Where it started for me

Voice recording #249 from Jan. 6, on Sirius Channel 5.
The Essex, "Easier Said Than Done", 1956. The Essex were a trend setter in that they copied baseball's  Sox by becoming perhaps the first musical group whose name didn't end in S. This was a pretty good song. It has some changes in tempo. One of the better '50s songs, but I couldn't understand what I said for a score.
Gene Vincent, "Lotta Lovin'", '58. 4,850.
Roy Hamilton, "You Can Have Her", no year listed. It's unusual in that the backup singers sound like a church choir, so there's a gospel feel. The singer doesn't want his wife or girlfriend anymore, so you can have her. 4,825.
Bill Haley and His Comets, "Mambo Rock", year? This is considered the original rock 'n' roll group, but this is not among their best. Part of it sounds like a later song, "Mambo Italiano", and it has what sounds like electric guitar picking. So it had some groundbreaking elements. This song did not create a dance craze, in the manner of the Twist or the Macarena. 4,810.
Ben E. King, "Stand by Me", late '50s. This song was revived 20-30 years later when the movie "Stand by Me" came out. The movie is supposed to be set in 1959, but imdb.com notes that there are a lot of anachronisms in it. I noticed the first time I saw it that a 1960 Topps baseball card was on the bulletin board of Will Wheaton's character's brother, who died in '59. Good movie, though, and good song. Good beat, good percussion. 4,100.
On most of these for the '50s I might be splitting hairs at the lower 4,000s among songs that might not even make the final 5,000.
I'm just about finished with the final entries in the database, at least for song names, artists and where they fit in their own year's Top 100. I still need to add information as we go along. I have more than 6,000 listed, so obviously they all couldn't make the top 5,000, and I'll be adding other songs that weren't in any year's Top 100 but still deserve mention. Songs that I like, mostly.
Lou Christie, "Two Faces Have I" from the late '50s. The late '50s into the early '60s was one of the best eras for falsetto singing, and Lou had his best in "Lightning Strikes". This was a good one too, in the same style: "One to laugh, and one to cry. Ah-Ahk." 4,350.
Larry Williams, "Dizzy Miss Lizzie", year? He had a fair number of hits in the '50s, with some early rock. His singing has a Little Richard feel. One that I couldn't remember or didn't remember who did it was by Larry Williams. (I forget which one as I write this.) 4,700.
The Schoolboys, "Please Say You Want Me Again", year? This one is painfully slow. There is some kind of chorus/background singers, but nothing really to commend this one. 4,950.
The Crickets with Buddy Holly, "Oh Boy", year? This is one of the many Buddy Holly songs that was covered by British groups. However, it wasn't Holly but Sonny West who wrote and first performed this song and "Rave On". "Oh Boy" has a lot of guitar, moves quickly and is forward-looking for its time even though the guitar play is simple in comparison to what we now expect. Buddy Holly also did things with his voice -- "ah-uh-ho" -- that almost added another instrument. 3,950.
Bonnie? Sisters, "Cry Baby", sounds like fairly early '50s. I'm imaging that this song would have been sung in jazz clubs. The sisters were pretty much drowned out by the saxophones and percussion. 4,975.
The Caravelles, "You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry", year? This has in common with "Cry Baby" the words "cry" and "baby", and probably a similar time frame. Mid-'50s? The lead singer has a nice voice -- high, very breathy, but hard to pick up over the little bit of drumming and cymbals. That probably points out the fairly primitive sound engineering of the time. There probably weren't many microphones, if even more than one, and there might have been one by the drums. And of course they didn't have today's digital equipment to remix. 4,850.
Thurston Harris, "Little Bitty Pretty One", late '50s? The song moves pretty well. 4,450.
I remember the songs from the late '50s. My late sister Carolee was 3 years older, so I remember some of her records and songs she would listen to on the radio. Pat Boone was her favorite. She also had records by Guy Mitchell and Jim Lowe's "Green Door". I got my first radio for Christmas in 1958, about 6 weeks before The Day the Music Died. I remember very distinctly listening to the radio the next day, which was pretty much 24/7 talking about Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. To my 10-year-old mind, that was very significant. Looking back, I guess that was akin to listening to a weekend sports-talk announcer a couple of years out of college saying that one of today's quarterbacks must be the greatest ever without regard for, or possibly even any knowledge of, Johnny Unitas or Joe Montana. My musical starting frame of reference was really the late '50s.
