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Harley Payette attempts to redress the balance for singers, songs and career choices that have been greeted with critical indifference or dismissal – “the great lost causes of rock ‘n’ soul.”

With rock ‘n’ soul celebrating its 60th birthday this year (if you start with 1951’s “Rocket 88” and that’s as good a place as any), its canon has pretty much been set. If you read the books, visit the websites, talk with friends etc. pretty soon you’ll be able to chart out a list, deservedly long, of recordings and artists you must hear. Some will argue so and so deserves to be higher on the list, such piece or artist deserves to be lower. Despite the huge volume of music that’s been recorded in the past 60 years, it’s pretty darn tough to break into the list. Old ideas are hard to displace. Every once in awhile folks will turn around and suddenly find the influence of a Velvet Underground or a Violent Femmes will be too big to ignore and in those rare instances the list will expand. Even rarer are the instances where a popular group who have been taken for granted, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival, suddenly becomes hip in retrospect. The instance where the ground moves is very rare.

If you’re like me, you might like to see it move a little more. When you’re a pop fan that’s been listening for a while you always run into something that deserves more respect. Occasionally, there does seem to be some hope that the ground could move. In other cases, the deck is so stacked there seems almost no hope.

That doesn’t mean you have to give up though. In the spirit of St. Jude, the Catholic Patron Saint of Lost Causes, here are ten lost rock ‘n’ soul causes, music and artists that just can’t seem to get a proper hearing. Some of the stuff here is more than forgotten, it was barely heard in the first place. Other items here are extremely well known but have been scorned. The very idea that there might be some quality is so antithetical to the conventional narrative of our time that speaking up for it will risk labeling you as some sort of loony.

For the space of the rest of essay I proudly proclaim myself a loony. The music that this leads you to will not always split the Earth open, but it does deserve to be heard and the musical tapestry of the past 60 odd years would not be the same without it. And I don’t think you can come to a full appreciation of all the musical power of the era without it.

1. Jesse Belvin	2. The Fleetwoods	3. Jackie DeShannon	4. The Bobbys	5. Sam Cooke at RCA
6. Elvis movie songs	7. Lesley Gore	8. Everly Brothers – 1964-66	9. Nancy Sinatra	10. The Belmonts

Belvin, who died in a suspicious car crash in early 1960 at only 26, was one of the pioneer figures in establishing the doo wop sound on the West Coast, particularly in Los Angeles. He wrote or co-wrote (without credit) the Penguins’ “Earth Angel,” the great beat ballad that helped usher in the age of rock when it crossed over to the pop airwaves. He sang in a variety of West Coast area doo wop groups like the Sheiks and the Shields (Belvin sang tenor on their classic “You Cheated”), and his 1956 ballad under his own name, “Goodnight My Love,” once rivaled the Spaniels’ “Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight” as a favorite sign off. It was also, like “Earth Angel,” one of the most covered songs of rock’s first generation.

The list of fine Belvin compositions also includes “Dream Girl” and Belvin’s lone Top 40 hit “Guess Who” (a co-write with wife Joann), which was covered with success by BB King and other artists.

Jesse Belvin – “Guess Who”

We may never actually know the depth of songs penned by Belvin because he sold or gave away the rights to many of his songs. In addition to being a mover in the West Coast doo wop field and a fine composer, Belvin was also one of the best singers anyone ever heard. Belvin’s voice had enormous range and stylistic facility, able to navigate from a sweet tenor to an almost Brook Benton like baritone. He assayed songs in the doo wop style, the classic Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, blues and early soul. He was on the forefront of mainstreaming the gospel style mannerisms that defined the soul movement in the early 1960s. “Guess Who,” with its white pop sounding chorus vacillating back and forth between Belvin’s devastatingly emotional and elastic vocal style, seems almost a road map to the formula that Ray Charles used to mind boggling success only a few months later. For all that, most rock histories seldom rate Belvin a footnote. But listening to his career provides an education on the evolution of one of the styles developed off the success of rock ‘n’ roll, and more importantly stupendous pleasure.

The Fleetwoods are best known for their #1 1959 hit “Come Softly to Me,” with its famous “da dooby doo dom dom dom doo dooby dom dom” hook. Nowadays, it’s even hard to find them in most rock reference books. Ask most people about them and they’ll think you’re talking about Fleetwood Mac. They had a nice little chart career from 1959 to 1963 during which they virtually invented the concept of soft rock. Such a description does not really do them justice though as the music they put on singles and some album tracks from 1959 to 1963 was completely singular in the history of rock ‘n’ soul, a sound that is miles from the raucous rock ‘n’ roll of everyone from Little Richard to Jerry Lee Lewis and yet also worlds away from traditional easy listening music. Yet it’s a sound that could not exist without either.

The very line-up of the Fleetwoods was unusual for pop music. They were a tight three members with one male, Gary Troxell, and two women, Gretchen Christopher and Barbara Ellis. Generally when there’s a mixed line-up such as this, one person takes the lead (usually the odd sex out) and the others do back up. In the Fleetwoods, it wasn’t like that. The intention was a group with three lead singers and one with a unique mix of intimate male and female harmonies. Sometimes it would be two-part harmony with Troxell singing a different line.

The Fleetwoods who formed during their senior year at Olympia High School in Olympia Washington were in no way rebels. Christopher emphasized in interviews that the group was extremely innocent. That worked to their advantage. They didn’t know enough to be jaded. Their sincerity and startling intimacy gave their songs an emotional edge. The best of their pieces have an unsettling, almost haunting feeling.

