Ten obscure but splendid '50s rock and roll, R&B and soul recordings - and a mystery "popcorn" classic

Can anyone help? First, please listen to this classic piece of what is now apparently known as "popcorn" from 1959...

In 1959, two 18-year olds, Alan Christian and Joe Zellers, wrote a minor key song called "Lonely Moon" and hawked it around... 

Farewell, Chuck Berry - the rock 'n' roll giant who never seemed to understand just how great he was

Let's get the non-musical stuff out of the way first. Several commentators have bemoaned the general lack of fuss about Charles Edward Anderson Berry's passing at the age of 90, compared to the oodles of coverage devoted to David Bowie and Lou Reed, etc. Racism has been cited as a possible cause of what they claim was a lack of recognition while he was alive, and the muted reaction to his death. That's silly. First, you'd have to be in your late '50s to have been aware of Chuck Berry in his glory days - roughly, 1955-65. Most working journalists (especially in TV or radio), and most of their audience, simply aren't old enough to have experienced anything but the faint echoes of Berry's immense influence on popular music... 

Some Big Band Boogie Woogie Bounce for everyone depressed by the Chancellor's ghastly Butskellite Bollocks Budget

The human dynamo on the drums - and the matchbox - was, of course,  Gene Krupa with his "Drum Boogie" from the great 1941 comedy Ball of Fire. Right, let's get the politics out of the way. Allister Heath expressed my exact feelings in the Telegraph this morning:

They've been away for a whole year - but Bad Record Covers are back, with a vengeance!

Let's start with Songs for Swinging Necrophiliacs:

I wonder if O.J.'s legal team is still available? 

If reincarnation exists, next time round, I'd like to be able to play the guitar like Phil Baugh...or Vince Gill, or Danny Gatton, or...

If reincarnation exists, next time round, I'd like to be able to play the guitar like Phil Baugh...or Vince Gill, or Danny Gatton, or...

That's Phil Baugh in 1965, performing his hit from that year, "Country Guitar". Here he is with Glen Campbell, who, before he became a superstar ballad singer, earned his crust as a top session guitarist:

Pop concerts this real gone daddy would love to have attended

Taunton? Yes, Taunton. Wherever, I bet it was fun (although I might have given Vince Eager a miss). Cochran, 21 at the time, was to die following a car crash in Chippenham two months later...

George Michael is dead - and yet Keith Richards, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Dave Bartholomew are still going strong!

Bobby Lewis ("Tossin & Turnin'") is still with us at 91. So is Chuck Berry at 90. Fats Domino is 88. Elvis's drummer, D.J. Fontana is 85, as is Sun Records artist Sonny Burgess ("We Wanna Boogie"/"Red-Headed Woman"). Little Richard is 84, and so is one of my all-time Country favourites, Stonewall Jackson ("Life to Go"), while Lloyd Price (whose "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" came out in 1952) is 83 - as is songwriter Mike Stoller, who, along with Jerry Lieber, wrote "Kansas City", "Hound Dog", Jailhouse Rock", "Stand by Me", "I (Who Have Nothing)". "There Goes my baby", "Poison Ivy", Yakety Yak", "On Broadway" and at least another dozen classics. Yoko Ono's still with us at 83, so it's not all good news - but I'm delighted to learn that the Canadian rocker, Jack Scott ("Geraldine", "The Way I Walk",  "Leroy") is due to turn 81 next month. But the most delightful discovery of all is that Dave Bartholomew...

Naughty! Johnny Cash, Robert Plant - and the great Don Covay/Mick Jagger controversy

Listen to "Crescent City Blues" by Gordon Jenkins, which was released in 1953. The song starts 35 seconds in. It will remind you strongly of a far more famous recording released two years later:

Recognise it? Well, of course, it's...

The Grønmark Blog list of Great Records from 1961

Half of the tracks featured in my previous post were released in 1961. Not one of them would have got anywhere near the pop charts that year, but, just to convey some sense of what a rich year it was for popular music in America - when the US was supposedly waiting for the Brits to come and save its musical butt - here are just some of the Top 100 US chart hits from 1961 (to be clear, these are all, with a handful of exceptions, songs I've given four or five stars to on my iTunes list - so no rubbish ) :

I've found some more obscure rock 'n' roll, R&B and soul classics on YouTube

I'd just returned from the St. Peter's Acton Green Christmas Fair (my wife's papier-mâché birds had all flown off the shelves), made a cup of tea, and settled down for some TV sport and iPadding (I'm strictly dual-screen these days). There was an image of an old single on Pinterest I'd never heard of, so I called up the number on YouTube. Here is Little Ike with the raucous, Little Richard-tastic "She Can Rock" (1959):

Now, where has that been...