Jerry Lee Lewis, by Jerry Lee Lewis (December, 1957)

Dad's Take:

It's telling that this album by one of rock and roll's original bad boys begins with an Elvis cover, turning "Don't Be Cruel" into a honky-tonk rollicker. And that the next song is a cover of Leadbelly's "Irene Goodnight." Jerry Lee Lewis was an exciting rocker with deep country roots. A hyperactive hillbilly, Lewis was always looking for trouble and had no difficulty finding it.

This classic Jerry Lee Lewis album has one big hit, "High School Confidential," but other songs like "Put Me Down" have the sound most people associate with Jerry Lee Lewis. But this album also has a ton of filler. At his best, Jerry Lee is one of my favorites. Unfortunately his output is a little bit inconsistent. Or maybe you prefer "versatile." On any Jerry Lee Lewis record, other than some greatest hits collections, you're going to get rock and roll as manic as Little Richard, Hank Williams style country, Dixieland spirituals, and bar room honky tonk. That's not a bad thing, as long as you don't go in expecting every song to be "Great Balls Of Fire." The Killer was far too ADHD to be pinned down to one musical style.

Lewis rose quickly and burned out just as fast, thanks to all that trouble he was looking for. Marrying his 13-year-old cousin was, in retrospect, maybe not such a very good idea, and it brought his career to a crashing halt after only about a year and a half. He has stuck around since then, but his prime was cut short by his actions. 1950s rock and roll liked its bad boys, but not when they really went Bad.

With all the great music he gave us in that short period, Jerry Lee Lewis leaves us with a "what if" almost as big as the ones we were left with on February 3, 1959. Fortunately, not for the same reason, but it still left Jerry Lee Lewis as one of the first tragic figures of rock and roll, brought down by his own hubris and poor judgment. Jerry Lee stuck around to have a few more hits even as late as the 1970s (especially on the country charts), and to electrify live audience all the way to now. I don't think the music world ever really forgave him, but they didn't forget him either.

Brad's Take: 


When I think of Jerry Lee Lewis, I instantly think of "Great Balls Of Fire." That's the only song that I really associate with Jerry, despite how unfair that probably is. I'm just only really familiar with his fast blues rock music. It wasn't until track 9 ("High School Confidential") when I heard the Jerry Lee Lewis sound that I was already familiar with.

I was a bit bored with all of the mid-tempo filler songs in the first half of this album. Maybe it's just today, but it wasn't holding my attention until "High School Confidential." And when the next track started ("When The Saints Go Marching In") I chuckled to myself. What a random song to throw on a rock 'n roll album. But either way, it was a fun version of the tune.

Needless to say, this album was mostly underwhelming. Especially with the Little Richard album we reviewed before this still fresh in my head. This album's energy and excitement just doesn't compare to Lil Rich.

This album isn't necessarily bad or anything. I just know that Jerry Lee Lewis has better music than what was put on this album.

Here's Little Richard, by Little Richard (July, 1957)

Dad's Take:

It's hard to imagine a greater contrast between two records than between the last one we reviewed, the soundtrack from "Around The World In 80 Days," and this one by the "architect of rock and roll," but the juxtaposition of these two records shows how schizophrenic the popular music charts were in 1957, as rock and roll started to dominate but still shared chart space with more traditional musical forms.

Victor Young's classical film score, heavy on the strings as it is, just can't match the excitement Little Richard's manic piano-driven rock and roll. It's clear which one is better music by traditional definitions, but the kids who were buying the records didn't care about traditional definitions. They wanted fun and excitement and enjoyed shocking their parents. Reviewing these two records back to back is about as detailed a definition of the 1950s generation gap as you're likely to find anywhere.

Few of the fifties icons shocked like Little Richard, this noticeably effeminate screaming black man. My mom tells stories of how her parents reacted to her Little Richard records, stories that include a certain very impolite N word that's hard to imagine coming from my grandparents, but apparently did.

This record starts with the iconic "womp bomp aloombomp a womp bam boom" and never lets go. There's screaming, sex, "jungle beats," and everything the aging white post-war culture feared, but that the kids absorbed and emulated in a way that never happened again until the hip-hop revolution 30 years later. Here's Little Richard is almost a greatest hits record, with great songs like "Tutti Frutti," "Ready Teddy," "Slippin' and Slidin'," "Rip It Up," "Jenny Jenny," and "Long Tall Sally." Those well-known songs are padded with R&B ballads and other fun stuff.

