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.

The Rays: "Silhouettes"

November 11, 1957 (1 week)

"Met my friends down at the pub, for a beer,

Got real drunk and began to cry, shed a tear,

Missing you from all the silhouettes we made

While we were getting laid..."

Maybe it's for the best that songwriters Bob Crewe and Frank Slay cut this proposed opening stanza from their hit single "Silhouettes". Or it would be if it hadn't been so obviously made up on the spot by a humble blogger nearly seventy years after it was composed. For a lyric with a giant red flag, I thought a bit of context to this creepy tale of jealousy, stalking, voyeurism and miraculous reconciliation was in order. Though the song doesn't say so, there's no way the guy in this story didn't wander the streets that night completely shit-faced, right?

Like a lot of men from my generation, I always thought that I was above petty jealousy. And to an extent, I am. Toxic masculine bullshit that justifies cheating on a spouse while going ballistic if they do likewise is something that I have no patience for. You don't want someone fooling around then don't do it yourself! (Amazing that something like this even needs stating) Yet, when I was a lot younger I could get jealous. I was so lacking in self-confidence that I expected the girls I was interested in were wishing they could be with others. It would eat away at me. But then I grew out of it. Becoming an adult isn't without its benefits.

It would be easy to dismiss "Silhouettes" as irredeemable crap but for the fact that it's a pretty good record, one that would result in a handful of notable cover versions (see below for one that even attempted to compete with The Rays' original). Weirdly, a cutesy bubblegum pop group would have a big hit with it a decade later (which we'll get to in due course) and ultra-Christian Cliff Richard would record a live rendition which would go Top 10 in his native UK in 1990. A chilled R&B group, a milquetoast Canadian doo-wop combo, a teen pin-up and a Bible thumper: not exactly the people I would've expected to embody toxic masculinity. A key to The Rays is that they treat the material with just enough sensitivity to pull it off. It's up to us as listeners to decide if the narrator of this song is a paranoid loser, we don't need The Rays to do it for us.

Which brings us to John Lennon, who was a compulsive cheater, admitted to hitting women and would write a pretty notorious song called "Run for Your Life" which he would eventually repudiate. Lennon acknowledged that "No Reply", the opening song on The Beatles fourth album Beatles for Sale, had been inspired by The Rays' "Silhouettes". The tunes aren't all that similar but the thematic approach of stalking and confronting the young women in question certainly was. "No Reply" has its merits but it sadly lacks the comedic payoff of its predecessor which is something you wouldn't normally expect from the witty Lennon.

With several covers and at least one song of note inspired by it, there's a question that arises: just what did they all see in it? Well, in addition to The Rays' very sturdy performance, it can't be avoided that it puts a happy face on being a creepy stalker. See? It was all a misunderstanding! I got the wrong house! It's all good! I was convinced those silhouettes on the shade were you and some other guy. But the people I confronted were good sports about it and you should be too! It'll never happen again! So problematic even if the simple act of listening to it isn't.

Till we meet again, "Silhouettes". I just hope that the next group to take you to number one is able to be as tasteful as The Rays.

Score: 7

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Con Can

The Canadian Content feature has been on delay due to there being very little on the CHUM charts to choose from but I thought I devote this post to a cover by Toronto's The Diamonds. According to Wikipedia, segregation caused a demand for a white doo-wop group to act like great big creeps, though not enough of one to give them much of a hit to piggyback on The Rays. Though it did get some radio play Stateside, few in Canada cared. I'd be proud of my compatriots embracing a group of African-Americans rather than a homegrown act and their rather bland cover but Canadians weren't always so progressive in their music tastes. As we'll see when we get to the sixties, they didn't seem quite as keen on Motown as listeners down south. I hope at least that the people of Windsor were open to it: Detroit was just across the river after-all.

Pat Boone: "Love Letters in the Sand"

June 3, 1957 (2 weeks)

One of the most unique yet largely unreported characteristics of music is how otherwise cool, cultured, intelligent, open-minded and worldly individuals may have the worst taste in what they choose to listen to. I used to have a friend who was a talented performance artist. He read lots of fascinating books, he seemed to know all the people worth knowing and you could have hours-long conversations with him about any number of subjects — but the music he listened to was mostly bland. You don't run into this when it comes to other interests people have: well-read individuals with a love of the arts don't tend to be into nothing but teen sex comedies and moronic Roland Emmerich popcorn movies. But having bad taste in music can inflict anyone, which may explain why Dave chose to give us a Pat Boone CD for Christmas one year. 

