About This Time 70 Years Ago… It’s The Hits Of April-ish 1954!

The Hottest Hit On The Planet:

Not only the Hottest Hit On The Planet in April: “Little Things Mean A Lot” was The Biggest Hit Of 1954!!!

Which means that it was…

The Biggest Hit Before The Rock’n’Roll Curtain Came Down!

So it’s only appropriate that “Little Things Mean A Lot” was performed by a woman who, although certainly not the biggest nor brightest nor most iconic pre-rock’n’roll female pop star – that would probably be Patti Page, of whom more below – was certainly one of the more typical female pop stars of her time; her career arc much the same as… pretty much every other pre-rock’n’roll female pop star you could name.

Kitty’s name may have not been the most prominent on the labels of those hit records. It may not have been printed in the largest and boldest font. But her name was there, in small print, boasting “Vocal Chorus By Kitty Kallen.”

Kitty had a sultry tone that was perfect for slightly saucy, but still sentimental, slow dances, of which “It’s Been A Long, Long Time” – for Harry James, whose Big Band got the big font – was her biggest hit.

“It’s Been A Long, Long, Time” is a cute song, but it was mostly a hit because World War Two was coming to a close, and millions of American soldiers were finally returning home after a long, long time.

And capitalize on the momentous event it did! “It’s Been A Long, Long Time” was so popular that not only did Kitty and Harry’s version go to Number One, but it was replaced at Number One by another version of the same song! This time by Bing Crosby and Les Paul!

But the Big Band days were over. And by the early 50s Kitty was struggling. A newspaper article in 1954 makes a mysterious reference to “’that’ time, the one all artists fear” when they make a record so bad that “those that bought the records no longer ask for Kitty Kallen anymore.”

What? Was this one the especially terrible Kitty Kallen record that destroyed her career? Was it her version of “Choo’n Gum”? It certainly sounds like a career destroyer.

So much had Kitty’s career been destroyed, that not only did she no longer have a recording contract, but Decca refused to give her one unless she paid for the recording session upfront! It cost $5,000 dollars. Which is about $50,000 now.

Good thing it became a hit, then!

That $5,000 budget included marketing costs, but presumedly didn’t include the fee for a decent photographer.

“Little Things Mean A Lot” is another cute song. A song written by… no one famous.

Or at least no-one famous outside of Richmond, Virginia:

She had also previously written Jewish children’s books based on the Bible. And “Little Things Mean A Lot” is precisely the kind of simple and wholesome love song that you’d expect a Grandma who wrote Biblical children’s songs to pen. Meanwhile, the music was written by a local radio DJ.

Kitty’s phrasing on “Little Things Mean A Lot” is perfect, particularly whenever she’s rhyming with “a lot.” “Say I look nice… when I’m nooooot” “Call me at 6… on the doooot.” I like the way she stretches her vowels. It’s sweet. It’s charming. It’s a 7.

Rock’n’roll wouldn’t kill off the soppy ballad, of course. But it did kill off the female torch singer. Not to mention the pop-star-who-looked-like-a-housewife scene (see below). Just look at the Billboard charts. There had been female voices at Number One for 26 of the 52 weeks of 1954. That’s exactly half! Equality of the sexes had been accomplished! In 1954!!

By 1956 that number had tumbled to just six.

To put it another way, there were four times as many weeks when the Number One record in America was recorded by men whose name began with a single letter – that letter being E – than there were of women whose name began with any letter at all!

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Meanwhile, in Countdown Showdown Land:

So, The Hottest Hit On The Planet – and the Biggest Hit Of 1954! – was a quaint little song in an era filled to the brim with quaint little songs. But there really wasn’t much to say about it.

That’s not going to be a problem with “Changing Partners.” There’s a lot to say about “Changing Partners.”

But it ties together so many of the trends that were criss-crossing the pop music landscape in the couple of years prior to the explosion of rock’n’roll.

For one thing, it was a good old fashioned Countdown Showdown! With multiple versions of the same song racing up the charts!

In one corner:

We had Patti Page: the Main Pop Girl of the Early 50s, a pop queen so wholesome that she also gave the impression she was the ultimate 50s housewife!

Patti Page was born in Oklahoma. Probably Claremore. Possibly Muskogee. Patti Page may have been an Okie From Muskogee!

And in the other corner we had Kay Starr:

Real name Catherine Starks, so she didn’t really have to strain her brain to come up with a stage name – who was also born in Oklahoma, but raised in Texas. So we have two country girls in this contest. Which makes sense because “Changing Partners” is a country song.

When she had her early 50s run of hits, her sound would constantly swing between the glamor-puss pop of “Wheel Of Fortune” – which included the sound of a roulette wheel spinning and so presumedly inspired “Wheel Of Fortune” the TV Show which would have its debut later that year – and the hillbilly-fiddling tune, “Bonaparte’s Retreat.”

