We’re already six months through our 1958 journey, let’s see what is charting this month:
Songs of the month
“All I Have To Do Is Dream” – Everly Brothers
“Big Man” – Four Preps
“Book Of Love” – Monotones*
“Chanson D’Amour” – Art And Dotty Todd
“Do You Want To Dance” – Bobby Freeman
“Do You Want To Dance” – Laurie London*
“El Rancho Rock” – Champs*
“Endless Sleep” – Jody Reynolds*
“For Your Love” – Ed Townsend
“Guess Things Happen That Way” – Johnny Cash*
“Hard Headed Woman” – Elvis Presley*
“He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands” – Laurie London
“High School Confidential” – Jerry Lee Lewis*
“I Wonder Why” – Dion And The Belmonts*
“Jeannie Lee” – Jan And Arnie
“Johnny B. Goode” – Chuck Berry
“Kewpie Doll” – Perry Como
“Leroy” – Jack Scott*
“Let The Bells Keep Ringing” – Paul Anka*
“Looking Back” – Nat King Cole
“No Chemise Please” – Gerry Granahan*
“Oh Lonesome Me” – Don Gibson
“Padre” – Toni Arden*
“Patricia” – Prez Prado*
“Return To Me” – Dean Martin
“Rumble” – Link Wray
“Secretly” – Jimmie Rodgers
“Splish Splash” – Bobby Darin*
“Sugar Moon” – Pat Boone
“Talk To Me Talk To Me” – Little Willie John
“Tequila” – Champs
“The Purple People Eater” – Sheb Wooley*
“To Be Loved” – Jackie Wilson
“Torero” – Renato Carosone
“Twilight Time” – Platters
“Wear My Ring Around Your Neck” – Elvis Presley
“What Am I Living For” – Chuck Willis
“When” – Kalin Twins*
“Witch Doctor” – David Seville
“Yakety Yak” – Coasters*
“You” – Aquatones
“Zorro” – Chordettes*
* = New to the chart this week.
You can listen to the full playlist on Youtube via this link.
This month in history
On June 9 Queen Elizabeth officially opened London Gatwick Airport, (LGW) – my 3rd favourite airport in London (to be avoided if possible.) Great news reel from the time below:
We don’t talk much about album releases. – it’d complicate an already difficult task, but sometimes they come up in history notes. On June 24 Nina Simone released her debut jazz album “Little Girl Blue”. No footage from that year, but a few later we can see her on TV in 1961:
On June 17th the Wooden Roller Coaster at Playland, which is in the Pacific National Exhibition, Vancouver, Canada opened, and is still open to this day. A construction video from 1958 below doesn’t make it look any safer than “wooden roller coaster” sounds…
What’d Sadie think?
The awesome “All I Have To Do Is Dream” by the Everly Brothers hangs on to the number 1 spot for another week in June before new entrant, “The Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley, takes it for 4 weeks.
It very rarely happens, actually perhaps just one before, but I wasn’t able to find a version of one of the songs in the chart. “Do You Want To Dance” by Laurie London. It looks like this might be the b-side of “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands”. Clearly didn’t last as long as the latter!
Loved ’em
“Book Of Love” by the Monotones is a great piece of doo-wop. Written by three members of the group it was apparently inspired by a toothpaste commercial…
Lead singer Charles Patrick heard a Pepsodent toothpaste commercial with the line “you’ll wonder where the yellow went”/ “when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent”, which inspired him to come up with, “I wonder, wonder, wonder who, who wrote the book of love”.
“Endless Sleep” by Jody Reynolds is apparently a “teenage tragedy” pop song. Which is a genre I was not aware of,
that peaked in popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Examples of the style are also known as “tear jerkers”, “death discs” or “splatter platters”,[1] among other colorful sobriquets coined by DJs that then passed into vernacular as the songs became popular. Often lamenting teenage death scenarios in melodramatic fashion, these songs were usually sung from the viewpoint of the dead person’s sweetheart
Apparently Reynolds wrote the song in 1956, after listening to Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel”, it was initially rejected by record companies as “too depressing”.
Speaking of depressing, but great, “Guess Things Happen That Way” by Johnny Cash is also about a dead lover.
In a 1958 interview Elvis Presley said that “Padre” by Toni Arden was his favorite song. It’s not bad.
On the lighter side of life we have “Splish Splash” which was Bobby Darin’s first hit. if you’re wondering where it came from well,
It was written with DJ Murray the K (Murray Kaufman), who bet that Darin could not write a song that began with the words, “Splish splash, I was takin’ a bath”, as suggested by Murray’s mother, Jean Kaufman.
Then on the even lighter side we have the classic “The Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley which tells how a strange creature (described as a “one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater”) descends to Earth because it wants to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band. And until now I did not realise the alien itself was not purple, but that it ate “purple people”. Go figure.
And then, because apparently it was a novelty song kind of month, we have “Yakety Yak” by the Coasters. Which I’ve heard a million times but didn’t realise it was about a parent telling their kid what chores to do. Great tune either way!
Now onto the rest of them…
Liked ’em
“El Rancho Rock” – Champs
“Hard Headed Woman” – Elvis Presley
“I Wonder Why” – Dion And The Belmonts
“Leroy” – Jack Scott
“Patricia” – Prez Prado
“When” – Kalin Twins
“Zorro” – Chordettes
“High School Confidential” – Jerry Lee Lewis
Leave ’em
“Let The Bells Keep Ringing” – Paul Anka
“No Chemise Please” – Gerry Granahan
Now go listen to the full playlist on Youtube via this link.