15. Tito Puente - Dance Mania (1958)

Tracks: El Cayuco//Complicacion//3-D Mambo//Llego Mijan//Cuando Te Vea//Hong Kong Mambo//Mambo Gazon//Mi Chiquita Quiere Bembe//Varsity Drag//Estoy Siempre Junto a Ti//Agua Limpia Todo//Saca Tu Mujer

Review:

Well, the cover more or less sums it up. It’s sexy! It’s cheesy! It’s for dancing! To be honest I know absolutely nothing about Tito Puente. He was in the “Who Shot Mr. Burns” two-parter of The Simpsons, where he performed that mambo about Mr Burns. I know that. And he wrote the oft-covered “Oye Como Va”, which is an OK song in both the original and the Santana version but which, to my mind, reached its peak with Amaral’s Trinidad Cavaliers Steel Orchestra and its bizarre steel-drum break-dance interpretation. So, I guess I know that, too. Um...

Oh! I also know that Tito Puente is considered El Rey, or the King of the Timbales, which is something that seems justified gauging by the contents of this album. I mean, I’m no expert when it comes to the timbales, but Tito Puente clearly knows his way around a drum kit. Which is good, since this is a dance album...

Honestly I don’t have much to say here. It’s a very solid album, but it’s not the sort of thing that demands deep analysis or extended descriptions. Well, maybe it does, but I don’t speak Spanish and as a consequence I can’t give a thorough reading of “Mi Chiquita Quiere Bembe”. According to Google that means “My babe wants Bembe”, but that’s not much help since I don’t really know what a Bembe is. Perhaps it’s some sort of beverage?

So what we have here is a lot of mambo, done very well, all quite danceable and integrated with numerous other styles about which I know nothing. You get extensive deployment of a great brass section, spidery piano and a killer vibraphone - and if there’s one thing I like it’s a vibraphone. Unlike the Machito album, this isn’t all instrumental – most of the songs are actually songs, you know, with singing. And sung well! There’s a lovely melancholy to the vocals that works as a nice counterpoint to the buoyant music. This is especially evident on the very sad-sounding and very pretty “Estoy Siempre Junto a Ti”.

Agh I really am having trouble finding things to say about this. “Hong Kong Mambo” uses the Chinese riff, but it’s pretty cool and very Les Baxter. “Mambo Gazon” is hypnotic and driving, built around layer upon layer of repeating horn figures and some mesmeric chanting that bursts out into a brief instrumental breakdown. It’s certainly the best song here, and maybe the only one that really lodges itself in your mind.

And there is the problem. Dance Mania is a lot of fun to listen to but afterwards I couldn’t really remember much of it. Although after a while, the grooves star to wear themselves into you. I found myself singing along to “Mi Chiquita Quiere Bembe” (which, incidentally, has a marvellous shuffling percussion break in the middle). Each of the songs manages to shift through a few distinct movements, and they’re all quite complex and interesting tunes. But, in the end, it’s just a sunny album to dance along to. You can bop along! It’s not overly confronting! It’s got understated charm. The ditties are catchy!

In the end, I quite like this. It’s not earth-shattering music, but there’s a level of skill and craftsmanship brought to these songs that I really appreciate. They’re really far better mad then they probably had to be. As a guy who owns more than his fair share of “Tango for Lovers” cocktail schmaltz LPs, it’s refreshing to here this done right. It’s actually swank! And I can’t not dance to “Agua Limpia Todo”, what with the little “la la la” chorus and all.

Ok, so final thoughts? It’s pleasant and friendly and it sort of sneaks up on you. I was considering writing this off as sort of vapid, but once you get into the swing of it, it’s a lovely listen. I want to strut about the Caribbean wearing a Panama hat and photographing missile bases. But I don’t know that I’d ever call this a particularly great album. It’s very, very good, however, and exceeds perfectly at being a fun little party record. I will admit, however, that I am a massive dork, and so if you don't count Doris Day among your musical idols you may not get quite as much mileage out of this.

So, yeah, this is pretty good stuff. Unlike my review, for which I apologise profusely. This is what happens when you haven't made-up your mind yet and find yourself listening to the album over as you write your post.

8/10

Download: Tito Puente - Mambo Gazon Mp3

Download: Amral's Trinidad Cavaliers Steel Orchestra - Oye Como Va Mp3

And! Los Simpsons en Espanol:

8. Buddy Holly and the Crickets - The Chirping Crickets (1956)

Tracks: Oh Boy!//Not Fade Away//You've Got Love//Maybe Baby//It's Too Late//Tell Me How//That'll Be the Day//I'm Lookin' for Someone to Love//An Empty Cup (and a Broken Date)//Send Me Some Lovin'//Last Night//Rock Me My Baby

Well, as Police Chief Klein once said regarding the Ramones, "They're ugly, ugly people".