Dave is one of my uncles. I've always looked up to him. He's clever and well-read. He usually has unique takes on matters of politics. He likes discuss sports but never has tired and cliched views on "playing with determination and heart" or any of that malarky. One summer he went camping with us and I got to ride alone with him in his car. During these drives through Alberta and BC, we talked about everything from the situation with the Ozone Layer to "Macho Man" Randy Savage's reign as WWF champion (admittedly, a topic I knew much more about than he did). Over the years he has given me many books and I've loved every single one of them. His film recommendations are equally spot on. And yet he gave us a Pat bloody Boone CD for Christmas.

What could Dave have seen in him? Indeed, what did millions of perfectly nice, normal people get out of such a boring artist? Elvis may have stolen from black music but at least he kept the thrill and excitement and even added some of his own; a listen to Boone's versions of Little Richard classics "Long Tall Sally" and "Tutti Fruitti" and it's clear that cultural appropriation is the least of his crimes. He took brilliant pop records and removed everything that made them special. Such an inoffensive and milquetoast singer by rights ought to have equally bland, nondescript fans. I have no doubt that plenty of them are but Dave isn't one of them.

With a song like "Love Letters in the Sand", however, it's less important that he's a giant dud because pure balladeering requires the steady hand of someone with very little personality. Well, a truly strong performance of a gentle love song needs a Sinatra, a Vaughan, a Crosby or a Fitzgerald who all oozed charisma and personality but a Boone can pull it off even though he was woefully lacking in these characteristics. The singing is technically flawless so what does the need for real feeling matter? Real feeling and passion is, if anything, a drawback if all that you want from the music you're listening to is for it to be something to have on while you're doing something else. No one got anything out of putting any real consideration into a Pat Boone record (believe me, I've been trying to do so over the last few days).

It was natural that Elvis Presley clones would emerge following his breakthrough in 1956. But while this became common in the UK and much of western Europe at the end of the fifties, Americans were lacking in this regard. Elvis' peers — Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Gene Vincent — didn't need to ape the star because they had cut their teeth on the road just as he had and were fully formed as the rock 'n' roll phenomenon was taking hold. Snapping up the 'Next Elvis' may have been the goal of record company executives but they should have been satisfied with some of his talented contemporaries. Perhaps they would have been had they managed to appeal to parents and authority figures who clearly preferred kids to be listening to Boone instead.

There was still the need to manufacture pop stardom even if there was no way to bottle what Elvis was able to create. Pat Boone was in the right place at right time to exploit this situation and he ended up surpassing the sales of all of them except for Elvis himself. His rock 'n' roll exploits are laughable but he could find his way around a well-crafted pop ballad. He even managed to be reasonably good at whistling on his records. And at least "Love Letters in the Sand" doesn't have one of those wretched spoken word bits in the bridge like his lousy UK chart topper "I'll Be Home".

Dave's taste in music isn't entirely vile. I know he likes The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and has a fondness for a good deal of folk music which isn't really to my taste but that's not the point. Judging him based on one CD gifted to us nearly the thirty years ago is unfair but judge I will continue to do. There's just no going back from tacitly approving such a lifeless singer. And to think I could have blogged about the Everly Brothers' vastly superior "Bye Bye Love" instead but it was held off the top by "Love Letters in the Sand". The dullards won and it wouldn't be the last time they got their way.

Score: 4

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Can Con

The Diamonds fell one spot to number twelve during the first week of Boone's fortnight at the top before "Little Darlin'" fell out of the Top 50 entirely just seven days later. Nothing else to report though it should be said that CHUM's published listings aren't exactly easy to read. In addition, artists aren't even listed for positions eleven through fifty so I may well be missing the odd Canadian act who did, say, "Coconut Woman" at number forty. Nope, that was Harry Belafonte. But not to worry, Canadians will be popping up much more often, especially when this blog moves into the sixties. Until then, it's crusty old bandleaders and teen heartthrobs who'll be doing the heavy lifting for the maple leaf. My homeland has also produced its fair share of tedious types, as we'll no doubt see.

Elvis Presley: "All Shook Up"

May 27, 1957 (1 week)

""All Shook Up" was Elvis Presley's first number one single in Britain," Fred Bronson points out in his classic reference The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. Perhaps he was unaware that it also happened to be his first chart topper in Canada. While it may be easy to shrug off success outside of America, this is a notable achievement, considering this is an individual who never played a show in the UK. Never played anywhere in Europe for that matter. Never did a show in Japan or anywhere else in Asia. Never came to Australia or New Zealand either. Never even played a private gig for one of the Middle East's petro-oligarch families — not that we know of at any rate.

Yet, The King did play in one country other than the United States — Canada. Given how easy cross-border travel used to be, one might expect almost as many gigs in Moncton as Montgomery but this was anything but the case. On April 2, 1957, Elvis played a pair of shows at Toronto's hallowed Maple Leaf Gardens, then did a matinee and an evening set the next day in Ottawa. Shows in Montreal, Canada's biggest city at the time, ended up being cancelled due to complaints that he was a bad influence on youngsters. Returning north of the border on the last day of August, he played his final Canadian show in Vancouver at Empire Stadium. And that was that. The nation's two largest Anglophone cities and its capital, all within the space of a few months in 1957 when Elvis was still just twenty-two years old.