“Come Softly to Me” kind of exemplifies their technique in that it embodies a soothing melancholy. The primitiveness of the record, recorded in a basement studio, and Gary’s “dooby dom” nonsense riff would never had made the Top 40 in a pre-rock era. At the same time its melodic quality and precise enunciation are easily recognizable to anyone who loved pre-rock pop. But its sense of quiet, no orchestra, no strings, no choir, just the three voices gently cooing, almost whispering, over an instrumental track that is barely audible at times, is unlike anything we’ve grown accustomed to on the easy listening station these past 60 years. Even the 1940s Ink Spots sound flashy by comparison. It’s music that is both stark and gentle. Listening to it captures what it would feel like to have the most secret, vulnerable parts of yourself exposed publicly. It’s music without defense mechanisms.

The Fleetwoods – “Come Softly To Me”

Such exposure is at the heart of the group’s flop masterwork “The Last One to Know,” where the singer finds out that his girl has dumped him and told everyone in their world except him. He even must walk online past all his friends as they console him on the end of the relationship. Troxel sounds completely beaten while Christopher and Ellis act as sort of a Greek chorus in sympathy. Few other records quite capture the dazed feeling of unreality that can accompany a sudden unexpected blow in our lives. They were only singing about teen love grief but it feels and sounds like so much more.

Even more impressive is their stunning rendition of “Unchained Melody” featured in a beautiful a cappella version on their greatest hits collection “Come Softly to Me: The Very Best of the Fleetwoods.” The girls take the lead and Troxel counters with a falsetto wail that encapsulates the horrible sense of uncertainty and impotence at the heart of the lyric. As the girls repeat “oh my love, my love,” the sense of loss is almost unbearable. It would not be overstatement to say the recording creates a sense of dread.

The Fleetwoods were also discoverers of up and coming songwriters. Randy Newman wrote one of their hits, “They Tell Me It’s Summer,” and Jackie DeShannon (see below) co-wrote another,”The Great Imposter,” which is one of the group’s greatest records. It tells the story of a conman stealing a guy’s girl. The central emotion of the piece is not self-pity but fear. The lyric never actually says it but, thanks to the performances of Troxel, Ellis and Christopher, we get a hint that the conman plans more than emotional harm on his conquest. This sensitivity is also evidenced in “Lovers by Night, Strangers By Day,” where Troxel is so terrified of hurting his current girlfriend that he stays with her rather than leaving her for the woman he truly loves. We wouldn’t buy it if Troxel’s vocal persona and the Fleetwoods’ sound were not so darn gentle. These kids really would agonize over hurting a friend.

For having a unique sound and for exploring emotional territory where few dare to tread, the Fleetwoods’ best records deserve a hearing in this century.

How Jackie DeShannon failed to become a superstar is one of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest conundrums. Gifted with a dazzling but husky contralto filled with character, a gift for songwriting and supermodel good looks, how could she miss? But miss she has.

DeShannon has somehow always seemed to be in the right place at the wrong time or vice versa. She toured with the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania. Too bad she was a beautiful blonde woman playing to largely female audiences who weren’t interested in anything but their idols. She had the original recordings of the Searchers’ hits “Needles and Pins” and “When You Walk in the Room,” only months before the British group scored with them. The trouble was the radio wanted British groups not solo American female singers playing an acoustic driven style of rock. Instead of the endless acclaim and accolades that seem her due, the Kentucky born DeShannon had to settle for being known as a two hit wonder for “What the World Needs Now” (#7 in 1965) and “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” (#4 in 1969). That’s really a shame because not only was DeShannon an incredible talent, she was also a pioneer. She was one of the first female rock ‘n’ roll musicians to compose and play guitar on her own material. In fact, long before artists like Chrissie Hynde got famous for it, Jackie was out there in the early 1960s plugging away in the sticks writing and playing her own stuff. When she got a chance to put some of that music on wax, her driving acoustic based sound was a pre-cursor to what became known as folk rock. Her original of “When You Walk in the Room” is a definitive early interpretation of the style.

Jackie DeShannon – “When You Walk In The Room”

DeShannon was also a performer of amazing dexterity, navigating folk rock, girl group sounds on tracks like “Should I Cry,” and serving as the best stand-in for Dionne Warwick that Burt Bacharach and Hal David ever had on songs like “Come and Get Me,” “What the World Needs Now” and “A Lifetime of Loneliness.” She also co-wrote (and performed the original version of) an amazing little song called “Bette Davis Eyes.”

ACE Records has recently released two volumes containing DeShannon’s Liberty and Imperial singles:

Title
You Won’t Forget Me: The Complete Liberty Singles – Vol 1 (CD)	Buy Now	Buy Now	Buy Now
Come and Get Me: The Complete Liberty and Imperial Singles – Vol 2 (CD)	Buy Now	Buy Now	Buy Now

When Jerry Lee Lewis found himself banned from the airwaves, his replacements on the air often shared a similar trait. “All they played was them Bobbys – Bobby Vee, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Darin, Bobby Rydell,” the Killer once explained to an interviewer. “If your name was Bobby, you were in for a sporting chance.”

Lewis’ quote is often used to capture the superficial quality of the teen pop music in the years after Elvis got drafted and the Beatles came along. It definitely sounds good, and while “the Bobbys” did represent a step back from the wildness and raunch of early rock ‘n’ roll, they were by and large a pretty talented group.

