1960-1962

1960-1962

                The first of our relatively fallow periods in the history of rock.  Rockabilly is mostly done, and our heroes of 50s rock are dead (Buddy Holly) or drifting out of the rawer sounds of the last decade.  Elvis is getting into his “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You”/”Marie’s The Name” era, where the songs are good, and the performances are good, but they pale next to the music he made before the Army, in terms of energy or innovation.  In the 50s, he sounded fine next to Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James; now he starts to sound more like a peer of Frank Sinatra.  Not bad, by any means, but not as interesting.  Chuck Berry, meanwhile, seems more interested in fitting in with the bluesmen.  Unfortunately, it’s not his strong suit.  He doesn’t have the voice for it, and his playing style is more well-suited to the up-tempo, jumpy rock & roll sound. 

                By no means is it all dire, though.  The Beach Boys are active now, and even at this early point, their harmonies are fantastic.  In a couple years, they’ll be hands-down the best harmony-singers in rock to the present day, but even on their debut the only group singers in the same league as them are the Phil Spector groups.  Still, pre-63 Beach Boys isn’t all that exciting.  The Spector stuff, though, is pretty excellent.  Obviously a much different (more produced/less raw) sound than the 50s stuff, but well worth getting to know.

                Also, both Motown & Stax are active by now.  Motown is fantastic right out of the gate, although like Spector a more polished sound than the rawer sounds of the 1950s.  Stax is more hit-and-miss.  Otis Redding’s debut single (These Arms of Mine) is in 1962, and he emerged more-or-less already fully-formed.  Other Stax stuff from this era sounds a lot more old-fashioned to modern ears.

                Bob Dylan’s debut also is 1962 (plus I’ve got a lot of Bootleg Series stuff from 1961-62.  Early Bob isn’t all that exciting, though.  He’s a clever lyricist, and he can play and write in the folk vein fine, but like Pete Seeger in the 50s, sounds a little too constrained by the formalism of playing “folk” as understood by New York City intellectuals.  Still, it sounds like he’s trying to tap into something deeper than the pop stuff of the time, so I get why he (and the NYC folk scene generally) appealed to people.

                My only other note on this is realizing how much more active in the 1960s the Chess artists were than I thought.  I knew that both Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters made atrocious psychedelic albums in the late 60s, but in my mind, songs like “Ain’t Superstitious”  and “Little Red Rooster” were older than the early 1960s.  Makes me rethink the mid-60s British blues-rockers as less like crate-diggers and more as covering their contemporaries. 

                Oh, and we get our first 3 versions of “Apache” in this period.  Bert Weedon and the Shadows, both from 1960, and Jordan Ingmann from1961. 

Song of the “Year”:  “Money (That’s What I Want)”, probably.  Something by either Motown or Spector, for sure, as those were the two most reliable sources of singles in this period, and “Money” has such a great propulsive energy.  Plus not even the Beatles could outdo the Barrett Strong original.

Album of the “Year”:  The Louvin Brothers Satan Is Real.  Like 1950-1955, a lot of the great stuff was still singles-based outside of jazz.  And I’m less enamored of early 60s jazz than what came before or what was right around the corner.  So I’ll throw the title to one of the rare fully-formed country albums of the period.

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  The Mar-Keys.  I’d always unfairly considered them a “little brother” band to the MGs, but their instrumentals were some of the best stuff coming out of Stax in the first few years.

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation: None, really.  This is a period of music I’d basically just ignored before now.