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!"

It All Started with These...

You're looking at the first two records I ever owned in my life. 

The bad news is: I don't have the original 45-RPM singles anymore.

But the good news is this: I went on to find the Four Tops' "Baby I Need Your Loving" and Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Street" on albums.

It was fifty years ago this month that I started collecting records (with Dad's and Mom's financial help, of course...heck, I was eight-going-on-nine years of age!). 

The real impetus for launching a personal record collection was still going some kind of strong in August 1964...six months after that impetus originally took hold here in America.

That's right...just as Elvis Presley's entry onto the Billboard pop chart in March 1956 ended up causing a boom in the record industry (and transforming everything else), so the Beatles' arrival on that same chart in January 1964 (and- the absolute clincher- their live appearance on TV's The Ed Sullivan Show on 2-9-1964) caused an even longer-lasting boom in the record business (and transformed everything else).

Started collecting records at a time when, to tell the truth, I was actually away from home...and not of my own choosing.

Where I was forced to stay, I heard the records that some of the other children at that same facility had bought and were playing. (Once a week or so, we'd go into the rec room down in the basement and stack that portable record player with 45s; once in a while, an album would get heard...and, more often than not, the LP was "Meet the Beatles!")

At that time, music was on many Americans' minds...especially the minds of the youngest citizens. If it wasn't the Fab Four, it was the Dave Clark Five or the Searchers or Gerry and the Pacemakers or Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas or Manfred Mann or Herman's Hermits or the Animals...to say nothing of the Rolling Stones.

Or it was some of the acts those British bands learned from...like the Miracles and the Contours and the Supremes and the Temptations and Martha and the Vandellas and the Four Tops (to say nothing of Chuck Berry, who'd found his way back on Billboard's charts at that very moment). 

Besides those rec-room moments, the radio was always playing (when the TV wasn't on), and it was always tuned to a Top 40 station...in this case, KWWL in Waterloo, IA. (I lived in Eastern Iowa from January 1964 to June 1967.)

And starting my own record collection helped make that three-and-a-half year period easier to take. 

Me, I didn't want to stop at Motown...or at any one genre of music.

And so, the next three singles I happened upon are now the oldest surviving 45-RPM releases I own: "Come a Little Bit Closer" by Jay and the Americans, "Selfish One" by Jackie Ross, and "Michael," Trini Lopez' remake of the Highwaymen's 1961 Number One smash.  

Anyway, I started buying albums in mid-1967 while continuing to purchase 45s (by then, I was receiving an allowance); over the next fifteen years, my collection grew, slowly-but-steadily.

By 1982, the cache exploded.

It was all because I found out about Kanesville Kollectibles (530 S. 4th St., Council Bluffs, IA), the biggest used record-tape-CD store in the Hawkeye State.

I got to the point where I'd go shop at Kanesville once a month. (Now I'm lucky to stop in twice or three times a year.)

Thanks to Kanesville Kollectibles and the chance to go to record shows every year since 1984, I now own roughly 2,000 records, tapes, and CDs. 

And since 2007, I've been working on digitizing these records and tapes, burning them onto a hard drive and converting the vinyl to compact discs. What's more, thanks to online music services like Rhapsody and eMusic, the computer I'm using to type this post now has about 5,000 items...and the items have been saved to a flash drive.  

One thing about this fifty-year (and counting) journey: This is one addiction I'm proud to have.

I'm Jim Boston, and thanks for reading this blog!