Ferrante & Teicher--Exdous (1960)

     Much of the time movie soundtracks have been relegated to writing pop songs which can also be used as a marketing tool. This has been a part of the movie going experience almost since the dawn of "talkies". There has however, in my opinion a shift in how an orchestra is used. Orchestrated music is still part of many a movie soundtrack, but very rarely can it be found on the charts. Even in the mid to late 70's, a top arraignment from a film would find it's way to the top 20 (Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Rocky). This brings us to two of music's greats when it came to this kind of thing.
     Arthur Ferrante and Louis Teicher met while studying at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. Upon graduation, they both became members of the faculty. They began their career as a performing duo in 1947 in some of the night clubs in New York, but it was during the 50's they became known for their classical renditions of popular songs. This style kept them on the album charts all during the 1950's. This spilled over into the early 60's as several of their songs were released as singles and worked their way up the charts. The biggest success in that arena was the theme from Exodus.
      The 1960 movie itself was based on the book of the same name by Leon Uris. Directed by Otto Preminger and loaded with an all-star cast which included Paul Newman and Eva Marie-Saint, When award time came, it was the soundtrack which brought home the hardware, which included an Oscar and a Grammy to composer Ernest Gold
     Ferrante & Teicher reached #2 on the charts that year with their rendition of the movie's theme, and although most of their singles never reached farther than the low rungs of the charts, they did reach the top ten two more times. "Tonight" from "West Side Story" in 1961, and "Midnight Cowboy" in 1969. When it came to album sales and popular instrumental music from the 50's into the 80's, Ferrante & Teicher was the standard that all aspired too.

     

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Percy Faith and his Orchestra--The Theme from "A Summer Place" (1960)

    The movie, "A Summer Place" was a 1959 movie starring Richard Egan, Dorthy McGuire, Troy Donahue, and Sandra Dee. You can go other place to read about the actual movie, but it did well at the box office, somewhat spurred on by the two youthful actors in the film. It was also known today for one of the songs used. The "theme" as it's named is not actually the main song from the movie, but a love song used for Johnny and Molly (Donahue and Dee)
     Percy Faith was a Canadian born bandleader spent much of the early 50's writing and arraigning for many of the major pop singers of the day, such as Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, and Doris Day. His "Percy Faith Orchestra" recorded many albums full of orchestral versions of pop songs as well as music from the stage and screen. His music filled the pop charts all through the 1950's and early 60's, and even continued to make it on the Adult Contemporary charts into the mid-70's.
     "Theme from A Summer Place" became his 7th top ten hit and third number one (the other two being 'Delicado' (1952), and 'Song from Moulin Rouge' (1953)). He also got an Oscar nomination for composing the score to the Doris Day film, "Love me or Leave Me", and did some work in television, writing the theme to the The Virginian. However...over 50 years later, this song is still reognizable by generations of music fans even if very few know who performed it.

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Sunday Morning Vault: Mark Dinning--Teen Angel (1959)

     From a purely historical standpoint, I was always amused by certain religious groups in the late 80's and 90's who were claiming that rock songs promoted death. Not that the subject would be worth discussing, but this was not the first time that popular music had been preoccupied with it. In fact, it has been a part of rock and pop music since the late 50's. There have been many over the years, but for those who think this is a subject of later rockers consider the death in a car songs, "Dead Man's Curve" (1964), and  "Last Kiss" (1962). Or maybe on a motorcycle with "Leader of the Pack" (1965). In fact, if you are wanting to dive into this a bit more, there is an entire page of this stuff with dozens of examples of death in music, either by accident, by murder, or by war. So any talk of death in today's music seems a bit disingenuous. (By the way...that website is  http://www.nyx.net/~anon52ea/DeadTeenSongs.html. Your welcome.)
     Anyway, this leads our blog today to look at, if not the first, the first popular "death" song on the charts. Mark Dinning was one of nine born to a couple who lived in Oklahoma,  (where Mark was born) Kansas, and finally Nashville. Three of his sisters had recording success as "The Dinning Sisters" in the late 40's. Mark however fancied himself as a country singer. He was signed to a contract with MGM in 1957, but really hadn't done much until he was given a song written by his sister Jean and her husband Red Surrey.
     The song had all the makings of a hit. Danger (car stalls on train), devotion (she goes back for ring), unrequited love (she dies in his arms...never to love her again ), and of course eternal devotion (assuming she is watching over him from above). It took awhile for the song to make it to the charts as US and UK radio stations at first would not play it because of what was considered morbid material. Between some stations what would play it, and word of mouth, the song would quickly make it up the charts becoming a number 1 hit in February 1960.
    Dinning would have three more minor hits over the next couple of years, but alcoholism hindered his career greatly. He died in 1986 of a heart attack driving home from a gig in Jefferson City MO.

 
   

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Andy Griffith--The Fishin' Hole (1960)

     For several generations the character of Andy Taylor and the actor who played him (for many of us one in the same) presented a vision for many of what life could be. Played in the fictitious Mayberry, North Carolina, it was as close to utopia as television would ever get. But I've often thought, "Why?". Well, there are those who will take a deeper look into the sociological aspects to the show, and this isn't the venue for that kind of analysis...so let's take a look at the man.
     Andy Griffith was born North Carolina and from his earliest years was immersed in music. He learned to play the trombone, and also acted some in high school. After pondering becoming a minister, he switched his major to music and graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1949. His first job out of school was teaching music and drama at a high school in Goldsboro.
     He started his career as a stand up comedian, but not like we think of one today. He was a monologist, one who would tell long stories. This was where he first made a name for himself with, "What It Was, Was Football", which 60 years later, his country/rural character still makes me laugh. This led him to the opportunity to play his first major role in the teleplay, "No Time For Sergeants" on the United States Steel Hour. He broadened out the play to a full length Broadway production in late 1955 which became quite successful. It was also made into a movie in 1958 with another young actor Don Knotts. This would be the beginning of a long professional and personal relationship between the two. Those who are old enough to remember won't be surprised to know that the television show Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C was pretty much a modern copy of this movie.
     Producer Sheldon Leonard and actor Danny Thomas wanted to get Griffith on TV and began to develop a show for him. On Feb 15, 1960, we see Andy Taylor (and Opie) on The Danny Thomas Show, where Andy plays the justice of the peace on an episode where Thomas gets arrested for running a stop sign This lead up to the debut of the Andy Griffith show in October of that year.
     For the next eight years, The Andy Griffith show was to be one of the top programs on CBS. Looking back at it now, it was (as many of television's best shows are) a cast of people who are perfectly suited for that role. Don Knotts, Ron Howard, Frances Bavier, and all of the others became so set in their performances, that none of them, were able to break out of the characters they developed in future years. For as well as Griffith, Knotts, Howard, and Nabors did after the show ended, over 50 years later we still seem them in citizens of Mayberry.
     Griffith did well post-Mayberry, starting his own production company, doing guest spots, and working on several made for TV movies, although he was never able to find success on a weekly show again until Matlock which ran from 1986-1995 on NBC and ABC. Although he continued to work on TV and film up to 2009, the last 15 years or so he returned to his love of music. From his first dramatic role in the 1957 movie, "A Face in the Crowd" through the Andy Griffith Show, he would find a time and a place to sing. He started recording albums of religious music in 1995 and had a great deal of success in that arena as well.
     To return to the question at the beginning of this blog. The Andy Griffith show and it's characters are by far the most celebrated and beloved in TV history. It came along at a time in which one could argue that the country was going through it's biggest upheaval since the Civil War. Despite what was going on socially, politically, and culturally, one could turn on CBS and see a 30 minute slice of what we wished for America to be, with the benevolent Sheriff/Dad Andy Taylor making sure all was ok with his world...and ours too. One might think that so many years later that sentiment like that would be passe, but we find that generations later, the lessons Mayberry taught has not lost it's importance. Although naive at certain level, at it's core we are drawn by the warmth of a town that was built on respect, kindness, and love. For some that reminds us of our own families. For others, it brings us closer to a family we never had. Let's face it, we still want to come home to a place in our hearts that is safe, warm, and protected by those who love us. That was the genus of The Andy Griffith Show, and in the death of it's star, we feel as if we have lost more than just an actor, we lost a friend.

