The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Yeah baby woo baby it’s the Afterword Almanac – 1956

Yeah baby woo baby it’s the Afterword Almanac – 1956

by 72 Comments

It’s that difficult second year time already at the Afterword Almanac and after much debate – ok 2 for chronological, one for random – it seems we’re sticking with the narrative approach for the time being. So without further do let’s usher in, via the NME Rock and Roll Years, the annus Rock and Roll Mirabilis that is 1956. As with last time post music or pretty well anything you like from the year that saw 2″ quadriplex, the world’s first videotape, unveiled and in Lugano the first ever European Song Contest is held, won by Switzerland.

Presley and Perkins set America rocking!
Almost fixtures in the top 20, Pat Boone and Bill Haley have been joined by two new names. The first is Elvis Presley, in whom RCA have invested heavily. Described as a ‘wild and turbulent rock and roller’ , Presley has crashed the charts with his very first single for the label, Heartbreak Hotel. Reactions to his brash new style have been mixed, but one things for sure, he’s a solid hit with the American teenagers, especially those of the female persuasion.
He hails from Memphis, Tennessee and has been described as slinky and ark, rather like a junior Rock Hudson. He shakes, rattles and rolls a lot in his act, like a dry-eyed Johnny Ray but with twice the locomotion !

Before signing with RCA, Presley released discs on Sun – the label which presents the second chart entrant, Carl Perkins. In the same mould as his former stablemate, 23 year old Perkins is also from Tennessee. His hit is ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ which eh wrote himself.
Whitest they can repeat their success in Britain remains to be seen, but if the NME singles reviewer has any say in the matter, they won’t! ‘ If this is singing, then I give up!’, he wrote when the Presley disc was released here last month. ‘If this is the stuff American fans are demanding, I’m glad I’m on this side of the Atlantic’.

Rock N Roll Gets Medical Bakcing
Interviewed on Radio WNEW IN NEW YORK, psychologist Dr Ben Walstein expressed the view that ‘there is nothing particularly harmful about rock’n’roll’. He went on the explain that ‘in every generation, adolescents find a style of music that expresses some of the yearning, the frustrations and the granting searching quality that young people have – and I don’t see why we should try to ban it or interfere with their enjoyment of it’.

Charts Chock-A-Block with Rock
During the past year, rock’n’roll and teen-slanted music has penetrated deep into the popular music mainstream.
This month, Britian’s Top 30 listing contains records by The Platters, The Teenagers, Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, Lonnie Donegan (one each), two by Pat Boone, three by Elivs Presley and a remarkable five by Bill Haley and his Comets.

When he visits Britian next Febrary, Haley will have to answer potentially embarrassing questions about the film Rock Around The Clock which has been at the centre of highly publicised youth riots and cinema smashing in the UK. The film has been banned in some cities and heavily criticised by senior police officers and councillors in others.

I’m going to kick off with what may be the world’s first mashup, Buchanan and Goodman’s Flying Saucer. The subject not surprisingly of a court case, but more surprisingly it stood down the record companies and hit no 3 on the US charts. John Cameron-Cameron is surely a distant ancestor of Brian Hanrahanrahan.

0

Comments

  2. Classic jazz from 1956

    Sonny Rollins AND John Coltrane. The underrated Red Garland on piano, and Paul Chambers and Philly Jo Jones on bass and drums. This is golden, classic Rollins bop.

  3. A quick shift thru’ the i-tunesIcan’tbearsedtostopusing and I can see this record buying malarkey has notched up a gear since last year, still with me a year from my birth. Here’s one that caught my eye, surely an early one from Andre Williams, a, um, colourful character whose career of ups and downs concentrated mainly on his pet subject, ins and outs of the copulatory sort, usually with other peoples wives and underage daughters. After a period of drug addled homelessness he reappeared twenty odd years ago, hitching his greasy R&B to, of all people, Canada’s surf-electric bluegrass band, the Sadies. Most odd, so I sought out his earlier stuff

  4. The 1956 Olympics were in Melbourne, the first time they had been held outside of Europe or North America, except for the equestrian events held 5 months earlier in Sweden. Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq boycotted the games because of the Suez Crisis.

    I love this paragraph from Wikipedia:

    “There was a major upset, marred briefly by controversy, in the 3,000-metre steeplechase. Little-known Chris Brasher of Great Britain finished well ahead of the field, but judges announced that he was disqualified for interfering with Norway’s Ernst Larsen, and they anointed Sándor Rozsnyói of Hungary as the winner. Brasher’s appeal was supported by Larsen, Rozsnyói, and fourth-place finisher Heinz Laufer of Germany. The decision was reversed and Brasher became the first Briton to win a gold medal in track and field since 1936.”

    What sportsmanship by the three individuals who would have benefited most from Brasher’s disqualification! Details of the exact nature of the interference are obscure.

