UK Charts: 1952-1962

1952

Where does popular music start? The concept itself is about as old as people realising they like some songs the strolling bard plays more than others, but with a post-per-year approach I've got to draw a line somewhere and it's not going to be one that has me writing 300 posts about tunes for sackbut.

Besides, "pop" is a more heavily loaded term than that, and there are a few characteristics which differentiate what we think of as "pop" from merely music which is popular. The most obvious is its symbiotic relationship with the chart, a weekly list that catalogues what's being bought the most this week.

Sales charts are an old concept, but started out a very different beast from what they are now; at first they tracked sales of sheet music. This leads us to another characteristic of pop: the inseparability of both composition and performance. We don't just care about "Ziggy Stardust", we care about whether it's Bowie or Bauhaus, studio or live or undiscovered demo.

It took until the 1940s for Billboard in the US to start tracking sales of individual singles in stores, but even then this was only part of a cocktail of measurements that included radio station airplay and what people were selecting on jukeboxes. Billboard became the de facto standard chart for the States, unifying those three charts into a "Top 100" in 1955 and discounting all but record store sales by the close of 1958.

The UK didn't gain an official singles chart until 1969. If I was being strict I'd draw the "where to start" line there, but it would be a bit of a stupid place to do so. The 1960s was a hugely influential decade for pop music, sending out shockwaves which still lap against the shores of 2019. Besides, you know I haven't drawn the line there because this article starts with a heading saying 1952.

So what happened in 1952? Well, a chap called Percy Dickins working for the New Musical Express happened upon the idea of telephoning a bunch of record shops to find out what was selling, and aggregating that list into a chart. Despite being culled from a mere handful of shops, this Top 12 has since graduated to become the official starting point of the UK singles chart (look, no "previous" link!) and therefore by extension the point at which I'm diving in.

It’s appropriate that the very first UK Number One was a record called "Here In My Heart". Not just for the title — this is pop at its most magisterial and confident, a big lush production that envelopes the listener with swelling choruses. I will have my problems with this record later on, but in the erstwhile here and now of 14th November 1952 it’s a great opener for the canon of pop.

One position below Al Martino nestled Jo Stafford’s “You Belong To Me”. It's a soft gentle amble through scenes of exotic climes far out of reach to the average record buyer in ration book Britain. But it hints at something which irks me with these early charts. Aside from the recording quality, there's little here which would have been out of place a decade earlier. If that's not enough to convince you, listen to Vera Lynn's "Forget Me Not" at #7. Calling out from a dense fog obscuring everything but a plucked bass, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a distant signal from the 1930s.

A theme that's going to come up a lot in this series is who was buying the records. And in the early 1950s, the audience was a mature one. Bing's "The Isle Of Innisfree" is an ideal example of this. It's a record to stick on your radiogram as you relax your weary feet and puff a stereotypical pipe. Maybe you'd find yourself drifting off to sleep to Nat King Cole's "Somewhere Along The Way".

Need to wake up? Kay Starr's "Comes A-Long A-Love" echoes big band sounds from an earlier era. I can't help thinking this is more for those reminiscing about the dance hall than heading out there. If as a record buyer even the 1930s felt like the disturbingly recent preserve of the whippersnapper, then Winifred Atwell's "Britannia Rag" was there to transport you back to the decade before that.

There's not a huge amount to say about 1952; the charts only existed for the last few weeks of the year. Pop got a strange old start, a mixed bag of imported American artists and songs sounding even more dated than their 67 years would suggest, but there was promise in there. "Faith Can Move Mountains" as the Johnnie Ray single closing out the year in the #7 spot said.

1953

I'm going to start this post about 1953 by talking about something which happened in 1952. If you were a lucky school child somewhere south-west of London in May 1952, you'd have been taken to a local hill to watch the first commercial Comet flight pass over. The jet age had begun, and while sangria on the Spanish coast was still the preserve of the wealthy it awakened a taste for the exotic in those who were firmly stuck in Dudley.

This surfaced itself not only in coronation chicken and sacrilegious things done to spaghetti, but also in the records people bought. I already mentioned Jo Stafford's holiday lyrics drifting down the Nile with "You Belong To Me", but "Jambalaya (On The Bayou)" brought New Orleans to record buyers with snatches of bastardised French. Stafford was Californian so a jaunt to Louisiana wasn't quite as jet age as you might hope, but that didn't seem to worry British buyers too much.

Danny Kaye's "Wonderful Copenhagen" came from a film soundtrack, and sounds it, but you wonder whether that same spirit of the age helped it up the charts in March. From this distant future it's less the sound of the exotic and more the sound of rainy afternoons with nothing to do besides watch old films on BBC2. (Although I always preferred The Titfield Thunderbolt).

Sadly, the desire for lyrics speaking of far-off deserts and sophisticated European evenings didn't extend to sonic adventure. Structurally, many of these records are about as exotic as a Post Office van. It's common to posit that pop released some arbitrary number of years after you stopped buying records is formulaic and dull, but listening to the early 1950s reveals the industry always had an instinct to find a successful template and stick with it.

Al Martino's "Take My Heart" is a good example. It tries to bottle the same lightning as "Here In My Heart" - big string intro, lush instrumentation, gentle tempo, crooning voice, even a title that's 50% the same. But in comparison it sounds less confident, less sincere, and a little bit of a retread. It dropped out of the charts after a week at #9.

One of the obscuring factors of these early charts is they didn't start entirely with new artists. Many of those faces on the NME's first attempt were in the middle or even at the tail end of long careers. Frankie Laine is a good example. "High Noon" just scrapes into 1953 (it dropped from last position in the chart on 2nd January) but it was part of a string of successful singles.

In April 1953 he followed it up with "I Believe". It's a bit of a plodder to start with, but that functional beat is joined by choir and strings until it builds into a crescendo worthy of a film score. "I Believe" introduced something which would become a mainstay of the charts: the monster hit record. It was an enormous hit, with multiple stretches at Number 1 and a total of 36 weeks in the charts.

It was also little more than a better-executed implementation of Johnnie Ray's "Faith Can Move Mountains" from the previous year. This is a problem I started to run into listening to these early '50s records. The first few may have been quaint but were also evocative, a fascinating journey into the past. But the more I listened to, the more I found them coalescing into the same lumpen, plucked-string mass. The early 1950s codified a small number of elements which went into making a popular record - something I call the Template.

What's in the Template? Start with a big swell of strings or a bold stab on the brass if you've got the budget for it. Tell your rhythm section to aim at what can best be described as a plod; "Broken Wings" by the Stargazers (#1 April '53) is the perfect example. Salt it with a little of the exotic to tempt those would-be travellers gazing up at the jets. Build up slowly over the next two minutes as per Muriel Smith's version of "Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me" (#3 June '53) and finally make sure you capture that filmic quality by shaking in a good dose of Hollywood schmaltz even if the song isn't from a soundtrack.

Oh, and don't be above keeping an eye on the public mood. Numerous versions of "In a Golden Coach (There's a Heart of Gold)" made the charts in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, but Dickie Valentine's is the most prototypical. He was an actor as well as a singer, and fittingly the song feels like it's been excised from a musical and confined to vinyl, forever missing the pictures that went with it.

I can't talk about the popularity of that film-like quality without mentioning Mantovani and his orchestra. Whether it was the theme from Moulin Rouge or "Swedish Rhapsody", if these weren't already part of a film score they definitely belonged there. And you know what? For all this era grates on me, Mantovani's okay. It's well-executed, it has a sense of fun, and he's not afraid of being at least a little up-tempo. Sure you can go kick it for being emblematic of the days before plucky teenagers rescued pop from the Olds, but this is far from the worst. A long way from it. He was enormously successful, selling more albums than anyone else of the era. Given the state of the contemporary pop scene he kinda deserved that.

As well as the formulaic chart record and the massive hit, those early 1950s charts also featured a pop mainstay: the novelty record. "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window" was #1 in April '53, and it wasn't unique. To a certain extent this was a hangover of music hall tradition from the previous century - there were plenty of records which showed the slightly straighter side of music hall such as Guy Mitchell's "She Wears Red Feathers" from February '53.

One thing quite noticeable in these early UK charts is how many of the acts were American. Laine, Mitchell, Stafford, Martino... there was home-grown talent but many of those early charts were stocked with transatlantic hits. Even when a British artist had a top-selling record, it was often indistinguishable from the Stateside efforts. David Whitfield was from Hull, but "Answer Me" (#1 October '53) was the '50s song template writ large. String introduction, reliable little donkey of a rhythm section, and a touch of the exotic in Whitfield’s Italianate warble on the vocal line. Speaking of which, does that vocal rise to a crescendo? Check! The week later it had been knocked off the top spot by Frankie Laine's version, barely distinguishable. Laine had a good chart run in '53, with an uptempo "Hey! Joe" (not the one you're thinking of) also trading in and out of that #1 spot.

The '50s may have arrived with many modern chart tropes fully formed, but it also had its oddities. One of these was TV themes being hit records. Ted Heath and his orchestra (another UK outfit, although very much inspired by American big-band acts) recorded a version of the "Dragnet" theme which spent a few weeks bumping around the lower ends of the chart, reaching a peak at #9 in December '53.

These novelties and diversions aside, I can't shake the feeling of sameness that looms over 1953. Is Guy Mitchell's November hit "Chicka Boom" anything more than a minor re-tool of "Pretty Little Black Eyed Suzie" from April? Does Winifred Atwell's "Let's Have A Party" from December do anything other than let you save some wear and tear on your 1952 copy of "Britannia Rag"?

Maybe it's a harsh outlook. I'm listening to these records unable to ignore the 66 years of pop that has passed since, or at least the 46 years of it I paid attention to. Records were expensive treats, not disposable fun, and perhaps that impacts the conservatism of the charts. Artists releasing more or less the same song because not everybody got to buy it first time round, perhaps? Whatever the reason, it's a weird era to listen to without the context.

1954

Let's start 1954 with someone you've heard of. Probably even a song you've heard of. Dean Martin managed a fair jackpot of 1950s fame, being a member of the Rat Pack, a popular comedian and one of the many crooner artists. "That's Amore" entered the charts in January '54, staying there for 11 weeks and topping out at #2 in February.

Now, remember the checklist from 1953? Plodding rhythm, a sprinkle of the foreign and exotic, build up slowly, and sound a little like you're accompanying a musical? "That's Amore" ticks all of those boxes and goes double or quite on the last one by being from a musical (a musical comedy, no less), The Caddy. Evidently it was just too competent though, as The Stargazers' version of "I See The Moon" kept it off the top spot with an unfortunate three-way collision between nursery rhyme, novelty song, and 1940s Ink Spots records.

Given the parlous state of music at this point, you might be forgiven for thinking a Norman Wisdom record would be little more than his evergreen “Mr Grimsdale!” catchphrase set to a perfunctory rhythm section. But Wisdom was entirely serious as a singer-songwriter, and "Don't Laugh At Me ('Cause I'm A Fool)" is a heartfelt record, if somewhat homemade in the vein of a bread bin Frank Sinatra. In its 15 weeks on the chart it peaked at #3. Also spending 15 weeks in the charts was David Whitfield's "The Book", which clambered up to #5 at the end of March '54. There's very little to note here, it being another one of those interchangeable Template records that to modern ears is half-forgotten before you've even finished it.

I bring up Whitfield as his next hit was far from ordinary or unmemorable. A collaboration with the Mantovani orchestra gave us "Cara Mia". It's a rare highlight. Not pop in the sense of the new; Mantovani’s orchestra had been around since the late 1930s, and was largely an album-oriented outfit by the 1950s, but the few singles it did feature on rarely failed to make it big.In the case of “Cara Mia”, it wasn’t so much big as massive: 25 weeks in the chart, much of it at or near the #1 spot.

Listening to Petula Clark's "The Little Shoemaker" is a bit of a let-down afterwards, but this uptempo novelty isn't so bad. It was also only one step on the road of a long career; Clark started as a child singer before such a thing as a singles chart existed and was still active well into the 1960s, although more of that anon.

1954 was a big year for the crooners, though. Both Al Martino and Perry Como had near-identical versions of "Wanted", and both peaked at #4. Como's version has slightly more strings, maybe? Frank Sinatra's "Three Coins In The Fountain" is similar - rather the theme of the year - but the obligatory build to a crescendo is better handled. It was #1 in September '54,  spending 19 weeks on the chart in total.