One of the “Bobbys” – Bobby Darin – was one of the most adventurous, popular, exciting performers of the post-war era. It’s true that Darin’s natural sympathies were more with Tin Pan Alley than they were with the rock ‘n’ roll movement. He wasn’t, though, just the latest performer in the Tin Pan Alley style. He was, in fact, the first pop performer to recognize the new music as a source of inspiration, rather than as a destructive competition. In that way he anticipated many, many pop performers from Barbara Streisand to Madonna, but also rock performers who wanted to work the other way.

In the mid-tempo “Dream Lover” he created one of rock’s true classics, a song that has been remade dozens of times by almost a rock and country who’s who from Dion to Ricky Nelson to Billy Crash Craddock. Darin’s original with his longing blues drenched phrasing and gorgeous pizzicato strings remains definitive.

Bobby Darin – “Dream Lover”

Tracks like “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” “Irresistible You,” and “Baby Face” with varying success tried to directly marry pop and Tin Pan Alley. For Darin, it was all good music and he wanted to mix and match.

And when he wasn’t rocking, he was as good a pop singer as the mainstream knew on tracks like “Beyond the Sea,” and “Mack the Knife.” He also made significant contributions in folk, protest and even country music.

Like Darin, Bobby Rydell would have probably preferred to be the next Sinatra more than the next Elvis. That’s led lots of rock fans to dismiss him, but there’s no dismissing the pure musicality of that voice. Whenever Rydell got to employ that musicality on moody ballads like “I’ll Never Dance Again,” and “Forget Him,” he managed to create some really fine records.

Sure, although some of his asides on tracks like “Swingin’ School” are drenched in more showbiz schtick than any 17-year-old boy should know, he carried his mild rockers with aplomb. Tracks like “Wild One,” although lacking the edge of early rock, retain their listenability after decades, mostly because of Rydell’s assurance.

Bobby Rydell – “Wild One”

Just as records by the likes of Fats Domino clearly evoke New Orleans,
Rydell records like “The Third House in From the Right,” and “Wildwood Days” are steeped in the ambience of South Philly.”

Many might feel that the New Orleans feel was more palatable, but the authentic local feel of some of Rydell’s best hits contradict the idea that his work was all cookie cutter crap. (To be fair, he did work for one of the more cookie cutter labels in Cameo Parkway, but I’ve always been fonder of their dance clichés than the kind of rock ‘n’ roll by market we often find in teen idols today.)

Bobby #3, Bobby Vee, would probably have preferred to rock out more than he did. An acolyte of Buddy Holly, many of whose mannerisms he adopted, Vee found himself packaged by his record label and his producer Snuff Garrett as a teen idol. He was a pretty good one though, consistently blessed with strong material from writers like Gerry Goffin and Carole King which he sung in a sincere and melodic style. It wasn’t wild but it did capture a lot of teen concerns which was an important function of the music. With Garrett’s sharp production, Vee made some of the best crafted hits of his era. Eric Burdon may have savaged Vee’s best single “Take Good Care of My Baby,” in his “Story of Bo Diddley” for not being tough enough, but even the song’s detractors would have to admit its perfect marriage of lyric, melody and performance. That Vee’s talent was more than an era and a look was evident when he remerged in the late 1960s with a small string of hits in a singer-songwriter type mode.

Bobby Vee – “Take Good Care of My Baby”

There’s a temptation to place the entire 1959-1963 era as one of the entries on this list. However, for most fans the idea that this era was some kind of nadir in rock ‘n’ roll history is almost immediately dismissed as soon as one realizes that this was the era of Ray Charles, Roy Orbison, US Bonds, the Drifters, the Four Seasons, Dion, Del Shannon, Phil Spector, et al. Then you remember old hands like the Everly Brothers and Fats Domino were still around churning out classic hits and there were classic one hit wonders like “Stay” and “The Locomotion.” You only have to think about it to expose the flaws in the theory. “The Bobbys” though make the case for the prolific quality of the era. Theoretically they emphasize all that was bad and trivial about the era and yet – they weren’t that bad.

Thanks to the recent work of writers like Peter Guralnick and Daniel Wolff, this is probably the case closest to reclamation on this list. In fact the mass popularity of the hits that Cooke released on RCA, including but not limited to “A Change is Gonna Come,” “Cupid,” “Chain Gang,” “Another Saturday Night,” “Twisting the Night Away,” “Shake,” and “Bring it on Home to Me,” makes this a plea for a change in status as opposed to one for respect. These tracks have earned bit by bit, mostly by popular response, over the course of decades, a certain status amongst rock fans and critics. That status though has always been one of a respected second class citizen.

Yes, the diehard soul fan and critics will tell us these tracks are good for what they are. Cooke’s real achievement was on his gospel tracks. Those are the works of a true artist. The hits are the work of a talented craftsman.

That’s a simplistic assessment, but it certainly beats Cooke the pop sellout, which was the popular vision until the past decade and a half. When that idea was popular, because RCA was the major label, it was Cooke’s RCA recordings that were considered his least worthy. Even Guralnick’s great book “Sweet Soul Music” hints that Cooke would have been better off at another label and that Cooke’s production work on his own indie SAR was better than the records he was releasing in the early 1960s.

