Tracks: Made to Love//That's Just Too Much//Stick With Me Baby//Baby What You Want Me To Do//Sigh, Cry, Almost Die//Always It's You//Love Hurts//Lucille//So How Come (No One Loves Me)//Donna, Donna//A Change of Heart//Cathy's Clown

The Everly brothers do have a lot of good ideas. They take the basic Buddy Holly country-rock template, graft on their impressive close-harmony singing, and then flesh things out with wide-ranging borrowing from other fields of pop and rock. Album-opener “Made to Love” boasts a surfy Link Ray beat and vocals that wouldn’t be out of place in a doo-wop song. “Cathy’s Clown”, the most interesting track in sonic terms, features a staggered marching-band beat over which the Everlys caterwaul melancholically in a style directly comparable with the early Beatles (who ripped-off this song). It has more in common with an old-fashioned pop song of the type one expects Doris Day to start belting out than the bluesy nonsense of Elvis and his like, complete with time changes and several clearly distinct sections.

Obviously, the levels of writing are considerably higher than usual, with a lot more chord changes and a more sophisticated approach to melody. And the arrangements are fascinating - guitars are layered and positively swirl, while “Always It’s You” boasts a glockenspiel and elaborate studio delay effects – gone is the irritating cheapness which has dogged all the rock albums on the list up to this point, and I for one thing that it’s about damned time. And hey, Roy Orbison ripped-off both “Love Hurts” (“You Got It”) and “Lucille” (“Pretty Woman”), so there’s that.

So, the Everlys have a lot of interesting ideas. Unfortunately they aren’t always being put in the service of memorable songs. “Made to Love” is a great catchy fist-pumper with empty-headed yet oddly endearing lyrics about women being programmed for love (Ah! To hear Dietrich cover this). “Donna, Donna” is similarly grand, yet less affirmative and more about how badly Donna screwed the Everlys over. And “Cathy’s Clown” is simultaneously the oddest song here and intensely enjoyable. All good there – the problem is, that’s only three songs on a twelve song album.

The other tracks aren’t worthless, they’re just not hit-you-in-the-face amazing. Lyrically, this is a very shallow affair – the Everly Brothers do an admirable job of capturing the Teenage Condition, but unfortunately the Teenage Condition is exceptionally tedious, relying as it does almost entirely on gut-reaction tear-jerking and pleas to the heart - a quick read of the track list tells you all you need to know. And look at the cover! Are you sad? Well, no fear - the Everly Borthers will date you even if no-one else will. If you can give yourself over to an entire album of self-absorbed whining then it’s a lot of fun, but you’re probably better off either ignoring the lyrics or listening to this just after the captain of the varsity football team gave Becky Winthrop his pin instead of you. And I mean ugh! She is such a slut! I mean, everyone knows she went down on Buck Jones in the back of his Plymouth after the Castle Beach Clam Bake. Oh god I am so fat... And if I don’t lose at least ten pounds then how am I ever going to marry Frankie Avalon?

Putting personal matters aside, this is a pretty good pop album. It has a few great moments, and is uniformly enjoyable – and how many albums can you point to where all the songs are good? Not many, really. And I may have complained of the simplicity of the lyrics, but on the other hand it does add a nice bit of immediacy to things. Plus, all the songs are short – about 2:20 on average – and both very slick and highly melodic. It may be sort of inconsequential, but then again pop music isn’t meant to be art. It’s meant to be a fun time or a simplistic augmentation of your current emotional state. And on that level, and as an interesting and important progresion in the development of rock, this more than delivers.

7.5/10

26. Miriam Makeba – Miriam Makeba (1960)

Tracks: The Retreat Song//Suliram//The Click Song//Umhome//Olilili//Lakutshn, Ilanga//Mbube//The Naughty Little Flea//Where Does It Lead?//Novema//House of the Rising Sun//House of the Rising Sun//Saduva//One More Dance//Iya Guduza

Well, this is a nice album, although I get the feeling they may have included it more because it’s Miriam Makeba’s debut than anything else. Is this an important album in the history of African music? Well, it has “The Click Song” on it, and that was a big hit in the West, so maybe it is. I poke about on the net and no-one ever seems to mention this that much. Miriam Makeba is a big deal, anyway, what with having been a major anti-apartheid and civil rights activist and getting exiled from South Africa during a trip to the USA - so I suppose it warrants inclusion on that point alone.