The mixed quality of the recordings makes it clear that this is a collection of music that was recorded over time in different studios. It also makes it obvious that the copy of this album we found online was actually cobbled together from different sources, rather than from the original record. A couple songs were the wrong versions. As a result, there's no uniform production value, and sometimes that can be a little distracting. But it doesn't change the fact that this is a kick-ass record (or a re-creation of a kick-ass record). I'm going to have to find the real thing.

It's easy to find what attracted the kids to this music. "Ready Teddy, for example," starts with a traditional swing sound and kicks out the jams. It's fast, fun, dirty, rebellious dance music that pissed off the parents. What's not to like?

Very few people influenced the future of popular music like Little Richard did, but nobody knew that when this record came out. Listen to it in the context of its time and it's exciting, scary, and more than a little naughty and dangerous. In 1957, this was about as edgy as anything could be. When Aunt Mary almost catches Uncle John with bald-headed Sally and they duck back in the alley, everything decent is turned on its head. That's the stuff of greatness. That's the stuff that changes the world.

Brad's Take:


After listening to the The Girl Can't Help It soundtrack, it made me excited that we'd eventually get to Little Richard's debut album Here's Little Richard. This is the first time I recall listening to a full official Little Richard album, and I am far than disappointed.

The energy this man has is just out of control. You can hear how much fun he must have been having in the studio recording his first album's set of songs. Whether it's a fast song like "Tutti Frutti" or a slower song like "Can't Believe You Wanna Leave", he puts 120% of himself into the songs and gives them maximum energy. The energy is totally contagious too. I found myself air-drumming to a lot of the songs.

This might as well be a greatest hits record because it includes so many Little Richard favorites, such as "Tutti Frutti", "Ready Teddy", "Long Tall Sally", and many others.

Besides the Frank Sinatra album that we reviewed, Here's Little Richard is my favorite album that we've reviewed so far. It's just straight up fun and energetic. It's an amazing debut album from an artist that is a couple years shy of 80 years old and still rocking these songs like it was 1957 again.

Around The World in 80 Days Soundtrack (April, 1957)

Dad's Take:

This soundtrack has the distinction of being number one on the charts twice, and being knocked off both times by Elvis albums. Apparently, this album was a big deal. Rock and roll wasn't dominating the charts yet, leaving room for an album of catchy instrumental movie music to do well.

Most soundtracks are easier to enjoy if you know the movie really well, giving the music more context. But Victor Young's music is interesting, ranging from traditional Viennese-style waltzes like "Sky Symphony" to music flavored by Hollywood's vision of other exotic locales, like Spain, India, and Paris. In a sense, this soundtrack is a cousin to the Exotica genre we've already seen (and will see again). It transports the listener to places around the world, as you'd expect from a movie about traveling around the world. Usually with a waltz flavoring.

Overall, the music is enjoyable, if not always especially exciting. Most film scores work better inside the film than out, and this is no exception. There are moments of beauty, humor, and tension in the music. It's not hard to hear why Victor Young received 22 Academy Award nominations for his film music, including his only Oscar, posthumously awarded for Around The World In 80 Days, after Young died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage in November, 1956, at the young age of 56.

If you enjoy film scores, there's a lot to like here. It's not my usual cup of tea, but it held my interest throughout, and I'll probably come back to it at times when string-based instrumental music is needed in my background.

Brad's Take:


I haven't seen this movie so the soundtrack doesn't make much sense to me. Because like my dad, soundtracks usually digest better when you know the movie, when you can recognize the song and which part of the movie it's from, etc. So this was a little hard for me to really get into.

Judging by the music, it was an action adventure movie with cheesy moments and comedy here and there. I could be totally off, but that's just what the music sounds like to me.

One thing I love about this soundtrack though (and many other film scores) is how the music's arrangements are done. I love when the arrangement matches the mood or tone of the movie, or even helps act out some scenes.  I especially love how one song can bounce all over the place. It can start off slow, and then get really epic and huge, and then bounce to a little funny silly part, and then go somewhere else. It makes it fun to listen to, but it also makes it hard to tell one song from another.

When I was in high school, I had a mutli-media class, and in the class, we'd film and produce our own movies and things, and I remember my teacher drilling this one thing into our heads every time: "Audio is half the visual." That always stuck with me because it's totally true (in most cases.) If your movie has a crappy soundtrack, it throws everything off.

Maybe one day I will watch this movie and then go back and listen to its soundtrack so I can fully understand.

