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...

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...

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... 

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...

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...

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...

Diminutive Welsh guitarist, singer and producer Dave Edmunds is a giant of British rock music - I salute him

Yes, I've heard all the criticisms - he's derivative, predictable, stuck in a time-warp, hasn't written any classic songs, and, au fond, he's a heads-down-no-nonsense-mindless twelve-bar pub-rocker whose terrible twin, lanky Nick Lowe, was the truly creative force in their erstwhile partnership. Some of that's partly true, I think - but if it is, it's because Edmunds has always been a hugely obsessive music fan, in awe of the wonderful noise produced by his heroes and determined to discover how they managed it - and to recreate it using any means at hand, including his own considerable talents as a guitar-picker and a vastly under-rated singer.

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.

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:

Those crazy cats, The Fulminators, are back with their first new music for 18 months - a cover of Chuck Berry's "Little Queenie"

The first BIG rock 'n' roll song wasn't "Rock Around the Clock" or "Heartbreak Hotel" - it was...

Stranded In The Jungle - with only jazz, exotica, R&B and rockabilly for company

15 toe-tapping tunes to help banish the January blues

Oh God! The news has been full of stupid politicians saying stupid things and lying through their teeth, we've just taken down our lovely Christmas tree, some idiot bumhole has dumped a bunch of crud on top of the black bin-bags waiting for collection around the lamp-post nearest our front door, so the foxes will be on the rampage all night long and the bin-men will as usual do everything in their power to leave an even worse mess in their wake, and the sky is grey and boring, and... well it's early January and I"M NOT GRUNTLED! So I've whacked on the light box and gone hunting for some insanely cheerful songs to take the edge off my mood, and - just in case any of you are feeling low as well - I've decided to share them with you. I'll start with possibly the most cheerful song I know, from 1946:

My favourite story songs, Part 2: from Creedence and Kassenetz-Katz to Sufjan Stevens and Fairport Convention