  5. A bumper year for sci-fi movies.

    Godzilla. King of the Monsters hit the screens in the USA.

    A rather odd film in that it was a mash-up of the Japanese move Gojira from 1954 (dubbed into English) complete with newly filmed sequences featuring Raymund Burr. The first movie since WW2 showing the Japanese in an heroic role.

    And then there was Don Siegel’s extremely scary, paranoid : Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

    A critique of McCarthyism or a warning about reds under the bed? The film-makers just said it was a thriller. But the studio forced Siegel to add a prologue and epilogue to lighten the tone.

    • If we’re doing 1956 horror movies, we should not forget Fire Maidens of Outer Space.

      Another planet that looks suspiciously like the Home Counties. A monster somewhat less scary than a joke shop outfit. A Temple of Intergalactic Love which is a rather louche, low-budget gentlemen’s club. And lots of voluptuous starlets in their nighties who scream a lot.

      Every expense was spared.

      I’m beginning to see a theme in 1950s British horror films.

      Here’s another in the same vein.

      Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)
      Astronauts travel to the moon where they discover it is inhabited by attractive young women in black tights.

      Unmissable!

        • It is indeed the first sci fi film set entirely in space. And, as you say, it was a milestone.

          The first film of any genre to use an entirely electronic soundtrack composed by Bebe and Luis Barron.

          It features the first robot, Robbie, who had a personality.

          It stars Leslie “Naked Gun” Nielsen in an early role.

          But does it have foxy lunar cat women in black tights?

  7. Ray Charles hit his stride with Drown In My Own Tears and Hallelujah, I Love Her So but my favourite is Lonely Avenue from the lovely ‘hmm, hmmm’ backing vocal to the beautifully understated sax solo by, I think, David Newman. It also drew attention to an up-to-that-point underrated songwriter called Doc Pomus.

    http://youtu.be/6C3SMR6Ocj4

  8. Quite a lot of big stuff happened in 1956, not least the Hungarian uprising and the Suez fiasco. But it was also the year of the first Eurovision Song Contest, held in Switzerland and won by Switzerland. A mere seven countries competed. Here, if you can stand it, are all the songs.
    https://youtu.be/-4NaART4w7Y

  10. And from Brilliant Corners, this is absolutely my favourite from old “Sphere” himself. Dig those floor toms.

    PS That’s our mate Sonny Rollins there too. He did indeed make some of his best music before being upstaged by Coltrane blew him* into the wilderness

    (*temporarily, thankfully)

  12. I was going to mention Harry Belafonte’s 1956 album Calypso, but since KFD saw fit to include it on the 1955 Almanac thread (because it was recorded in 1955 – please let’s not start doing this, it could become mighty confuddling!), I’ve had another rummage through the 78s for your listening pleasure.

    Johnny Dankworth and his Orchestra released Experiments With Mice in ’56. Since it was included on the last episode of Car Boot Vinyl Diaries (which of course you all listened to), here’s the flip, a groovy little instrumental called Applecake.

    • My profoundest apologies about the calypso confuddlidation, Mini.

      I think you’d be more than entitled to mention Harry’s smash hit album again. It was after all the first LP record ever to sell over a million copies.

      Talking about calypsos in general, while looking for one abou the Suez Crisis, I found several compilations on 50s calypsos on Spotify today called Murie’s Treasure. They seem to originate from this websire and radio programme. Well worth a read.

      http://irwin.wfmu.org/muriels_treasure/

      Calypsonians were the news reporters of their day. Great quote here from that site:

      “A catalog of qualities I find endearing about the style (in no particular order): rhythm, humor, rakishness, unpredictability, playfulness, candid observations about humanity, wisdom, variety, songcraft, cleverness. A sense of decency in the lyrics. Calypsonians are likeable. And they seem to have fun in the timeless battle of the sexes.”

  15. 1956 also saw the birth of punk (almost literally).
    75% of the Sex Pistols
    75% of Joy Division (OK, not actually Punk, but you get the idea …)
    25% of The Damned

    letting out the first cries to the world

  17. In other news:
    “Colonel” Tom Parker became Elvis Presley’s manager on March 26th.

    The first UK albums chart is published in Record Mirror on July 22nd. Frank Sinatra’s “Songs For Swingin’ Lovers tops it for the first two weeks.

    Nat King Cole becomes the first major black performer to host a variety show on US national television, when The Nat King Cole Show is broadcast on November 5th.

  19. Miles Davis spent a couple of days in the studio fulfilling his Prestige deal in order to move on to Columbia. The results were enough for four albums, Cookin’, Relaxin’, Workin’ and Steamin’. These two days captured his quintet at their peak and are a touchstone for Hard Bop. They swing effortlessly.