Kalin? Twins, "When", year? I will say that these '50s songs tend to be even shorter than those today or even a decade or two after the '50s. This song was not out of the ordinary or out of its time. The singing was not very good. 4,900.
The Olympics, "Big Boy Pete", year? I don't remember this one, but I think that The Olympics might have had a plagiarism case against whoever did "Jolly Green Giant". It's almost an identical tune, and similar subject matter about how you don't mess around with this guy. However, "Jolly Green Giant" was a better song, in part because there were better tools at the group's disposal. Forgot to give Pete a score.
The Platters, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", 1958. Anyone who lived through the '50s and '60s or has seen "Mad Men", would understand the idea of smoke in the eyes. Not just around the campfire, in those days. I'm pretty sure this is a remake of an older, classic song. The Platters had a lot of good hits during their time. Their style was mostly slow, romantic ballads. There were a lot of strings and backup singers harmonizing in the background. 4,550.
Annette, "O Dio Mio", maybe '56 or '57. Annette was the late Annette Funicello. "Mickey Mouse Club" came on TV about 1955. Not much after it debuted, I started watching it, and a lot of other kids did too. Annette, 13 at the time, was one of the first females who taught boys my age that teenage girls actually had breasts. In a way, she was the Britney Spears of her day, taking herself from "Mickey Mouse Club" to music and movies, but not as successfully. My 5,000 has to have room for an Annette song, if only for her groundbreaking activities and sweaters. And this probably isn't even her best. It does have Italian in it: O dio mio, oh my God. 4,700.
Del Shannon, "Runaway", the song was released in 1961, but somehow it got on Sirius XM Channel 5 with '50s songs. Again there's a falsetto theme: "I'm a walkin' in the rain." He did that more with this song than his others. The music has a penny whistle or maybe a piccolo. I checked, and neither of those instruments was in the song. I might have been hearing a Musitron, an electronic keyboard invented by Max Crook, who sang on the record with Shannon. The sound was similar to what we heard on Crispian St. Peters' "Pied Piper" in '66. "Runaway" was ahead of its time. 3,700.
Brenda Lee, "Sweet Nothin's", year? Brenda was pretty big in the '50s and early '60s. 4,600.
Brenda Lee, "As Usual", year? There's a lot of country in her singing. There seemed to be quite a bit more country crossover into popular music in the 50s. Certainly, cowboy shows were a big part of television programming then -- Roy Rogers, Gabby Hayes, The Lone Ranger, Wild Bill Hickok, The Cisco Kid and others -- and Western movies also were popular. 4,800.
Cadillacs, "Woe Is Me", year? 4,900.
Percy Faith, "Theme from a Summer Place", maybe '59? Very much lost in this era, but prevalent in the '50s and '60s, were orchestral songs that would make it on to the charts. This one I believe was No. 1 overall in the year it came out. There were words to the song that Percy Faith's orchestra made with lots of strings and horns. "The sweet secret of a summer place, is that it's anywhere where two people share all their hopes, all their dreams … all their love." Percy did OK on this one. 4,600.
Rolf Harris, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport", year? This was a folk song from Australia that played more as a novelty number here. One line that wouldn't go over well today was "Let me abos go loose," with "abos" a pejorative slang term for aborigines. Another thing I remember about this song was that my girlfriend for most of high school was Nancy Sullivan, whose dad called her "sport." Her sister, Mary, always kidded her about "Timmy kangaroo down sport."4,650 just for the song's originality.
Fabian, "Tiger" from 1959. Fabian was a heartthrob for about 10 minutes of fame at the time. No, he probably got in a full 15 minutes, but he didn't have the staying power of even Justin Timberlake. 4,900.
Next: Voice recording #253 from Jan. 7.