Biggest Song Of The Month:
“Rags To Riches” by Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett grew up in rags. Or something close to it. It was after all, the Great Depression, when everyone grew up in rags.
So Tony and his mother had to move into a “railroad flat” – which as best as I can tell is a “shotgun shack” but on the second floor – above – and here’s a nice little idyllic twist: a candy store.
I like to think that this was a sign that things were starting to look up for young Anthony.
By the time Tony recorded “Rags To Riches,” his riches had certainly arrived.
Singing in restaurants after the war, and working his way up through the Greenwich Village scene – clearly it hadn’t become a folk music centre yet – Tony had found himself in the centre of the 1950s pop music machine, slaving away as one of Mitch Miller’s minions.
Mitch Miller was a mad genius who came up with mad genius ideas.
Such as: forcing the very-much not Italian Rosemary Clooney to sing harpsichord drenched novelty songs in an Italian accent, and the very-much Italian Tony Bennett to sing country songs by Hank Williams. Incredibly enough, these wacky schemes usually worked.
Rosemary hated him for it. Frank Sinatra hated him so much – mostly for forcing him to record a song called “Mama Will Bark” – and complained so much that he got fired. Imagine firing Frank Sinatra! That’s how much power Mitch Miller had!
Mitch Miller seems to have been exceedingly easy to hate.
He had an evil looking beard, that he presumedly liked to stroke whilst concocting new ideas for crazy novelty records that he knew America would go nuts for. And, once again, he was always right!
EVIL!!
Tony was apparently a little skeptical about singing country hits: “I’m an Italian kid from Queens, what do I know about country music?” etc – but he was too good-natured to hate anybody. Whenever Tony was asked about Mitch, he just started gushing with gratitude.
Compare that to Frank, who once bumped into Mitch in, where else but a Las Vegas Casino. When Mitch tried to say hello, Sinatra just grunted: “f*ck you, keep walking.”
The good-naturedness of Tony Bennett shines through “Rags To Riches.” I like to think that it was this good-natured-ness, or at least his patience in going along with Mitch’s crazy schemes, that led to Tony being given “Rags To Riches” – the sort of big-band song that Frank would have killed for, or at least hire a hit job for – as a sort of thank you present.
“Rags To Riches” is an 8:
Meanwhile… in Jump Blues Land:
“Honey Hush” by Big Joe Turner
“Ah, let ’em roll like a big wheel, in a Georgia cotton field”,
I’m not entirely sure what that means, but Big Joe is having woman problems. It’s not that his woman is leaving him though, it’s that she just keeps jabberin’, and yakity-yakkin’, and Big Joe needs his supper fixin.’
Big Joe likes to create the impression that no woman is going to be tying Big Joe down. Except that it’s all a lie, because one did. For Big Joe was married.
In fact, he attributed “Honey Hush’s” copyright to her. I like to think this was his way for apologizing for all of his own jabberin’ and yakity-yakkin’.
There’s not a whole lot to “Honey Hush.” Atlantic was so desperate for a new Big Joe Turner song they just harangued him into a radio recording studio, grabbed any blues musos that were around – since they were in New Orleans this wasn’t a problem – and pressed play. And Big Joe did what he did, and just hollered a whole lot of cool shit over some boogie woogie piano.
Including, since the The Lone Ranger was popular at the time, and Big Joe was clearly a fan, a whole lot of “Hi-Ho Silver!”
“Honey Hush” is a 7:
Meanwhile… in Country Land:
“There Stands The Glass” by Webb Pierce
You think that country music is authentic? Ha!
About a decade before he discovered the wonders of rhinestone bejewelled Nudie suits, Webb Pierce was already coming up with schemes to stand out of the crowd, pretending to be more popular than he was.
Before there were visuals, there was sound, and Webb was on the Louisiana Hayride:
A live country-hoedown broadcast over the radio. And Webb hired some teenage girls to sit in the front row and scream at him, as if he were Frank Sinatra, or something.
You wouldn’t think that Webb would need screaming teenage girls as a gimmick to stand out. Surely his nasal yodeling squeal should have been gimmick enough, even in a genre such as country noted for its nasal singers, and not entirely philosophically opposed to yodeling.
In that genre, and across those airwaves, Webb’s nasal quiver could pierce through the air.
Being some sort of Frank Sinatra of country yodeling, Webb Pierce needs a drinking song. A drinking your sorrows away because your girl has left you song. “There Stands The Glass” is such a song.
And it’s a song far darker than Webb’s nasal chirp might have you believe. It’s not just a drinking your sorrows away because you girl has left you song. Those sorts of songs don’t start and end with a glass, standing, there.
This isn’t a song about a girl.
This is a song about a glass.
