They kept writing 'em like that anymore

My childhood fell between the middle 1950s and early 1970s...and for television fans here in the United States, that meant that variety shows were all over the dial. If you watched, for example, The Ed Sullivan Show, you'd more often than not get to see your favorite rock/R&B act...about a half hour after Ed introduced one of those smooth pop crooners on the show.

In fact, my first eight years of life (1955-1963) were a period when America's music industry was trying to figure itself out. In early April 1957, for instance, Perry Como's "'Round and 'Round" was Billboard's Number One pop hit...only to be displaced a week later by "All Shook Up," by Elvis Presley.

And "All Shook Up" rode high for nine weeks...until knocked off the top spot by "Love Letters in the Sand," by Pat Boone, a man whose records, by then, had one foot in the Presley ethos and the other in the Como system.

Industry leaders, as a group, loved the old Tin Pan Alley styles...but knew the newer styles were where the money was.

Even so, some of the biggest hits of the late 1950s through, really, the middle 1970s, owed something to the way pop music sounded in the 1890s-1920s period...when ragtime, followed by jazz, caught America's attention.

With that in mind, here's a list of ragtime/honky tonk-influenced rock/R&B/pop songs recorded from 1956 to 1974:

1. "The Green Door," Jim Lowe (Dot 14586; r*5, *1, 1956)/2. "When I See You," Fats Domino (Imperial 5454; r*14, *29, 1957)/3. "Sugartime," McGuire Sisters (Coral 61924; *1, 1958)/4. "The Stripper," David Rose (MGM 13064; r*12, *1, 1962)/5. "Alley Cat," Bent Fabric (Atco 6226; *7, 1962)/6. "Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer," Nat King Cole (Capitol 4965; r*11, *6, 1963)/7. "Washington Square," Village Stompers (Epic 9617; r*22, *2, 1963)/8. "(Down at) Papa Joe's," Dixiebelles (Sound Stage 7 2507; *9, 1963)/9. "Southtown, USA," Dixiebelles (Sound Stage 7 2517; *15, 1964)/10. "Java," Al Hirt (RCA Victor 8280; *4, 1964)/11. "Daydream," Lovin' Spoonful (Kama Sutra 208; *2, 1966)/12. "Spanish Flea," Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (A&M 792; *27, 1966)/13. "I Love Onions," Susan Christie (Columbia 43595; *63, 1966).

14. "Winchester Cathedral," New Vaudeville Band (Fontana 1562; *1, 1966)/15. "Lady Godiva," Peter and Gordon (Capitol 5740; *6, 1966)/16. "Words of Love," Mamas and the Papas (Dunhill 4057; *5, 1967)/17. "Hello Hello," Sopwith "Camel" (Kama Sutra 217; *26, 1967)/18. "I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman," Whistling Jack Smith (Deram 85005; *20, 1967)/19. "Like an Old-Time Movie," Scott McKenzie (Ode 105; *24, 1967)/20. "Cab Driver," Mills Brothers (Dot 17041; *23, 1968)/21. "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde," Georgie Fame (Epic 10283; *7, 1968)/22. "Cinderella Rockefella," Esther and Abi Ofarim (Philips 40526; *68, 1968)/23. "Indian Lake," Cowsills (MGM 13944; *10, 1968)/24. "Those Were the Days," Mary Hopkin (Apple 1801; *2, 1968)/25. "Goodbye," Mary Hopkin (Apple 1806; *13, 1969)/26. "Abergavenny," Shannon (AKA Marty Wilde) (Heritage 814; *47, 1969).

27. "Is That All There Is," Peggy Lee (Capitol 2602; *11, 1969)/28. "Rag Mama Rag," Band (Capitol 2705; *57, 1970)/29. "Gimme Dat Ding," Pipkins (Capitol 2819; *9, 1970)/30. "Mississippi," John Phillips (ABC Dunhill 4236; *32, 1970)/31. "In the Summertime," Mungo Jerry (Janus 125; *3, 1970)/32. "Rubber Duckie," Jim Henson's Ernie (Columbia 45207; *16, 1970)/33. "Honky Cat," Elton John (Uni 55343; *8, 1972)/34. "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Ole Oak Tree," Tony Orlando and Dawn (Bell 45,318; *1, 1973)/35. "Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose," Tony Orlando and Dawn (Bell 45,374; *3, 1973)/36. "Who's in the Strawberry Patch with Sally," Tony Orlando and Dawn (Bell 45,424; *27, 1973)/37. "Last Time I Saw Him," Diana Ross (Motown 1278; r*15, *14, 1974)/38. "Nothing from Nothing," Billy Preston (A&M 1544; r*8, *1, 1974)/39. "Steppin' Out (Gonna Boogie Tonight)," Tony Orlando and Dawn (Bell 45,601; *7, 1974).

The chart positions were taken from Joel Whitburn's "Record Research," compiled from Billboard's Pop chart, unless indicated otherwise; r*= the record's position on Billboard's R&B chart.

See you next time, and thanks for reading "Boston's Blog!"

Another Rogue!

After I got back to Omaha and washed up and changed shirts to go back out, I found out I had some time on my hands before going to the 5:00 PM Saturday service at the church I attend.

So...I went to the Midtown Crossing Shopping Center to check out a piano I'd heard on YouTube.

Like that 1916 Bush & Gerts upright at Sweatshop Gallery, the Midtown Crossing piano isn't officially one of the "Play Me, I'm Yours" instruments.

But it's still some kind of fun to play!

 

Midtown Crossing's piano is a Werner upright from the second half of the 1920s, and it's found in the garden space of the shopping center. (The garden space is between Prairie Life Fitness, a restaurant known as the Black Oak Grill, and another restaurant, Crave.) 

On www.youtube.com, a teenager named Isabella turned in snippets of two classical pieces she played on this Werner upright. And they sounded great!

Ragtime greats Del Wood and fellow Tennessean Johnny Maddox would've really enjoyed playing ol' Werner, because it's got that real "honky tonk" sound.

It's also got a palette- with real dabs of paint and a real brush next to the palette- right in the middle of the music rack. What's more, the design team led by an artist named Larry Roots replaced the wood of the music rack with Plexiglas (so that you can actually see the hammers). 

Well, I spent an hour playing this piano, starting out with "Tennessee Waltz" and "That's All Right" before going through some much older pieces...like "The Entertainer" and the one that made Del famous, "Down Yonder."

All this time, I was able to get the attention of quite a few passersby...such as a security guard named Derek and a woman named Lisa, who lives in the apartment complex next to the shopping center. (Lisa played the piano until getting in an accident...otherwise, she would've done her version of "Fur Elise.")

Three little boys- one named Pedro, another named Gustavo, and the name of the third escapes me- tried the C-E-F-G trick I started showing people a week earlier.

Then after the boys left the garden space, the audience changed over to four teenage girls- Sydney, Cindy, Liz, and Prithee.

Of the four of them, only Prithee had had any prior contact with piano playing...so she ended up coming over to the Werner upright, where she played the first part of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Minuet in G." (This is the same piece 1960s songwriters Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell transformed into "A Lover's Concerto," a 1965 Number Two pop hit- and Number Four R&B hit- for a singing group called the Toys.)

 

Well, by 4:38 PM, I had to pack it in.

But I really DO want to get back to Midtown Crossing to play that "honky tonk" piano before they take it away.

After all, I'm itching to do "The Crazy Otto." (That's the rag that not only put Johnny on the map, but did the same for its originator, Fritz Schulz-Reichel, the original "Crazy Otto.")