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Chubby Checker--The Twist (1960)

    Ernest Evans has lamented that his career has been focused on just one song, but probably no one artist in the rock and roll era has been linked to a song like he has...

     As a teenager, The Twist was the only song that I associated with Chubby Checker. In fact, it's the only song linked to him in 2010. There have been times that he has complained about that, which is a valued argument. From 1960 to 1965 Checker had 21 hits on the top 40 (if you count The Twist's second #1 showing in January 1962). So why isn't he known for more than just this one song.

     Well, first of all, it's a great song. It was originally recorded by Hank Ballard & The Midnighters in 1959 as a B-side to "Teardrops on your Letter". In 1960, Dick Clark attempted to get Ballard on American Bandstand to perform the song, but was unavailable. With that Clark decided to look for a local kid to do the song. He found Checker who's vocal style is similar to Ballard's. The song went to #1 and began a string of hits that linked itself to dance (including 5 about the Twist).

      The Twist was also on the cusp of a couple of cultural changes that are still with us today. The first was the style of music. People had been dancing for centuries, but the Twist was the first major hit in the rock era where couples didn't have to touch to dance. I'm not sure why, but it sparked a revolution in dance where the participants wouldn't be touching. Another huge change (and a reason why it went #1 for a second time) was that adults began dancing the Twist. Before this song, rock and roll songs were danced by teenagers and the parents stayed away. However, the upper and middle class adults began to take the dance moves to the floor, and this spurred on an entirely new audience for the song.

      Another factor why this was important in the career of Checker was that of all of those dance crazes, the Twist is one of the few that has survived the hype. The Pony, The Limbo and others have pretty much gone away except for those who were actually dancing in that era. For whatever reason, the dance and therefore the song stayed in the public eye for years. Then in 1988, he re-recorded the song with The Fat Boys, in a totally different style and reached the top 20 again and made the song hip again for a new generation.

       Checker hit the oldies circuit since the 70's, and is still touring today. And on dance floors all over the world, there will still be couples dancing the twist.....

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Mildred Anderson--Hard Times (1960)

     Mildred was a mostly forgotten jazz and blues singer. She began as a singer in Albert Ammons' band in the late 40's and sang in several other bands through the 50's. Anderson recorded a couple of albums in the 59/60 time period that are really good and if you can find them, it's worth a listen.

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Sunday Morning Vault: Art Adams--Rock Crazy Baby (1960)

By 1960, much of Rockabilly had gone underground. It was being recorded on small labels all across the country and was full of the reckless abandon that top 40 rock and roll had promised, but by 1960 was failing to deliver. Listening to many of these records now, it has a native urgency and rawness that it the true essence of rock and roll.

Art Adams was a Kentucky boy who, with his group 'The Rhythm Kings', recorded a couple of sides for Cherry Records. They also cut a bunch of songs that were never released at the time, but thanks to the Brits (again) and Canadians, Adams and many like him were re-discovered. His popularity has been such that after decades of inactivity, he has a band again and touring.

"Rock Crazy Baby" was released in 1960. If you are interested in hearing more, there are several albums that not only have his released output, but the demos that were never released...also check out You Tube.  If you like the oldies, popular and more obscure, I invite you to click the live 365 banner to the right and the station will pop up in another tab. Then you can listen while checking out the other blog posts....have a great Sunday everyone!

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