Of course, saying all that makes it seem as though I don’t think much of this. It’s good, though. Quite good. Frequently, very good, and perhaps at times even great. Makeba does a lot of different things here, and she manages to do most of them well. This suits her background – a South African with a jazz background and strong interest music folk, classical and pop. I guess that makes her a lot like Nina Simone, although Simone would have been less inclined to fill her album with jaunty calypso numbers about naughty fleas wanting a bite of Brigitte Bardot. Ah, but then I don’t actually know if some of these songs are calypso – they sound like calypso, but then where exactly is the line between Afro-Caribbean and straight-up African? I don’t know much about African music, and almost everything I do know is limited to West Africa, with folks like Fela Kuti and Bembeya Jazz National and Konono No.1 and all that jazz (quite literally). Miriam Makeba may have lived in Guinea for a time, but that was all well into the future and there isn’t all that much that’s Guinean about the music here. So, my frame of reference for South African music is limited largely to this, and to Paul Simon’s Graceland. And there isn’t much that sounds like Graceland here, either.

Putting my incoherent rambling aside. The predominant modes here are down-tempo jazz with a light guitar backing, like you might expect to here on a 50s Julie London album, and big boisterous African-style tunes (no I do not know the name of the genre) with lots of call-and-response vocals and deep, chanted rhythms. But, Makeba mixes it up, and the results on both fronts are something curiously quintessential in character. Some of the most revelatory moments are the ones where she just sings a cappella as a lead-in to some of the songs. Her voice really is extraordinary.

There are some very good songs here, and only two that even approach bad. “House of the Rising Sun” is sort of mangled, since Makeba attempts a sort of jazzy deconstruction and doesn’t quite pull it off. Her voice is beautiful – something that holds true for all the songs here – but as a composition it’s a little disjointed. “One More Dance” has immense novelty value, as it is just so incredibly weird. Basically, Miriam duets a rather standard song in the vein of “Baby it’s cold outside”, with the difference being that the song is about her putting off going home to tend to her dying husband, and the man she is dueting with is, throughout the song, in paroxysms of laughter. Actually I don’t know if it’s fair to call the song bad, so much as it is just so extraordinarily weird.

On the flipside, however, we have three songs that are absolutely extraordinary. Firstly, there’s “Mbube”, which is sort of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” except that it is far more complicated and fun and exciting, does not have the wimmuways, and is generally just better all round than the more well-known version. Hell, it's just glorious really. Secondly, there’s “Where Does It Lead”, which is an utterly beautiful folk ballad which is really the main reason I mentioned Nina Simone in the second paragraph. Makeba sings at full force over a sparse, faintly Latin guitar backing, and it’s really just utterly mesmerising stuff. There’s a sort of stiff, classical character to the vocal which gives it an otherworldly air. And then there’s “The Click Song”, which gets its name from the fact that it’s sung in Xhosa, and as a consequence features a quasi-tango rhythm lots of, well, clicks. But then it also features these delightful little growls, and they remind me of an African housemate I used to have who would get angry sometimes, and who I had something of a crush on. So. Lola, if you are reading this – you are pretty.

Between all of this is a lot of other great stuff. “Novema” is a lazy, up-lifting song with wonderful rhythm. Makeba has such a tremendous ability to put joy into her songs. It helps, I suppose, that a lot of them are just overlapping rhythmical interplay seemingly built around the concept of shouting joyously. This is a quite an understated album, really, and mostly just coasts along in a series of cheery, laid-back grooves. I have absolutely no idea what Makeba is singing about, but it sounds great and that’s really enough for me. I mean, “The Retreat Song” sounds happy as hell, so I have no idea what they’re retreating from. Although she may just be happy to run away. Who knows? People who speak the language, and ethno-musicologists, probably.