Nat King Cole's "Smile" is yet another record in the same mould. Maybe the rhythm section is a smidgen more sprightly? It hit #2, kept off the top spot by Sinatra and then by Don Cornell's "Hold My Hand". Listening to all of these in order, it's hard to see "Hold My Hand" as anything but an irksome plod-fest. It takes a lot for Rosemary Clooney's "This Ole House" to be a welcome palate cleanser, but in this company it's nice just to hear something with a bit of life to it.

Even by December '54 prosaic records like Dickie Valentine's "The Finger Of Suspicion" and Rosemary Clooney's mash-up of novelty and foreign flavour "Mambo Italiano" would have you wondering whether anything had moved on in the slightest since that very first chart back in '52. The charts had come into being, and were tracking records that were popular, but they were missing the most important part — the idea of the chart as a contest of new ideas, new sounds and new movements. What the pop charts didn’t have in those early years was any pop to go on them.

Then, right at the end of December 1954, along came a little record called "Shake, Rattle And Roll".

1955

Consider three records from the very turn of 1955. "Shake, Rattle And Roll", "Mr Sandman" and "Rock Around The Clock". Big, bold confident records. These were the sound of America: Cadillacs and sock hops, a nation untroubled by rationing or cast-concrete prefabs. Bill Haley had given up on country music and decided to do something new. His Comets brought the image of early rock’n’roll fully formed. The Chordettes may have been more prosaic in appearance, and their music the everyday America of doo-wop and barbershops rather than the brash America of advertisements, but they had a similar effect.

Now consider a fourth record: "Give Me Your Word" by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Ford was a Tennessean who’d moved from radio announcer to singer, with a powerful classical baritone. “Give Me Your Word” was The Template writ large. It entered the charts in January 1955 and went to #1 long before “Rock Around The Clock” did. (While "Rock Around The Clock" did eventually become the biggest-selling UK single of the 1950s, it wasn’t until nearly 12 months after its release that it hit #1).

One of the things I've been acutely aware of writing this series in relatively strict chronological order is the power of narrative. Usually when you read a pop history it will talk about each movement in turn, and you'd be forgiven for thinking big band was followed by rock 'n' roll followed by Merseybeat, all in neat columns where punk takes over from disco before being deposed by new wave. But it was messier than that - people kept inconveniently buying Template records like Ruby Murray's "Softly Softly" and Eddie Calvert's mambo-tinged "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White" even after rock'n'roll had arrived to show us the way.

This, however, was the real power of the pop charts. A battleground of ideas, each judged only by its ability to shift more 45 rpm vinyl into the hands of eager purchasers. That Utopian ideal may have been tarnished by accusations of rigging and uncounted sales over the years, but at its core is a ranking of musical ideas by what ordinary people like, rather than what knowledgeable experts tell them they should. Perhaps that's why critics are wont to look down their nose at pop?

They'd be forgiven if they looked at early 1955, which suggested record sales were a foolish idea and everyone should go back to counting sheet music. The sheer number of versions of "Stranger In Paradise" and "Unchained Melody" trading places beggars belief: Tony Bennett, Tony Martin, Four Aces, Don Cornell, and Bing Crosby in the case of the former, with Jimmy Young, Al Hibbler, Les Baxter, and even Liberace having a crack at the latter. I've probably missed some, but you get the picture. I'll probably give up whatever shred of credibility I have left with this statement, but Liberace's is pretty tolerable by the standards of the age with a hint of the Mantovani to it. It beats the trend for most versions after Jimmy Young's to be increasingly turgid and unnecessary, even if it spent only a single week barely on the charts at all (#20 June '55 - the hit parade having expanded from a top 12 to a top 20 by this point).

Speaking of new ideas, over the pond Billboard had the bright idea that when a country record became very popular, it should be counted as a part of the pop charts rather than herded off into a pen with others of its kind. (The originally rather amusingly named "hillbilly" chart). Slim Whitman's "Rose Marie" was the first such record to also make a dent on the UK charts; a significant one, as it was #1 at the end of July '55. Bill Haley would have been forgiven for thinking he should have stuck with playing country at this point!

Nevertheless, rock'n'roll was beginning its slow climb out of obscurity. In November Pat Boone released his attempt at Fats Domino's "Ain't That A Shame". It's a horrible record compared to the Fats Domino original; a by-the-numbers copy covered in a thick layer of sticky gloss that makes an exciting original lumpen and turgid. It peaked at #7 in December.

By that time, though, "Rock Around The Clock" was #1. Rock'n'roll had finally arrived.

1956

1956 opened with an odd echo of the previous January: a Bill Haley record being eclipsed by something from Tennessee Ernie Ford. In this instance it was "Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie" (#4 January '56) from Haley and "Sixteen Tons" (#1 in the same month) from Ford. The former is prototypical rock'n'roll. It opens with blaring sax and has a simple but hot guitar solo. It also highlights a problem that rock'n'roll would struggle to grapple with as the decade closed: in the year since "Rock Around The Clock" nothing had moved on. It was the same idea treated in the same way.

If anything "Sixteen Tons" was the innovative record here. Instead of aping "Cara Mia" it has a lean, stripped-back swing that's eerily predictive of Roger Miller's "King of the Road" from 1965.

Rock'n'roll still claimed one chart innovation though, and that was the emergence of the teenager as a significant force in pop music. It's easy to forget just how expensive records were in the early days of pop, and merely using inflation masks the true figure; crudely benchmarked against the typical weekly wage, a 45 rpm single in the late '50s would have cost its aspiring purchaser the equivalent of around £15 today.

Britain's post-war doldrums hadn't helped that equation, but by 1956 the British teenager found themselves possessed of strange new things such as disposable income and free time. Not much of one, and not too much of the other either, but enough to start buying records and start appearing as a noticeable trend on the pop charts. There was one thing they lacked, though, and that was their own music. Rock'n'roll was an acceptable substitute and the Teds seemed largely happy with it in between bouts of vandalism and non-specific menace, but it was still American music made largely both by and for Americans.

British teenagers were about to get their own uniquely British pop though. It came in the form of Anthony James Donegan, a kid who'd started learning the guitar at 14 and made money playing with small jazz bands. When he started his own band he adopted the name "Lonnie" and took to entertaining patrons in the interval by grabbing a washboard, a tea chest bass and a cheap guitar. They called it a "skiffle break", and eventually skiffle made it onto a record with "Rock Island Line" all the way back in 1954. Why are we talking about it here, then? Well, it didn't become a hit until January 1956, entering the charts in that month and reaching #8. One wonders quite how it got missed in the dire situation of 1954!

Skiffle records like this and "Lost John" (#2 in mid-1956) had an attainability to them. British teenagers might not have been able to afford a Fender guitar, an amplifier and a drum kit, but a washboard and a tea chest were well within reach. Skiffle groups sprouted in back yards like weeds, and those lucky enough to get recording contracts traded places with rock'n'roll singles like Bill Haley's "See You Later, Alligator" (#7 March '56). "Alligator" was fun but also showed the Comets becoming worryingly derivative of themselves. Without any good way out of this, they resorted to gimmickry with silly voices and funny lyrics.

King of the gimmick was the King himself. Elvis first entered the British charts with "Heartbreak Hotel" in early May (#2 June '56), followed by "Blue Suede Shoes" at the end of the month. Thankfully most of those gimmicks were confined to the hip-wiggling stage act and its inter-song banter; "Heartbreak Hotel" is a fantastic record, strutting and prowling about Lonely Street like it's in charge of the place.

"Blue Suede Shoes" was a Carl Perkins number originally, but ended up forever associated with Elvis. This is as much credit to Elvis' early-iteration rhythm section (Scotty Moore on guitar, Bill Black on bass and D.J. Fontana on drums) as the man himself - the driving rockabilly beat and confident solos provide one hell of a scaffold to hang off. It's got its gimmicks with plenty of "uh-huh"s and a cat-called "rock it!" before Moore sets down to raising blisters with the guitar, but somehow Elvis gets away with it.

Besides, rock'n'roll may have slathered on the gimmicks trying to keep a largely stagnant genre fresh, but it wasn't quite so hopeless as the novelty records around it. Kay Starr's "The Rock and Roll Waltz" is dreadful. The central conceit of past-it parents trying to waltz to Bill Haley might have worked, but with this arrangement the record ends up being exactly the thing it's trying to mock: adults who don't get rock'n'roll, but still think they can be a part of it.

"The Happy Whistler", a May #8 for Don Robertson, was one of a string of whistling records that bubbled along in their own isolated niche through the late '50s into the '60s - this was one of the earliest and is typical enough of the genre. But that aside, a lot of the pop of 1956 was little changed from those first charts of 1952-1953. You've got Nat King Cole, you've got Sinatra with "(Love Is) The Tender Trap" (#2 February '56). TV themes? See Gary Miller's "Robin Hood", #10 in that same February. Don Cherry's "Band of Gold" (#6 March '56) tilts at doo-wop, but the chassis is a good old-fashioned Template record and no fancy brass can hide that creaking ladder frame. Finally Perry Como wanted to take us all off to the circus with "Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom)", seatbelts safely fastened and nice sweaters perfectly pressed. It was #4 in June '56, but on reflection I'd rather not have gone.

Pop's melange of ideas can be fascinating, but when there's one set of ideas you love and one you don't it can be just as frustrating. I grew up rooting for indie as it slugged things out with boy bands. Watching rock'n'roll and skiffle try to displace those turgidly mature efforts from earlier in the '50s brings out much of the same annoyance. How could you people buy this?

Sometimes the solution is more ideas. We'd seen a bit of doo-wop from the Chordettes back in '55. A bunch of New York teenagers led by Frankie Lymon called, rather appropriately, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers cut "Why Do Fools Fall In Love". It was #1 at the end of July '56, adding to the feeling that the charts would evolve away from records evocative of ration books and boiled sprouts. It's a cracking pop record; I'd rate it above Elvis' "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" (#14 September '56) which clumps along in good-natured but rather unexciting fashion compared to his hits earlier in the year.

Elvis was out-Elvised by Gene Vincent on "Be-Bop-A-Lula" (#16 August '56) , which has all of the swagger and then some. It's slower and meaner than your typical rock'n'roll record, pushing further into rockabilly territory. You'd fully credit this is a guy who picked up his first guitar at twelve years old, dropped out of school, did a stint in the Navy and bought a motorbike the moment he was back on shore. We also got a Fats Domino original - "I'm In Love Again" (#12 September '56) was the man himself sounding as ever like he was having the greatest fun in the world sitting at that ol' piano.

Still, these were all low positions and small sales figures compared to something like Frankie Laine's "A Woman In Love" (#1 October '56). You can see some evolution here; there's more energy and a bit less plod than Laine records from a few years earlier. Did rock'n'roll at least give the Template a bit more energy? Who knows - even when you're there at the time, it's hard to tell which pop ideas feed off each other and which just happened to independently move in the same direction.

The boundaries did blur in places toward the end of 1956. The Platters' "The Great Pretender (#5 September '56, but a solid 16 weeks on the chart) straddles the gap between rock'n'roll records and Template records. A choir and a dunka-dunka beat meets horns and "woah woah"s. "My Prayer" from the same band (#4 November '56) suggests that might have been accidental; it's much slower and hews closer to a pure Template record. That might suggest why only one of the two is still well-known today.

What both Platters records are missing from proper rock'n'roll is the frantic solo, a flurry of simple notes rattled off as if the guitarist has an urgent appointment they're about to miss. Elvis Presley's recording of Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog" (#2 September '56) is a prime example.

As 1956 drew to a close, Bill Haley had a #4 with "Rip It Up", a record we’d heard a dozen times before with the same name on the cover. Even the startup gimmick is straight-up ripped from "See You Later Alligator". It’s a shame it outperformed "Blueberry Hill". Whenever I see videos of Fats performing this song he’s sat at the piano having the most fantastic time, and it comes across on the record. What a record - deep, dense and a slightly plaintive note in Fats' voice that sells it. The public of the past seemed to agree: fifteen weeks in the chart and a #6 peak.

Meanwhile, Tommy Steele and his Steelmen were perhaps the first to realise the gap between skiffle and rock’n’roll wasn’t so big, spending a few weeks in the chart with "Rock With The Caveman". "Singing The Blues" gave him a #1, although Guy Mitchell got there first and neither is indispensable given the other. It also gives Steele's game away: he was more of a variety artist and entertainer, presumably attracted to rock'n'roll by its gimmick-laden excesses than any bad boy attitude on his part. At least you didn't see Gene Vincent following up his caged animal pacing with a whistling record.