I should be honest and admit that I don’t think any rock album at this point is going to get full marks. The genre was still in its relative infancy! Furthermore, most rock albums at the time were just quickly-assembled packages of recent singles with b-sides and album cuts. Add to this the fact that bare-bones rock & roll has never exactly been my favourite genre, and you can see why I might not exactly go nuts over this stuff.

The “Chirping” Crickets does, however, present us with quite a lot worth going nuts over. Buddy Holly’s influence on the nature of rock is difficult to overstate. The only guy of comparable importance is Chuck Berry, and while the two guys do share a lot in common in terms of music (with Berry obviously having influenced Holly quite a bit), they’re still very different beasts. You listen to songs on this album and you can point and say – yes, this song invented The Beatles. Yes, the verses on “Rock Me Baby” more or less invented the Rolling Stones. Buddy Holly and the Crickets are like a framework onto which later acts have all laid their influences to create the wacky madness that is modern rock.

Having said that, it’s worth noting that Holly and Co clearly aren’t cooking this stuff up ex nihilo. The vocals on the rockers have a lot in common with early Elvis. “Not Fade Away” uses the Bo Diddley beat, and even cops the melody of his hit “Bo Diddley” for the vocal. “That’ll Be the Day”, probably the most famous song here, is in most respects just a swipe of Chuck Berry’s “Automobile”. However, Holly and the Crickets make it their own – they cut the blues groove out almost entirely and focus on the country and pop elements, turning it into a jerky rockabilly number which is in itself not really quite like anything else – there’s a nice little breakdown on guitar, and Holly’s vocals are very nicely done. At this point in rock music, these were big innovations - it was all about mixing shit together. Things went along slowly. Also, did you know that Holly was apparently inspired to write “That’ll Be the Day” by John Wayne’s catchphrase in the Searchers? Is it true? Who knows? Anyway, back to the music. “Not Fade Away” has great “boop bop bop” backing vocals and some nice chicken-pecking guitar work, and strips the skuzzy blues element out, once again, for a far more country-pop feel. Add to this the fact that Holly’s in fine voice throughout, and it’s a great song. The sense of rhythm these guys display is marvellous. They stirring all the harder guitar elements up with a wonderful fats Domino smoothness, and it’s great.

To focus more on the country element, however. Holly started-out singing bluegrass. Harmony is everywhere on this album – all though the “Chirping” Crickets never actually sing, every single song features the backing vocals of all-male group The Picks, who manage to sound entirely like women. “Tell Me How” is basically just a country song. The best rocker here is rockabilly, in the form of the amazing “Oh Boy”. Holly wrote many of the songs here, but not this one. Its hooks are amazing, and it’s the hardest thing on the list to this point. I’m constantly impressed with the amount of stuff that these bands managed to do with a simple 12-bar blues. It doesn’t hit as hard as a Little Richard number but it’s just as strong as a lot of his work in pop terms – almost all the force comes from the singing and the simple pound of the drums, but Jesus Christ! Holly growls and squeaks his way through the thing, riding on the drawn-out notes of the Picks and their doubling vocals. It manages to work gospel, country, blues and R&B into one song and I’ve had it stuck in my head for three days as of writing. And the lyrics! “All my life I’ve been waiting – tonight there’ll be no hesitating. When you’re with me, oh boy, then you’ll see that we were meant to be”. It’s some cheeky shit, I will grant, and a classic of the admittedly somewhat narrow-minded “Blue balls” school of rock. But hey! This is music for teenagers. Teenagers are horny devils. Replace “teenagers” with “people” and you have the vast majority of art, anyway. The difference is, the older tradition had been to play coy, whereas rock seems to have decided it might be better to simply go out grinning with prick held high.