A lot of the perception about Cooke’s work from this period is based on the commonly shared assumption that a major label, with its corporate bottom line to serve, always interferes in the machinations of its artist. Cooke’s music at RCA, though, belonged to him even more than the music he made with the Soul Stirrers and the music he did solo on Keene. With the Soul Stirrers, Cooke was stepping into an established group with members who themselves knew a thing or two about gospel music. Throughout his time with them, their interests mattered as much as his, as often did those of Specialty label owner Art Rupe. As time went on, Cooke’s records sold more, the group became more his outlet. But that was only at the end. He was also hindered with, what were for him, the lyrical limitations of the gospel market. Cooke absolutely loved gospel music, but his interests were far larger than its narrow parameters. He wanted to write and sing about a lot of things. There wasn’t a ton of outside interference, but at Keene Cooke had not yet found the idea that he could reach the broadest popular audience simply by being himself.

RCA records took exactly three recordings to figure that message out. On Cooke’s initial RCA offering, the label did indeed try to impose its commercial vision on him. The song was “Teenage Sonata,” a second rate Brill Building composition that overtly pandered to the white teen market. It bombed, stalling in the middle of the Hot 100. A second label-inspired single died without even hitting on the
charts. The next record out Cooke released his own self-penned “Chain Gang,” a legitimate rock ‘n’ roll record with a semi-doo wop vocal arrangement and some veiled social commentary. It went to #2.

Sam Cooke – “Chain Gang”

For the rest of Cooke’s tenure at the label, his success enabled him to grab more and more control. His label-provided producers, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore, became mere advisors. The big decisions like the use of arranger Rene Hall and the implementation of musicians like Earl Palmer were made by Cooke.

The result was a catalog of surprising variety – the rock ‘n’ roll dance pop of “Twisting the Night Away,” and “Another Saturday Night,” the mainstream folk of “Frankie and Johnny,” gospel drenched early soul like “Bring it on Home to Me,” and “That’s Where it’s At,” to the wonderful late night jazz blues of the “”Night Beat” album – maturity and power. A track like “A Change is Gonna Come” made explicit the cultural critique only hinted at in some of his gospel songs. Even the light hearted remake of “Blowing in the Wind” he did at the Copa reeks of ambition. The Bob Dylan composition blew Cooke away and he used it in his legendary performance as a double-edged weapon. One side nudged the comfortable crowd into subtly acknowledging some unpleasant truths. The other side allowed a black audience, who heard the song on album, to hear a composition that spoke to and for them.

While it could be argued that Cooke as a solo artist seldom achieved the raw intensity he did as a member of the Soul Stirrers, at RCA, Cooke’s sense of musical craft reached its peak and allowed him to make statements as powerful but in a different way. Think of the unfairly maligned “Cupid” and its felicitous French horn and Cooke’s nuanced vocal that treats every word in every line as its own entity. On a track like “Touch the Hem of His Garment,” Cooke tries to knock us down. With a track like “Cupid,” he wants to float us away. Sure he aimed at similar targets on Specialty, with more pop oriented gospel tracks like “Wonderful,” but in his early 30s on the RCA label, he was in a better position to pull it off. If you’re dismissing this evolution of skill and ambition as a pop sell out, you’re missing a lot of what made the man great.

This may be the toughest sell here because Elvis’ movies for a long time have received a savaging from many critical outlets in great disproportion to their actual detriments. (Are they really that much worse than say the Rat Pack films or other light Hollywood period entertainments?) Bad mouthing them has become almost a necessity for those who fancy themselves serious connoisseurs of pop music. And to be brutally truthful, Elvis did give critics a lot of ammunition with some of the songs he sang in his films. Tracks like “Do the Clam,” “Do the Vega” (too late attempts to cash in on the dance crazes of the early 1960s), “Ito Eats,” “Dominic” (a song about an impotent bull), “Old MacDonald” (yes that “Old MacDonald”), “Mama,” “Yoga is as Yoga Does,” “Shake That Tambourine,” “Queenie Wahine’s Papaya,” and dozens of others would have embarrassed Frankie Avalon, let alone a man of Presley’s gifts.

Elvis in his 16th movie Roustabout

The worst of the worst of what Presley did has basically driven the idea home that if a track was recorded in association with a Presley movie, it was probably a bad song. Enough time has passed so that many would be surprised to find that a good number of Elvis’ best known and best tracks were from his movies, including “Jailhouse Rock,” “Hard Headed Woman,” “Trouble,” (the song Elvis used to open his 1968 television special), “Mean Woman Blues,” “Treat Me Nice,” “Teddy Bear,” “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care” and “Love Me Tender. All these tracks, though, are from the 1950s, a period where Elvis’ work is considered more pristine.

The knives are really out for Elvis’ 1960s movie recordings. These are the recordings that are usually being referenced when you hear the dismissals. Despite these dismissals, Elvis’ 1960s movies also contain a handful of smash iconic hits, most notably “Return to Sender,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Viva Las Vegas” and “A Little Less Conversation” (which became a huge hit when a version Elvis recorded for his 1968 TV special was remixed in 2002). Those hits today rival the ’50s hits in overall popularity.

Without even having to think, that’s four we know and love from Elvis’ 1960s movies. If we do look deeper, they’re far from being alone in terms of quality and even popular success. For Springsteen fans, there’s “Follow That Dream,” a title song and #15 hit from a 1962 film that inspired a remake and rewrite by the Boss. For the crowds that packed into Cirque De Soleil’s “Viva Elvis,” there’s the frantic dance novelty “Bossa Nova Baby,” a #8 hit from 1963 that remained an oldies staple into the 1990s. More importantly there’s the snippet of “In My Way,” a brief but moving philosophical acoustic ballad Elvis recorded for 1961’s “Wild in the Country.” The song was sampled into the Cirque rethink of “Love Me Tender” and provided most of the depth of the new recording. Fans of the movie “Jerry Maguire” can hear an alternate take of “Pocketful of Rainbows,” a lovely ballad that Elvis recorded for GI Blues in 1960. Another song from that movie – the admittedly goofy but energetic “Frankfort Special” – stuck in Robert Plant’s memory enough that he was moved to tease Frankfort crowds with the song in a Led Zeppelin concert more than a decade later.