If there's anyone you'd choose as the face of '56, though, it would be Elvis. He finished up a year of hits with "Love Me Tender", a slow and gentle record that nevertheless stands distinct from Template efforts. It's simple and a little vulnerable, eschewing the kind of ornamentation that was so common in this era. Even if it is from a film soundtrack.

1957

Imagine that somewhere out there is a parallel version of me, perhaps somewhere in upstate New York, compiling this same series of articles but with an American bent. Their touchstones are not Suede and Pulp but Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. Their source of data would be Billboard, not the hodge-podge of early magazine-based charts I work from. There would be less skiffle and more doo-wop. And yet... so many times, we'd talk about the same songs at the same time. There's an oddity here, though. We might talk about the same songs, but we wouldn't always talk about the same artist.

Hence "Garden of Eden", a hit for Joe Valino in October '56 in the States, first surfaced over here a few months later as a Frankie Vaughan number (#1 January '57). As was common with big hits in the mid-'50s, it was backed up by versions from Gary Miller (#14 January '57) and Dick James (#18 January '57). Miller's is brash and sounds like it's made for a TV theme - James' isn't all that distinguishable from Vaughan's. All were more popular than the original Valino recording. A week late to the party, it only made #23 and slipped out of the charts after its second week there. A shame, as I dare say it's the best out of all of them.

I've given rock'n'roll a bit of a kicking for its reliance on gimmicks over progression of its own genre, and Mitchell Torok's "Red Light, Green Light" is the first hint that it would eventually slide to that ultimate sales gimmick, the novelty record. It's not outright stupid, but you can see the progression there. Still, its main contribution was celebrating the recent expansion of the charts to a Top 30 by spending a single week at #29 in January.

This early rock'n'roll sound was getting tired by 1957. The basic template had only existed for two years, and already record companies were putting out re-recordings of old songs (Bill Haley and his Comets, "Rock The Joint", #20 February '57) or songs which had already been a hit for someone else (Fats Domino, "Ain't That A Shame", #23 February '57). They might still have the occasional performance, but despite kick-starting things the Comets were becoming increasingly unnecessary.

Britain was more taken by the homemade charm of skiffle - Lonnie Donegan's "Don't You Rock Me Daddy-O" hit #4 in February. It's just over a minute and a half of manic energy finishing with a dustbin clatter. However, the song actually belonged to the Vipers Skiffle Group. Their version is devoid of the energy and while more professional, professionalism is an attribute which I feel sits uneasily with the ethos of skiffle. Maybe I'm inaccurately projecting a "grab an instrument and get going" attitude which really belongs to punk and latterly grunge. Anyway, the Vipers only hit #10 with their record.

When faced with this kind of sluggishness of ideas in the charts (hell, The Beverley Sisters' "I Dreamed" could be a 1952 record played slightly too fast) it's interesting to look at what was #1. The #1 slot has a mystique all of its own - if the chart is a melting pot of ideas, a competition between ways of making music, then the #1 is a clear signpost pointing at what won this week. In February '57, that was Tab Hunter's "Young Love".

So which idea won? None of them; "Young Love" is a curious mix. It's a bit country, there's some Platters influence in there somewhere, and that choir wouldn't sound out of place backing Perry Como. It's also a little ahead of its time; this wouldn't have seemed too out of place on the chart in 1960. Perhaps the idea which won is the feeling that music should be moving on.

If you had felt that in 1957, rock'n'roll was not going to be the genre to satisfy. All it had to offer was gimmick compounded upon gimmick - adding outrageous dress and stage presence to its catalogue of whistles and gewgaws. Little Richard scored a significant hit in February with "Long Tall Sally", eventually hitting #3 in April, but more famous cut "Tutti Frutti" disappeared after a week at #29.  I don't blame the punters of '57: it's so similar you wonder if the phrase "badge engineering" can be applied to music.

When the charts start suffering from a paucity of new ideas, it's usually not long before the vacuum starts to be filled by silly ideas. This really needs the '70s to demonstrate in full, but various versions and variations on title of the "Banana Boat Song" hinted at a restlessness in early 1957. Skiffle was having a decent time of it with both Donegan and the Vipers releasing versions of "Cumberland Gap" (Donegan #1, Vipers #10) but listen to these against Chas McDevitt's Skiffle Group with "Freight Train" (#4 June '57) and you can hear that same failure to evolve preying on skiffle too.

Speeding through these charts is rather a fatiguing experience. Maybe if you'd had to wait three months between "Singing The Blues" and "Knee Deep In The Blues" (#3 March '57 for Guy Mitchell, #15 February '57 for Tommy Steele and the Steelmen) it wouldn't matter quite so much that the songs are nigh identical. Tab Hunter's "Ninety Nine Ways" (#5 May '57) feels like a step back from the swaggering "Young Love". The proto-Jacksons bop of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers' "Baby Baby" (#4 May '57) feels rote.

I do like a bit of Fats Domino, but "I'm Walkin'" feels a bit torpid after Little Richard and it joined many of the year's rock'n'roll cuts in skulking about the lower-mid charts, peaking at #19 in April '57. Nat King Cole's "When I Fall In Love" could have been released in 1952 if it weren't for the progression was in recording technology. Even with my tendency to snipe at these old Template records I have to admit it's enticingly rich-textured.

Taking stock of pop music at this point, we have three stalled genres: rock'n'roll, skiffle, and the MOR trad pop that was still yet to be supplanted by those brattish upstarts. But where the other two would struggle to break out of their rut, trad pop was starting to celebrate its rut - making the same old thing to be sure, but making it better, with more care and devotion to its production. Another example would be Bing Crosby's "Around The World" (#5 June '57) - could have been made back in '52, but not at that level of fidelity. Proper music for serious listeners, not the trashy and disposable stuff that's come after it. Now there's a story which will be reliably repeated through pop history.

This schism would eventually lead to such records being sequestered away to racks marked Easy Listening, although the genre was not properly codified or named until the 1960s. It's interesting to compare Andy Williams' "Butterfly" (#1 May '57) with his later, more famous "Pretty Butterfly" from after this point - an Elvis-lite impression of a contemporary Charlie Gracie song (#12 May '57) that's far from his latter fare. A side note here: when I first created this playlist, I didn't spot the two similarly-titled songs and only noticed when playing the Gracie version. One disadvantage to streaming is not having the copyright date on the label!

"Butterfly" took that #1 spot from Guy Mitchell's recording of "Rock-A-Billy", which adds a few fresh ingredients (and is oddly skiffle-esque in places) but still treads that "rock'n'roll for variety audiences" path. The next #1 was Johnnie Ray's "Yes Tonight Josephine" in June '57 and that leans even further toward the novelty with its "yip yip" refrain. Elvis is decent enough on "Too Much" (#6 May '57) but in line with rock'n'roll's malaise it's a little bit Elvis-by-numbers.

One of the first things I learnt after embarking on this half-crazed mission to listen to all of pop ever was that acts had to be judged against their contemporaries. You’ve got to understand how fresh, how now Bill Haley and his Comets sounded at the end of 1954. How wild Elvis was at first. And right now, in mid-'57, how much of a doldrum the pop charts were in.

Little Richard's "Lucille" (#10 August '57) lacks energy in its rhythm section and sax solo, as if the rest of the band are embarrassed to be hanging around with Richard. Nobody wanted to spend a "School Day" with Chuck Berry, with it peaking at #24 in June. He'd eventually recycle it verbatim but for added novelty next decade in "No Particular Place To Go". Pat Boone did better with "Love Letters In The Sand" (#2 August '57) but it's an unappealing mash-up of downtempo rock'n'roll with Sinatra leftovers, and squelches along like a Little Richard single accidentally played at 33 rpm.

Set against this background, you start to notice things such as Elvis being more of an innovator than he's given credit for. Elvis tended to innovate in fits and starts, and you can see this with "All Shook Up" (#1 July '57) and "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" (#3 August '57). The first hits exactly the target Little Richard and Pat Boone swung for and missed - leaner and more stripped back rock'n'roll played at a less frantic pace, but still with all the swagger and self-assurance. However that big leap is followed only by a rather samey record doing it all again, the rock'n'roll curse in a two-record microcosm.

"Little Darlin'" by The Diamonds (#3 July '57, and a total of 17 weeks in the chart) was the first sign that more of a shake-up was coming. Up-tempo, and with an unusual spoken word interlude, it felt like a burst of life in the rapidly stagnating pool of pop. It also feels like a young Neil Sedaka might have been taking notes from this one!

But back to that shake-up. At its forefront would be an act who were genuinely a cut above. Almost every single they released moved the game on in some way. And yet they didn't do so in a scrappy, DIY way (as per The Velvet Underground, say) - one which relied on someone else to take what they did and make it palatable for a mainstream audience. No, each one of their singles was perfectly realised and often a massive hit.

The act I'm talking about is the Everly Brothers. On the face of it, there’s no reason why Don and Phil Everly should have been so significant. They came from Kentucky, they were country-influenced as had been Bill Haley, and ended up in Nashville courtesy of Chet Atkins. Early attempts only resulted in them being unceremoniously ditched from Columbia records. Everything here points to another rock'n'roll footnote.

Then they signed to Acuff-Rose, a music publisher. Then they released "Bye Bye Love". It made a mere #6 in the UK, but spent 16 weeks on the chart (entered July '57, peaked September '57). And listen to the thing! It’s perfect. Not a note out of place, not a sound that shouldn’t be there. Subtle accents all over the place, and then the Everly Brothers harmony which would become infamous over their career.

Despite its popularity, skiffle like Johnny Duncan's "Last Train to San Fernando" (#2 September '57) sounds amateurish and homemade in comparison, trading too much off skiffle's fascination with the railroad beat. You can’t make an Everly record on your washboard and tea chest.

It took me a while to "get" the Everly Brothers. When I was younger my dad lent me a double CD of all their Warner singles, but aside from a couple of tracks I rather bounced off it. At that point I, like many of my Britpop-consuming contemporaries assumed that worthwhile pop music started and ended with rock: that the lineage went straight from Bill Haley to the Beatles to Stones, Hendrix and Zeppelin. The Everly Brothers were essentially a "dead to us" form of music and not worth further investigation. Oh, youthful arrogance, you made the world so simple.

What the Everlys (I never feel quite happy pluralising that) had done was to take trad pop's focus on production values and applied it to the immature end of pop music. Something like Petula Clark's "With All My Heart" (#4 October '57) felt as if it was in the right genre to have those swelling strings and the little Mediterranean-influenced motifs, but nobody was taking that kind of care over a rock'n'roll record.

Listen to the gap between "School Day" and Paul Anka's "Diana", a monster hit (#1 September '57) released only a scant couple of months later. They sound years apart, not mere weeks! The latter is all perfectly timed bomps and sax that integrates with the song rather than off in a corner being frantic without too much reference to what the band is doing.

It was as if "Bye Bye Love" had unlocked a pent-up desire to create rock'n'roll with serious production values. The Everlys were closely followed by another cut-above band, this time from Lubbock in Texas. Bespectacled singer Buddy Holly recorded a new version of unreleased 1956 track "That'll Be The Day", crediting it to his band The Crickets in order to get around a contractual restriction on re-recording. This one went to #1 in November. It's more of a pure rocker, but that same impetus to strip away the sound and integrate things so your lead guitarist isn't off on their own unleashing a torrent of unrelated notes is clear. (Noticeable if you can dig out the original Holly-credited version, which doesn't do this.)

Played back-to-back with Jerry Lee Lewis effort "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" (#8 November '57) highlights all these flaws in pre-Everly rock'n'roll. It's fun, it's fast, if you made your way back from the record shop with this you'd have a good time playing it. But it's not meticulous in the same way. The solos feel like they've been ordered from a catalogue. The breakdown is another entry in the genre's proud ledger of gimmicks.

It's also rather similar to "(Let's Have A) Party", an October #2 for Elvis. Elvis eschews the unnecessary elements to bring things in at a mere minute and a half - if you've only got one real idea in a record, then no point outstaying your welcome with it.

While still in its infancy, the new era of meticulous production on pop records would bring with it the role of the producer. Jim Dale's "Be My Girl" (#2 December '57) might not be too notable in itself, but for a production credit to George Martin who would later become famous as the man behind the dials for the Beatles. It's very much in that late '57 trend with neat stop/start piano and choir lines.