I have realised at this point that most of what I could say about this album is kind of just repeating myself. It’s really good, anyway. The fact that I don’t understand the lyrics means that I can’t really appreciate it as a particularly deep experience, but the mix of African and Western styles combined with the generally blissful, earthy tone meant that I enjoyed it anyway.

Although it is kind of funny to hear stereotypical late-fifties “oohing” choirs on an album like this. It certainly pushes the gospel aspect forward a bit.

8.5/10

Download: Miriam Makeba - The Click Song Mp3
Download: Miriam Makeba - Mbube Mp3
Download: Miriam Makeba - Where Does It Lead? Mp3

25. Elvis Presley – Elvis Is Back! (1960)

Tracks: Make Me Know It//Fever//The Girl of My Best Friend//I Will Be Home Again//Dirty, Dirty Feeling//Thrill of Your Love//Soldier Boy//Such A Night//It Feels So Right//Girl Next Door Went a-Walking//Like A Baby//Reconsider Baby

Yes, Elvis is back and better than ever! I couldn’t resist saying that, and I’m sorry. It’s not even particularly accurate – I mean, yes this a better album than Elvis Presley was, but that’s not really saying all that much. And there’s the fact that I said most of what I have to say about Elvis back in my review of his debut... Well, let’s get on with it.

Firstly, just what is Elvis back from? The army and a corresponding drop in public profile, that’s what. Elvis got called-up in ’57, and after finishing filming on King Creole he was promptly shipped-off to Germany for two years, where he would no doubt spend a great deal of time mucking-about in tanks and making lewd comments about bratwurst. And fun as that may be, it also meant two years without new Elvis! These days a two-year break between albums might not seem like that big a deal but back in the late fifties, acts were popping-out two or three albums a year -often more. And now such a drastic ebb in the tide of Elvis. How would the world survive in such a horrible state? It’s like the Ruskies finally dropped the bomb and we’re suddenly living on tinned beans and old lingerie catalogues. How terrifying.

Well, the stop-gap solution was that RCA did a bit of a Buddy Holly, and kept releasing singles and albums from a stockpile they had accumulated during intense recording prior to his enlistment. And it worked. So even though he was half-way around the world he’d never really gone away (what a relief). But he couldn’t do live shows and he couldn’t do media appearances, and so people started to get a bit antsy. This is a guy who was arguably more about the image than the music, after all. And then throughout there was the deep curiosity as to whether, when he finally did get back from Germany, Elvis would still have “it” (whatever the hell “it” is).

The short answer is, yes, although “it” may in fact be at least a couple of years out of date. While there’s nothing really wrong with Elvis is Back, it’s not the most instantly exciting stuff. It’s just a solidly enjoyable slab of turn-of-the-60s pop rock, with no real highs or lows. If that’s enough for you, then great! Although personally I’d sort of hoped, given his reputation, that Elvis might deliver something a little more exciting given all his years of experience.

Still, it’s a qualitive leap of considerable proportions from the rather scatter-shot realm of his debut. Which is only to be expected - by this point they’d been putting out his albums for several years, and had a very clear idea of both who Elvis was and how he (or his creative team) should be presenting himself. So this is a very polished effort. The songs are all catchy, immediately likeable and well-performed. Personally I’m not all that taken with Elvis rather muddled attempt at “Fever”, but considering the Peggy Lee version is one of my absolute favourite songs that’s only to be expected. I mean, it started-out as a rock tune so maybe, when compared to the original, this is a dazzling work of genius. Maybe. To my ears it just sounds poorly mixed and Elvis is a little off the beat. Those finger-snaps are just ill-advised.

But hey, there’s a lot of other stuff that’s actually pretty good. A few songs even manage to step beyond being “pretty good” and into the realm of genuine, rocky greatness! “The Girl Next Door Went Walking” is just such fun. I am a fan of any song built around a double entendre, it’s true. It’s better than “Dirty, Dirty Feeling”, anyway, which has great rhythm but features a rather bizarre and perhaps ill-advised “minstrelesque” vocal. Still, that’s immediately followed by “Thrill of Your Love”, which is a gorgeous piano-led ballad with very clear R&B influences but without the silly voice, so it all balances out. Ah, and there is a much bigger emphasis on balladeering by this point, which is good, since Elvis really does excel at ballads. “Soldier Boy” is just lovely, and has obvious resonance (however manufactured) with Elvis’ own recent past. It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to get the bobby-soxers swooning. Oh god! And the break-out chorus on “Such A Night”. Heh, and then all the little orgasmic moans. For a guy who reportedly had so much trouble with women, Elvis sure could be a sexy devil. I suppose the Jordanaires help more than a little. Actually scratch that the Jordanaires help a whole lot. The see-sawing backing vocals on “Like A Baby” are just amazing.