Then there’s the songs that continued to play a role in Presley’s career after the movie years were over. The proposed centerpiece production number of Elvis’ 1968 TV special was “Let Yourself Go,” a song Elvis recorded brilliantly with a better arrangement a year before for his movie “Speedway.” The number was cut from the show because it was too incendiary (although it’s available on the videos and DVD versions), but Phil Spector said it was one of the best things Elvis ever did. And a movie song was at its heart.

In the 1970s Elvis often hauled “Hawaiian Wedding Song” out of mothballs because of its popularity with audiences. The reason the song remained so popular was mostly because Elvis delivered a definitive version of the song at the climax of 1961’s “Blue Hawaii.” The title song of that movie has often been anthologized by RCA.

Those two songs underline a fact that you understand from some of the hits as well. Not all of Elvis’ movie music came from studio mandates. “Blue Hawaii” was a song Elvis had been fooling around with in private since 1959. “Hawaiian Wedding Song” meant so much to him that he sang it to Priscilla on his wedding night. There are indications that he would have recorded these songs anyway. This is what happened in 1967 when Elvis sang Eddy Arnold’s aching evocation of unrequited love “You Don’t Know Me” for his film Clambake. Elvis did not like the version he laid down for the movie, so he went back and re-recorded the song in a Nashville studio. This deeply felt version is what appears on the soundtrack album for the film. Another of these is Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say,” which was one of Elvis favorite songs to sing of all time, and was added to “Viva Las Vegas” at the last minute.

Some of Elvis’ best writers contributed work for his films, including Otis Blackwell, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, and Don Robertson. Many of these tracks deserved broad exposure, including Blackwell’s “Return to Sender” which Colonel Parker insisted be in 1962’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” because it was so good. Pomus and Shuman’s saloon ballad “I Need Someone to Lean On” and Robertson’s reflective and moody “They Remind Me Too Much of You” would have probably eventually made a studio session as these songs are amongst the author’s best, but also because Elvis liberally used the work of these composers in the studio.

Elvis Presley – “They Remind Me Too Much Of You”

Although in the minority, the worthy work in Presley’s ’60s movies is far deeper than you would suspect given the movies’ dubious reputation. You don’t have to be a slavish celebrity worshipper to recognize that of the 220 some songs Presley recorded for his 1960s films, about a quarter of them were recordings of distinct quality. Beyond the songs listed above, you might be moved by the driving philosophical rocker “King of the Whole Wide World”; “Angel,” a 1962 ballad so exquisitely sung by Elvis that he weaves words like beads on a hand crafted necklace; the raunchy duet with Ann Margret on “You’re the Boss”; the Blackwell pop hit “One Broken Heart for Sale”; the standard like “Hawaiian Sunset,” which might have been a classic had it been introduced in a film by Sinatra or Crosby two decades before; “C’mon Everybody,” the music behind the iconic dance with Ann Margret in Viva Las Vegas; the Dixieland-influenced Bobby Darin pastiche “Frankie and Johnny”; the lyrically predictable but beautifully melodic and sung “Home is Where the Heart is”; the dramatic Latinate ballad “Marguerita”; “Stop, Look and Listen,” a rip roaring minute and a half from Spinout that approximates the sound of the Los Angeles go go rock scene of the era; the pop blues “I’ll Be Back” from the same movie; “Rubberneckin’,” a studio song inserted into “Change of Habit”; Pomus and Shuman’s “Doin’ the Best I Can,” which may be as close as Elvis ever came to doo wop; the too respectful but solid remake of the Coasters’ classic “Little Egypt”; “City By Night,” a slice of cabaret pop jazz unlike anything else in the Presley canon; “Clean Up Your Own Backyard,” a thinly veiled slice of social commentary from the writer of “In the Ghetto”; and “One Track Heart,” a smart slice of early ’60s pop rock burdened by over-production.

Even one of the goofy Elvis movie songs, “Song of the Shrimp,” is primed for re-evaluation. If Harry Belafonte had recorded it as a revamped traditional, or if Sinatra had recorded it for one his movies as a children’s number or as part of a concept musical, the song might be well loved today. Because it was recorded by the King of Rock ‘n; Roll on the cusp of an era of great self-seriousness in pop music, it’s seen as some sort of disgrace. But it’s really a gentle lilting lullaby with a mellifluous melody and one of Elvis’ most graceful vocals.

A performance like “Song of the Shrimp” captures a facet of Elvis’ movie work that is both a dilemma and a virtue, the fact that the outside impetus sometimes pushed Elvis outside his comfort zones. Many times with the situational movie songs, the results were disastrous. And after so long at its worst, it helped Elvis abdicate his personal responsibility to the work. In other instances though, it gives us an insight into the worlds Elvis could have explored. Not all the results were exactly exciting. The light psychedelia of 1968’s “Edge of Reality” from “Live a Little, Love a Little” may be strained, but at least it’s there – a view into how Elvis would have done had he explored that powerful strain of late 1960s music. Stuff like “City By Night” and “Frankie and Johnny” are thrilling glimpses into a musical universe that might have been.