Dinah Shore – from Tennessee! Another country lass!! – also had a version out. And it too was a hit. But things are getting too complicated. Let’s keep this a simple two-horse race.

This sort of thing happened all the time back then.

Opening up a purely random copy of Billboard…

…let’s see, from June 1945… the Top Ten features three different version of “Sentimental Journey” – one by Les Brown featuring Doris Day, another by Hal McIntyre and yet another by the Merry Macs – and another three versions of “Bell Bottom Trousers” – by Tony Pastor, Kay Kyser and Guy Lombardo!

And you think you’ve got it tough hearing the same songs everywhere you go. Imagine multiple versions of the same song everywhere you go! It was almost as though Roosevelt was rationing out pop tunes to help the war effort!!!

But back to 1954: At the very same time that Patti and Kay were fighting it out on the charts, several other similar races were also taking place!

But back to “Changing Partners.”

“Changing Partners” was not only a good old-fashioned chart race at the height of good-old fashioned chart-races, but a good old-fashioned country song, at a time when pop versions of good old-fashioned country songs were constantly barnstorming the charts.

It had all started with Tony Bennett’s covers of Hank Williams songs a couple of years earlier. Covers that had become absolute monster hits. Naturally other pop stars followed suit and had monster hits with other Hank songs.

Despite each year boasting at least a couple of Number Ones that had originally been country tunes, few country singers would become mainstream pop stars themselves, with one glaring and largely forgotten exception: Pee Wee King.

Pee Wee managed to grab a Number One – not a Country Number One, but a Pop Number One! – with the charmingly lackadaisical “Slow Poke.” (“Slow Poke” is a 7)

That mild mannered man singing is not Pee Wee by the way. That’s Redd Stewart. Pee Wee was one of the fiddlers in the background. Which suggests that he even more mild mannered.

Pee Wee didn’t write “Slow Poke,” either. It was written by one of his friends, a Kentucky girl called Chilton Price.

The definitive pre-rock’n’roll 50s pop ballad was basically a country song.

Pee Wee may not have written “Slow Poke,” but he did write another definitive monster hit of the early 50s, a song that – like “Changing Partners” – was a barnyard dance rejection ballad. A barnyard dance rejection ballad by the name of “Tennessee Waltz,” which would become an enormous hit for… guess who?

Patti Page!

“Tennessee Waltz” – which hit Number One at the end of 1950 and held the spot all the way through winter – began with Patti dancing happily with her sweetheart. But then she introduced her sweetheart to her friend from long-ago. This turned out to be a terrible idea, for Patti’s “friend stole” Patti’s “sweetheart from” Patti.

Except that: “Changing Partners” doesn’t involve an old-friend, just the insensitivity of a barn-yard dance announcer declaring that it’s time for your dance partner – who you’ve only just met – to dance with someone else. At which point you feel absolutely crushed.

Pee Wee also had a version of “Changing Partners” out – although he didn’t write it, his version was the first on the market – suggesting that he too considered the two songs to be a complimentary pair.

So Patti had a bit of an unfair advantage in this bout. She was already known as the girl who loses her man at barnyard dances. It was a key part of her brand.

And she was the Main Pop Girl. In the all-important chart contest, Patti wiped with floor with Kay Starr: No.3 to No.13.

This is only right since Patti’s version is far superior. She keeps it simple. Despite feeling devastated, Patti remains poised. Kay, on the other hand, doesn’t only have to compete with Patti, but with her own backing vocalists from the cheesiest corner of the 50s.

Patti’s version of “Changing Partners” is a 7. Kay’s is a 4.

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Meanwhile, in Birdland Land:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, as you know we have something special down here at Birdland this evening… a recording… for Blue Note records.”

That was Pee Wee Marquette, so called because he was three and a half feet tall. The Master Of Ceremonies at Birdland, he was reputedly a terrible person, constantly mispronouncing the musicians names unless they paid him to get it right. But in that one sentence, we are transported right into the middle of the New York bee-bop jazz world.

Like “Changing Partners”, “A Night In Tunisia”, exists at the cross section of a whole bunch of trends.  A whole lot of legendary figures. And a legendary record label. And a legendary nightclub. The primary difference is that – unlike “Changing Partners” – “A Night In Tunisia” is sizzling hot!

Birdland was a jazz club on Broadway.

Having a radio show broadcast from there in 1952, also showed they meant business. Commissioning a theme song for said radio show, and calling it “Lullaby Of Birdland” showed they meant business. Naming the venue after Charlie Parker aka Bird – a good way to ensure that he’d turn up to play on opening night– showed they meant business.

That opening night was a one-off though. Bird rarely played there afterwards. 

But if anybody complained that the lack of Bird meant that Birdland was false advertising… well, management could simply refer them to all the finches they kept in cages hanging from the ceiling. Although they didn’t last very long either. Turns out finches don’t really like smoke. Or jazz.