Another great number is the more R&B “Maybe Baby”, with one of the coolest opening riffs going and a marvellous, hiccupy refrain. Holly did write this one, and it’s great. The guitar on the bridge is nothing but rattling madness. It’s followed by a ballad, “It’s Too Late”, which is a great crooning pop number. My favourite part is when Holly steps back from the mike to belt out the choruses and his voice develops a massive echo due to the added difference. After this is “Tell Me How”, a nice little pop ditty with lots of nonsense “la la la” singing from the Picks in the absolutely wonderful intro. The backing vocals are the catchiest thing here! La la la! And then the cymbal comes in on the bridge! Ah, it’s all wonderful and clops along beautifully. Holly’s vocal delivery here is marvellous, although the melody is suspiciously similar (although nowhere near as good as) “Peggy Sue”. His most obvious comparison here is to Roy Orbison (fair enough, as he co-wrote one of the songs here with him). It’s one of the weaker numbers here, but the vocal delivery and the amazing intro save it. This is a fine song, owing more to pop than anything,.

And that’s what really makes the album work, that it’s a pop album. Care is taken in the actual construction of most these songs – they have the nifty little introduction, an interesting middle 8 (check the dazzling little slithery guitar in “Looking For Someone to Love”). And the whole song is anchored by a catchy hook, and then a nice little finish. Most of these songs don’t even have a verse/chorus structure – it’s just a single repeating verse pattern and nothing but hook. Ah, it’s pop in essence and really quite wonderful. This stuff would be as influential on Phil Spector as it would on the Beatles or the Stones. The fact that these are rock songs being written by professional song-writers with long backgrounds in pop, who half the time are coming from outside the genre, are a great strength.

Having said that, there are one or two duds. Or at least, songs that aren’t as good as the more up-tempo stuff. “I’m Looking For Someone to Love” is better than half the rockers on Elvis’s debut, for example, but is still just a rather by-the-numbers piece of swing. “An Empty Cup (And A Broken Date)” is about as good as its title, which is to say “not very”. It’s just a rather ordinary ballad with a terrible backing vocal by the Picks. “Send Me Some Lovin’” is a bit better, but still not anything to write home about, although it does have a nice build in the middle. And unfortunately, all this means that the album starts to falter a bit on the second half. But then!

“Last Night” has a great, great hook, with Holly’s classiest vocal performance. It’s unquestionably the best ballad on the album, bobbing along over a “bum bum bum” vocal riff from the Picks and a simple four-note bass line. It’s beautiful. It’s delicate. I love this song. Quite strummed guitars! Ah, now this is a lovely pop song. The Picks unfortunately step-up to a lead vocal for the outro, but other than that it’s great.

The very last song, “Rock Me My Baby”, is half great and half just okay. The verses are god damned groovy. Unfortunately, the choruses are just sort of tedious Bill Haley fair. It even references Bill Haley in the lyrics! It’s not a bad way to close an album, I suppose, and it’s not a bad song. The all-over-the-place nature, combined with the fact that they actually manage to hold such a schizophrenic song together, lends it a lot of charm.

So, all in all not a bad album at all. There are a couple of shaky moments, but this is a fine, fine piece of work. Damn near everything from Fats Domino to Howlin’ Wolf Judy Garland finds its way into the album somehow, but it doesn’t sound disparate at all and as a consequence you don’t just have a bunch of different styles here – you have a genre! Early-60s rock is born! Bring on the Ronettes. Well, no, really they owe more to Fats Domino than anything. And to be fair the Beach Boys were ripping-off Chuck Berry songs, but anyway. It’s funny how the far more abrasive Berry ended-up influencing the Beach Boys.

This album is a fascinating testament to the varied people making it, and to their deep and differing life experiences. It’s a shame that Holly would die the following year, as he was both a fine, fine performer and an excellent songwriter in his own right. The number of ideas on display here are captivating, and the hooks! Such hooks!

Not a perfect album, but a really damned good one.

8.5/10

Download: Buddy Holly & the Crickets - Oh Boy.mp3
Download: Buddy Holly & the Crickets - Maybe Baby.mp3

5. Fats Domino - This Is Fats (1956)

Tracks: Blueberry Hill//Honey Chile//What's the Reason//Blue Monday//So Long//La-La//Troubles of My Own//You Done Me Wrong//Reeling & Rocking//The Fat Man's Hop//Poor Me//Trust In Me

It’s a rock and roll album, but you wouldn’t really describe it as rockin'. This is a very laid-back and soulful affair. It’s more... cheery, than anything. The Barry White to Little Richard's Funkadelic. Fats Domino was one of the earlier pioneers of rock music, and it seems like by this album he still hadn’t got around to updating his style from the late 40s. This album is tacked together from singles recorded across the fifties, but remains stylistically extremely coherent nonetheless. All but one of the tracks is piano-led, most of them have a saxophone take the chorus. Honestly, it’s difficult to pick which tracks would have been recorded when just by listening.

So. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Fats is doing something interesting here, and he does it well. He has a simple, relaxed style built-up around blues and pop with very strong gospel influences, and he marries that to a steady, gently swinging rock beat and lets the song carry itself on his pleasant crooning and distinctive, pulsing piano playing. “Blueberry Hill” is a fine example of this, very nice crooning R&B - an utterly lovelyl song, almost lighter than air. A few peppier numbers emerge to shake things up a bit, and he gets the horns out regularly to crank up the soul (although I suppose soul music as such didn’t really exist at this point – Fats and his ilk were busy creating it). Having said this, he does manage to work quite a bit of variety into what is a relatively restrictive format. “Reelin’ & Rockin’” stands-out the most from the crowd. The layers of horns and piano are stripped off and it rides a steady swinging beat, a proto-surf guitar and a tambourine that just won’t stop. It’s completely non-threatening, but it’s danceable and a lot of fun – I get the impression that a live show with Fats would have been pretty wild, but the records are for better part a family affair.

“The Fat Man’s Hop” is another stand-out – a straight-up blues instrumental, with the melody carried on the saxophone. “Trust In Me”, conversely, is a full-blown, honest to god rock & roll song. It’s got a repeating horn groove over which Fats croons, and an amazing display of folk-influenced electric guitar bubbling away like something from a Django Rheinhardt song over the top. It’s probably the only song that comes close to dropping the “restrained” qualifier from it, although to be fair standards were different back then and audio recording was not always at a great level. “What’s The Reason (I’m Not Pleasing You)” has an infectious little groove carried by slowly rising horn bends, and some funny little lyrics. In fact the lyrics on this album are all quite nice – there’s nothing earth shattering about them, but they’re often fairly funny. The choruses on “Blue Monday” build up to a modest crescendo on the strength of some nice stuttering drum breaks. It’s a pretty simple song about Mondayitis, but it’s not half bad. “So Long” is in a similar vein, but has a more delicate bridge carried by some beautiful saxophone playing.

There’s not much point going into depth with this album. You’d probably got a fair idea of what it sounds like. This is, blessedly, far more the antecedent of something like Stevie Wonder than Steven Tyler, you might say. Fats Domino was massively successful in his time, and there’s something so darn fun about the pleasant, positive music on this album that makes you see exactly why. Most of the songs aren’t immediately mind-blowing, but it has understated charm and a suitable danceability. The mix of R&B and rock is also a wonderful sign of things to come in the next decade - everything from the Shangri-Las to Sam Cooke to Curtis Mayfield and Nancy Sinatra. It's a goddamn blueprint for soul and R&B. And it’s great! Kids can make-out to it and grandparents can drink tea and talk about the war. Fun for the whole family.

I really like this. It’s... graceful.

8/10

Download: Fats Domino - Blueberry Hill.mp3

3. The Louvin Brothers - Tragic Songs of Life (1956)

Tracks: Kentucky//I'll Be All Smiles Tonight//Let her Go, God Bless Her//What is Home Without Love?//A Tiny Broken Heart//In the Pines//Alabama//Katie Dear//My Brother's Will//Knoxville Girl//Take the News to Mother//Mary of the Wild Moor

A plain-speaking title for a plain-speaking album – and it’s this very matter-of-factness that gives it strength. The performances on this album are immaculate – Ira and Charley Louvin possess two of the finest voices I’ve heard in a long time, and they bring this considerable prowess to bear on the “close-harmony” style of bluegrass they’re working in here. The mono mix twists their voices together until they almost sound like one person, the lines of melody folding over one another beautifully. It sounds like nothing so much as a piano accordion, actually – but that’s hardly a bad thing.

Add to this the understated but highly capable mandolin and guitar work of the duo, laid over a bare framework of bass fiddle and snare drum, and it’s all very simple but very beautiful. None of the songs hurry – they’re all in the same time, at roughly the same BPM. In fact, this is virtually archetypal country music – a bluegrass blueprint, right down to the amazingly depressing lyrics. I mentioned plain-speaking? Well, imagine how positively chilling this album becomes when “Knoxville Girl” appears. The ballad of a man who meets a girl and beats her to death to halt her “dark roving eyes”, it’s very creepy stuff. Or the cover of the Carter Family’s “I’ll Be All Smiles Tonight”, a song originally written from the perspective of a young woman which the Louvins don’t even change the gender pronouns in. It gives everything an oddness – this is, I suppose the core of old folk music. The song tells a story, and it’s the story that evokes the emotions. It’s simply the Louvins’ job to document it all with their astonishing voices.