Anyway, this broader variety is what really makes the album work. It’s short, and it changes it up a bit, and the result is something that’s constantly entertaining even if it’s not especially deep. The lyrics are decent, the songs are fun, and Elvis throws himself into the performances without ever lapsing into the twitchy lunacy that marred his earlier performances (although doing a sub-par Ray Charles impression on “Reconsider Baby” may be just as great a crime – the song works, but not till he drops the mimicry and goes his own way). The songs have a focused, restrained compositional approach that lets them rock-out without ever becoming annoying. So, it’s not as raw and dirty as a lot of black music Elvis is drawing on, but if I wanted that I would just go and listen to Howlin’ Wolf or something. By this point in his career, Elvis seems to have a much surer sense of himself as a "pop" rather than a "rock" musician, and his music is nothing if not the better for it.

So, this is one of those albums where I start writing the review with one opinion and by the end of it I’ve done a complete 180. Elvis delivers a solidly enjoyable rock album that ticks all the boxes for what I’d want from something of this period, and frequently manages to veer into something like greatness. I never really bought the Elvis myth, and even if I still haven't changed my mind, albums like this are enough to make me understand where all the obsessive whack-jobs are coming from. Hell, if it weren't for "Fever" I might even give this album a 9.

Anyway, pretty darn good.

8/10

Download: Elvis Presley - The Girl Next Door Went a-Walking Mp3
Download - Elvis Presley - The Thrill of Your Love Mp3

Joan Baez – Joan Baez (1960)

Tracks: Silver Dagger//East Virginia//Fare Thee Well//House of the Rising Sun//All My Trials//Wildwood Flower//Donna Donna//John Riley//Rake & Rambling Boy//Little Moses//Mary Hamilton//Henry Martin//El Preso Numero Uno

We’ll never get anywhere at this rate...

Well, here’s the 60s, and we open with one of the most iconic styles of the decade – folk – and one of its most iconic figures – Joan Baez, naturally.

It’s difficult to say all that much about Joan Baez as a musician. Yes, she was seemingly everywhere when it came to activism and hobnobbing. She introduced the world to Bob Dylan! She developed a specialised form of yoga which allowed her to splinter into several thousand simulacra of herself, thus explaining her ability to appear in footage of seemingly every major political event of the early to mid 60s. She and her friends got together at a concert once and pestered Tom Waits off the stage. All fascinating and admirable of course, but leaving that aside is there really all that much to say about a young woman crooning along to a guitar?

Well, to Baez credit she did do it first. The album was recorded live with her sitting down on the floor in a hall somewhere or other – as Baez put it, at the time it was probably all she knew how to do. Well, thankfully she did it well. Not only does she possess a truly extraordinary voice, with a steady vibrato and near-inhuman control, but she was also a pretty good guitarist, and for some reason no matter how tired I sometimes get of rock music, I can always stomach a lightly handled acoustic guitar. Although putting good points aside, Christ but she doesn’t half belt at times. The high notes are enough to level a bunker.

Lyrically, we get the standard selection of songs from the folk repertoire, most of them kind of depressing. There’s even an alternative version of “Silver Dagger”, which we last heard on the Louvin Brothers album. Hey, that’s kind of neat. This seems to have been before the song-writing trend really took off in folk, back when it was all about being an interpretive artist and being “authentic” and such nonsense. All well and good but somewhat limiting. Then again, can Joan Baez even write? I don’t know – but she does fine singing these tunes and it’d probably be best if I focused on that a bit more. And hey, she slips in a few Spanish-American ditties too, which is only appropriate given her last name and gives the album a little something to make it stand-out amidst all the more resolutely blues-oriented stuff. The fact that "El Preso Numero Nueve" is actually pretty great is just the icing on the cake. Honestly, she gets angry and I fall in love a little.

