Elvis Presley: "Return to Sender"

November 5, 1962 (2 weeks)

It was still about six years away from happening but the idea of Elvis making a comeback was already being floated around in 1962. Though the hits kept on coming, it had become clear that this wasn't the same King from 1957. Seriously, did no one figure he'd be different when he was released from the army? One look at him gallivanting on stage with Frank Sinatra at his Welcome Home show should have confirmed it: hillbilly wildcat Elvis was gone and mainstream, fit-for-the-establishment Elvis had taken his place.

And you know something? Presley seemed to be making the best of it. His output had been admittedly erratic but he hadn't exactly been consistently great ever since the peak of '56. His return from Germany in 1960 coincided with opening himself up to a variety of style that he other wise wouldn't have dabbled in. That said, what seemed to stymie his development in the early sixties, however, was his inability or unwillingness to pick a lane. Middle-of-the-road lounge music seemed to be where he was heading but the pull of old school rock 'n' roll was still there and his heart seemed to be in gospel.

Hints of a growing musical maturity kept being blocked by a combination of pressure to remain a teen idol and the increasingly lightweight roles he was being given in Hollywood. The last time Elvis topped the Canadian charts it was with the average "Good Luck Charm" but flip side "Anything That's Part of You" indicated there were hidden depths. Then he put out follow-ups "She's Not You" and "King of the Whole Wide World" which were as trite and/or moronic as ever. Has there ever been an artist whose progress could be halted on a dime by outside influences as readily as Elvis Presley?

"Return to Sender" is a partial return to form. Only partial because it's pretty idiotic but The King sounds like he's having a good time and not simply going through the motions so that's a definite plus. The song is charming enough even if it overplays its postal delivery metaphor hand. Yet, it remains an unconvincing stab at a rock 'n' roll comeback. It had been just a year since "Little Sister" and "(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame" which showed The King in effortless mid-fifties form; in this case, it's not so much that he's struggling with a genre that he once defined and more that he's doing a competent pop song that's trying to act like vintage Elvis when it's patently clear that it's not up to the task. For his part, Presley probably was up to it but this is a man who couldn't write on his own and wasn't always serviced with the best outside material.

"Return to Sender" also happened to be Elvis' first single A side in Canada since "Hard Headed Woman" all the way back in the middle of 1958. I don't know why so many of his flip sides (many of whom varied in quality) were given such prominence or indeed why the practice was stopped here but it does signal that the double A side would slowly begin to fade from the charts. Only one would get to number one in 1963 before The Beatles briefly brought it back during their conquest of the Top 40 in the early part of '64 but that would be only a few months away from the changeover to the RPM chart where opposing sides of the same single were able to chart separately.

Score: 6

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Can Con

I've been trying to ignore him but, what the hell, Paul Anka's still having hits so why not give an update. The Latin rhythms of "Eso Beso (That Kiss!)" suit his overconfident voice. In fact, Anka has always been at his best when he sounds like he's vaguely annoyed. Catchy, good fun and it probably deserved a bit better than only getting to number eleven. A pleasant surprise given my usual antipathy towards Ottawa's favourite son — and a good deal better than Gord Lightfoot's latest effort, the lame country-gospel "It's Too Late, He Wins". By the seventies, the idea of preferring Paul Anka over Gordon Lightfoot would be laughable; a decade earlier and Canada's original lounge lizard wins easily.

Billy Vaughn: "Sail Along Silvery Moon"

January 13, 1958 (3 weeks)

Imagine a recording artist of today deciding to do a cover version of a single from twenty years ago. They might choose "Toxic" by Britney Spears or "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day or...damn, what the hell came out in 2004? I'm pretty sure "Everything Changes" "Everybody's Changing" by Keane came out then (or close to it at any rate). It feels like Arcade Fire were becoming a thing and also The Killers, a pair of groups that never did much for me. And there was a Wilco album that I was excited about which I only listened to the once. But pick anything from this very unremarkable year in music and decide to do something radical with it.

The obvious thing is to replace the glossy Max Martin production for some "real" instruments like a guitar, bass and drums — in fact, there's nothing remotely "radical" about this approach; indeed, I have no doubt there are several versions of "Toxic" that have been recorded this way. The other thing you could do is synth up something like "Everybody's Changing" which the original isn't a million miles from to begin with. Or you could do "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" in the style of Norah Jones. Or The Killers' "Mr. Brightside" as performed by Johnny Cash. Just take any song from '04 and give it a stylistic remodel. Simple.

What you most likely wouldn't think to do if you had any chance of sniffing the charts and/or gaining some measure of critical acclaim is to have it done it as an instrumental. Yet, this is what the multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Billy Vaughn did on several occasions throughout the fifties and into the sixties as a regular on both the American and Canadian hit parades. It should be said that the quality of his work varies. "Love's Melody" was a big hit for him back in 1954 but he lays the syrup on thick. His recording of the Western standard "Shifting, Whispering Sands" is stronger but the narration and chorus (yes, another one of those!) lets it down a tad. His rendition of recent Canadian chart topper "Raunchy" — which also happened to be the B-side of the present single — is punchier than Bill Justis' but he and his orchestra don't quite deliver the powerhouse jazzy rockabilly treatment it deserves.

But he certainly got it right when it came to "Sail Along Silvery Moon" and he managed to do so by making chicken salad out of the chicken shit that was Bing Crosby's 1937 original. To be fair, the Old Groaner did give his typically beautiful restrained vocal performance but there's seemingly nothing to the tune which just nonchalantly glides about on the back of a Hawaiian ukulele and little else. For Billy Vaughn to sense a stellar composition lurking about in there somewhere is a credit to his ear.