Given the tour itineraries of most well-known bands nowadays, this is pretty typical. (I've long considered pitching an article to The Beaverton with the headline 'British Group on Forty-Date North American Tour Surprised to Learn Canada Has More Than Three Cities') It probably wasn't a whole lot different back then either. What's more surprising is that he never returned. Elvis would go on to play four shows apiece in cities like Denver and Seattle over the years but he never even played in Toronto a second time. That said, just four gigs in major American cities isn't all that much either. The army, a longtime Vegas residency, living until only his early forties and Hollywood commitments will conspire to do that.

John Lennon famously summed up the decline and death of his idol by remarking that "he died when he went in the army" (a subject of Elvis' life that is bound to come up soon enough in this space). Harsh but it reflects how it was felt that military service tamed him. Quite right too since that's precisely what conniving manager Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk Colonel Tom Parker had sought. Doing two years in the army as a real soldier rather than a performer for the troops was meant to make the rock 'n' roll rebel a respectable figure with the parents and authority figures who had once condemned and/or dismissed him. But what if this was already beginning to happen?

Some purists love nothing but the Sun recordings (because there's always someone out there who can't tolerate anyone becoming popular) while many are just as content listening to the phenomenal batch of pop hits from 1956: "Heartbreak Hotel", "Hound Dog", "Don't Be Cruel", "Lawdy Miss Clawdy". I'm not the biggest Elvis fan in the world but I'll give my due to these, along with a handful of singles spread over the sixties and the brilliant 1969 album From Elvis in Memphis. But bland, pointless recordings were becoming more common only a year into his incredible run. With the push to become a Hollywood star, it was only natural that what he really excelled at would take a backseat, a trend that would commence almost immediately and only become more apparent following his discharge from the US military.

Luckily, there was still a bit left from that early rush. "All Shook Up" remains a favourite and with good reason. Yet the thrill of old had already begun to fade. Elvis' voice has never been as silky smooth which ought to be evidence enough that things were changing. Lost in the mix is Scotty Moore's guitar and you'd be forgiven for assuming (as I did) that he decided to let Hoyt Hawkins do the heavy lifting with a nice shuffling piano part. Hawkins' vocal outfit The Jordanaires earned their keep on "Blue Christmas" and on some of Elvis' gospel recordings but they aren't needed here; if anything, their presence is a distraction from The King's sexed up vibe. Though not exactly slick, there's a warmth to the production that suggests professionalism had begun to triumph over passion and spirit. Context, though, is everything: listening to it alongside "Don't Be Cruel" and "Blue Suede Shoes" does it no favours; on the other hand, playing it next to some of the dismal soundtrack material that would follow only convinces you that this is vintage Elvis.

"All Shook Up" enjoyed a run of eight weeks on top of the Billboard's old Top 100 and another seven in the UK but only managed a single seven-day run up in Canada. This was likely the result of timing: had CHUM's Weekly Hit Parade been established earlier, it would have almost certainly had a lengthier stint on top. But it reflected Elvis' own experiences in Canada during that year: they both arrived with a bang only to depart just as rapidly. Only there'd be far more Elvis singles to come even if The King himself never bothered making a return trip.

Score: 7

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Can Con 

The Diamonds: "Little Darlin'"

Here's an oddity within Canada's first official Top 50 chart: a total of sixty records appear on it. Call me overly literal but shouldn't this then be considered a Top 60? You'd think but for a quirk from the time which counted the same song recorded by multiple artists in the same chart placing. Thus, Fat's Domino's "I'm Walkin'" shared the number nineteen spot with Ricky Nelson's "I'm Walkin'". Meanwhile, "Sittin' on the Balcony" had a three way split at number twenty-three by Eddie Cochran, Don Cornell and Johnny Dee respectively. (This crazy chart system affected a certain number one hit/hits which will be dealt with when we eventually get to it/them) Having more room, however, didn't provide more opportunities for Canadian acts as Toronto's The Diamonds' were the sole homegrown representative present. If it's too dismissive to label the kind of doo-wop they favoured in "Little Darlin'" as "dated" then let's be charitable and say it's a "period piece". Good as this type thing goes but nothing terribly remarkable either. Even had Elvis phoned it in, he still would've deserved a number one over competition of this quality. But well done all the same! (Finally, "I'm Walkin'"? "Sittin' on the Balcony"? "Little Darlin'"? What on earth did the letter G do to offend so many songwriters back in the fifties?)