number ones 1955
This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And sure some legendary music is going to pass by today as I'll play the number ones on the Rhythm & Blues hit list of the year 1955. A year when the rock 'n roll craze really took off, but also the year that brought us the pop classic Unchained Melody and some very popular doowop ballads. And with that we'll start the year. On January 15 of 1955 this hits the number one spot on Billboards Rhythm & Blues list. On the Dootone label, here are the Penguins with Earth Angel.
01 - Penguins - Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine)
02 - Moonglows - Sincerely
And this is maybe the most classic example of that typical Moonglows sound. This was the original recording of the song, that is credited to be written by Harvey Fuqua and Alan Freed - but they stole part of the lyrics of That's What You're Doing To Me, a song of the Dominoes from 1951. They actually copied all of the lyrics of the bridge of that song, only changing Why I love that woman so to Why I love that girlie so. In the same year the McGuire sisters covered it and made it a number one hit, probably eating away a lot of the sales of the Moonglows version. It became common practice that white groups covered songs with hit potential from black groups and became much more succesful with it. Well you can hear that version playing in the background and shoot me dead if you don't agree but I think this version is only a bleak echo of that fabulous version of the Moonglows. Well maybe it's better that you just send me an e-mail at rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com instead of shooting me for my opinion.
The Moonglows' Sincerely on the Chess label hit two weeks number one from January 22 and we go to February 12 to find another ballad on number one. Here is Johnny Ace with Pledging My Love.
03 - Johnny Ace - Pledging My Love
04 - Etta James & The Peaches - The Wallflower
From a pretty clean 78 on the Modern label, you heard Etta James with the Wallflower. Etta James was 14 years old when she was spotted by Johnny Otis singing in a night club with her girl group the Creolettes, and he brought her to the Modern label to record this answer song to Hank Ballard's Work with Me, Annie. Well it was just one of the many Annie-follow-ups and answer songs. The title Roll with me Henry was changed into the Wallflower hoping not to be considered too risque to be played on the major pop radio stations. The male voice remained uncredited but is identified as Richard Berry.
Etta James has become immensely popular with the fans of Rhythm & Blues and soul. We lost her in January of 2012 just three days after the man who'd discovered her, Johnny Otis.
On April 23 we find Little Walter on number one. On the Chess label here is My Babe.
05 - Little Walter - My Babe
06 - Ray Charles - I got a woman
The legendary song I got a woman brought Ray Charles to the top of the R&B list on May 7. Now many soul fanatics credit Ray Charles for starting soul music with this song, by putting a profane song on the base of a gospel. Well this did bring some controversy for that, but is wasn't unique and for the mixing of gospel elements into Rhythm & Blues, it was already common practice since the early fifties - and the controversy wasn't unique either.
Back in 1947 we had Good Rocking Tonight, that big hit of Roy Brown and more known by Wynonie Harris, that was written as a gospel parody with the first line of the lyrics referring to gospel songs about the 'news about Jesus', and the gospel style handclapping created a fad in Rhythm & Blues that is considered one of the most notable influences on Rock 'n Roll.
Going even farther back in time, we find Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the early forties singing profane songs in a very strong gospel tradition, with Lucky Millinder and his orchestra, and her gospel songs with strong blues influences. And actually - it's not that strange that there's always been crossover between the sacred music and the blues - many R&B musicians started their career in church.
Well still it's a strong song and the first number one hit of Ray Charles.
1955 was also the year of the Unchained Melody. You will get two versions today, first one from Roy Hamilton and it hit number one from May 21.
07 - Roy Hamilton - Unchained Melody
08 - Fats Domino - Ain't It A Shame
Ain't it a shame has become a true classic of Fats Domino but it hit number 1 for only one week on June 11. The next week it's another version of the Unchained Melody on number one - by Al Hibbler. The song was written as the soundtrack of the movie Unchained, a pretty obscure prison movie and that explaines the name, as the word Unchained doesn't appear in the lyrics. It's been estimated that over a five hundred versions have been recorded since, making it one of the most recorded songs ever, though it's still nothing compared to Gershwin's Summertime, that has been covered somewhere between 25 and 33 thousand times.
Listen to Al Hibbler and his version of Unchained Melody.