It’s the technical prowess and the strong song selections that really sell this album to modern ears. “Let Her Go” is a sad reflection on lost love that cops the “Sometimes I get a strange notion/to jump in the river and drown” from “Goodnight Irene”. “In the Pines” is a more expansive version of the song familiar to most as “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”, and while it might not match the Ledbelly version it’s a very haunting presentation in its own right, with some absolutely beautiful wordless harmonising between the verses that drags pictures of the mountains right up before your eyes.

However, given all the spookery and macabre goings-ons, it’s perhaps somewhat surprising that the most affecting song on the album is actually a rather sweet and innocent little song. “A Tiny Broken Heart” takes the form of a monologue from a six year old boy begging his father to do something to stop the family of itinerants working at the next door farm from moving away and taking their little daughter with them. It’s stuff like this that encapsulates the album – on the one hand, it’s utter cornball, but on the other it’s genuinely and deeply affecting. Another fine song is “Katie Dear”, telling the surreal story of two kids whose parents each keep a knife by them to murder anyone they should happen to fall in love with. It’s very twisted.

I suppose, however, that no album is perfect. If there’s one real complaint it’s that the vocals often lack the sort of heavily invested emotion that we tend to expect from pop music. This is an extremely rigid, formal album. Its restraint gives it great tightness and unity, but on the same hand it does leave a want of breathing space in the music, and can the tracks can bleed together a little.

Still, very fine. I can’t think of much else to say about this. If you strip the rock out of Patsy Cline or polish-up an old Carter Family record you’ll get a pretty good impression of what’s on offer, but it’s all done so damned well. It’s a very strange and touching album.

8 /10

The Louvin Brothers - Knoxville Girl.mp3

2. Elvis Presley - Elvis Presley (1956)

A: Blue Suede Shoes//I'm Counting on You//I Got A Woman//One-Sided Love Affair//I Love You Because//Just Because

B: Tutti Frutti//Trying to Get to You//I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry//I'll Never Let You Go (Li' Darlin')//Blue Moon//Money Honey

Well, this is something of a contrast. Where Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours constitutes a coherent, polished statement drawn from a single, focused recording period, Elvis Presley shows more or less the exact opposite trend – a mish-mash of left-over country recordings from Elvis’ days at Sun with a selection of harder-driving R&B numbers recorded with his new pals at RCA the following year. This is something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, there’s a great breadth of material here – from straight-up country, to rockabilly to R&B, to pop – but on the other, not all the material is up to the standards set by the best tracks. Nothing here is really bad, per se – but the haphazard nature of the album’s construction shows. “I’m Counting on You” displays astonishing vocal control, but Elvis’ soaring and twisting vocals ultimately sound a little foolish over the modest country backing – he’s got an incredible voice, with one hell of a range, but doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with it here. “I Love You Just Because” is a much more successful attempt at the same thing, with some very soulful crooning in the upper register, even if he sounds almost unrecognisable.

Perhaps his finest vocal performances appear on two of the ballads at the end of the album. “I’ll Never Let You Go” and “Blue Moon” both feature a subdued backing of little more than bass and guitar. The former soars along with a beautiful, feminine R&B vocal in the Inkspots vein that suddenly erupts into a chugging bit of rock. “Blue Moon” is arguably the best song on the album. The bass is a primitive “walking” rhythm and the guitar clops like horse hooves in a simple repeating figure. There’s almost nothing there, and it gives a chance for Elvis to deliver an utterly arresting performance (courtesy, partly, of what sounds like a very fine echo chamber, I will grant). His falsetto vocalese across the bridge is beautiful – a trumpet couldn’t have done it better (and why is it that I keep praising so many Hart/Rodgers tunes?). Despite the fact that Elvis is remembered primarily as a rocker, I’d argue his true strength always rested in his crooning. I mean, the guy was a gospel singer for Pete’s sake! He knew crooning! Although, regrettably, no gospel appears on this album – Elvis was, at this time, the King of Rock and Roll, yet to crawl from the schoolgirl’s bed and endear himself to the housewife – and Gospel at the time actually being religious music, it wasn’t exactly sexual dynamite. It’s a pity – his driving approach to Gospel and R&B in the 60s is what really endears him to me.

