Elvis, by Elvis Presley (October, 1956)

Dad's Take:

By the time Elvis Presley released his second RCA album in October 1956, he was able to release it under his first name only. He had had the smash hit of the summer with both sides of the "Don't Be Cruel"/"Hound Dog" single. Riding on the success of that single, went back into the studio for three days in September, and the result topped the charts for four weeks, despite containing only one hit, "Love Me," which hit #2 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart (as well as #7 on the Black Singles chart and #10 on the Country Singles chart). The other two singles, "Old Shep" and "Paralyzed" failed to reach the top 40.

Elvis was now a bona fide star, and this album shows him performing with much more confidence and energy than he had on Elvis Presley earlier in the year. "Rip It Up" is an energetic opener, one of three Little Richard covers on the record. Elvis's "Ready Teddy," on the other hand, is just plain kick-but rock and roll, thanks in no small part to a killer instrumental break. Add the three Little Richard covers to the one on his first album and you add significant fuel to Little Richard's claim to be the "architect of rock and roll." "Rip It Up" falls a little short of Little Richard's maniacal energy and you can understand the words (which takes some of the fun out of it), but it's a strong opener and sets the mood that permeates this album.

I've heard a lot of Elvis over the years, but most of these songs are new to me, because they weren't hits. That they weren't is a surprise. For the first time, we get an album full of songs with the signature Elvis sound. By 1957 almost every song on this album would probably have made an assault on the top of the charts, but now they can almost be considered obscure to anybody but big Elvis Fans.

A favorite that I don't remember hearing before, but that I'll be listening to again (and again, and again) is "So Glad You're Mine." This song is as Elvisy as "Heartbreak Hotel," but not nearly as well known, with a rocking bar room beat and some heavy guitar and piano, and fun lyrics that stick in my head, like:

My baby's long and tall
Shaped like a cannon ball
Say every time she loves me
Lord you can hear me squall
She cried "ooo weee"
I believe I changed my mind
She said, "I'm so glad I'm livin'"
I cried, "I'm so glad you're mine"

I had to listen three times before I could move on, something that hasn't happened yet while listening to the records for this review. Even unadulterated cheese like "Old Shep," an old-style country weeper that won Elvis 2nd place at a fair in Tupelo when he was ten, can't spoil the fun of this record. If Elvis Presley is Elvis before he was The King, Elvis is his coronation party.

Brad's Take:


This album kicks off with quite the punch. "Rip It Up" truly rips it up right from the start. I wish the whole album was like that song. It's just a tease though because the second song is as slow as Elvis gets. I wish they had moved "Love Me" down in the tracklist, but oh well.

This album is a lot like Elvis' debut. It's a roller coaster. Fast paced classics with ballads randomly thrown in here and there. He, of course, has the voice to pull off everything he did, but I prefer fast rockin Elvis to slow-dancing Elvis. I was loving the fast paced songs and getting impatient with the slow ones, in hopes that the next song was another rockin' jam. "Rip It Up", "Long Tall Sally" were early favorites, but that guitar work in "So Glad You're Mine" is a lot of fun.

Another thing that I loved right from the moment it happened was the way that "When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again" flowed into "Long Tall Sally." It's almost seamless. I love when tracks flow so smoothly with each other.

Whether it was a fast song or a slow song, The King nailed it. They got some golden takes in just the 3 days that it took to record this record. Without all the fancy technology we have these days, it's clear that Elvis, his band, and the producer had great talent.

I think it's time for me to make an Elvis mix CD with all of the up-tempo songs from his first two albums...

Memorial Album by Hank Williams (September 1956 UK)

Dad's Take:

I don't care who thinks we're silly
You be daffy and I'll be dilly
We'll order two bowls of chili
Settin' the woods on fire

This album was assembled and released a couple years after Williams died too young in the back seat of a Cadillac. I couldn't find a US release date, other than "1955" (with two more songs), but our book lists a September, 1956 UK release date, so we're going with that release.