But, like I said, there’s not much to say. On the one hand, this is groundbreaking stuff – it doesn’t sound like the 50s at all. Baez puts her stamp across everything, thoroughly updating some rather elderly tunes. “The 60s” have definitely arrived. Clear, clean production and a dynamic approach which is just sort of.. different. The results are, quite frankly, fucking amazing. I mean, look at a song like "The House of Rising Sun", which by a simple switch of gender pronouns turns from being a poor me story about debauching into a harrowing tale of girls trapped in prostitution. That's impressive And yet through the whole album we are mercifully spared overt politicising, with Baez instead couching her criticisms within the simple humanistic stories of the folk tradition. That's one of the things I've always like about folk and gospel music. But on the other hand, so many people have followed in her footsteps that close analysis seems almost irrelevant. Although having said that, as much as Sandy Denny owes to Joan Baez the two don’t really sound much alike.

Anyway, I’m not sure what I’m even talking about anymore. This is a very good, very beautiful album. As an interpreter of songs, you’d be hard-pressed to find many better. At turns eerie, funny, sad and just sort of there (in a good way). And then you have haunting and delicate tunes like "Mary Hamilton". Oh god, and the part where she sings "HE shall turn robber" in "Henry Martin". It's a song to send chills down your spine, her voice doing little tumbles like a trapeze artist.

Oh great now I have a crush on Joan Baez.

8.5

Download: Joan Baez - Silver Dagger MP3

Download: Joan Baez - Henry Martin MP3
Download: Joan Baez - El Preso Numero Neueve MP3

23. The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out (1959)

Tracks: Blue Rondo A La Turk//Strange Meadow Lark//Three to Get Ready//Kathy's Waltz//Everybody's Jumpin'//Pick Up Sticks

I'm back! Assuming anyone realised I was gone. My excuse? Well, I guess I like the Fifties so much I just never wanted it to end. But, end it must. Doff your slacks and clear-out your bomb shelters, the Fifties are out of time. So here's Time Out.

There are so many strange things about this album. Strangest of all is that it reached number 2 in the charts. Listening to the dizzying, jagged rhythms that open "Blue Rondo A La Turk", it's fair to say that it doesn't seem like the likeliest of pop hits. I mean, look at the cover - it's a piece of thoroughly modern art. The music, meanwhile, consists of a range of carefully studied fusions of contemporary classical music with Eastern traditional music and jazz, most of it in funny time signatures.

The time signatures are, of course, the point of the album (yet another pun - what is with jazz albums and puns?), although the greater bulk of the music is in 4/4 or waltz time, which makes it slightly less impressive. Still, consider - up until around this time, damned near every single jazz tune had been in 4/4 or waltz time. The most adventurous time signature we've had till now was double waltz on Kind of Blue. "Blue Rondo A La Turk" opens in 9/8 and sounds like a thunderstorm in a glass factory. "Take Five" is in 5/4 (yet somehow managed to be a top ten single). The reason for this is that apparently the Quartet went on a military tour of the Middle East, where they were exposed to Levantine dance rhythms. They thought to themselves "Hey, if the Turks can swing to this then why can't we", and of course the rest is history.

People were angry with Dave Brubeck about this. They told him he'd gone to far in mucking about with the 4/4 foundations of jazz. And then they went and said that a lot of the music on this album wasn't even jazz to begin with. And to be fair, a lot of the music here is not always especially jazzy - but if it's not jazz, then we'd have to invent a new category of music for it, so let's just call a spade a spade and head for the club. Really, Dave Brubeck's piano sounds like a Picasso painting more than anything (he owes a debt to Monk - that much is obvious). I really hate these wags who go about trying to declare something "jazz" or "not jazz". Most of the time they're just fusty old jerks who want to sit alone at home doing possibly illegal things to their Duke Ellington collections. Things evolve! Everything evolves! It's like those punk rock guys who think that keyboards are the tool of the devil and it's wrong of you to ever use more than four chords in a song. This album was integral in opening jazz up to a whole host of "Bach to Jazz" and treacly semi-classical albums. To my mind, jazz is just putting the blues on classical or the classical in blues, and if that's not good enough for you then go back to Dixie and have a lot of fun with your marching bands.