Even trad pop took another stride forward into the realms of exercising high fidelity equipment. Nat King Cole's version of "Stardust" is impossibly lush! It's still the Template under there, but covered in so much chrome and polished to such a high shine you'd only notice that 1940s chassis if you went looking for it. However it only made #24, slipping from the chart after a mere two weeks.

The Everly Brothers returned with "Wake Up Little Susie", proving they could do what they did on a repeat basis. This time they hit #2 (December '57). At a mere two minutes long it's overflowing with ideas; no checkbox-ticking solos or gimmicks to pad out the run time here. The level of craftsmanship expected from pop music had gone up.

1957 had been a big year despite its disappointing start, but it's got one other little thing of note right at the end. It had been common for the crooners and the more variety show influenced performers to release a Christmas single toward the end of a year ("Christmas Alphabet" having even been a #1 for Dickie Valentine back in 1955) but in '57 Elvis decided to get in on the act too, releasing a whole Christmas album. Single release "Santa Bring My Baby Back (To Me)" hit #7 in (no prizes for guessing) December.

1958

January 1958 was a great month for pop. These are some real vintage charts, and it would be churlish to skip through the songs in them just because there are so many to get through.

So what makes this such a classic month? Start with Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue" (#6 January '58). It's simple and laid-back, which only makes the guitar solo more of a surprise when it does kick in. It's the typical rock'n'roll solo - a big lipped alligator moment in musical form: fast, hot and barely connected to the song it's in - but one of the things Holly and the Crickets did so well was taking these rock'n'roll cliches and making them somehow work.

Then you have Jackie Wilson's "Reet Petite" (#6 earlier in January). What "Peggy Sue" does for the disconnected solo this does for the rock'n'roll gimmick. Silly noises and all the possibilities of four-octave vocal range are thrown at the listener so thick and fast it's hard not to enjoy it.

I criticised Jerry Lee Lewis for following a tired formula in "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and if I was cruel all the same problems could apply to "Great Balls of Fire" but it's so utterly over-the-top ridiculous I'm giving it a free pass. This is one of the great things about pop music; sometimes the enthusiasm with which a record is made can trump all your learned points about formulas and gimmicks and tired genres. The public certainly had some enthusiasm for this one: #1 January '58 and 12 weeks in the chart.

Big change in tempo from Lewis to Sinatra's "All The Way", #3 January '58. Even amongst the rock'n'rollers the Template record was still a regular fixture. There's something underlying this though, and the record to illustrate this is Perry Como's "Magic Moments" (#1 March '58). I'll forever associate this record with afternoons at my Nan's; a little neo-Georgian terrace where we’d have Woolworths Pic-n-Mix and fill in colouring books using a tin of well-preserved colouring pencils. It was a place of anniversary clocks and books with titles like, "The Car of Today: 1912".

My nan would have bought this record 2-3 years before my parents became old enough to start picking up Shadows and Johnny Kidd and the Pirates 45s. What that reveals is that the people buying Perry Como records in 1958 were a whole generation earlier, often a good 20-30 years older than the ones buying Elvis Presley’s "Don't" and Little Richard's "Good Golly Miss Molly" at the same time. This is one of the strange lenses the pop chart reflects the world through; it's not so much about what all people are listening to as who's buying singles. The '50s looks very much like the awkward transition between music purchases of any format being an adult-only affair, and singles purchases being for the young with adults directed to the album section.

Anyway - one last January #1. "Jailhouse Rock" closed out the month in the top slot, spending much of February there. Elvis was as much a film star as a rock'n'roll star by this point - "Jailhouse Rock" was his third movie. The single is a straight-up rock'n'roller, driven by a 12-bar shuffle and relatively restrained piano accents.

Country was still taking the occasional journey into the charts. "Who's Sorry Now" (#1 May '58) was one of the biggest hits of the genre. The song itself was an old standard, and had many crooner covers of it before Connie Francis made it into a country hit. 1958 is a strange year to listen to because there was so much happening all at the same time. You've got country sitting alongside doo-wop like the Chordettes version of "Lollipop" (#6 May '58), skiffle records, big-band, and the second-wave rock'n'roll acts like the Crickets with "Maybe Baby" (#4 April '58).

If all that stew isn't complex enough, new flavours were still being added to it. I'm not sure if it was the first rock'n'roll instrumental, but "Tequila" by the Champs was the first big one. Reaching #5 at the end of April '58, it spawned a couple of covers, the Ted Heath one notable among them for a particularly demented shout of "Tequila!" before settling down into something a bit more reliable and reserved. It was originally intended as a 'B' side for a track called "Train to Nowhere" that had some neat Duane Eddy style guitar but feels a bit directionless compared to the tight focus of "Tequila".

It's at times like this with a thousand things going on but also going nowhere, you feel pop crying out for an identity. A record to stick a marker down and say, "this is what pop is in 1958".

A record like "All I Have To Do Is Dream".

Twenty-one weeks in the charts. A solid number one. Beautiful guitar chords, played on a bridge pickup with a hint of tremolo. Reverb-drenched production. The Everlys really thought about their records. It's not that notable you'll still hear it on soundtracks today, but it is notable that it sounds far more modern than its contemporaries.

Compare, say, Buddy Holly's "Rave On" (#5 August '58). Still a top tier act, still a great record, but the obvious 12-bar shuffle and backing choir make it feel that much more dated to modern ears. "All I Have To Do Is Dream" is open and sunny where "Rave On" is dense, close-textured and dark.

It didn't help that rock'n'roll as a genre was creatively spent after a mere 4 years. The reliance on gimmicks and cheap novelties to jazz up records that fundamentally hadn't moved in structure since 1954 started sliding into outright novelty. Take Don Lang's version of "Witch Doctor" (#5 June '58). If the sped up helium voices sound familiar that's because the original was recorded by Ross Bagdasarian, a.k.a David Seville of Chipmunks fame.

This was followed by a string of novelty records; "Purple People Eater", "Splish Splash", "Yakety Yak". Running the tape machine too fast, adding sound effects, writing silly lyrics - the popularity of these records belied that rock'n'roll was a dying genre, one unable to either absorb new ideas or to elevate its quality of production to Everly Brothers or Buddy Holly levels. Even though I have a soft spot for unlikely December #1 "Hoots Mon" by Lord Rockingham's XI it's another sign that by the end of 1958 first-wave rock'n'roll had no more sensible ideas to give.

The cyclic tension between "produced" and "raw" has been a regular feature of pop: think punk vs. prog or Stock Aitken Waterman singles being displaced by grunge. Even in the first six years of the charts there had been one move from "produced" (trad pop Template records) to "raw" (rock'n'roll) and now buyers were looking for something more professional again. Peggy Lee's version of "Fever" (#5 October '58) is a good example. It's dark, stripped-back and has a slinking bass line, but it's clear that care and attention has been given to it in the studio.

Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool" (#4 October '58) is another record with the kind of layered production and subtle accents you'd find on an Everly Brothers record. There's just as much influence from Elvis Presley. I find it interesting that it took this long for someone else to start picking apart how an Elvis record worked and start to replicate it, at least successfully.

Nelson was more successful in the States than in the UK, and part of this was that while the UK did want another Elvis, it wanted a British Elvis. This is a story that really gathers pace in 1959, but the first sign of it was an October #2 for Cliff Richard and what were still the Drifters, with "Move It". Now, while it might be popular to savage Cliff's career I can't find much fault with this one. It's a big bin of rock'n'roll influences, more than a shake of Elvis, and Hank Marvin's guitar constantly going off on little mini-solos which helps tie the main solo back to the rest of the song.

It was displaced from its #2 slot in November by the Everly Brothers with "Bird Dog". It sold well, maintaining a chart presence into 1959. It's not aged quite so gracefully as "All I Have To Do Is Dream" but as ever there's a wealth of detail under the surface. Amazing they did all this in the days before massive multi-track studios.

Tommy Edwards' "It's All In The Game" is the one which took the #1 spot in November '58. It's one of those floaty soft rock'n'roll records, all drive-ins and Cadillacs. The song itself had been kicking around since '51 with various jazz and crooner covers, and this one was Edwards using up the last session of his contract. It was big enough on both sides of the Atlantic to pick his career back up and keep it going until 1960.

"Rebel Rouser" by Duane Eddy was never a massive hit (#19 September '58) but showed "Tequila" wasn't completely a one-off when it came to the rock'n'roll instrumental. Compare it to the Poni-Tails with "Born Too Late" (#5 October '58) and you can perhaps see why it didn't sell in such big numbers. Frantic rock'n'roll sax was definitely old-hat compared to the smooth playing on "Born Too Late". Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" is another record which didn't do as well as its later popularity would suggest - a mere #18 in December '58. People were buying Conway Twitty's "It's Only Make Believe" (#1 December '58) instead, and how often do you hear that these days?

As rock'n'roll continued to fade, trad pop was still in rude health. Marino Marini's "Come Prima" (#2 October '58) is a bit more uptempo than what you'd have heard earlier in the decade, and on a less grand stage than that of Mantovani, but showed the travelogue single to still be alive and well. Perhaps more archetypal of late '50s big band is the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra's "Tea For Two Cha Cha", released in October and reaching #3 just at the start of 1959. It's all bold brass stabs, castanet percussion and just enough jazz that it's not going to scare your granny.

And if that's not enough, somewhere in the mix of all the other things going on in 1958, people were still buying skiffle records; Lonnie Donegan had a #3 hit with "Tom Dooley" in December. I prefer the more relaxed folk style of the Kingston Trio version (#5 January '59) though. It's one hell of a journey for a year that started with "Great Balls of Fire" at #1.

1959

One of the first hits of 1959 is rather an oddity. It's an entirely forgettable record called "To Know Him Is To Love Him" by Phil Spector and the Teddy Bears that somehow made it to #2. Anyone at the time would have been forgiven for thinking that wasn't a name worth remembering. It's a murky old record, and the only explanation I can figure out for its popularity is somewhat aping the tempo and style of "It's Only Make Believe". Somewhat.

Rock'n'roll was in the doldrums by the end of 1958, but things were about to get worse. On February 3rd Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper died in a plane crash after trying to find a better way of getting about than an unheated 1950s tour bus. This was the infamous Day The Music Died. The Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace" had already seen release in January, but rose to a posthumous #12. But it's Buddy Holly's "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" (#1 April '59, and the UK's first posthumous #1) that really highlights the loss. This is moving on from primitive rock'n'roll, with string parts pushed into every corner. Can you imagine an early '60s with both Holly and the Everlys competing for new ideas and ever-richer production?

Speaking of the Everly Brothers, "Problems" (#6 January '59) was unusually experimental for the boys. The Nashville country lead lines and sudden guitar breaks are cool, but the sudden fade out with no real resolution is an unusual lack of care.

Even without losing some of its brightest stars, rock'n'roll had spent most of 1958 suffering from running out of ideas. By 1959, skiffle was also suffering from the same problem. In particular, there was a small core repertoire of songs and after three years most of them had already been committed to record. Without any real avenue for innovation, skiffle also turned to novelty and records like Lonnie Donegan's "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On The Bedpost Overnight)", #3 March '59.

The pop world was moving on. "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" (#1 March '59) as recorded by The Platters may as well have been from another century for all the similarity it has to those skiffle records. And yet underneath it was pure trad pop. There had been evolution - this record would have been too fast and too lithe to do well in '52 - but essentially "adult" music had survived two teenage attempts to depose it from the charts.

If there was any doubt the olds were back in charge, it should have been dispelled with the rise of Russ Conway. He'd had a few piano instrumentals of old standards enter the charts toward the end of '58, but "Side Saddle" was his first #1, topping the charts in April between the Platters and Buddy Holly.

Was rock'n'roll over? Elvis scored a #1 in May with "A Fool Such As I" but it was a murky record with a guitar line that never meshes properly, and added little to the canon. The charts capitulated to novelty songs in the mould of movie star Anthony Newley, while Russ Conway released a record called "Roulette" which may as well have been a cut of him rehearsing for "Side Saddle", but still shot to #1 in June '59. Bert Weedon had a crack at being a home-grown Duane Eddy with "Guitar Boogie Shuffle" (#10 June '59) and sold a million copies of his "Play In A Day" book off the back of it. Ricky Nelson's "Never Be Anyone Else But You" is a better record than its position (#14 June '59) suggests, with a fair old Everly influence.