Although it is far from a consistent body of work, the fact that Presley remained a creator within the challenges and limitations of his 1960s movie music is something that must be understood to appreciate his achievement. Even if the listener does not find the same highlights as the author, he/she owes it to him/herself to at least listen to the music if they care about Presley and his role in rock ‘n’ roll music.

The 2-CD release “Elvis at the Movies” from 2007 contains a good selection of Elvis’ strongest movie songs.

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Elvis at the Movies (2 CDs)	Buy Now	Buy Now	Buy Now

There are two pop references that sum up Lesley Gore’s role in the pop pantheon. The first came in a review I read in the second Rolling Stone Record Guide back in the late 1980s. Critic Dave Marsh reviewed a set of oldies and listed Lesley Gore’s contribution in a list of “nice stuff” on the album. Behind Gore’s name, Marsh included the parenthesized qualification “even” as in “even Lesley Gore is good here.” Marsh felt the need to qualify no other inclusion on the list. The other memory is just from last year. Filmmaker John Landis did a brief extra for the video of the legendary TAMI concert. Landis, who attended the historic event, attempted to give us a little context. “Lesley Gore was the biggest star – believe it or not.” Man, how lame were they?

You don’t have to argue that Lesley Gore was a greater or equal figure than the Miracles, Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones and the Supremes, or any of the several legends who appeared on the show, to understand that she could be star at a moment when these legends were in ascent, descent or at a peak. Her best records stand without apology in any era.

In many ways, the fact Gore emerged in such a prolific era for pop has led to her being dismissed or unfairly ignored. Much like the Hall of Fame Philadelphia Phillies slugger Chuck Klein who in 1930 hit .386, slammed 40 HRs and drove in 170 runs, yet didn’t lead the league in any of those categories, Gore happened to approach greatness in an era where greatness seemed almost commonplace and even the most dizzying achievements could be lost in the flow of the moment. In 1964, for instance, she dished out the beautifully defiant slice of early pop feminism, “You Don’t Own Me,” and the brilliantly written and intricately arranged Brill Building classic, “Maybe I Know.” Yet when people think of 1964, the hits that most define the year were those by the Beatles and the British Invasion artists.

Like Klein in the baseball world of the early 1930s, Gore in the pop world of 1963 to 1967 delivered consistent and powerful work that ranked near the best in the business. She and her most frequent producer Quincy Jones were not great innovators, but they were supreme craftsman. In this early incarnation, Jones was one of Phil Spector’s most skilled acolytes, employing a stripped down interpretation of the master’s style with lots of double tracking, especially on Gore’s voice. He also consistently found the young singer (only 17 in 1963) fine material from a variety of sources. Gore herself tore through her songs with supreme assurance and a skill so subtle it was very easy to miss. Listen to her dramatic pauses before the title phrase on “Look of Love,” arguably her best record, even better than “You Don’t Own Me.” She made no show of technical prowess, she just delivered the message of her songs with efficiency and purpose.

Record to record in the mid-1960s Gore delivered big almost every time. “It’s My Party,” “She’s a Fool,” “You Don’t Own Me,” “That’s the Way Boys Are,” “California Nights,” “The Look of Love,” “Maybe I Know,” “Sunshine Lollipops and Rainbows,” “My Town, My Guy and Me,” and even flop tracks such as “Wonder Boy.” Some complain that she wasn’t rocking enough, ignoring the drive of “She’s a Fool” and “The Look of Love,” and the attitude of “You Don’t Own Me” and “It’s My Party.” Others see her as a relic of another era despite the fact that she continued to have hits well after the British Invasion took hold. It’s time to admit that whatever she was, she was very, very good, for what in pop terms was a long time.

Lesley Gore – “It’s My Party”

This is an almost completely forgotten body of work. The Everly Brothers, of course, are one of the true legends in the annals of American popular music. The work most people know from the Brothers is the harmonic interpretation of rockabilly that made them superstars from 1957 to 1962. “Cathy’s Clown,” “Bird Dog,” “Bye Bye Love,” “Wake Up Little Susie,” “All I Have to Do is Dream,” “When Will Be Loved” and more than a dozen others are amongst the best known, loved and exciting songs from rock ‘n’ roll’s first rush. The Brothers though have also received praise for their early interpretation of country rock in the late 1960s and for some of their mid-80s country tracks. Everything else they’ve done, including the solo tracks they made in the 1970s, is seen as inconsequential.

From 1964 to 1966, though, they laid down one of the most unexpected and unusual bodies of work in rock and soul history when they became the only first generation rockers to openly embrace the British rock scene. Although the attempt went virtually unrecognized in the Everlys’ homeland, they were right there in the middle of it and the best of the work they did, while a little short of their early slew of hits, is a compelling body of work which holds up considerably better than their country rock efforts and even many of the British Invasion rockers.

After briefly returning to the US Top 40 with a self-composed revved up Bo Diddley beat single that sounded like it could have been the latest British offering, “Gone, Gone, Gone,” the race was on. Over the next two plus years the Everlys released three of their all time best LPs – “Rock ‘N’ Soul,” “Beat ‘N’ Soul” and “Two Yanks in England,” as well as a handful of terrific singles, including “The Price of Love,” (a #2 British hit that the Evs used as the opener of their 1983 comeback concert) and “Man With Money.”

Everly Brothers – “The Price Of Love”

“Rock ‘N’ Soul” and “Beat ‘N’ Soul” are, surprisingly, oldies LPs but the songs on each were performed with a nod to the new British style. The crunching “That’ll Be the Day” that opens “Rock ‘n’ Soul” is maybe the best ever Buddy Holly remake. The rousing rethink of “Love is Strange” became a concert staple and a huge hit in England.

