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3Take a saunter down the Avenue of Memories, in a time fast being forgotten in this Digital Era. Before computers became common in people’s homes and the family would splinter off into their own worlds, Daddy, Mummy, Kids and their Toys would all sit by the radio and hear the latest popular tunes. If they could afford to buy their own records, a not inconsiderable extravagance, they’d sing along to their own favourites, 23 of which are collected here.
Standards by Nat King Cole, Frankie Laine and Al Martino all sold in their millions and helped parents sink into one another’s eyes as their kids unwound before bedtime, subliminally receiving an education in melody and lyric, learning how songs work to convey adult emotions of love and longing, as well as the child-friendly spirit of having fun.
An example of the latter, Teresa Brewer’s ‘Music, Music, Music’ has honky-tonk piano jostling with a pumping brass section and confident vocal delivery; Dean Martin’s ‘That’s Amore’ ting-a-lings the sound of bells and compares the moon to a pizza with its call-and-answer string-soaked refrain; The Ames Brothers spell out ‘Ragg Mopp’ like a prototype Sesame Street skit.
One of the funniest ever number ones is Phil Harris’ ‘The Thing’, where the military tempo of the song is at odds with people shooing Phil away, even the hobo and the guardian of the Gates of Heaven, telling him to take his ‘bump-ba-bump’ with him. We never discover what the thing Phil discovered in a box on a beach really is, which adds to the charm of the song, the moral of it being never to let curiosity get the better of you, a valuable lesson for all the family.
Two fun Jo Stafford songs hymn ‘Shrimp Boats’ (“The womenfolk wave their goodbyes” to forlorn harmonies who want their husbands to “hurry-hurry-hurry home”) and the man in her life. ‘You Belong To Me’ evokes Algiers or a “tropic isle” with woodblock percussion, transporting the family in the sitting room all around the world. Similar exoticism is found in Georgia Gibbs’ passionate version of ‘Kiss of Fire’, suitably Latin and syncopated, where she willingly subordinates to a man’s kiss which “dooms me…consumes me”.
With a spinning sound effect introducing it, Kay Starr’s ‘Wheel of Fortune’ (“Will this be my day?”) contains close harmonies, a great deal of hope and “yearning for love’s precious flame” – she should consult Ms Gibbs… – while Johnnie Ray’s ‘Cry’ is a masterpiece of melodrama, every phrase touched with invisible tears. “Your blues keep getting bluer” is one of a host of lines inviting the listener to weep, a healthy emotional reaction in a climate where often the lip was kept stiff. It was one of the biggest hits of the early-1950s, alongside ‘Here in my Heart’ by Al Martino, the first Official Number One in the UK when a survey of record shops was taken in 1952.
What made a hit in those pre-rock’n’roll days from which all the tracks in this compilation are drawn was perhaps its wide-ranging cachet, its wholesomeness. Today kids can click a button and hear the latest pop songs whenever they want to, knowing that their parents will think it not to their own taste, but sixty years ago records could be found in chemists and libraries that parents could buy for family consumption. The diet of grandiose ballads with weddings as their theme included songs by both Eddie Fisher (‘I’m Walking Behind You’) and the Frankie Laine-sung movie theme to ‘High Noon’.
Laine’s immortal ‘I Believe’ is also included here, one of the era’s definitive classics. All the family should enjoy today these Fifties favourites!