The Girl Can't Help It, by Various Artists (December 1956)

Dad's Take:

This is a strange album to include in the book about classic albums that we're using as our list, because it wasn't an album at all. The Girl Can't Help It was the first major rock'n'roll movie. All previous movies had been black and white cheapies. For the first time, audiences could see rock'n'roll stars, as well as unknowns who were never heard from again, on the screen in color, in a funny, innuendo-charged movie starring Jayne Mansfield. Other than a four-song EP by big band star Ray Anthony, no soundtrack was released until recently. It's that recent release that we're reviewing here.

I have this movie, and enjoy it immensely. The movie is good and the performances are excellent. Little Richard is featured in the title song and two others. Other big names include Fats Domino, Julie London, Gene Vincent, the Platters, and Eddie Cochrane. (The great Eddie Cochrane is amazingly presented in the movie as an Elvis imitator and as "proof" that you don't need talent to be a rock'n'roll star. This film has the only known color footage of Gene Vincent performing "Be-Bop-A-Lula." Ray Anthony is also featured as both a musician and an actor.

The influence of this movie cannot be over-estimated. Besides introducing millions to rock'n'roll stars in full living color, it had a major impact on the history of rock and roll. For example, John Lennon claimed that, when the movie was shown in Liverpool in 1957, showing him his musical idols for the first time, it helped inspire him to follow his rock'n'roll dreams.

The soundtrack is excellent, containing several songs in versions only available in the movie (and mastered from the film for CD), as well as the original Ray Anthony EP and several other songs not available elsewhere (and some that were probably never available anywhere else).

The best way to experience this soundtrack is by watching the film, but the music is also very much worth having by itself.

Brad's Take:


It's kind of weird reviewing single artist albums and then reviewing one with a bunch of artists compiled into one album. Instead of judging the album's vocals, lyrics, overall recording quality, etc., we're having to review each song one-by-one and then the entire thing as a whole.

Needless to say, there are some amazing artists on the soundtrack for The Girl Can't Help It. You've got Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Fats Domino, The Platters, and a handful of others that are a little less known (at least to me.)

Little Richard starts the soundtrack off with a two and a half minute bang with the title track "The Girl Can't Help It." It starts off at full speed and never slows down. It sets the mood up perfectly for the rest of the soundtrack. It rarely ever slows down. This soundtrack is full of up-beat finger-snapping classic rock 'n roll jams. With 24 tracks, the album clocks in at just under an hour. No song is over three minutes long. Each song gets straight to the point within the first couple seconds.

I haven't seen the movie, but I can only imagine how great it actually is. Seeing the actual musicians in the movie "performing" these songs would be awesome to see. I'll have to steal my dad's copy next time I'm over there.

I understand why this soundtrack is in the book. It's a perfect mix of the great 50's rock 'n roll vibes. If you want to listen to up-beat fun 50's music, but you don't know where to start, I'd definitely recommend this.

'S Wonderful, by Ray Conniff (December 1956)

Dad's Take:

Ray Conniff had an excellent resume by the time the fifties rolled around, having worked for people like Mitch Miller and Artie Shaw. He had a very successful career as a big band and popular music arranger before he struck on the formula that would make him the king of easy listening for at least a decade and a half. He took his big band experience and added a touch he'd discovered with Mitch Miller, adding a small choir to a big band arrangement and having them sing wordless arrangements, doubling the women's voices with trumpets and the men with trombones. Using this formula, he had 28 albums in the American Top 40 between 1957 and 1968, an amazing number. Obviously, people liked his work a lot, mostly people who liked to swing but didn't like all these rock and roll kinds of songs and singers, people who were once cool and then, as they aged, found themselves to be suddenly square. 'S Wonderful takes a selection of classic songs and removes all the soul from them, watering them down into the kind of elevator music people played if they wanted people to think their elevators were almost hip once upon a time.

My biggest problem with Ray Conniff is that he reminds me of my dentist growing up, who played this kind of music in his practice. So now it makes my teeth hurt. And this was in the days before nitrous oxide. I imagine a good dose of gas might make all these doo doo doo ba bops funny, at least.

I recognize Conniff's talents as an arranger and his musical pedigree, and applaud his effort to keep the swinging big band sound alive, even if he toned it down for his aging audience who by now had to worry about breaking their hip if they tried to dance like they did when they were young. I enjoy the big band sound as much as the next guy, but I cannot get into Conniff's easy listening version of it. I made it all the way through the album, but this one is clearly not for me.