I'm not a country music fan, but I like Hank Williams and some of the other old-school country artists. Williams might not have invented western music, but he brought a new emotion and heart to the genre. This is back when there wasn't a lot of difference between country & western and folk. It's American roots music, and it lies at the bottom of nearly everything that came after in rock 'n' roll, whether it's Buddy Holly (and by extension, The Beatles), Bob Dylan, CCR, or the Eagles. Without Hank Williams, today's popular music, whether country, rock, or whatever else, would be a very different place.

This is a fine collection of eight Hank Williams classics. It might have been a mistake to follow "Your Cheatin' Heart" with the nearly identical "You Win Again," to open the album, but other than that, I have no complaints.

Every drawn-out word is a hillbilly cry, every bit as sad as Sinatra was in the wee small hours. Sinatra cried in a city bar, where Williams sat alone by the fire out on the ranch, but both lamented their plight. When Williams is cheerful, as in "Settin' The Woods On Fire," "Hey, Good Lookin'," or "Jambalaya" (which was apparently on the 1955 release but not on the only one we could find, and which is very much missed on this record), the joy fills his voice just like the cries of the sad stuff.

Bottom line for me is, whether you like country music or not, no American popular music education is complete without a good strong dose of Hank Williams. This album is as good a place as any to start.

Brad's Take:


This isn't a style that I usually listen to on my own, but I enjoyed this memorial album. The tempo and guitar style to some of the songs aren't much different than the Chet Atkins album we reviewed before this, but with vocals and a band, it makes it different enough.

If you have this on as background music, you'll think it's all upbeat and cheesy fun country songs, but when you pay attention to the lyrics, you hear that Hank had his ups and downs in relationships:

If you missed me half as much as I miss you
You wouldn't stay away half as much as you do
I know that I would never be this blue
If you only loved me half as much as I love you

Like my dad said, whether you're a fan of country music or not, Hank Williams would definitely have to fit into the curriculum of The History Of American Music. Artists like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash might have never gotten as popular as they did without Hank Williams' success.

Finger-Style Guitar, by Chet Atkins (September 1956)

Dad's Take:

Chet Atkins was an innovator of country-style guitar playing, they tell me. And it may have been true. I don't know enough about that genre prior to this album to be able to comment on that.

All I know is, innovator or not, every song on this album makes me think of roller rink music or the samples for guitar lessons. There is some good picking here, but every song is played at the same roller skating tempo. Whether it's an upbeat number like "Gavotte in D" or a gentle ballad like "Unchained Melody," nearly every song is played at pretty much the same tempo, a tempo that reminds me of what you might hear when you walk into a chapel.. It doesn't help that there are no gaps between tracks. (You wouldn't, after all, want gaps of silence in your skating rink.) When songs are played pretty much the same and run together, there's no avoiding monotony. Occasionally, there's a song that promises a little more excitement, like "Malaguena," but by the end, even those songs drop back into the all-too-familiar tempo.

I'm going to have to leave it to my guitarist son to comment on the technical virtuosity of Atkins's playing. Truth is, whether this album is really innovative, and whether it is an influential disc, it's not something I find particularly entertaining. I'm afraid this is a one-time listen for me.

Brad's Take:

When I first started guitar lessons way back in the day, my teacher mostly taught me acoustic finger picking techniques. At the time, I hated it. I just wanted to play rock music. In the last few years though, I've opened my mind a bit more and I wish I had paid more attention and practiced more often during that first year of guitar lessons. I would love to be able to finger pick like Chet Atkins.

Fun fact: This album was recorded in only one day, which is pretty impressive. Then again, it's only a guy and his guitar, for the most part. If you're good enough (which he obviously is) then it shouldn't take very long to record a whole album in one day. I wonder how many takes each song took though.

There's no doubt that this guy is incredibly talented. The album went by really fast for me. I enjoyed it a lot. As my old man said, the tempo to each song is pretty much the same, at least in the first half of the album. The songs remind my dad of roller skating, but they remind me of the ending credits to Spongebob Squarepants. We definitely grew up in different eras.