The Deplorables' Hit List: ten recordings that go down well with American patriots (and I like some of them too)

Canadian commentator Gordon Sinclair's 1973 single started out as a radio broadcast - they just added...

Ain't it a shame - Fats Domino has left this Valley of Tears

I must have first heard a Fats Domino record when I was five or so, which means The Big Beat has kept me rocking in my seat (and on my feet, when nobody's looking) for the best part of 60 years...

Legendary British TV and music producer Jack Good and the Cary Grant film "Father Goose" - synchronicity strikes again!

I was watching Cary Grant and Leslie Caron in the WW2-set romcom Father Goose (1966) the other night in a fairly desultory fashion (it's an enjoyable film, but I've already seen it at least twice and it was past midnight). There are several scenes...

Take the "My Favourite Song Openings" quiz - a blast from the past

First warning: I first posted this four years ago. Second warning: If you want to test your knowledge of popular music (1953-1983), you should look away while the video is playing, because it includes a host of visual clues. The titles of the 31 songs can be found below:

Why am I repeating myself, I hear you ask? Because...

Fats Domino - ten rays of aural sunshine from a true rock 'n' roll giant

I gave a friend a Fats Domino greatest hits LP for his 20th birthday. I'd been bullying him into appreciating early rock 'n' roll (I was young and determined to spread the gospel). When he unwrapped it and studied the distinctly uncool, unthreatening-looking, fat little black man smiling benignly beside a piano on the cover, his disappointment was evident. "Just give it a listen," I suggested. I was relieved a week later when the birthday boy appeared at my door, raving about the album. (He might have been trying to spare my feelings, but that really would have been a first for him.) I've long ago stopped expecting anyone to share my popular culture enthusiasms, but I still suspect anyone who fails to react positively to The Fat Man's music of being  an anhedonic miserabilist. You don't have to respond to Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent or Carl Perkins - but if your system doesn't flood with endorphins the moment Fats Domino comes on the radio, it probably means you're a bad person. Not that I'm being judgmental or anything. If you've got Sky, and you've hooked it up to broadband, I strongly recommend visiting the Sky Arts catch-up section to download The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll...

Cool Cat Wild! goes all "friend of Dorothy" - we've been watching That's Entertainment III. Again.

In 1976, I landed two tickets to the London premier of That's Entertainment! Part II, a second compilation film featuring clips from the heyday of MGM musicals, with linking material provided by toupée-wearing old stars, many of whom looked as if they'd been embalmed. I can't now remember why I was given a ticket - something to do with my job as a publicist for the publisher, New English Library - but, thinking about somebody else for once, I had the cheek to request a second ticket, was promptly given one, and asked my mother to accompany me. Like me, she wasn't a great fan of musicals, but she'd been raised on a diet of Hollywood movies in pre-War Glasgow. Oddly - considering she was a former fashion model - she became flustered as we walked up the red-carpeted stairs towards the entrance and press photographers started snapping us. At the end of the screening...

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:

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...

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...

From the Vipers to the Kinks: How British rock 'n' roll records caught up with the Americans, 1957-1964

Vince Taylor & His Playboys

Catching up took a while, but that's not surprising, given that rock 'n' roll was a purely American phenomenon, and that, while it boasted its fair share of jazzers and folkers, Britain wasn't exactly awash with performers steeped in the blues, country or bluegrass.

Farewell, Scotty Moore: the last member of the Elvis, Scotty and Bill trio has gone to glory - and left a great deal behind

I was so obsessed with politics last week that the news that one of my great musical heroes had died only reached me four days after it was announced. While making a cup of tea, I became aware that Radio 4 were playing Elvis records, interspersed with the dulcet tones of a gentlemanly Southerner: it could only be Scotty Moore. It took me a minute to realise he was being spoken of in the past tense. Yes, the man whose wonderfully playful, propulsive, echo-drenched guitar-playing graced dozens of Elvis's greatest recordings - from "That's Alright, Mama" to "Jailhouse Rock" - was dead, at the age of 84. A good innings. Yes, he was "only" the guitar player - but he was vital to Elvis's success, and every guitarist alive today owes at least some part of his style to the genius of Scotty Moore.

So farewell, George Martin, famed producer of The Vipers Skiffle Group!

But, of course, George Martin is probably better known for his work with...

The origin of "Lucille", and why "Rock Around the Clock" had such an impact - BBC4's excellent "Rock 'n' Roll America" series

I thoroughly enjoyed the recent three-part BBC4 documentary series, Rock ‘n’ Roll America, which traced the development of the genre from its early 1950s' origins in the American South, to its rapid spead in the late 50s, its temporary evisceration by anaemic white pop singers mostly called Bobby, to its 1960s’ rootsy reinvigoration as teen pop by (among others) Motown, Phil Spector and British Invasion bands.

My favourite songs about sex workers

The story about a hotel in Hull refusing to admit an 18-year old Romanian student because staff thought she was a prostitute surprised me, because every report I saw on the incident used the word “prostitute” rather than “sex worker”. Sky News and the BBC went through a phase of favouring the latter term, which implies that whoring is a perfectly respectable way to earn a living, rather than the old-fashioned, judgmental one. Is this a sign of political correctness finally loosening its suffocating hold on the nation’s throat? Probably not. I’m sure our collective timidity will ensure that the void between, for instance, “coloured people” and “people of colour” will grow ever wider, and that the use of "homosexual" - as opposed to "gay" - will eventually be outlawed altogether.

Good Lord! Mickey Hawks's raucous "Bip Bop Boom" has made it onto a Citroen TV advert!

Bo Diddley's "Down Home Special" - why does nobody tell me about these things?

I was reading a book about great guitarists the other day which mentioned a 1956 Bo Diddley number called "Down Home Special". As I'd never heard of it, I called it up on YouTube. It is utterly magnificent. In fact, I knew it well enough to sing along - but I'm almost certain I'd never heard Bo's version, even though he composed it, and even though I'm pretty much au fait with the Great Man's oeuvre. But, then, which version of it do I know so well? The internet isn't much help. Answers on a postcard please. Take a listen: