They all tried, but few singers and musicians from the 1950s became stars. Yet many of them had stories to tell that were far more interesting than the ones you already know. Author Hank Davis was bitten by the music bug as a teenager. By the time he entered college in 1959, he was no stranger to New York’s recording studios and had a few 45s of his own on the market.
Spanning a 45 year career in music journalism, Davis has spent time backstage, in motel rooms, and on tour buses to uncover stories that rarely made the official annals of pop music history. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews and new research,
Ducktails, Drive-Ins, and Broken Hearts offers a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the winners and losers during rock ‘n’ roll’s formative era.
How did a decade as uptight and puritanical as the ’50s produce so much cringe-worthy, politically incorrect music? What was it like to see a pale cover version of
your latest record climb the charts while yours sat unplayed by mainstream radio stations? How did precious Elvis tapes end up in a Memphis landfill? And who was that thirteen-year-old girl who made a five-dollar vanity record at Sun just two years after Elvis had—and ended up singing backup on ‘Suspicious Minds’ and ‘In the Ghetto?’ This book is a must-read for all fans of ’50s music.
In the words of Jerry Phillips, son of Sun Records founder, Sam Phillips, ‘Hank Davis is one of the few guys who really gets it.’
Cuprins
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I: Hitmakers and Bold-Faced Names
1. Carl Perkins Meets Elvis in a High School Parking Lot
with Shawn Pitts
2. La Vern Baker: Play It Fair
3. Frankie Laine: Bringing Passion to Pop
4. Ella Johnson: Since I Fell for You
5. Charlie Rich: Before the Fox Was Silver
6. Betty Johnson: No More Singing for Her Supper
7. Rosco Gordon: Just a Little Bit
8. Ella Mae Morse: So Much, So Soon
Part II: One-Hit Wonders, Wannabees, and Supporting Characters
9. Chuck Miller: Fryers, Broilers, and the House of Blue Lights
10. Huelyn Duvall: Close but No Cigar
11. Eddy Bell: His Alter Ego Became a Star
12. Sherry Crane: A Parakeet Visits 706 Union Avenue
13. Ben Hewitt: The Best Known Unknown
14. Joey Riesenberg: The Scrapyard Drummer
15. Troy Shondell: The Early Years of a One-Hit Wonder
16. Carl Mann: That “Mona Lisa” Boy
Part III: Chasing the Story
17. How Elvis and the Jones Brothers Ended Up in the Memphis Landfill
18. Hannah Fay and Jeannie Greene: Searching for Missing Singers
19. Allerton and Alton: Black, White, and Bluegrass
20. Donna Dameron Loses Her Gig in an Iowa Cornfield
21. The Kirby Sisters: Envy Wrapped in Red Velvet
22. “Unchained Melody”: The Pre-
Ghost Story
23. Chuck Berry and Other Passengers on the Hellbound Train
24. Delia’s Not Gone: The Musical Legacy of the Late Delia Green
with Paula Cimba
Part IV: Doo Wop Stories
25. A Brief Introduction to Doo Wop
26. The Paragons Meet the Turbans
27. The Channels: The Closer You Look
28. God or Girlfriend?: The Prisonaires Create a Very Confusing Love Song
29. Going Steady with the Pearls
30. The Six Teens Meet the Cleftones
Part V: The Bigger Picture
31. The First Rock ’n’ Roll Record and Other Creation Myths
32. Politically Incorrect Music in the 1950s
with Scott Parker
33. “Sugartime” and Other Subtle Sexual Content in ’50s Music
34. Looking under the Covers
with Scott Parker
35. The Dozen Most Influential Records of the 1950s
36. Instrumental Hit Records: No Words Were Necessary
with Scott Parker
37. Ancestors of the Chipmunks
38. The Bobbys: An Antidote to All That Rockin’
About the Author
Index
Despre autor
Hank Davis is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Guelph in Canada. He has produced and annotated many boxed reissue sets for Bear Family Records and other European record companies, including the award-winning
Sun Blues Box and the critically acclaimed
Memphis Belles: The Women of Sun Records.
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