But it was the Everlys who finally gave up the game. "Poor Jenny" (#14 July '59) is a scrappy record, barely distinguishable from any late period rock'n'roll. Marty Wilde's #2 hit "A Teenager in Love" makes it sound thin, and at #14 it was even resoundingly beaten by Ruby Murray's "Goodbye Jimmy Goodbye" (#10 July '59), a record which could have been on the very first chart back in '52 without raising any eyebrows.

Lonnie made a good case that skiffle had survived all of this with "The Battle of New Orleans" hitting #2 in July, but post-"Chewing Gum" the perception was that he'd sold out and started making comedy records with asides to the band and all. People had started buying sped-up records under the guise of David Seville and the Chipmunks, and that sort of thing is never a good sign for the health of the charts.

Craig Douglas hit #1 in September with "Only Sixteen" but it's got a charmless and superficial air to it more befitting of an Anthony Newley music hall record. Even some great drum rolls from the Everlys with "‘Til I Kissed You" (#2 October '59) couldn't stop the chart-topping position going to Bobby Darin's "Mack The Knife", a trad pop number so relaxed it may as well be sleepwalking.

One reason I think rock'n'roll had such a fragile grip on the British charts is that there weren't any home-grown heroes to sustain it. I mentioned that part of this journey was learning to measure acts against their contemporaries, not the modern perception of them. It's easy enough to do with the Everly Brothers. But to move on from here, we need to do the same for Cliff Richard.

From a modern viewpoint this might seem an unlikely candidate for an Elvis in the British image, but it also looks it in context. He’d been born as Harry Webb to a wealthy family in India, who had decided in 1948 to become a much less wealthy family in Carshalton. They moved to Waltham Cross, then to Cheshunt, with Harry taking an O-level in English Literature. He joined a band called The Drifters — not the famous US one, but a local outfit. Perhaps there’s a universe in which Harry Webb and The Drifters are just another footnote, but prior to an appearance in Ripley, Surrey someone made the link between "rock'n'roll", "rock", "cliff face" and Cliff. One name change later, Cliff Richard and the Drifters made their debut at the Regal Ballroom, and recorded "Move It". (Which I mentioned back in 1958, or at least my writing thereof).

"Living Doll" came out in July 1959. This one had the chops to hit #1, and garnered enough attention for the more famous Drifters to request the English act change their name. The Drifters (UK) became The Shadows, and "Living Doll" gave them their first big hit under that name. If "Move It" has been an acceptable Elvis pastiche, this one had more of its own identity.

However, about that identity. This is the record where I throw my hands up and admit that, important as he and his band may have been to the British pop scene, I still don't like Cliff's music. This isn't exactly a revelation; you could ask almost anyone my age and get the same answer. Originally this would be an inherited position. When we were searching our parents’ record collections for Queen and Stones and Beatles in the '90s, we’d be told cautionary tales of the Bad Artists: prejudices against Status Quo or Genesis or indeed Cliff Richard that we'd inherit and replicate without even listening to the music to know if our position was justified.

But even now I can't overcome a niggling irritation listening to "Living Doll". There’s something too reserved about it — for a Home Counties Elvis, Cliff is a little too much Home Counties and not enough Elvis. The record is so cloyingly nice. It's Morris Minors and Lyons Corner Houses, not leather jackets and motorcycles. I'd have spent my hypothetical 1950s pocket money on Connie Francis' "Lipstick On Your Collar" (#3 August '59) instead and never mind it being American as all get out with references to soda stores and all.

Maybe it's the feeling that Cliff's performance sounds like he could give more than he does. Take Paul Anka's "Lonely Boy" (#3 September ‘59), a richly-instrumented pop single where the vocal definitely had some effort put into it. Even Perry Como has more life on "I Know", and I really shouldn't be saying that compared to the British equivalent of Elvis!

Back to Cliff: "Travellin' Light" from October 1959 was merely functional at best, with a similarly irksome combination of featherweight lyrical content and reserved performance, but those are my problems and the excitement of a home-grown rock star shot it to #1 again. Which is somewhat a shame, as that same week saw a much more deserving record reach our shores. Toledo band Johnny & The Hurricanes may have only known how to make one record, but in its first incarnation it was a hell of a record. "Red River Rock" played second fiddle to Cliff with a #3, but it's exciting.

Santo and Johnny added their own twist with "Sleep Walk" — never a big hit, but one that spawned decades of copycat performances, Brian Setzer's being of particular note. Eddie Cochran's "Somethin' Else" sounded desperate and overwrought in comparison. Also much-covered in years to come.

These were American acts again, though. The new-found appetite for home-grown acts next found its expression in Emile Ford and the Checkmates. Emile was from Saint Lucia, but moved to London. With his half-brother as bassist, the Checkmates cut "What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For", a rollicking doo wop inspired single that powered to #1 at the end of 1959. Maybe it's local pride speaking, but I think it's superior to the Coasters' "Poison Ivy", a mere #15 of the same time.

Over in the States, a young man called Neil Sedaka set himself to understanding how hit records worked. He bought a pile of them, and set out to figure how each of them ticked and how to incorporate all those ideas into a hit of his own. The result was "Oh! Carol", a deserved #3 with echoes of 1957's "Little Darlin'". Sedaka was one of the early pop writers at 1619 Broadway, better known as the Brill Building, which had contained music businesses for decades but became host to a series of pop writers and composers all working in a similar style as the early '60s approached and in doing so gave its name to that particular stream of pop.

Meanwhile The Avons, a band assembled from Ireland, Jersey and Willesden, turned up another home-grown hit with "Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Back Seat" going to #3. It's a bit of a prosaic record though, and the theme from "Rawhide" making it to #6 didn't give a great picture of the ever-shaky health of the 1950s charts at the end of 1959. Russ Conway underlined it by letting "Snow Coach" out of his sausage factory of piano instrumentals.

Still, ever-keen to improve on an invention, the Brits went back to their sheds and came up with Adam Faith. An actor and a bit of a teen heartthrob who'd even tried his hand at skiffle, Faith was a kind of Cliff Mk.2 who would reliably turn out hits from his Hampton Court base. "What Do You Want" was the first success of these, a big success in fact. (#1 December '59). The formula takes a few more risks than Cliff and the Shads did at first, and it's one of those records which isn't afraid to have a bit of fun with itself.

By this point Tommy Steele had given up and gone full music hall with "Little White Bull", a #6 hit nevertheless, and Johnnie Ray's "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" showed that the trad pop Template was still in there somewhere, absorbing those hot brass stabs from then-current instrumental practice, as per Elmer Bernstein's "Staccato's Theme", a #4 from the turn of 1960. I rather like Fats Domino's "Be My Guest" (which eventually climbed to #11 in January '60) but it's still a rock'n'roll holdout that would have been perfectly at home in '57 or ‘58.

It was left to Johnny and the Hurricanes to close out the decade in a more positive way by stamping another imprint of the one record they knew how to make, this time a revolutionary-flavoured instance entitled "Reveille Rock". I'll excuse them on the basis that "Red River Rock" was so good it can get away with a second outing. Not that I've got a soft spot for it or anything.

1960

The first number 1 to be released in 1960 was a record called “Starry Eyed” by Michael Holliday. It’s a decade-straddling curiosity of a thing. The structure is 1950s, but the guitar chimes in a definitely post-Everly manner. Freddie Cannon’s “Way Down Yonder In New Orleans”, entering the charts in the same week and eventually hitting #3 in February 1960, has a similar outlook of one foot in the past and one foot in the nascent future. It’s classic rock’n’roll, but the chorus stomp is bang up to the minute.

Either is better than yet another Anthony Newley record, which is a shame because the unremarkable “Why” (a question I ask myself too) hit the top spot a week later, suggesting that 1960 wasn’t going to be quite the clean break with ’50s awfulness we might have been hoping for. At least it wasn’t a music hall comedy effort.

Ascendant Cliff Mk.2 Adam Faith channelled Buddy Holly for a March #1 with “Poor Me”, but this only underlines the reality that the beginning of a new decade was not going to result in a radical new sound apropos of nothing but the third number in the year changing. The closest we’d be getting to anything new was Mr Acker Bilk’s instrumental turn on “Summer Set”, a record that suggested jazz was innovating even if pop wasn’t.

Johnny Mathis gave us a competent cover of old standard “Misty”, but this was one in a long line of standards for him and while there’s a fascinating story in the history of jazz we’re trying to build a history of pop here.

It fell to the underrated Emile Ford and his Checkmates to shake up a slow start to the decade with “On A Slow Boat to China”, weaving their signature doo wop harmonies with an insistently catchy guitar break. Number 3 in March 1960 nothing to be sniffed at, but it was eclipsed by Johnny Preston’s silly and insubstantial “Running Bear” on the top spot, a record I can’t bring myself to like no matter how much it may presage “Hooked On A Feeling”.

Probably the hottest vocal sound in early 1960 was imitating Buddy Holly, and Marv Johnson’s “You Got What It Takes” is a passable take on a Crickets record. Even the Everly Brothers were looking backward, and while “Let It Be Me” featured impeccable production as ever, it was sluggish and failed to excite record buyers. “Be Mine” (#4 March 1960) suggested Lance Fortune might serve as a passable backup Adam Faith if we broke the original, but this was just mining a longstanding desire for soundalike records.

If you were looking for something interesting at the start of 1960, you were looking at instrumentals. Percy Faith’s “Theme From A Summer Place” provided a huge hit — only reaching #2 at the end of March, but hanging around in the charts forever (29 weeks) and enduring long beyond that as a favoured trope of film and TV producers everywhere. If you were pining for Duane Eddy, the John Barry Seven’s “Hit & Miss” blended twangy guitar with a melody that could have been straight off an Adam Faith record. But even the relative excitement of the instrumental couldn’t shake off the past, and Russ Conway’s ever-reliable sausage factory gave us exactly the same record yet again with “Royal Event”.

At least some people were cribbing the better parts of the ’50s. We gained another British star with a rename job in the shape of Billy Fury, with “Colette” taking notes from the Everly Brothers’ copybook. This was Fury’s own composition, and gave the still just about teenage Fury (he turned 20 in April) a #9 right at the end of March.

Johnny and the Hurricanes gave us a whole twenty seconds of thinking they hadn’t just released “Red River Rock” yet again with “Beatnik Fly”, but a sprinkling of new sax and guitar couldn’t disguise the old one trick pony and it ultimately went nowhere. At least they didn’t sell out. “My Old Man’s a Dustman” might be a right old music-hall dust up, and I can’t deny cracking a smile, but everyone assumed Lonnie Donegan had been put up to doing it and the necessity of doing a novelty record didn’t make a great advertisement for the health of skiffle in 1960. Still, it traded #1 places with Anthony Newley’s “Do You Mind?”, Newley playing the serious artist for once and being all the better for it.

“Do You Mind” highlights half the problem with early 1960. It’s a mish-mash of cribbed elements from Everly Brothers records, hastily patched on to the rolling framework of a Template record (just listen to that bass plod!) without ever understanding how an Everlys record worked.

Which made it a good thing we got a genuine one a few weeks later. “Cathy’s Clown” is the kind of record only the brothers could make; immediately recognisable, noticeably different to what had gone before, and just so damn well integrated. I’ve made this point before, but I swear the Everlys put about ten times the effort that anyone else did into their records, making everything fit just so. Listen to the little ascending guitar scale after “I die each time…” and then the same signature but this time dropping down for the last note after “…I hear this sound”; it’s all of about five seconds and yet they worked so hard on this one little tiny thing, and all those other tiny little things that make these records so perfect. Oh yeah: #1 (May 1960), 18 weeks in the chart, every one of them deserved.

They showed up their contemporaries, at any rate. Adam Faith was still one of the many artists cribbing Buddy Holly: “Someone Else’s Baby” isn’t a bad record (#2 in fact), and it’s got some interest provided by a late game key change, but it suffers from the problem that a good Everlys record could render everything around it irrelevant. Even serial hit absorptionist Neil Sedaka’s “Stairway to Heaven” sounded dated with overwrought sound effects and a sax line that was best before 1958 and still had the dust on top to prove it.

This really was becoming the year of the instrumental. Duane Eddy’s “Shazam” was a mad fusion of Eddy’s signature twanginess, mad sax, and a wild “woo-hoo!” or two thrown in there for good measure. A #4 in June 1960 wasn’t a bad showing at all, and at 13 weeks it did its share of time in the charts.