    May 11, 1956
    Rudy van Gelder Studio, Hackensack NJ
    Commercial for Prestige
    Miles Davis Quintet

    Miles Davis (tpt); John Coltrane (ts); William “Red” Garland (p); Paul Chambers (b); Philly Joe Jones (d)

    1. In Your Own Sweet Way
    2. Diane
    3. Trane’s Blues
    4. Something I Dreamed Last Night
    5. It Could Happen To You
    6. Wood ‘n’ You
    7. Ahmad’s Blues
    8. Surrey With The Fringe On Top
    9. It Never Entered My Mind
    10. When I Fall In Love
    11. Salt Peanuts
    12. Four
    13. The Theme (take 1)
    14. The Theme (take 2)

    October 26, 1956

    1. If I Were A Bell
    2. Well, You Needn’t
    3. ‘Round Midnight
    4. Half Nelson
    5. You’re My Everything (false start)
    6. You’re My Everything
    7. If I Could Write A Book
    8. Oleo (false start)
    9. Oleo
    10. Airegin
    11. Tune Up
    12. When The Lights Are Low
    13. Blues By Five (false start)
    14. Blues By Five
    15. My Funny Valentine

  21. Not just any old year! Francis Beckett and Tony Russell have a book called 1956, The Year That Changed Britain.

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/16/1956-world-revolt-year-that-changed-britain-review-1966-year-decade-exploded-jon-savage-simon-hall

    The UK in the 50s had been up until this point suffering from “the great greyness”, as Dennis Potter called. Now things were starting to turn.

    On May 8 Look back in Anger is performed at the Royal Court Theatre with Alan Bates in the main role. The era of the “angry young men” begins here.

    Not much evidence of that anger in the pop musicof the time. One of the hits of the years was Winifred Atwell’s The poor people of Paris Never having heard it, I expected a mounrful, Gallic dirge. Far from it! It’s chirpier than Lieutenant Pigeon.

  23. I was in favour of random too, Mousey, but then I changed my mind. Ms Breakfast is very persuasive!

    Perhaps not do the whole thing chronologically, but a chunk of a few years in a row now seems a better option than jumping backwards and forwards over six decades. It’s easier to follow developments.

    Time to cross La Manche and hear a few tunes you might have heard on the radio while you were munching your croissant in Paris.

    George Brassens – Je me suis fait tour petit
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ-jmO_EkPc

    Leo Ferré – Le Guinche
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j000CI-Bkcc

    Gilbert Becaud – Alors raconte

    Dalida -Bambino
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U0NlPgvRuI

  24. Shit! What can one say?

    Not your favourite year then – by a very long chalk!

    I read the first part of your comment on my phone and came home and was planning to write a few lines on what an interesting pop star Dalida was. Suddenly it seems rather irrelevant.

    • Don’t worry KFD a long time ago and wasn’t aware. It gives me a chance to do something next month though so this has made me slightly more aware.
      Post more Dalida, saw her on the Franco-music programme on BBC4, excellent.

  27. As mentioned above, Dalida released her first album in 1956. Born of Italian parents in Cariro, she moved to France and went on to become a Gallic superstar. Bigger than Dame Edna!

    Singer, actress and the object of the eternal fascination of the paparazzi. Her love life was dramatic and messy. One lover commmitted suicide when he didn’t make it on to the San Remo Festival (!!) and she found his body.

    Je reviens

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6khRjWmFpV8

    Paroli paroli – with one time boyfriend Alain Delon

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICnbevTw4WQ

    Needless to say the bloke in the dirty raincoat in the phone box is not M. Delon

      • Hollywood was thinking on its feet in 56 and reacting to the enormous popularity of rock n roll.

        “The Girl Can’t Help it” was originally intended as a vehicle for Jane Mansfield. She was rather overshadowed by all the rock n roll artists.

        The same thing happened to the Western, The Reno Brothers, Elvis’s first movie and the only one in which he did not receive star billing. When one of the songs in the film, Love me tender, zoomed up the charts, the movie was rapidly renamed.

        It’s also the only Elvis film not set in the present day.

        • Maybe not so much Hollywood in general as director Frank Tashlin in particular; with a background working at Warner Bros in their cartoon section, he devised a lot of the sight gags, and had a possibly better eye for shooting the material than your mainstream director might have had.

          And “Twenty Flight Rock” achieved a measure of historical significance the following year when young James McCartney played it to some fellow he’d just been introduced to at a church fete.