In the spirit of this album's spirit, I've decided to break with convention myself and present my notes for each of the individual tracks:

Blue Rondo A La Turk – Truly amazing composition that regrettably lapses into what is actually a pretty solid bit of bop. I say “regrettably” because, firstly, it doesn’t really fit the strange nature of the rest of the piece. This is nightclub jazz that suddenly appears out of nowhere halfway through an elaborate bit of dazzling minimalism-meets-jagged, see-sawing Eastern folk. Still, the fact that they tie such disparate elements is what ultimately makes this song so impressive – this is basically a full-on classical suite in the jazz idiom.

Strange Meadow Lark – A very pretty piece. Opens with an pretty, angular extended solo piano introduction in a semi-classical mode . There is very little, if any, blues on the intro. It’s tied to the blues in the same way one of the Beatles’ chamber-pop tunes is. This is a large part of what got Brubeck dismissed by some folks – he wasn’t bluesy or traditional enough. The main body of the song is much more “jazz” and “blues”, and sounds oddly like “I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plans”. The sound of the clarinet does a lot to make this album, but then the harmonic innovations are also quite impressive. Jazz should evolve, or it’ll become a museum piece. The solo piano outro is also gorgeous. The solo piano here really makes this piece, and I wish they’d focused more on that than on a pleasant but ultimately inconsequential jam.

Take Five – This song still sounds quite like nothing else. Like Brubeck and Co inventing Krautrock and funk ten years early. That jerky little piano riff is utterly captivating, and the drumming is truly exceptional. The drum solo taken here is astonishing, like cannon fire. My favourite quote regarding this album is clarinettist Paul Desmond’s remark that “Take Five” wasn’t written to be a pop hit, it was written to be a drum solo for Joe Morello. The funny thing is, however, that Brubeck and Co are at their best performing things that soundly like fully-composed songs. But the thing that really sells this is the supremely melodic clarinet playing. Who doesn’t know that melody? It’s astonishing. One of the finest melody lines ever produced and single-handedly responsible for the mega-selling status of what is actually a pretty weird album, when you think about it. This song doesn’t sound like music created by humans.

Three to Get Ready – This has a lovely little rising piano melody that can only be called “charming”.

Kathy’s Waltz – Lovely little clarinet bit here, swinging around like a circus melody and utterly gorgeous. There’s a piano transition that sounds exactly like “All My Loving” by the Beatles. Utterly gorgeous crashing solo piano closer that brings back the “All My Loving” melody but buries it under lots of water chords.

Everybody’s Jumpin’ – this is one of those instrumental songs where you can actually hear the clarinet and piano cry “Everybody’s Jumpin!”. It doesn’t need words. And then Brubeck goes off on these utterly astonishing, chiming piano chords that just repeat and repeat like a jack hammer, faster than I’d thought possible. Amazing.

Pick Up Sticks – Most straightforward here. Nice cymbal clatter. Plenty of jaunty piano comping. Lovely clarinet solo. Very “Kind of Blue”. Certainly the most succesful bit of straight-up jazz on display. Brubeck’s trademark jerky piano is all over the place with some love chords doing utterly wonderful, clattering things. This is Brubeck’s chance to shine and he does some astonishing things with chords. And then Morello comes in to close the track out on beats that sound like wood being chopped.

And there you have it. Is this a great album? It's a pretty good one. Unfortunately the experimentation which makes it so unique and compelling also undercuts the strengths of some of the songs In the end, however, this is a remarkable piece of work - it's not just "Take Five" with a few extra tracks tacked on, no sir it isn't. It's not the best jazz album we've had so far, either, though it's certainly interesting and unique, and it certainly managed to do its job in breaking new ground as to what you could get away with in jazz while still being popular.

So basically I guess the lesson we learned today is that people will let anything slide if you've got a way with melody.

8.5/10

Download: The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Blue Rondo A La Turk MP3