The first glass today. The first step on a journey to oblivion. A journey in which Webb is “on his way.”
Sad. So sad.
Here Webb is, a decade or so later, by which time he had definitely discovered the wonders of rhinestone bejewelled Nudie suits. This particular Nudie suit doesn’t feature any rhinestones, but you can’t deny it’s not fabulous.
“There Stands The Glass” is a 7.
Meanwhile… in Yodeling Land:
“The Happy Wanderer” by The Obernkirchen Children’s Choir
Obernkirchen is a small town in the middle of Germany. You will be disappointed to learn that although it is located in a region known as the Weser Uplands, these are not the kind of uplands that possess “mountain tracks,” upon which you might like to go a-wandering, with a knapsack on your back. The Obernkirchen Children’s Choir are not singing from personal experience.
No, the Weser Uplands are just rolling hills.
They are however the supposed setting for Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White! A fairy tale land indeed!
And the perfect setting then for a story of how a bunch of war orphans were recruited into a children’s choir and – via a singing competition in the north of Wales – briefly became an international sensation!
If you find Obernkirchen Children’s Choir to be a bit too much of a mouthful, then feel free to refer to them in the original German: Schaumburger Märchensänger.
Here’s Schaumburger Märchensänger on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. So it’s probably not the same kids.
I have no idea how to rate this:
To hear these, and other 50s hits, tune into DJ Professor Dan’s Twitch stream on Tuesday 8pm (Melbourne time), 9am London time, 1am L.A. time (technically Tuesday, but really Monday), middle of the night New York time!!!
https://www.twitch.tv/djprofessordan
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Wondering what to expect from DJ Professor Dan’s Twitch stream? In which I finally live up to the DJ part of my moniker, whilst dropping little factoids about pop music history along the way?
It’ll be a little bit like this – the preview of my first show – “DJ Professor Dan Plays Really Old Stuff.”
Join me as we party like it’s 1929!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVaMQYr3nzM&t=5s
1929? Oh yeah, that’s Eddie Cantor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcrggtH-j7k
Missed DJ Professor Dan’s Really Old Stuff Night!?
Never fear, it’s now a Spotify playlist!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1M8Ov0xawvcusbYHCzQXNx?si=e4b07b3201a248fe
Just set the crossfade to 12s and it’ll be just like being there!
Also never fear, because there’s always next week!
I don’t know how to rate Happy Wanderer either but I expect that ‘valderi-valdera ha ha ha ha ha’ will be haunting me in my dreams tonight.
I once won a quiz by being able to name the Obenkirchen Children’s Choir as the culprits responsible for Happy Wanderer. Validation for the many hours of devouring music trivia.
Spent 5 weeks at #2 on the UK chart and 24 weeks in the top 10. Unsurprisingly, they were a one hit wonder.
One hit wonders, sure, but the David Guerra remix slaps.
You had me at jump blues. I most certainly clicked on that and it did not disappoint.
Your Rosemary Clooney reference dovetails with an article I have coming up soon. I won’t give away the topic.
The Happy Wanderer was still culturally relevant in the 70s as I do recall hearing it as a child. I seem to remember it being one of the songs featured on a game show called Musical Chairs, where contestants would hear someone sing part of a song lyric and would have to guess the correct answer on the rest of it.
My dad told me that when he was in college after WWII, he was part of an advertising fraternity and was responsible for finding an act for a party they were hosting. He ended up booking a young singer named Tony Bennett who was still an unknown at the time. I saw Tony Bennett at Ravinia in the early ’00s and he definitely still had it. I don’t think he ever lost it.
We used to sing “Happy Wanderer” on the bus that took us to summer day camp. Not the German part.
It was a common song at the various church, Girl Scout, etc. camps that I went to as a child. I wasn’t aware at the time that it had ever been recorded. I thought it was just one of those weird songs that always seemed to be sung at camp, like “Kookaburra” and “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”. No idea how they come up with those songs. Just part of the camp experience.
TIL that “Kookaburra” is sung in countries that don’t have kookaburras!
I was born in the 80s, and I remember singing “The Happy Wanderer” as a kid.
I don’t quite remember the context. It was either from my grandmother (from whom I also learned Buckle Down Winsocki), or from my elementary school music teacher (from whom I also learned Daisy – A Bicycle Built for Two).
Band name of the day: The Rhinestone Bejewelled Nudie Suits
“The Happy Wanderer” was a recurring riff on MST3K during hiking scenes, so that one I’m most familiar with.
I get Tony Bennett vibes from watching Bruce Springsteen’s music video for “Night Shift”. After he passed, I took a close look at his catalog.
I didn’t know he collaborated with k.d. lang. A Wonderful World was my entry point.
Did you see Asteroid City? Is Jarvis Cocker’s character based on Webb Pierce?