09 - Al Hibbler - Unchained Melody
10 - Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley with the song titled Bo Diddley - one of the great innovations of Rhythm & Blues where he built a song on African rhythms with a unique guitar staccato. Bo Diddly - without the e - is slang for absolutely nothing while a diddley bow is a one-string homemade guitar-like instrument that was popular in the slavery era in the South as a toy for children. Later it's been used by professional musicians including on a few Motown recordings. Well I think Bo Diddley is a great name for a guitar wizard like Ellas Otha Bates - that was his real name.
Bo Diddley hit number one on June 25 for two weeks - to be followed up by Ray Charles with A fool for you - a song much closer to the soul of the sixties as to the Rhythm & Blues of the fifties. To me, much more with this song as with I got a woman, he deserved the title of inventor of soul.
11 - Ray Charles - A Fool For You
12 - Chuck Berry - Maybelline
And from Ray Charles' early soul we go to outright rock 'n roll. Chuck Berry hit number one from August 20 and he remained a favourite in the juke box for a long time. His Maybelline topped the list for a solid eleven weeks. And the other big hit for the fall of 1955 was that great classic of the Platters - Only You.
13 - The Platters - Only You
14 - Fats Domino - All by myself
Fats Domino with his second number one hit of 1955, All by myself on the Imperial label. 1955 was a very succesful year for Fats, we'll get a third number one hit of him within a few minutes. At the end of the year he had released four number one hits in his career and one number two, his first single the Fat man, that made up together for five gold discs - that is, million sellers. He lost them all, together with the National Medal of Arts that he'd been awarded by president Bill Clinton, in the flooding after hurricane Katrina. George Bush later replaced the medal and the RIAA for the gold records together with Capitol records, the owner of the Imperial catalog. For some of them, original 78s had to be found to make the gold print for the replicas from.
All by myself hit number one on October 29 of 1955 for three weeks, so not very long but it remained a best seller for a long time, eventually becoming one of the twenty gold discs that he's been awarded during his life.
The next record was a comeback song for Jay McShann, a veteran in the music business who'd been leading his own big band in the late thirties featuring great names like Charlie Parker, Walter Brown and Al Hibbler whom we heard earlier this hour with his version of the Unchained Melody. McShann was drafted into the army in 1944 and when he came home, he found out that the big band era was over. Instead he started working with Jimmy Witherspoon in a much smaller combo. The hit he had in 1955 was with Priscilla Bowman, and this was the last record ever to hit number one on the R&B list without entering the Billboard Hot 100, the pop list.
Maybe just a statistical thing, but it does indicate a certain change that has been going on during the fifties - a phenomenon that we call cross-over. It's hard to imagine, but during the forties Rhythm & Blues records were seldomly heard on the radio. They were the domain of the African Americans only, played in juke boxes in the back of the local joint, far away from the mainstream audience. Disc jockeys like Alan Freed started playing Rhythm & Blues on the radio, only from the early fifties, and with that they fueled the rock 'n roll craze and white kids not only listening and dancing to that exciting music that was new to the mainstream audience, but also starting their own bands with their version of the music - what was to become rock 'n roll. The greater audience began to get access to African American music, white artists increasingly started to cover songs that started as Rhythm & Blues, mostly with cleaned lyrics, and that made the gap between white and black music smaller. Eventually, for a short time in the sixties, Billboard had given up on publishing a separate Rhythm & Blues list, for the two lists had grown too close to each other. The British invasion - the fast growing popularity of British bands - and the rise of soul music created new differences that made the R&B list being re-installed in January 1965.
15 - Jay McShann feat. Priscilla Bowman - Hands Off
16 - Fats Domino - Poor Me
17 - Drifters - Adorable
And those were the two number ones for December 31 of 1955, Fats Domino with Poor Me for most played in jukeboxes and Adorable by the Drifters for most played by disc jockeys - best selling still was Jay McShann's Hands Off. Indeed, Billboard maintained three lists for R&B and what I presented you today was from a list that is actually a merger of these three.
And the end of 1955 also ends this 58th episode of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. I was just lucky being able to have exactly one year in one show, I just happened to have closed 1954 in the previous show on the number one hits, and also there just happened to be seventeen records to be played. Together with my blabla that makes up for exactly one hour.
I hope you enjoyed the selection, not a selection I made but it's what the record buyers, jukebox users and disc jockeys liked back in '55. Let me know and send me an e-mail - the address is rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. Or find me on the web, and instead of spelling out some difficult web addres, I tell you just to do a google search on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and the program's web site will show up first. As for now - have a wonderful, and rocking day. See you next time here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!