However, the Template was never far from popular consciousness. Consider Connie Stevens. Like many of her contemporaries, Stevens crossed between television, film and music. She’d started out her career in teen-focused B movies, but fame came from a detective series called Hawaiian Eye. In the meantime she’d followed a familar ’50s path of putting out some old standards and novelty singles. Two of her singles entered the charts at the end of May. If you listened to “Sixteen Reasons”, you’d wonder whether to make the case for country as a key sound of 1960; Jim Reeves had a minor hit with “He’ll Have To Go” early in the year and it stuck around the lower reaches of the chart until Autumn.

However, “Sixteen Reasons” was a mere #9, and departed the chart soon after. “Mama” was the biggest hit, and this is about as Template as it comes. There’s a big string intro, the backbeat plods, the crescendo builds, and there’s a token verse in Italian to fill out the bingo card. It’s well-produced, but still could have been released at any point in the preceding decade without sounding like it was from the future.

With the British desire to have our own home-grown versions of the hottest American sounds, it was no surprise that we returned to our garden shed and emerged with The Fabulous Flee-Rekkers, a domestic answer to Johnny and the Hurricanes. “Green Jeans”, a reworking of Greensleeves produced by a temperamental 31 year old called Joe Meek, was only a minor hit but served to confirm that the instrumental was the hot sound of the year. Even the by now formulaic sound of Johnny and the Hurricanes was good for a number 8 with “Down Yonder”.

I don’t think this is down to an innate desire on the part of the record-buying public to not have vocals. Instead, it’s more that the plodding bass and tame melodies of Template records just didn’t work if you took away the singer, and so the instrumental bands had to try something new and take a few risks if they wanted to make an engaging record. (Even if, as per the Hurricanes, they merely made the same record over and over once they’d cracked the formula for the first time).

What would happen if you took the excitement the instrumental bands were playing with and then added back the singer? Johnny Kidd & The Pirates answered just that question with “Shakin’ All Over”. #1 in August 1960, Kidd added a moody lyric to what would have been a decent instrumental in its own right. Barely five seconds in and you can tell this record’s got attitude. The Pirates added extra theatrics by dressing as — what else? — pirates for their stage show and performing in front of a galleon backdrop, which I might almost mock as a music hall pastiche had not their sound been so exciting for the time.

Cliff and the Shads were taking notes. “Please Don’t Tease” tangled with the Pirates for the #1 slot, and while it was a far more conservative affair you can hear the influence of the instrumental. It’s got an unusually spacious solo for the time (ten seconds of trying to blister the audience’s faces off with a flurry of notes was the typical rock’n’roll paradigm) which let young guitarist Hank Marvin show off his Stratocaster. It wouldn’t be the last time he did so.

A bit of Everly craftsmanship is always welcome, and July release “When Will I Be Loved” went to #4 at the end of August. They make it sound so easy. A walking bass underpins the whole outing and gives it swagger, the Brothers’ vocals are on top form, and as ever the record is full of little details you’ll still be noticing for the first time on the dozenth play.

But 1960 was building up to something.

At then end of July the Shadows tried their hand at making a record without Cliff Richard. A little instrumental originally written for Burt Weedon by composer Jerry Lordan, called “Apache”. It was a huge #1. “Apache” cemented the instrumental as the sound of 1960 so convincingly that Duane Eddy’s “Because They’re Young” sat under it in the #2 slot mostly by virtue of being in the right place at the right time.

To understand the impact of “Apache”, though, we need to look back at when Lonnie Donegan first hit big. Teenagers in 1956 didn’t have much in the way of means, and so if forming a band needed any equipment more complex than a washboard, a tea chest and a cheap old guitar with 4 or 5 working strings then it was as much out of reach as the moon. Skiffle was appealing to the teenager of ’56 because, for once, it was attainable. You could form a group yourself and play in your local village hall.

By 1960, the teenage situation had improved marginally. Nobody could afford a Strat like Hank Marvin’s, but it was entirely feasible for a youngster with a part-time job to buy a department store electric guitar, a Watkins Dominator amp, and try to replicate the sounds they heard on Pirates or Shadows records. In the case of “Apache”, it’s as simple as putting your finger down on the second fret of your guitar, playing a couple of notes, and realising you can go down the village hall and make a few bob playing this. You don’t even need a good singer!

I don’t want to preempt the rest of the 1960s, but this feels like something that might become quite important within a few years.

If I’ve learnt anything from the long slog through Template records via the brief but unfulfilled promise of rock’n’roll that eventually got us to August 1960 and “Apache”, it’s that pop history was largely messy and failed to organise itself along the clean lines between genres that revisionists like to draw.

So while “Apache” may have inspired a thousand small beat combos, it was still sharing the charts with novelty singles like Brian Hyland’s “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” and Rolf Harris bringing the Australian music hall to our shores with “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport”. The Template still loomed large with records like “As Long As He Needs Me” by Shirley Bassey, which hung around in the charts for half a year and eventually hit #2 in November 1960.

The sound of the charts was maturing, though. Listen to Fats Domino on “Walking To New Orleans” from August 1960; it’s immediately identifiable as one of his, but compare to “Blueberry Hill” and you’ll hear cleaned up production, a string section adding a bit of lushness, and that metronome click running through the whole track giving it a bit of texture.

Roy Orbison was one of the finest in this new, glossier era. “Only The Lonely” soundtracked much of the Winter, hitting #1 in October 1960. If “Apache” was one you could make at home, this was one you’d need a studio and a stack of cash to reproduce. It’s easy to forget in the modern era of excellent synthesisers and multi-track studios that the little string stabs and accents on “Only The Lonely” would have required hiring a small army of session musicians and a lot of studio time to get things right while recording in similar conditions to a live performance. If songs of this era sounded like expensive records it’s because they were expensive records.

Even Elvis was sounding a touch more polished than his raw ’50s performances. That said, #2 “A Mess Of Blues” sounds like it owes perhaps a little more than it should to earlier Everly Brothers hit “When Will I Be Loved” and while I’m always happy to hear things being influenced by the Everlys there’s such a thing as too much.

As it did through much of 1960, country continued to bump along barely above radar altitude — Hank Locklin’s “Please Help Me, I’m Falling” is a nice record but it only made #9. Connie Francis had more luck with “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”, a #5 from September that also had the unusual distinction of being subsequently rerecorded as a German-language polka rave-up.

Another early-decade oddity (although technically a carry over from 1959) was the death disc. A morbid teenage fascination with death is almost as old as the concept of the teenager itself, and this manifested in records whose characters met their fate in grisly car accidents and motorcycle crashes. “Tell Laura I Love Her”, a Ricky Valance #1 from October 1960 in which hapless protagonist Tommy enters a stock car race on the way home from work. It’s an affecting lyrical performance, although Valance hailed from Monmouthshire so it’s hard to shake the nagging doubt that the car Tommy crashed in flames was probably a Morris Minor. Explains why no-one knows how it overturned in flames, at least.

The death disc was a noticeable enough phenomenon for country artist Bob Luman to record bouncy answer record, “Let’s Think About Living” which reached #6 in November. The answer record itself was already an extant concept, with “The Purple People Eater Meets The Witch Doctor” having been recorded by Joe South way back in ‘58. Luman, incidentally, had earlier formed a band called the Shadows over in the US, although they had never achieved enough success for the UK Shadows (formerly the Drifters, before the Drifters told them not to be) to complain about it.

The instrumental was still in there somewhere, with Tacoma, WA band The Ventures releasing “Walk — Don’t Run” at the end of September. Talking about the attainability of songs, this was one of the first things I learnt to play on guitar — before I figured out Apache, in fact! If you were a fledgling beat group on the village hall circuit you’d have added this to your growing repertoire in no time. The Piltdown Men’s “MacDonald’s Cave” also kept the instrumental flag flying, although that one had a whiff of the novelty to it.

It’s about time we caught up with the Everlys, and there they were at #4 in October with “Lucille”. They’d signed for Warner Brothers in 1960; “Cathy’s Clown” was the first Warner single to be released in the UK, and had catalogue number WB1. All of those firsts and making such an absolutely fantastic record must have taken it out of them, because “Lucille” was the boys in one of their holding patterns.

Either that, or late 1960 was so much more interesting that they didn’t stand out as much any more. Compare Billy Fury’s “Colette” from earlier in the year with “Wondrous Place”, released at the start of October. It was only a minor hit at #25, surprising for one of the best-known records of the era, but it had a maturity and assurance that “Colette” lacked. In keeping with trends, it was also a lot cleaner.

Then there was Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang”, #9 in November 1960. One of the things that marked out records through the latter half of the year was that while they were often expensive, they didn’t shout about it. If you listen to a Template record (they were still churning them out: “My Love For You” by Johnny Mathis was contemporary), it comes out right at the start yelling, “we got strings! Listen to ‘em!” On “Chain Gang”, the string section doesn’t even come in until after a minute has passed, and they’re never any more than a subtle accompaniment.

This idea of subtlety spread across vastly different streams of pop. The menacing “Restless” from Johnny Kidd and the Pirates was just as coy about getting up in your face as Roy Orbison’s gentle “Blue Angel”, which was covered in backing singers and soft strings but never went out of its way to draw attention to them. Even Elvis was quietly cribbing from the copybook: “It’s Now Or Never”, a #1 from the moment it was released in November, toned everything down while adding a load more in. Below it at #2, “Save The Last Dance For Me” by The Drifters (the real ones, not the pre-Shadows Shadows) put its strings so low in the mix they were almost non-existent.

If those names sound familiar, it’s because November 1960 involved a lot of catching up with familiar faces. Connie Francis went full country on “My Heart Has A Mind Of Its Own”, netting a #3 at the end of November. The Shadows gave us “Man of Mystery” — at #5 it was no “Apache” but did a decent stint on the charts (13 weeks). One wonders if this was in part due to Hank Marvin letting loose and being a bit harder to replicate this time round.

Closing out 1960, we had “Perfidia” from the Ventures in December, an instrumental so laid back it’s almost a lullaby until it wakes you up with a key change halfway through. It traded for the #4 slot with “Counting Teardrops” by a sleepless Emile Ford & The Checkmates; maybe Emile should have listened to “Perfidia” if he felt the need to count teardrops or sheep. At the other end of matters, Acker Bilk gave everyone a rousing wake up call with the jazzy “Buona Sera”.

Anthony Newley was at #3, Lonnie Donegan was still “Lively” well into his novelty era and even the Russ Conway sausage factory was in there somewhere, although he was self-aware enough by this point to start giving his records titles that started with “Even More” and ended in “Part 1”.

There are also a small brace of records that I’m not going to mention here, because while they were released right at the tail end of 1960 most of them only became hits in 1961, and they’re more interesting in the context of that year.

1961

The Template was a strange old thing. While it produced songs that shared the same structure and largely sounded the same except in the most masterful of hands, it managed to see off early rock’n’roll, see off skiffle, and even hang on as the instrumental took hold of pop.

Even at the turn of 1961 not only were established artists having Template hits, but new artists were taking it as their chosen form of expression. Matt Monro had enjoyed a brief career before slipping into obscurity at the tail end of the ’50s, but after some unfortunate circumstances working with George Martin on a Peter Sellers comedy record, Martin asked Monro to record for Parlophone. “Portrait of My Love” was their second single, and reached #3 in January 1961. It takes some cues from the era: it’s a far more subtle thing than a record made in, say, ’58.

With this in mind, it’s easy to understand why Ray Charles’ first big hit in the UK was “Georgia On My Mind”, which is an out and out Template record. I’m torn on this, because I love this record; it’s an old standard, but Ray sells it in a way that many of his contemporaries didn’t. Maybe it’s that he was an innovator at heart: listen to 1959’s improvised jam turned studio record “What’d I Say” and you’d never accuse him of being a Template artist. Remember where we were in ‘59? In the context of that year, the electric piano intro to “What’d I Say” was space age madness from a far-flung future, and it’s a shame it never made the UK singles chart. Still, it was played in the right places, and a young man called George Harrison remembers listening to it at an all-night party in 1959, while another young man going by the name of Paul McCartney was similarly inspired — by 1961 their band was playing the song live in Hamburg nightclubs.