“Two Yanks in England” is a full scale immersion in the British sound, featuring a selection of rare compositions from some of the hottest English groups, especially the Hollies and instrumental help from Jimmy Page as well as several members of the Hollies. It is one of the Everlys’ top to bottom most pleasurable LPs. The sound is in tune with the period and the Brothers sing with a level of nuance and enthusiasm that matches even their Cadence classics, although the material is a little short of that peak standard. You listen to something like “So Lonely” and you wonder how it could have missed. This is not a played out old rock act trying to hop on the latest trend, it’s a veteran act of consummate skill and experience finding a contemporary voice. Hearing a track like this every hour on the radio in the mid-1960s would have only enriched that already exciting atmosphere.

You could make many of the same arguments for the Everlys’ entire mid-60s output. The Everlys, unlike their ’50s peers, saw how much the British acts were steeped in their own sound and the new wrinkles they brought to it. Throughout the period, they sound engaged, energized and joyous, like an old man who stumbled upon a fountain of youth. In the years before the Invasion, the Brothers were floundering trying to find something new to do; they found it in the Brits. Where their peers saw only a threat, the Everlys found opportunity. It’s too bad the audience missed it. You don’t have to.

“Rock ‘N’ Soul,” “Beat ‘N’ Soul” and “Two Yanks in England” were reissued on CD in 2005:

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Maybe this is a tougher sell than Elvis’ movie songs. Dave Marsh picked “These Boots Are Made For Walkin'” as one of the worst #1 songs ever. Critics have lambasted Sinatra as “tuneless,” “off key” and “boring.” Some of it is I guess is the implicit idea of nepotism, another celebrity riding off daddy or mommy’s name. The thing this theory ignores is the fact that while having a celebrity parent helps you land a record deal and even some pop airplay, it doesn’t guarantee hits. The balance sheets of record company rolls are filled with losses from the failed recording careers of celebrity offspring. (For that matter, Nancy’s brother Frank Jr. never made the Top 40.) To have a hit is an anomaly and to have a string of hits over the course of several years is extremely rare. Listening to Nancy’s records today, it’s easy to see why she made it big and so many other celebrity kids didn’t.

The hits of her golden age were a consistent kick filled with flash and humor. Her first “These Boots Are Made for Walkin,” certainly did not deserve Marsh’s arrow. As Nancy pointed out once in an interview, the instrumental track arranged by Billy Strange and produced by Lee Hazlewood – with its descending bass line intro and extremely rhythmic guitar and tambourine punctuated by furious drums – would have been a hit even if it were released without a vocal. What we would have lost if that were the case.

Hazlewood’s lyric is arguably the most sexually aggressive given to a white mainstream female singer to that point, certainly the most sexually aggressive ever performed by a singer associated with the rock ‘n’ roll style. For a Shangri Las or a Ronettes or a Shirelles the sex was always between the lines, to be imagined by the listener. It was also something that happened to the protagonist rather than an action she instigated herself. Not here. “These boots are made for walkin’ and that’s just what they’ll do,” Nancy asserts in the immortal chorus. “One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.” It’s a declaration of sexual power completely in the hands of the female. This is a year before Aretha demanded mere respect. Nancy acted as if respect was assumed.

Even more remarkably, Nancy goes on to sing “I just found me a brand new box of matches/And what he knows you ain’t had time to learn.” This is a young woman not only declaring her sexual intent, but also her preference for experienced sexual partners.

The “ha” Nancy uses to lead in to the phrase makes it believable, as does the “yeah” she purrs right after mentioning “the brand new box of matches.” She likes men of experience because she’s a woman of sexual experience. Until this point, her vocal is more committed than passionate but in the record’s final moments she establishes her dominance over the material. Some would dump on Nancy for her technical deficiencies as a vocalist, but so much of rock ‘n’ roll is attitude and in the 1960s Nancy definitely had it on records like this.

The record ends with a camp rush of horns that kind of exemplifies the spirit of this and many of Nancy’s records. There’s the tongue in cheek humor, coupled with the (for some males) emasculating threat of the sexually assured female. Navigating this then novel territory opened up a dizzying array of production and arrangement possibilities for Hazlewood and Strange.

Nancy Sinatra – “These Boots Are Made For Walking”

Sinatra and Hazlewood released a string of records capitalizing on the formula, all with more variation than the Motown producers generally brought to their records. “How Does That Grab You Darlin'” was a first rate “Boots” retread. “Last of the Secret Agents” satirized the Bond themes of which Nancy would do one of the better in “You Only Live Twice.” “Lightning’s Girl” took the implications of sexual deviance in “Boots” to almost absurd proportions with a huge threatening fuzz tone guitar and Nancy’s talk-sing vocal. Her character here clearly relishes what she perceives as the physical superiority of her mate, and the collision of sexually advanced beings. “Sugar Town” uses an old fashioned beat and chorus to convey the ’60s “do your own thing” message. It’s a complete assertion of indifference to the demands of the world, and the subtlest and prettiest middle finger ever to come over Top 40 radio.

It’s not that these records are as good as the best of the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Beach Boys or Motown at the time. It’s just that Sinatra and Hazlewood in this era of innovation were staking out a compelling territory completely their own.