It was also a big album for Blue Note Records, a jazz label founded by a communist about a decade and a half earlier. By 1954 they were probably the coolest jazz label in the world, releasing records by everyone from piano plunker Thelonious Monk, to vibraphone wizard Milt Jackson, to ill-tempered trumpeting genius Miles Davis, to pianist – and victim of police bashing and consequent electro-shock therapy – Bud Powell. And Art Blakey, the drummer whose band was being recorded that night.

“A Night At Birdland” was also the first big Blue Note album to be engineered by Rudy Van Gelder.

Another mad scientist type, Rudy owned his own studio, built a lot of his own audio equipment, and lied about his techniques so that no-one could copy him. It’s only appropriate that Rudy’s first classic album for Blue Note would be a live album, since that’s how his approach – whether for a live or a studio recording – is usually described:

He was particularly good at capturing drums. An instrument which had previously sounded muffled, on those occasions that you could hear it at all. This is not a problem for Art Blakey’s “A Night At Birdland.”

“A Night At Birdland” – including “A Night In Tunisia” – is very clearly recorded by a drummer-led band.

Art Blakey was originally a pianist. Legend has it that he didn’t play the drums until a club owner convinced him to, by waving a pistol at him.

Another legend has it that Art learnt drums – or at least his signature drumming technique – on a trip to Africa in the late 40s.

Also some debate on whether he converted to Islam whilst over there, or beforehand, since he was already leading a band called the 17 Messengers before he left. They wore turbans whilst they read the Quran.

Art seemed to like calling his band the (something) Messengers. His band for “A Night At Birdland” would soon become the Jazz Messengers.

Just to be clear, Art didn’t go to Tunisia as part of his African tour. He stuck to Nigeria and Ghana.

The “A Night At Birdland” version of “A Night In Tunisia” may not be the definitive version of “A Night In Tunisia.”

That honour goes to a live version from the year before. One that featured its composer Dizzy Gillespie, who Art claims wrote the tune on the bottom of a garbage can. Although Art seems rather insistent about this point, I’m not entirely sure how it would work. Dizzy was, after all, a trumpet player.

The definitive version of “A Night Is Tunisia” didn’t only feature Dizzy Gillespie. Charlie Parker was also in attendance. And Bud Powell on piano. And Max Roach on the drums. And legendary double-bass player – and even more legendary asshole – Charles Mingus.

There was a good reason for no-one being in the audience.

Even Dizzy himself seemed more interested in the bout than his own concert. He kept on disappearing from the stage to check up on the action. He was able to do this because improvisational jazz solos are so damn long.

Rudy didn’t produce these sessions. You can tell because the drums are all muffled. The drums – and the bass – are so muffled that Charles and Max rerecorded them when they got back to New York.

Both the Birdland and the Massey Hall versions of “A Night In Tunisia” are 9s.

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Meanwhile, in Blues Land:

Muddy Waters came from Mississippi. The Mississippi Delta, to be precise. A very short distance from the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil.

So close to that sacred place did Muddy live that his first recording session took place because Alan Lomax was wandering around the Delta trying to track Robert down, only to find out that he’d died and gone – presumedly – to Hell, a few years earlier. So he recorded Muddy instead.

But before all of that, before Muddy was even born, a gypsy woman visited his mother, and told her that she had a boy child coming. And that boy-child, he was going to be a son-of-a-gun.

That’s the kind of world that Muddy Waters grew up in.

And John The Conqueror Root? That stuff protects you from slaveowners. Some of this magic goes back a long way.

As for hoochie coochie? That used to be a sexy dance – sort of like belly-dancing – back at the turn of the century. But I think Muddy is just telling us he’s a good root.

Muddy Waters wasn’t shy about talking about his hoodoo voodoo hoochie coochie roots. He called his band the Headhunters.

They were also quite a bit louder than your average 1940s blues band, the result of an investment Muddy had made in an electric guitar when he first arrived in Chicago.

But the real genius here was Willie Dixon.

That one he gave to another incredibly named bluesman, Howlin’ Wolf. An understandable decision given that Howlin’ was arguably even badder than Muddy. Howlin’ sounds like a witchdoctor casting a spell… “EVVVIIILLLLL!!!”

Naturally the two incredibly named bluesmen had to have a feud. Over who was going to get the best Willie Dixon songs. Was it going to be Howlin’ Wolf, who sounded all evil and unsettled, but was actually quite professional and businesslike when you met him off-stage? Or would it be Muddy Waters, who didn’t sound quite as evil, and wasn’t businesslike at all?

How unbusinesslike was Muddy Waters?

“Hoochie Coochie Man” is a 9.

“Evil Is Goin’ On” is a 10.

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Meanwhile, in This Song Could Not Possibly Come From 1954 Land:

And yet, apparently it does:

I’m not going to research this. It’ll just ruin the mystery of how a record like this could possibly exist in 1954.

“Space Guitar” is a 10.

What a crazy-man-crazy time to have been alive!

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