100 Great Rock & Roll Songs Of The 1950s, Part V.

Jerry Lee Lewis “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”
(Roy Hall/Dave Williams)
Sun, 1956
The number of Louisianans on this list is undoubtedly disproportionate; but even if I didn’t have a New Orleans fixation this gentleman would demand inclusion. Maybe the greatest white rocker ever — and one of the greatest country singers of all time, too, though his contribution to rock & roll tends to overshadow that. His elastic baritone borrows from vocalists as diverse as Hank Williams and Al Jolson, but is unmistakably his own; his piano playing is so dense as to be almost two separate instruments. And all in service of the Almighty Dance Party: “wiggle round just a little bit ... yeah” is topped only by the percussive “whose barn what barn my barn” in the Annals of Rock & Roll Exemporization.


The Cadets “Stranded In The Jungle”
(James Johnston/Ernestine Smith)
Modern, 1956
Again with the novelty haters. Inviariably, punk rock fans call this the worst song ever recorded by the New York Dolls. The scorn of punk fans is understandable; after all, the song does tell a ridiculous fantasy story by means of a series of musical suites — that’s right, it’s the first-ever rock opera, a less sophomoric “A Quick One While He’s Away.” It also features blackface vocals (study minstrelsy some time: black performers frequently wore blackface in order to conform to white notions of blackness), most notably in “great googa-mooga,” but even the narrator sounds like Amos or Andy (I forget which). You’d think punk fans would at least embrace the outrageous tastelessness of it all, but I guess that only counts if you’re white, suburban, and play guitars ironically. Or are R. Kelly.


Carl Perkins “Dixie Fried”
(Carl Perkins)
Sun, 1956
And sometimes a well-timed cover can rescue a superb track from oblivion. (Not that very many people know the cover; James Luther Dickinson’s 1972 Dixie Fried is the definition of a cult record.) But here Perkins atones for the glib inescapability of “Blue Sude Shoes” — this comic squib of a song is cheerfully violent in the best rock & roll tradition (the title refers equally to chicken, being wasted, and the electric chair). And the racial lines that converged on rock & roll are entirely blurred here: the razor-totin’ stereotypes in the lyrics are black, but the nervous jump of the music is shitkicker white. Like “Frankie and Johnny” or “Stagger Lee” fifty years earlier, it’s an equal-opportunity American myth.


Little Willie John “Fever”
(Otis Blackwell)
King, 1956
It’s a shame that most modern listeners only know the song via a godawful Madonna cover; or if they know it was a cover, as Peggy Lee’s signature song. While Miss Lee’s minimalist torch version is skin-crawlingly sexy, it cheeses out on the lyrics, trading Little Willie’s smoldering entendres for shout-outs to Shakespeare. Little Willie John was (as his name implies) a minor when he had his first success, but he was more of a Stevie Wonder than a Michael Jackson: fully in command of his bluesy nightclub style, he could just as easily have been twenty-nine; or fifty-nine. And hey — there’s Otis Blackwell again.


Roy Orbison “Ooby Dooby”
(Wade Moore/Dick Penner)
Sun, 1956
Just imagine for a second that Roy Orbison had boarded that plane with the Big Bopper and those two other fellows. Fantasies of his seizing the controls and changing rock & roll history aside — this would be an even more legendary song. As it is, his early rockabilly sides are (probably deservedly) overshadowed by the high-drama popera of his early-60s hits, when he discovered his falsetto and sunglasses at the same time. But as a callow teenager swimming in echo under Sam Phillips, he still managed to invest one of the dumbest lyrics in rock & roll history (and it’s got some stiff competition) with a quivery, yearning pathos that introduced teenage heartbreak and the teenage dancefloor as the close friends they are.


James Brown & The Famous Flames “Please, Please, Please”
(James Brown/Johnny Terry)
Federal, 1956
Philip Gourevitch’s 2002 New Yorker profile of the Godfather opened with the lyrics James Brown actually sang in “Please, Please, Please.” In bald print, they’re whiny, repetitive, incoherent, and trite. That was the point, of course: even at that young age, Brown’s musical personality was strong enough to wrestle deep meaning and passion from the unlikeliest material, and transform it from drivel to something approaching the sublime. Its other point was that he was a master of going off-message, of throwing new notes and words and emotions into a song. It is the essence, the starting-point, the promise and the fulfillment, all at once, of soul music.


Charlie Feathers “Can’t Hardly Stand It”
(Charlie Feathers/Jody Chastain)
King, 1956
In the grand tradition of creepy American loners, Charlie Feathers stands alone. Rockabilly was established as an amphetamined, stripped-down version of western swing; he slowed rockabilly down, made it even more minimalist, and created desert noir. He may be the ultimate Quentin Tarantino soundtrack artist: obscure enough to be a revelation to the average Tarantino fan, but the hardcore music geeks already have the Revenant compilation. Er, not to mention the highly cinematic use of space and echo in this song, which was used memorably in one of the Kill Bills. Before there was Ennio Morricone, there was Charlie Feathers, hiccupping and sobbing like he was contemplating murder.


Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”
(Frankie Lymon/Jimmy Merchant/Herman Santiago)
Gee, 1956
Was it Van Morrison or Brian Eno who compared discovering American r&b on shortwave radio in postwar Europe to receiving transmissions from outer space? And yet Americans weren’t any better prepared to handle it, either: both Robert Quine and Brian Wilson were electrified by the sax solo here, and how its sweaty r&b skronk didn’t seem to fit the rest of the song, which legend has it was adapted from actual love poetry written by an acquaintance’s girlfriend. Both Quine and Wilson would go on to make beautiful noise in entirely separate categories; but what’s called to mind most emphatically, listening today, is the Jackson Five. Frankie Lymon’s young, clear voice bounds like a gazelle, just as young Michael’s would do twenty years later. He was smart, though, and faded away gracefully.


Etta James “Tough Lover”
(Etta James)
Modern, 1956
She was in at the birth of rock & roll, cutting one of the first response records to the Midnighters’ seminal “Work With Me Annie.” And she’ s still out there today, tearin’ it up and knockin’ ’ em out. In between, she’ s done everything from hitting #1 on the pop charts and touring with Otis Redding to kicking a nasty heroin habit. But this is the peak of her early material, a slice of tearing, frenzied, jittery funk, complete with Little Richard howls and a backing combo racing to keep up with her. Tina Turner, the ultimate raw soulstress, could have based her entire career on this song. And her opening vocal, halfway between a moan and a snarl, is an exact duplicate of the way Orange Juice’s 1983 jangle-pop hit “Felicity” opens. Coincidence? Or something more?


Johnny Burnette & The Rock & Roll Trio “The Train Kept A-Rollin’”
(Tiny Bradshaw/Howard Kay/Lois Mann)
Coral, 1956
I don’t care what you say: this is Hard Rock. Hell, it’s practically Heavy Metal. Burnette attacks his guitar like it’s going to kill his mama, and the piercing, distorted licks he wrenches out of it come off like Neil Young at his most savage. Rockabilly didn’t get much more intense than this, at least not until the Cramps. Tiny Bradshaw’s original jump blues tune, an ordinary celebration of good times and fast livin’, is steamrollered by the daemonic fury of these adolescent rednecks, and the first faint echoes of what would become Led Zeppelin (the Yardbirds loved to cover this song) can be heard in its wake.