Brad's Take:


First off, the lyrics on this album are incredible! ...Oops, I already made that joke. 


The music is definitely well-arranged, and it's easy to listen to, but the vocals made me laugh a little bit. It was hard to take the non-lyrical vocals seriously because the whole time I was just reminded of this video. And like my dad said above, it's very much like the music you'd hear in an elevator, but besides that, I kind of liked this album.


I imagine this is what young adults were listening to when they wanted to feel cool for listening to older styled music, but their parents shook their heads and said, "This isn't real big band music..."


I definitely prefer the older big band sound that came before this 50's style that Ray Conniff did, but this album is just a lot of fun. I would love to have been in their choir and only sing doo doo's and ba da da's. But seriously, this is good for what it is, and I would like to listen to some of his later albums to see how he progresses from this. This album 'S Kinda Wonderful.

Ellington At Newport, by Duke Ellington (November, 1956)

Dad's Take:

By 1956, Duke Ellington's career appeared to be on the downside. He had financial issues, and the The Duke had been deposed by The King after sinking in popularity with the rise of bebop. According to the reports I've read, by the time Ellington took the Newport Jazz Festival stage at midnight on July 7th, the crowd had diminished, and it was expected to drop off some more. But Ellington rocked the joint, in the original sense of the word. The crowd went wild, and Ellington and his orchestra had to play four encores before they could get off the stage.

The original release contained only three tracks (a more complete concert recording was released later), dominated by the Newport Jazz Festival Suite. At nearly 24 minutes in length, this is a masterpiece for any genre. And, in fact, of many genres, moving from big band swing to smoky bar room jazz and mood-drenched blues and everywhere in between. The suite was reportedly played without some of the band members, who were nowhere to be found when Ellington took the stage.

I'm not familiar enough with the vocabulary of jazz to do this one justice, but let's just say that this recording blows me away. I'm somewhat familiar with some of Ellington's earlier work, but I'd never heard this performance. This thing swings. It moves. By the time we get to the final track, Diminduendo and Crescendo (which, by the way, might have just become one of my favorite recordings ever), it even rocks. The solos are flat-out amazing, and when the whole combo is playing, it's impossible not to move with it. I'm glad nobody else can see me dig this jazz. They're likely to think I'm having a mild seizure.

At a time when the kids were taking over music, a 56-year-old big band leader regained his position at the top of the world and revitalized his sagging career with a single performance, and the record captured that early morning performance perfectly.

Or so it was thought.

As was common at the time for live records, much of Ellington at Newport is a studio re-creation recording, mixed with live performance and often supplemented by phony applause. An estimated 40% is actually live. Ellington hadn't thought the original live recordings of the under-rehearsed performance were good enough to release. This was common practice at a time when recording techniques and equipment often had trouble capturing the sound of a live performance. It's not the last time a live album in our classic album list will have been doctored in the studio. That does not change the quality of the music, though. This is a great recording, live or not.

Now that the complete concert performance is available in one set, along with the studio recordings, I'm going to have to go out and get it. I want to hear both the real live recordings and the undoctored studio recordings.

Brad's Take:


First off, the lyrics on this album are incredible! ...Dumb joke.

For real though, I've recently gotten into some of Duke Ellington's work. In fact, just a couple weeks ago, I bought "Duke Ellington Meets Leonard Feather" on vinyl at an antique store for only 2 dollars. I've been listening to and collecting a lot of jazz music lately, and it's fun seeing my dad get so into a jazz album. He and I might have to do some jazz music swapping sometime soon. I've got a nice collection going on lately.

Back to the topic, Duke Ellington rules! It's really awesome to hear the crowd go so wild for Duke (hopefully it's the real audience screaming for most of it.) It's pretty unheard of for a musician to make their diminishing career turn around and be on the top again with just one single performance. It must have been one hell of a show! YouTube and even the internet obviously weren't around so videos couldn't have been passed around all over the world or anything. It was generally all word of mouth, and that makes this even more incredible to me. If it wasn't for this historic performance, the man wouldn't have graced the August 1956 cover of Time magazine.

Like my dad said, everything on this record is top notch. The musicianship is amazing and I love hearing Duke hollering in the background during some of his bandmates' solos. Whether some parts are live or are re-done in the studio, the recordings are perfect. Even though it was after midnight when they began their second set of the night, you can feel the energy Duke and his band had, thanks to the reaction from the adoring crowd.

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...