Lolita: "Sailor (Your Home Is the Sea)"

October 31, 1960 (2 weeks)

It was in 1955 that the literary world was rocked by the publication of Lolita, a supposedly erotic novel by Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov. I say "supposedly erotic" because there's nothing remotely titillating about a grown man grooming a school-age girl. I'm not trying to condemn the book or author, mind you; I read it and thought it was rather good, if not quite as brilliant as many literary types would have you believe (still, I got through it which is more than can be said for the baffling and utterly unenjoyable Pale Fire).

I'm not sure it was inevitable that a female singer from Europe would adopt the stage name 'Lolita' but I'd say it tracks. What would have been unexpected is that she didn't come onto the scene as a fifties' equivalent of Britney Spears in a crop top school uniform but as the smiling, wholesome, unglamourous and very much adult persona of one Edith "Ditta" Einzinger, who had previously been a kindergarten teacher in her native Austria. If she had been out to troll middle aged dads for clout then well done!

It's a shame she didn't put as much effort into her recording career. To be fair, however, Lolita is probably the best thing about "Sailor (Your Home Is the Home)". Her voice isn't especially notable but it's more than good enough which makes it a good deal preferable to everything else. The music plods along at a languid, vaguely country and western pace (something that is far more apparent in Petula Clark's English version) and there's a thoroughly nauseating chorus that pops up from time to time. Though recorded near the end of 1959 (with the English spoken-word part tacked on at a later date in anticipation of its release in North America), it somehow sounds older than its sixty-five years. If not for the lack of technology, it might as well have been recorded centuries ago. That's timelessness for you, even if the record itself isn't all that good.

"Sailor (Your Home Is the Sea)" — aka "Seemann (Deine Heimat ist das Meer)", to give its full German title — is the third Canadian number one of 1960 to be about seafaring which may or may not be of significance. What matters is that it is the only one which doesn't seem to have an appreciation for the water. Johnny Horton's "Sink the Bismark", for all of its ills, is a naval call-to-arms while Jimmie Rodgers' "The Wreck of the John B" gives a stirring account of being out at sea for far too long. "Sailor", on the other hand, is given from the female perspective: a schoolteacher from landlocked Austria is probably not going to have much of an understanding of life as a merchant marine. The lonely girlfriend stuck at home while her man sails the around the world is a topic that hasn't been covered much in pop and it deserved better than this feeble attempt. 

Continental pop would be slow to adapt to the beat group boom and it would take even longer for female artists to really start sexing up their images. This is no bad thing but what really holds back a record like "Sailor" is that there's little for the listener to relate to — and not just because I don't speak German. Luckily, there would be another number one from a neighbouring country coming along soon that would really get hearts fluttering, as indeed it still should.

Score: 3

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Can Con

Bloody hell, the CHUM charts have been low on homegrown talent of late. Only Paul Anka and Jack Scott have been appearing with much regularity. But then a new act emerged out of Quebec. The Beau-Marks had already made the CHUM hit parade earlier in the year with "Clap Your Hands", which also somehow managed to reach the number one spot in Australia, and "Billy, Billy Went A-Walking" was the follow-up. Both singles are strong if somewhat low on character, which is something a lot of non-American acts struggled with prior to around 1964. The sort of songs you can listen to three dozen times and still not remember even if you enjoyed it while it was on. If only they'd been active a few years later.