  31. We’ve not yet covered the appearance in March of Elvis’ debut LP – Elvis Presley. I’d go so far as saying that though the first rock and roll single will be the subject of endless dispute, this set the template for the rock album – only Bill Haley’s compilations pre-date it. It topped the charts and sold in bucketloads, saw every track released as a single, and twenty-four years later saw The Clash steal its layout. A contender for coolest album cover ever and all of 28 minutes long.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua4hdHuAOC0

    • 1956 was the year that Elvis fever really spread like wildfire. When he recorded that album in January, he was still a local Texas star. On September 9, 1956, his appearance on the ED Sullivan show “was seen by approximately 60 million viewers—a record 82.6 percent of the television audience.” (Wiki).

      One has to hand it to Hollywood. They were quick off the mark to get him into a movie.

      Youthful hysteria over a popular singer wasn’t a completely new phenomenon: the bobby soxers had got rather excited about Sinatra in the 40s. But nothing on this scale had ever been seen before. The rise of the television set must have played quite an important role.

      Jukeboxes with 45 rpm singles, which arrived at the beginning of the 50s, also helped spread the word.

  32. The rest of the world was very rapid to jump on the rock n roll bandwagon. For example, Nora Ney produced the first rock record in Brazil in 1955: Ronda das horas. Love the accordion break which would sound more at home on a forro song.

  33. In 1956, Gerald Durrell’s fictionalised account of his family’s time on Corfu pre WW2, My Family and other animals, was published. I remember enjoying it and his other books like The Bafut Beagles enormously as a child. I suspect they might be rather dated now.

    But clearly they continue to fascinate. In the last year I’ve seen a feature film adaptation of the book, plus the TV series, The Durrells. All very agreeable, gentle light entertainment and extremely English.

    Durrell took liberties with the truth as have the screenwriters. His older btother Lawrence, the novelist, was already married when the family moved to Greece. But that wouldn’t have made such a good story.

  35. In 56, for the first time ever, the three Clancy Brothers and their pal Tommy Makem gathered around one mic, plugged into a tape recorder in a kitchen in New York and recorded their first LP.
    ‘The Rising Of The Moon’ was issued on their own Tradition label. The instrumentation was very very basic and they later re-recorded the whole thing with different arrangements.
    It doesn’t so so good today but it started the whole Irish/Scots/and beyond, ballad boom.

  36. We seem to be forgetting. In 1956: God created woman. And Donovan had nothing to do with it!

    The IMDB summary is priceless.

    “About to be sent back to the orphanage by her foster mother, she identifies with the rabbit. …Things get complicated.”

    Mademoiselle Bardot further consolidated her status as an international sex symbol. And men flocked like lemmings to the cinema.

    • I missed that one – could well be a Christmas job as I can think of absolutely no valid reason not to spend the first fortnight of the new year in 1956 rather than 2017.

  40. My apologies to Hubert for mentioning Ms Bardot a second time. What I’d intended to do was take a quick look at the majpr European films released that year.What actually happened was that I took a quick look at the trailer for And God created woman and that capricious coquette so entranced me that I completely forgot what I was supposed to be doing. I was putty in her exquisite Gallic fingers, a lemming dashing to the nearest Odeon to gasp at her gorgeousness.

    Here’s a useful site for French movies:

    http://www.cinema-francais.fr/cannes/cannes_1956.htm

    In 56 Le Ballon Rouge won Le Palme D’Or at Cannes ( a great fave of Pencilsqueezer’s)
    Two other major French films:

    Bob le flambeur – Jean-Piere Melville
    A man escaped – Robert Bresson

    !956 was the year of the epic in Hollywood: The Ten Commandments, Giant, War and Peace and Around the world in 80 days. The last of these cleaned up at the Oscars and won best film and four others.

    I learnt all that from this very informative site:
    http://www.filmsite.org/50sintro2.html

  41. My apologies to Hubert for mentioning Ms Bardot a second time.

    What I’d intended to do was take a quick look at the major European films released that year.What actually happened was that I watched the trailer for And God created woman and that capricious coquette, BB, so entranced me that I completely forgot what I was supposed to be doing. I was putty in her exquisite Gallic fingers, a lemming dashing to the nearest Odeon to gasp at her gorgeousness.

    Here’s a useful site for French movies:

    http://www.cinema-francais.fr/cannes/cannes_1956.htm

    In 56 Le Ballon Rouge won Le Palme D’Or at Cannes ( a great fave of Pencilsqueezer’s)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSzDsvJE1mg

    Two other major French films:

    Bob le flambeur – Jean-Piere Melville
    A man escaped – Robert Bresson

    1956 was the year of the epic in Hollywood: The Ten Commandments, Giant, War and Peace and Around the world in 80 days. The last of these cleaned up at the Oscars and won best film and four others.

    I learnt all that from this very informative site:
    http://www.filmsite.org/50sintro2.html

    I’ll definitely be revisitng it.

    • The Red Balloon is a massive favourite of ours too. A completely unique and singular piece of art. Must have seen it well over a dozen times and the ending gets me every time.

Leave a Reply