Post-Everly rock’n’roll still had its place, though, and Johnny Tillotson had a #1 in mid-January with “Poetry In Motion”. Again, the push to subtlety of ’60 was much in evidence. Even a more rough and ready record like Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs’ “Stay” was still far more sophisticated than any early Elvis record. (“Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, a #1 in February, showed the King was taking notes from all sides; the production is smoother, but that’s a bet-hedging Template backbeat keeping it all going! The haunting vocal and lengthy spoken monologue are anything but Template though.)

Bobby Vee’s “Rubber Ball” (#4 February 1961) gives more than a passing nod to Buddy Holly and the Crickets combined with production that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Roy Orbison record. However, this is only part of something bigger — all of these disparate high points of ’59 and ’60 are starting to combine into an identifiable pop sound of ‘61.

And who better to underline this than the Everlys? “Walk Right Back” is a great record with one of the most enduring melodies of the period, but unlike the end of the ’50s it finally fits in. It’s merely one of a number of confident, well-crafted records rather than a standout beacon in a fog of mediocrity. As if knowing they needed to pull something special out of the hat, the Everly Brothers made it a double 'A' side with “Ebony Eyes”, a beautifully fragile death disc whose heartfelt spoken monologue knocks “Are You Lonesome Tonight” into a cocked hat. As ever, you’ll never stop noticing the details, like the way the drums emulate rolls of thunder from the storm that claimed Flight 1203, but only from the moment the protagonist realises something is amiss.

However, the brothers were no longer alone. Nothing illustrates this more than “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, a #4 for the Shirelles in March. Remember Neil Sedaka, the man who sat down with a stack of pop records to figure out how they worked? Well, he had a friend who wrote music under the name of Carole King, with her college friend Gerry Goffin providing the lyrics. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” was the first hit of their partnership, and it’s a deserving one. The string section twines itself around the lead vocal, before breaking off and running free in a solo.

A host of songs followed cementing this as the sound of ’61. Notable examples include Adam Faith’s “Who Am I?”, the charming “Are You Sure?” by The Allisons (#2 in March) and Bobby Vee’s “More Than I Can Say” from April.

Of course, as ever in pop, the rise of a new era never completely displaces the old. So alongside all this you could end up with a record straight out of the music hall like “76 Trombones” by The King Brothers. If that wasn’t novelty enough for you, then Benny Hill was releasing some early singles. The instrumental was still going great guns too; “Wheels” by The String-A-Longs was a fun little example. The Shadows had their latest as well: “F.B.I.” augmented its galloping beat with plenty of tape echo and provided the little beat groups playing village halls with something new to aspire to. If you preferred your instrumental a little more Mantovani, then Ferrante & Teicher could provide their “Theme From Exodus”, which reached #6 in April 1961.

What’s interesting about 1961, though, is that despite finding a new signature sound pop wasn’t content to stick with it. This was a big break from the past: the great hope of rock’n’roll had faded away when, after two years of the same old blistering solos and the same old frantic sax, it had taken novelty song lyrics to shift what was an increasingly stale sound. Skiffle had seen the same fate. The only truly enduring sound so far had been the Template.

“Blue Moon” by The Marcels could have followed the subtle strings and up-tempo rhythm that had defined ’61, but it didn’t. Instead, it was a freakout in a barbershop which married that a capella intro with harmonies all over the place and a vocal line that could have come from a Platters record. It was #1 in May. Hot on its heels came Del Shannon’s “Runaway”. Built around a framework of piano and a home-made clavioline called the Musitron, it was maybe the most extreme example of early 1961’s desire to keep finding new sounds to augment its pop signature.

Clarence “Frogman” Henry married big band brass with Fats Domino inspired piano for “(I Don’t Know Why) But I Do” — I suspect this may have been one for the parents but it’s up-tempo and fun. It hit #3 in June, at any rate. The tempo is one of the things I like about the more coherent pop identity of ’61; take a representative record like Billy Fury’s “Halfway To Paradise” (released in May, eventually hitting #3 in August) and note how what would easily have been rendered as a dirge three years prior now has some swing in its step.

Tempo may have been one of the most pervasive elements of the ’61 sound; Shadows instrumental “The Frightened City” runs at an elevated clip, and Elvis #1 from June, “Surrender” is a similarly pacy record. Eden Kane joined the growing British line-up of teen idols with his first record for Decca in June, “Well I Ask You” riffing on Elvis but with a very British note. This one made it to #1 in August.

Another artist seemingly influenced by Elvis (although in truth it was far more Carl Perkins) was American Ricky Nelson; he’d been successful already Stateside but “Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart)” was his first big UK hit, going to #2 in July 1961.

Even with all this going on, pop still couldn’t break entirely with its past. “Pasadena” by The Temperance Seven could have soundtracked a Laurel and Hardy short, and while this may have been deliberate on their part it sounds very out of place. Anthony Newley was still having music hall hits, too; “Pop Goes The Weasel” went to #12 proving there was still a market out there.

But never mind. Buy “Temptation” by the Everly Brothers (at #1 in July, many did), turn it up loud, and be happy that the Everlys are finally only one of many acts who can sell you a great pop record in 1961.

Let’s continue 1961 with a pair of singles that were very typical for their year, but very atypical for their artists. “Weekend” (#15 July ’61) is like someone’s celebrated finding a volume control on Eddie Cochran by turning it down fifty percent. If anything, it makes the case that normal Eddie is just Buddy Holly with the volume turned up twice as loud. Well — maybe that’s an overly curmudgeonly assessment. It’s a good record, and anyway the number of times I’ve spent playing “Summertime Blues” on a big ol’ Gretsch suggests Eddie is the last person I should be mocking.

Speaking of Gretsch guitars, the other record is Duane Eddy’s “Ring Of Fire” — an unusually complex arrangement for Eddy, and a mere #17 which is a shame as it deserved better. Top placings or no, these are both very much records in keeping with the sound of ’61. And “Ring Of Fire” is interesting because if you took that record, stripped it back to its very bare bones and then built it back up with a vocal you’d end up with something not too far off Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me”, a surprisingly minor hit that only spent 4 weeks in the chart and never saw higher than #27.

All of these records were beaten by child star Helen Shapiro, whose “You Don’t Know” climbed the charts through July, eventually hitting #1 in August. Ideas may have been different nearly sixty years ago, and the number of songs which treat sixteen as a magical age are worrying to modern ears, but at merely fourteen I think it’s legitimate to call London east ender Shapiro a child star even by the standards of the age. It’s definitely a sound of ’61 record, at any rate.

But then was the sound of ’61 a static point, or was it best represented by the year pop found its endless hunger to reinvent itself? Now would be as good a time as any to introduce a three-story flat above a handbag shop at 304 Holloway Road in a corner of what was at the time the run-down borough of Islington. Joe Meek (whom we last heard associated with the fabulous Flee-Rekkers) had made this his studio and the home of RGM Sound, and in September 1961 he had his first number 1 as producer on TV star John Leyton’s “Johnny Remember Me”.

This is a record that had care lavished on it, but not in the same glossy, high-budget manner of the Everlys and their Nashville background. The charm of Joe Meek’s production is that while he was a ceaseless experimenter, his records always had an element of home-made authenticity to them. “Johnny Remember Me” has those ghostly backing vocals and a galloping guitar that never sounds any less than distant from the record, but you can still tell if you listen hard enough that it was recorded in a flat, especially if you compare it to something like Sam Cooke’s “Cupid”, a #7 from late September that drips with sophistication. Still, I wouldn’t have a Joe Meek record any other way.

What’s surprising after the slow-moving ’50s is how quickly records started dating now the pop sound was evolving. Bobby Vee’s “How Many Tears” would have sounded modern at the start of the year, but in this company it’s a bit old-hat. Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again” was clearly from a previous decade, although memories of the Twist were enough to keep it around in the charts until it went to #2 in early 1962.

Pop continued to favour new sounds. While Lonnie Donegan had a hit with “Michael Row The Boat” it wasn’t a #1 until it was recorded by a folk act called The Highwaymen — their version, simply called “Michael” hit the top spot in October, hot on the heels of the Shadows who’d landed “Kon-Tiki” there the week before. Del Shannon’s “Hats Off To Larry” actually toned it down some from “Runaway”, although the Musitron was still in there, gaining a very “Runaway”-like solo in the process. (A fun game with these singles is to spot all the things you can find in both.)

I’ll admit to finding most of the novelty records of the period a horrible slog through music hall idioms and lazy production, but I’ll make an exception for fun minor hit “Who Put The Bomp (In The Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)” by the Viscounts, which is just plain good old fun. Also it shares a fair bit of its rock’n’rolling beat with Helen Shapiro’s next hit “Walking Back To Happiness”, a massive hit from late October. It kept John Leyton follow-up “Wild Wind” from the top spot, even if that record did see the return of the ghostly choir. It took the return of Elvis with “His Latest Flame” taking the #1 spot away from Shapiro in November ’61. (It probably helped that it was a double 'A' side.)

Jazz was still putting in a showing, although it was a more mature sort of jazz that excited chart buyers; Dave Brubeck’s smoky instrumental “Take Five” was a #6 in November, and Ray Charles had a hit with standard “Hit The Road Jack”. It’s got a similar atmosphere that brings to mind tobacco-stained basement clubs with dim lighting. Of course, if you wanted standards 1961 was still creating new ones. The year saw the release of a little film called Breakfast At Tiffany’s, and Danny Williams had a huge hit at the end of the year with his version of “Moon River”, a Mancini/Mercer penned song that for me will always bring to mind Audrey Hepburn on the window ledge no matter who sings it.

I think at some point I may have pointed to Acker Bilk as an early progenitor of this tendency towards mature jazz with high production values, and “Stranger On The Shore” from December ’61 is the perfect record to cap off this little diversion, especially as it went on to become the biggest-selling single of 1962.

Anyway, that’s ’62 and we still need to finish looking at the sound of ’61. Dion’s “Runaround Sue” had the tempo, a distinctive “hey, hey, whoah hey, hey” backing vocal and called back to early rock’n’roll without slavishly copying it. And remember how Matt Monro made a Template record with a tiny nod to modern sound at the start of the year? Listen to Frankie Vaughan’s “Tower Of Strength” — that’s a Template record taking so much from the sound of ’61 that it becomes consumed by it.

It’s nearly a decade since the start of the popular music charts and the Template has finally started to crumble and wilt in the face of an all-consuming new pop sound. 1962 has all the potential to become an interesting year in music.

1962

Let me skip forward many, many years. Remember how I said “Mis-Shapes” wasn’t just a pop song, it was something that described a movement? Well, if my generation chose to describe itself in terms of that, then the teens of 1962 had Cliff Richard’s “The Young Ones”, a song separated from Suede’s 1996 “Trash” by 34 years and little else.

Pop had found a rallying statement: we’re young. It also had a sound that was up-tempo and enriched with strings and chiming guitars: Bobby Vee’s “Run To Him” from the start of ’62 was a prime example, as is “The Young Ones” itself. It was a sound that allowed for variety — there’s a decent sonic gap between either of those records and Eden Kane’s “Forget Me Not”, a #3 from February ’62. Helen Shapiro’s “Tell Me What He Said” added a big piano and vocal intro, but it soon settled into the recognisable pop sound.

And the originators? I keep trying to make this case: the Everly Brothers did it first and did it best. Even once the rest of the pop world had caught up, records like January’s “Crying In The Rain” were still a cut above when it came to production and attention to detail. Listen to Elvis #1 “Can’t Help Falling In Love”, then compare it to what Elvis was doing in ’58, and then compare it to what the Everlys were doing in ’58. That little bit of steel guitar used as an accent tells the story: Elvis caught up. But the Everlys were the ones already there in the first place.

If the Everlys had encouraged people to start seriously producing records, then I’d also make the case that the Shadows were encouraging them to pick up guitars and get to that point in the first place. And talking of the Shadows, there’s something that really pleases me about 1962. “Wonderful Land”, from March ’62, was their biggest single. Bigger than “Apache”. Which is great, because it’s also their best single. Just a beautiful record. If you grew up with the curiously British phenomenon of the Ladybird books, a series which detailed the most mundane aspects of suburban life with wonderful paintings by the same commercial artists who did contemporary advertising, then “Wonderful Land” is the soundtrack of those books. I can sit and listen to this thing on repeat for ages. It’s probably a good thing for the harmoniousness of my household that I do so on headphones.

Alright, moving on. The Big O (Roy Orbison) was at #2 in April with “Dream Baby”, which is interesting for how much it takes from pop’s history: it’s a secret rock’n’roll song, played at a less manic pace and with those horn stabs that were so popular in ’58. Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ The Night Away” was similarly backward-looking, although some of this could be explained by the brief resurgence in the popularity of the twist in 1962. (The re-release of Chubby Checker’s 1960 original “The Twist” even made it to #14).

