1959 Titus Turner, We Told You Not To Marry. Odea Matthews, Five Long Years For One Man. All the girls on the block wondered: why did Johnny marry Bonnie? Johnny was popular enough at school, though maybe he laughed too loudly, but he went completely off his head for the first girl to really look at him. Bonnie was short and had slightly buck teeth--the line was that she had a "great
1959 Theophilus Beckford, Easy Snappin'. Laurel Aitken, Boogie in My Bones. Ska's first steps: Theophilus Beckford recorded "Easy Snappin'" sometime in 1956, but the track didn't get released until three years later. You could call it, as some have, "year zero" for modern Jamaican music. And you can hear, in its birth spasms, the skanking rhythm, Jamaica's pulsebeat. Beckford was attempting
1959 Cannonball Adderley Quintet, You Got It! Modern Jazz Quartet, Odds Against Tomorrow. Throughout October 1959, the Cannonball Adderley Quintet was in residency at a club called the Jazz Workshop, in the North Beach district of San Francisco. One night Dmitri Shostakovich, looking to hear for the first time "authentic American jazz," walked into the club and sat with his entourage for an
1959 Irma Thomas, (You Can Have My Husband But Please) Don't Mess With My Man. Meet Ms. Irma Thomas, who has one thing to say to you ladies: do what you want with her deadbeat husband, but leave her lover alone. The money my husband made was for red beans and rice But my man keeps me in steaks, now ain't that nice? Thomas, born in 1941 in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, knew something about
1959 Don French, Lonely Saturday Night. Don French, Goldilocks. As ominous as it is ridiculous, Don French's "Lonely Saturday Night" captures a certain aspect of adolescence--the belief that a temporary bout of misery is somehow eternal. The singer doesn't have a date for Saturday night, as the girl he likes stood him up. But as the song goes on, he moves from desperation to panic to,
1959 Buddy Holly, Learning the Game. Buddy Holly, Peggy Sue Got Married. Buddy Holly, Love is Strange. Buddy Holly, Dearest. Buddy Holly, Slippin' and Slidin'. The newly-married couple moved into 3B at the Brevoort in the fall of 1958, just as the sycamores were turning. They were very polite whenever you came across them in the hallway. The girl, Maria Elena, is Puerto Rican. While at first
Midway Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita... Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken. The Kinks, Young and Innocent Days. The Beatles, Help! Frank Sinatra, Why Try to Change Me Now? Howlin' Wolf, Getting Old and Grey. Marvin Gaye, Where Are We Going? The Kinks, Where Did My Spring Go? There's a Samuel Beckett story (probably
1958 "she moved in circles, and those circles moved" Theodore Roethke, I Knew a Woman. Clyde McPhatter, A Lover's Question. The Drifters, Drip Drop. Dwight Pullen, Sunglasses After Dark. Don and Dewey, Bim Bam. The Everly Brothers, Down In the Willow Garden. Jimmy and Johnny, I Can't Find the Door Knob. The Kalin Twins, When. Bob Denton with Eddie Cochran, Thinkin' About You. Dorothy Masuka,
1958 Sun Ra and His Arkestra, Saturn. One would have needed either fanatical dedication or just blind luck to have actually heard this track in the year of its release--Jazz in Silhouette, the Sun Ra LP that contains "Saturn," was pressed on cheap vinyl, issued in handmade covers, and sold only in a few Midwestern record stores and by the generally-broke members of the Arkestra for cash after
1958 The Jamies, Summertime, Summertime. The Jamies were a quartet from the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester (one of the guys has a honker of an accent): siblings Tom and Serena Jameson, Jeannie Ray and Arthur Blair. "Summertime, Summertime" was their one-hit wonder. Has any song better captured the joy of the first day after school's ended, with nothing but an endless length of sun-blessed
1958 The Coasters, Yakety Yak. The Silhouettes, Get a Job. The Miracles, Got a Job. In which teenagers declare war on the adult world. While skirmishes out in the brush continue to this day, the kids eventually seized control, though they still had to get jobs at some point. The Coasters' "Yakety Yak" was recorded in New York on March 17, 1958, with King Curtis on the sax break and Mike
1958 Rod Bernard, Pardon Mr. Gordon. Rod Bernard, This Should Go On Forever. You might not be able to guess from listening to the tracks, but Rod Bernard was a Cajun. Born in Opelusas, Louisiana, in 1940, Bernard was playing guitar and singing professionally by the time he was 10 years old, first in a group called the Blue Room Gang and, after Bernard had heard Elvis, with a rock & roll band
1958 Jimmy Smith, The Sermon. "Anyone who plays the organ is a direct descendant of Jimmy Smith. It's like Adam and Eve -- you always remind someone of Jimmy Smith," Joey DeFrancesco. One of the deacons of soul jazz (essentially, jazz heavily under the influence of gospel and blues) was an organist named Jimmy Smith. Smith, born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, in 1925, started out playing the
1958 The Collins Kids, Whistle Bait. The Collins Kids, Rock Boppin' Baby. Let's begin with 14-year old Larry Collins, who, while sounding as though he's yet to attain puberty, is evidently randy enough to leer and hoot at some poor girl on the street. "She's-a whistle bait!!" he squeaks in this freakish little voice which Morpheus could have used to overdub nightmares. That said, Larry could
1958 their rockin' homework is what they love the best Gene Summers and His Rebels, School of Rock 'N Roll. Where Chuck Berry's "School Day" is a precise sketch of the tedium of a typical American high school, whether it's the Class of 1958 or 2007, Gene Summers' "School of Rock 'N Roll" is pure greaser fantasy, the kind of place where the only use for books is to steady a wobbling
1958 Benny Goodman, Goodbye. Ornette Coleman, The Sphinx. Gordon Jenkins' "Goodbye" had become, by the late 1930s, the standard closing number for the Benny Goodman Orchestra. Goodman had taken to the piece quickly, often investing a sorrowful tone to the lead clarinet melody. And during the war, "Goodbye" naturally became a poignant end to an evening. Goodman had experimented a bit with his
1958 Paul Perryman, Satellite Fever Asiatic Flu. Strange as it may seem now, this was a topical song, referring to the resurgence of the "Asiatic Flu," which had first appeared in Russia during the last years of the 19th Century. The 1957 pandemic began in China early in the year and had spread to the United States by the summer. (Shoghi Effendi, leader of the Bahá'í faith, died from it, along
1958 Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm, Get It Over Babe. Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm, How Long Will It Last. Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm, I'm Gonna Forget About You (Matchbox). While the lives of Ike Turner and Sam Phillips had intersected throughout the 1950s, these tracks mark the terminus. For Turner, the future held untold promise, as in a year's time he would meet a singer
1958 Lazy Lester, I Hear You Knockin'. Lazy Lester, I'm a Lover Not a Fighter. Lazy Lester, born Leslie Johnson in Torras, Louisiana, in 1933, is one of the great swamp blues players, noted for his songwriting as well as his skills on a host of instruments, including harp, bass, drums and guitar. I first heard about Lester from the Rev. Frost, who offered this mini-bio when he wrote about
1958 Lawrence Ferlinghetti, See It Was Like This When... Jack Kerouac, Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, American Haikus (excerpt). In April 1958, the San Francisco newspaper columnist Herb Caen coined the word "beatnik," a play on "Sputnik," tossing the neologism into an otherwise run-of-the mill gossip piece which, thanks to the grace of time, is at least 75% incomprehensible. (It warms the heart to think that someone in 2050 will be baffled [...]
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