If the records Nancy made solo were distinct, the ones she did in duet with Hazlewood were downright exotic. There was a predictable if energetic version of the country standard “Jackson.” “Summer Wine,” “Lady Bird,” “Sand,” and “Some Velvet Morning” are without parallel in pop music. Heavily orchestrated, they’re filled with psychedelic flourishes, cryptic and unsettling folk lyrics, cowboy imagery, and the weird cocktail of Hazlewood’s guttural non-melodic voice contrasted with Sinatra’s more traditional (she’s at her most melodic on these songs) waif-like highs. “Some Velvet Morning” is almost an L.P. in execution with its shifts in tempo and key working as movements within the piece.

That all this leaves aside Sinatra’s lyrically creepy but musically charming duet with her dad, “Something Stupid,” and her brilliant slow motion recast of Cher’s “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” which served as the key note of Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill, is testament to how good she was in her prime. She was definitely more than just Daddy’s little girl.

Most of Nancy’s important songs are on the 2006 compilation, “The Essential Nancy Sinatra,” which was compiled by Nancy herself.

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What? The Belmonts without Dion? Yes and it’s one of the best albums of the early 1970s.

Dion and the Belmonts are a name that exemplifies an era – its values, aesthetics and sounds. In reality, their body of work together is rather small. Dion recorded with the group from 1957 to 1960 before going solo. With a few exceptions (“Teenager in Love,” “I Wonder Why,” and “Where or When”), most of the hits people associate with Dion are songs he made during his solo career (during which he was often backed by the Del Satins). “Runaround Sue,” “Ruby Baby,” “Lovers Who Wander,” “The Wanderer,” and “Donna the Prima Donna” are all solo Dion hits. The Belmonts soldiered on after Dion left, making the Top 40 with “Come on Little Angel” and “Tell Me Why,” and a string of smaller hits. Just as Dion had an identity beyond the group, the group had one beyond him.

That identity reached its apex with a 1972 LP that did not even reach the bottom of the Billboard charts, “Cigars, Acappella, Candy.” Recorded near the height of the first rock ‘n’ roll oldies revival, “Cigars, Acappella, Candy” definitively makes the case that Dion and the Belmonts were part of a collaborative unit with Dion rather than mere support. But it makes a bigger more important statement about early rock ‘n’ roll – that it was a movement of soul as much as of a moment and that it could grow with its audience.

The Belmonts – by now Freddie Milano, Angelo D’Aleo, and Frank Lyndon, with the great bass Carlo Mastrangelo featured only on some tracks – using only voices, foot stomps, handclaps and an occasional kazoo, made an album that directly challenged where most rock ‘n’ roll was going at that moment. In an era where technology and huge arrangements groomed rock music to an absolute sheen, “Cigars, Acappella, Candy” presented the most direct human face of the music. There was nothing in the way of the sheer feeling of this music. That passion took precedence over form was evidenced when one of the Belmonts let out a quick cough during “That’s My Desire,” an imperfection that captured the heart of rock ‘n’ soul. The art and classic rock of the period took tremendous pains to make sure that everything was just so, and in the process often sacrificed the soul of the music. The Belmonts, before anyone even heard of punk, were willing to pursue wherever the emotion of a piece led them, and physical imperfections were not going to stand in their way. After all, there is very little perfection in humanity. Anyone who doubts that doo wop is a true spiritual error to the democratic spirit of hip hop and punk will get a comeuppance when they listen to this album.

This is not to belittle the sense of craft that went into the album. Every one of the nine performances makes its own statement. The group balances oldies like “Where or When” and “That’s My Desire” with then newer songs like “My Sweet Lord” in medley with “He’s So Fine” and “Rock and Roll Lullabye,” which had just finished its chart run. The choices emphasize the continuity of the original rock ‘n’ roll music to the then current music.

The Belmonts – “We Belong Together”

The group’s vocals and the more ambitious lyrical quality of the newer material makes another statement about the importance of this music. Detractors of doo wop have often pointed to the music’s “innocence” as a detriment that makes it irrelevant in the more sophisticated pop culture of the early 21st century. Supporters, rightly, see a lot of that innocence as aspiration. The Belmonts’ performances of songs like “Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever,” “My Sweet Lord” and “Rock and Roll Lullabye” wrote clear the need for that kind of aspiration in order to wade through a world filled with uncertainty and complications. Greil Marcus, the great rock critic and one of the LP’s admirers, wrote in the CD liner notes:

“Rock and Roll Lullabye,” recorded by BJ Thomas earlier in 1972 is very different: a song about loneliness, despair, abandonment, love, but what you hear as the Belmonts trace its story slowly, across five full minutes, is doo wop’s free play. Without ever suppressing the pain in the tune, the group locks into the doo wop nonsense syllables that shape it. A man remembers his teenage mother singing rock ‘n’ roll to him at bedtime; it’s all he needs to remember.”

It’s just the sound of the Belmonts’ voices, their harmonies that make Marcus’ point. Almost 40 years later pop music continues to grow even more conceptualized and artists that don’t make the big lyrical statement, that don’t have big productions, flamboyant vocals or allusions to classical themes aren’t taken seriously. The Belmonts showed that you can make the biggest statements with the simplest tools.

The fact that the LP was and remains so out of the mainstream, and the fact that the Belmonts without Dion seem to most people like an automobile without an engine, has meant that only doo wop die-hards have heard it or even heard of it. That makes it like the other music on this list, some of which has hidden in plain sight. Trying to get a hearing for this stuff may be a lost cause, but just because a cause seems lost doesn’t mean it’s not worth fighting for it. St. Jude, I know the big things – world peace, the end of poverty- must come first. But if you’ve got a few extra minutes on a weekend, you could do worse than helping the songs on this list find an audience or respect.

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