Del Shannon was starting to join the roster of recyclers with the number of songs he could build on the basic chassis of “Runaway” — “Hey! Little Girl” omits the Musitron but it’s the same running beat and assortment of minor chords. Still, a #2 in May ’62, following on the heels of Bruce Channel’s “Hey! Baby”, a fairly sober affair with a nice turn on the harmonica. Maybe May was a month in which people felt they had to buy a record with “Hey!” in the title.

That said, May’s biggest single was two minutes of mad classical wig-out in the form of “Nut Rocker”. The credit on the label was to a band called B Bumble & The Stingers, but in reality they were a bunch of session musicians goofing around and wondering if they could sell the result as a record, a format that would give us Booker T & The M.G.s later in the year.

And yet, with all of this, The Template was still kicking around. “The Wonderful World of The Young” by Danny Williams came out in April ’62 and could almost have been a carbon copy of “Here In My Heart”. But lyrically, this is someone looking in from the outside. It didn’t understand that wonderful world of the young anywhere near as well as Billy Fury’s “Last Night Was Made For Love”, a record which kept its strings under far tighter control.

Maybe I gave Elvis a bit too much grief for “Can’t Help Falling In Love” coming over a bit Everlys, because “Good Luck Charm” set an Elvis template (small t!) of its own, with a bounce in the bassline, the famous “uh huh huh” and Scotty Moore’s guitar tone making a passable imitation of an electric piano. Predictably, it was another #1, keeping home-made Elvis equivalent Cliff’s double 'A' side “Do You Want To Dance/I’m Looking Out The Window” from the top spot in June.

If the Template was still looming large, then so was the inconsequential novelty song — Mike Sarne’s “Come Outside” (with Wendy Richard performing vocal interjections) was a ridiculously corny #1 in July although at least the surroundings give me nowhere near the amount of despair that the ’50s did. You might get a horrific novelty, but then there’s the soft folk-like “Ginny Come Lately” by Brian Hyland, and Joe Brown’s “A Picture Of You” is Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly by way of Lincolnshire.

Oh yeah, and July ’62 is the month where I become a massive hypocrite. Because I love Ray Charles’ #1 “I Can’t Stop Loving You” (sadly not on Spotify in the correct version) even in spite of it being at least 70% Template compliant. Can I justify it on terms of craft and Ray having put serious effort into it, rather than just a lazy approach of, “well, this makes hits, let’s do this.” Probably not. But it reminds me of third year at university, where I’d go round a couple of friends’ rather chaotic household and someone would always be in the living room watching the end of Osamu Tezuka’s “Metropolis”, soundtracked by this very song. Which is one of the defining characteristics of pop — its ability to define a moment, to transport you back to a time and place when you hear a familiar record many years after.

Or maybe all of the ’50s has broken me to the point I’ll accept anything. I don’t mind Jimmy Rodgers’ “English Country Garden” either, and might almost go so far as to suggest it inadvertently created the genre of baroque pop four years early.

Back to normal service: The Crickets had attempted to carry on after the tragic accident that killed Buddy Holly, and “Don’t Ever Change” was #8 in August. There’s a real sadness to this record, though. You can feel the band lost a key member in horrible circumstances, and I can’t listen to this without thinking about it. Let’s move on.

Frank Ifield’s “I Remember You” was #1 in August ’62, and featured some harmonica lines vaguely reminiscent of “Hey! Baby”. I don’t care so much for the vocal performance, though. I’m feeling August is not a good month for my tastes, with novelty putting in a strong showing in the form of Pat Boone’s “Speedy Gonzales” and Bernard Cribbins’ “Right Said Fred”, and even serious songs like Bobby Darin’s “Things” sounding rather inconsequential.

In this company, it’s Nat King Cole who sounds like he’s learnt the most from the mad rush for new sounds in ’60-’62. “Let There Be Love” is clearly descended from the great crooner singles of the ’50s, but it’s got an attention to detail and desire to be interesting for interesting’s sake that’s right up there with the rest of 1962. It doesn’t seem out of place compared to something like Brian Hyland’s “Sealed With A Kiss”, which sounds oddly prescient of the Moody Blues’ “Candle Of Life” although that’s probably coincidence. (Beside which, it’s supposed to be 1962 and therefore the Moodies are still kicking around in various little local bands around the suburbs of Birmingham at this time)

Having given us the soundtrack to Britain, the Shadows decided they’d also score those kind of endearingly naff Spanish holidays we all used to go on before “holidays” became “travelling”, with “Guitar Tango” a #4 that is very obviously of its August ’62 time. Elvis, having found a small-t template that worked for him, had another #1 in September with “She’s Not You”.

With all this settling into a rather easygoing and pleasant way to make a pop record, it makes one wonder quite what Joe Meek was thinking of sticking a microphone down his toilet and flushing it over in the flat above 304 Holloway Road. But record this he did, then reversed the tape and in doing so gave us the intro to “Telstar”. This record gets a bit of grief for being the favourite pop song of Margaret Thatcher (although if you’re going down that road you should reserve maximum ire for “How Much Is That Doggy In The Window?” which was her favourite song of all time, making my distinction between “pop music” and “popular songs” technically a revival of early period Thatcherism).

But think of the song through the mind of someone who saw herself as a reformer, had been an MP for just three years at that point, had been on the front bench but a single year, and suddenly heard the most forward-thinking record of the year, the decade so far, possibly even the entire history of pop. If “Wonderful Land” flew over what Britain was in 1962, the Tornados took a break from being Billy Fury’s backing band to get in their toilet-powered rocket ship and treat us to a manifesto of what Britain could be. And all of that in one instrumental.

Fans of Del Shannon’s band and their home-made Musitron would have recognised another clavioline type instrument keeping things on track, and ex-Pirates drummer Clem Cattini took his familiar role behind the drums, acting as much as Meek’s in-house skins man as he did member of the Tornados. Predictably such a forward-thinking, optimistic record in a period of pop that was all about forward thinking and optimism turned into a massive #1 by the middle of October, leaving echoes in its wake such as the demented “Rocket Man” by space suit wearing Swedish band The Spotnicks, an electric version of folk song “Polyushko-polye” that the chronology suggests was produced independently but rushed onto the British charts two weeks after “Telstar” made its first entry in early September.

Whether “Telstar” itself was an independent idea soon became a bone of contention, and Meek was sued for plagiarism before he received any significant royalties from it, with the case not being resolved in Meek’s favour until much later in the ‘60s.

With Joe Meek dominating the charts, even if not getting the money for it, it’s time to catch up with another big name in pop, the Goffin/King writing partnership. Their latest hit was “The Loco-Motion”, sung by Little Eva. It’s an evolution of the Brill Building sound they broke with the Shirelles, mixed with a nod that if the Twist had managed a spurt of popularity earlier in the year, maybe what the public wanted was another dance to learn. Carole King was also recording for herself, although only by accident — “It Might As Well Rain Until September” was supposed to be a demo for a Bobby Vee track, but it hit #3 in October and I guess that makes it the definitive version.

If you couldn’t decide between the Twist and the Loco-motion, then you could always go with Chris Montez’s “Let’s Dance”, which name-checked just about everything but said any of them would do. The organ brings to mind “Red River Rock” which is no bad thing in my book — pop was learning to look back at the same time it was striding forward. It was even stealing from the Template; Mark Wynter’s #4 from November “Venus In Blue Jeans” might have had a straight-up Template string intro and a little bit of a build to a crescendo, but it was a modern record that incorporated just as many Cliff Richard-style vocals and Sam Cooke-esque strings as it did elements swiped from “Here In My Heart”.

Frankie Vallie borrowed from doo-wop for “Sherry”, a strutting proto-soul outing that made it to #8 at the end of November. Del Shannon even managed to channel the ’50s obsession with European-sounding records on “The Swiss Maid”, notable for being a break with his usual “Runaway”-based approach to making a single. Susan Maugham’s “Bobby’s Girl” is another record to mix ’50s idioms with a more modern sound.

It almost makes you think the next thing to crop up is going to be a modernised skiffle act. Pick something like, I don’t know, Liverpool band The Quarrymen, formed by a then 16-year-old John Lennon in 1956. Come the turn of the decade they’d renamed themselves, and gone over to Hamburg to hone their craft playing extended jams of “What’d I Say” to audiences of sailors in dingy clubs where they couldn’t hear their own instruments.

These untoward circumstances led the former Quarrymen to learn how to really play as one unit; they’d say in later years that all they had to work with was a thud in the chest whenever Paul McCartney played a note on his bass. These guys came back to England and they were tight. But in the context of late ’62 they were just another bunch of lads making an old sound — merely a more talented version of the kids who’d picked up guitars and were making a bit of scratch playing the easier Shadows hits and old Johnny Kidd and the Pirates songs in village halls.

With records like “Let’s Dance”, “Venus In Blue Jeans”, “The Loco-Motion” and “Telstar” being the big sounds of ’62, can you blame Decca for having told these upstart Beatles at the start of the year that guitar groups were on the way out? (Bear in mind they’d played a bunch of old rock-’n’-roll songs at their audition). Was Joe Meek right in saying they were nothing more than another bunch of noise, and all they did was copy other people’s music?

Well, listen to “Love Me Do” in its proper context, and we can talk about this later.

When I talked about my personal history with pop, I mentioned there was a long gap between growing out of silly, kids’ stuff records in mid-’94 and discovering “Different Class” late in ’95. I spent much of that year and a half immersed in classic rock, and by extension the royal family of classic rock: The Beatles.

This had all started with a book I’d been lent called “The Art Of The Beatles”. I’d skimmed through it at first but in the summer school holidays I read that thing cover to cover and back again, fascinated by the band’s story and the artwork it had spawned. What music could they have created to produce such a rich seam of creativity?

What you have to remember about going on this kind of journey in ’94 was that there was no Spotify, no YouTube, no Napster. A copy of a CD album by any of rock’s royalty would have been £16.99, the equivalent of £31 in today’s money. Tapes were marginally cheaper, but still represented weeks of saving. So for me to uncover the music of the Beatles required this sort of patient scavenger hunt. Listening to radio shows that I knew played ’60s music for hours on end, hoping to hear a Beatles track that I’d never heard before. Finding relatives who had VHS copies of “Magical Mystery Tour” or had recorded “Yellow Submarine” off the television. Getting parents to dig old vinyl records out of storage. Sometimes you’d get friends who had access to something you didn’t, and they’d say, “you’ve got to listen to Revolution, it’s mad!” with wide eyes.

The net result is you ended up with a lot of love for bands like the Beatles and Led Zeppelin and Queen, because you’d had to put in so much effort to discover and catalogue their music. Plus the nature of discovery: listening to the things which were still worth playing on radio, putting on film soundtracks or at least keeping in storage meant you only heard the best stuff. It would certainly have been much harder for me to develop a youthful Queen obsession had I been aware of their large number of duff album tracks and experimental missteps right from the beginning.

So with all that in mind, it rather pains me to say that in its company, “Love Me Do” is merely a less good “Hey! Baby”, its production quality a good 18 months behind its contemporaries, and a peak position of #17 shows that Beatlemania was far from instant. The public were buying Frank Ifield’s “Lovesick Blues” and Rolf Harris’ break with comedy “Sun Arise”, which notably features an imitated didgeridoo owing to Rolf not having figured out how to play the real thing at the time.

This is what Decca had been thinking. Pop had been moving away from raucous guitar noise — records like the Everly Brothers’ “No One Can Make My Sunshine Smile” (#11 in December ’62) were a far more mature and laid-back affair. The sonically more adventurous instrumental had been absorbed back into the pop song, perhaps never more obviously so than in #4 from January ’63, “Dance With The Guitar Man” by Duane Eddy, which married his signature sounds with vocals from The Blossoms.

The Blossoms also recorded “He’s A Rebel”, although the name on the sleeve was the Crystals. It was a bigger hit in the US than on these shores, but introduced the signature traits of producer Phil Spector to the UK audience: girl groups and the wall of sound with its dominant piano. Spector was the stateside equivalent of Joe Meek; a driven and somewhat mad auteur who was obsessed with making history every time he stepped into the studio. Of course he was on a far higher budget, and you could never criticise a Philles record of sounding like it was recorded in a flat above a shop.