“But Thomas!” you cry. “What about the Rock & Roll! Nobody cares about mellow pop music, man – this guy broke rock and changed the world! Talk about that!”. Well, okay then. I guess the reason I focus upon Elvis’ voice is because that’s where his true strength lies. He didn’t write, and he wasn’t much of a guitar player (there is some very able assistance on this album from no less a man than Chet Atkins). The rock here, is, however, pretty damn good. Did you need me to tell you that? Well, a song’s spending fifty years at the core of the pop canon may tend to colour people’s perceptions of it. The principal charm in the music is how feral it is. The version here of Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” lacks the heavy, measured thuds of the original, but makes-up for it with being a pure explosion of energy. It’s the whole punk rock thing – Elvis was pure youth distilled, shooting out of the speakers like white hot ejaculate to impregnate the teens of the world with rebellion. Or something. You don’t need me to tell you that the fifties were a pretty buttoned-down time, and that all the bored, middle class kids needed something wild and freaky to shake them up. Elvis, all his musical merits aside, had the image. He freaked-out the squares. He may not have been as good a rock & roller as, say, Little Richard – especially not judging by his cover of “Tutti Frutti”, which is rather anaemic compare to the original, salvaged by a marvellous guitar solo compensating for Elvis’ little boy vocals – but, if you want to get down to it and say what we’ve all been thinking, he had the one thing that mattered: he was hot he was white.

This isn’t to discredit the guy. He’s done a great album here. But rock music had been around a fair while before Elvis and he doesn’t do much that’s new or particularly accomplished. His main importance in the history of music comes from his popularisation of rock in white, middle class homes. If you do want to give credit, however, then even though Elvis may not have produced many innovations here, he did present one important formal shift. Elvis Presley is an enormously cosmopolitan album – Ray Charles covers sitting right beside Appalachian balladeering and the old-fashion rattle-and-hum Blues of “Just Because”. That Elvis Presley manages to push forward so many different styles on one album, and sometimes within one song, and do it for the better part quite well, is something of an achievement in shaking-up what was, at the time, a very carefully segregated pop-music landscape. And, considering that so many of the rockers to come after him took Elvis as a direct model, that seems pretty damned important.

Now, you could argue that Elvis “stole” “black” music. Maybe he did. I don’t know. Maybe New Orleans jazz stole French marching music. Granted, I don’t know if the New Orleans jazz movement ever set about systematically exploiting a host of white marching bands in the aftermath of their discovery, but anyway. You can’t really argue that the musical landscape isn’t much richer as a consequence of all this sort of thing. “Heartbreak Hotel” opened a floodgate (well, Little Richard and Fats Domino may have been important too). Black dudes got played on the radio! Is that a bad thing? Maybe I could do without all the people who insist that the Beatles and their imitators are the be-all and end-all of pop music, but oh well. At least we got Elvis’ killer phrasing on the chorus of “Sit Right Down and Cry” in compensation – it’s probably the one moment where his rock vocals really kick in, arguably the sound of the guy finding his rough edge, which would work so well later on in instances such as, say, the King Creole soundtrack.

Anyway, to further digress (and I suppose, given the importance of Elvis, I might as well), it does make a fair bit of sense. People these days tend to fall into one of two camps – those who, for some reason, think that Elvis just sort of sat down one day and invented rock music, and those who on the other hand argue that a bunch of white guys showed-up and simply lifted it from the black scene wholesale. Both of these are inaccurate, although the latter has far more truth than the former. Basically, trad rock is a hybridisation of “white” country & western and hillbilly music - originating in a complex mixture of Eastern European, Spanish and British folk styles - and rhythm & blues. The restructuring of country around a blues back-beat, coupled with adoption of the 12-bar structure, led to the “rockabilly” style that lead more or less into conventional rock a-la Buddy Holly (see also: Chubby Checker). At least, I think that’s how it went. Obviously, the styles that developed more directly out of R&B have a very different origin, but if you want to look at Elvis as the prototypical rocker – and given that he probably had the most defining influence on the direction of early rock, it seems fair – then this album is actually a very honest mixture of the various elements that would lead to, say, The Beatles, I suppose.

Of course most musicians, Elvis included, simply plucked willy-nilly from the Blues tradition, thus shooting my theory to shit. But hey!

Anyway. So, this is a very promising debut. The sound of the recordings is very raw, and cheap, but it works. Everything is sort of up in the air – Elvis was a live performer, after all, and this captures that live feel quite nicely. There’s an invigorating energy and a certain panache that glosses over the album’s numerous flaws like a solid local act playing on the marquis at a street festival. It’s all fine stuff, and it lead to one of the most bizarre and fruitful careers in pop music. Elvis would remain hit-and-miss for the rest of his career, but the hits were usually worth it.

7/10

Elvis Presley - I'll Never Let You Go.mp3