Not unlike "So Rare" and "Raunchy", one can imagine a full-blown jazz version of "Sail Along Silvery Moon". It's easy to picture tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins doing an inspired blowing session over it and I would swoon over what the Modern Jazz Quartet might have done with it. That said, this much more compromised effort is probably the best of both worlds. The rock 'n' roll influence on the song's beat gives it a steady groove. Too much improvisation might have also wrecked the relaxed atmosphere which Vaughn managed to preserve from the Crosby original. Perhaps he and his orchestra had some fun by stretching it out in their concerts but as a 45 release it's perfectly good the way it is.

With jazz waning commercially and this newfangled rock 'n' roll turning off anyone over the age of twenty-one, easy listening music was there to appeal to increasingly conservative men and women who really weren't all that old but whose tastes must have seemed ancient. This could result in some dreadful stuff and a good deal of it was also horribly boring. Yet, in the right hands there was a place for creativity to peak through by borrowing from styles of music that they normally steered clear of. Who'd have thought that so much could be done with a forgotten Bing Crosby number by adding on jazz and rock? It's as if they had unwittingly created jazz fusion at a time when Miles Davis was still trying to be as classy as possible. There's a pop music what if you never hear about.

Score: 8

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Can Con

The Diamonds return with "The Stroll" which would end up being their second biggest hit after "Little Darlin'". While hitting number three in Canada and four in the US seems a little higher than it might have deserved, it's a good deal better than their earlier work. Nudged along by a honkin' tenor and/or baritone sax, the Toronto foursome go all moody and sensual. The same cannot be said for Paul Anka's "You Are My Destiny" which only makes me wish his nibs could have made a return to form in the style of "Diana", which you may recall I didn't think much of when I reviewed it a few weeks ago. Well done Canadian public for not overdoing it on Ottawa's favourite son. I'm not looking forward to having to deal with him again but at least it won't be for a while.

Paul Anka: "Diana"

August 12, 1957 (1 week)

I'm not sure if it began with Fay Wray, the Dionne Quintuplets or — him again! — Guy Lombardo but at some point Canadians began taking a little too much pride in the famous names who hailed from their homeland. If I was to guess, I'd say it really got going after the war with the likes of Glenn Gould, Christopher Plummer, Lorne Greene, Monty Hall, Wayne & Shuster and Oscar Peterson. When Gould crossed through the Iron Curtain to play Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre in 1957 it would have been a point of pride for many Canadians, even for some who didn't care for his Goldberg Variations. Similarly, having the chance to witness entertainers like Greene and the comedy duo of Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster perform on the Ed Sullivan Show would have meant a lot to viewers who lived north of the US border.

But at some point there seemed to be this expectation that Canadians ought to be proud of anyone from our country who happened to find fame in the States, regardless of our distaste for them. I was once doing an English language camp one winter break at my university here in Korea and one day we had a special guest speaker. She spoke to students, teachers and staff for nearly an hour. At first, the kids liked her. Speaking pretty good Korean no doubt helped. But she began to lose them when she started to boast of the many famous Canadians out there. This being 2012, she would've been well-advised to bring up a still popular and (relatively) trouble-free Justin Bieber. Instead, she informed everyone that Jim Carrey and Celine Dion and Avril Levigne all happen to be Canadian. These people meant nothing to the kids at this assembly. Afterwards, a teacher from New Zealand — itself a country short on well known individuals beyond Peter Jackson — came up to me and asked, "does everyone in Canada do that?" "Oh god yeah", I replied, my eyes rolling in exasperation.

Paul Anka could very well have been a pioneer in this respect. I don't think there's a Canadian from an earlier time who people would boast proudly over and yet not want to have anything to do with otherwise. I can only speculate on this. He was very popular so of course some of his fellow citizens could tell people from other countries about Anka's birthplace and be a fan of his but there's certainly no question his music isn't for everybody. "Diana" isn't even the worst offender as equally large future hits "Lonely Boy" and, particularly, "(You're) Having My Baby" are a good deal worse. Growing up in the eighties, I didn't know anyone who liked him but he did seems to command a certain degree of respect though only if your definition of 'respect' is to not be making fun of someone all the time. A British or American equivalent would have been mocked ceaselessly in spite of having a lengthy run of hits; but for Ottawa native Anka it was more like 'let's be excited that he managed to make it Stateside even if we'd rather not have anything to do with him otherwise'.

Watching the groundbreaking National Film Board of Canada documentary Lonely Boy, it's clear that Anka went down a storm as much among the the older generations than he did with sobbing girls. Maybe more so in fact. Playing New York's legendary Copacabana club, he is in his element, confidently strutting about behind a mic and hob nobbing with intimidating nightclub owner Jules Podell. "Diana" would've worked better in this kind of environment rather than having disguised as ersatz rock 'n' roll. But the screaming girls had to be satisfied: the pleading Anka just had to have something approaching beat music in the background.

Better than I remember it being but nevertheless completely undeserving of the nine weeks it spent at the top of the UK chart, the "Diana" single week it spent on top of both the Canadian and US charts seems much easier to accept. Countrymen may indeed have been proud but they weren't interested in keeping him at number one for any longer than need be. And who could blame them? After all, we'll tell the rest of the world about how Paul Anka happened to have been born and raised in the same country as us but we wouldn't go so far as to listen to his music. We're just very Canadian that way.

Score: 4

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Con Can

Paul-bloody-Anka and nothing else. But being a lone Canadian looks nicer at the top of the charts instead of hanging around near the bottom. But couldn't B side "Don't Gamble with Love" have grabbed a lowly spot of its own? I can see it going down well among the well-to-do socialites and mob bosses at the Copacabana but maybe the shrieking females had little interested in it. But what am I saying? One Paul Anka song is more than enough.