Category: 1955-1959

“You’ve Changed” (1958) – Billie Holiday * Written by Bill Carey and Carl T. Fischer * Produced by Irving Townsend * Arranged by Ray Ellis * LP : Lady in Satin * Label: Columbia

For a worthwhile overview of the stardust-sprinkled wonder that is Billie Holiday’s Lady in Satin album, read Will Frielander’s entry in his book The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums (2017). This gives a refresher on the lifetime of personal pain she brought to the sessions, and also her unlikely pairing with Ray Ellis, whose own artistic banner as a studio sugar man waved considerably lower than Holiday’s.

One track on the album emerges with special glory halfway through and stops listeners in their tracks. This is “You’ve Changed,” and although others had previously dampened it with their tears, Holiday transforms it, with her peerless control and inflections, into something that seethes and devastates.

And why does this lament about a love interest who has become woefully incompatible manage to jibe so well with its angel choirs and galactic backdrop? Because it has a secret message of hope, a subliminal flip side of meaning that taps into one of humanity’s fondest anticipations that people can, indeed, change. 

“Mobile” (1955) – Julius LaRosa * Written by Robert Wells and David Holt * Orchestra conducted by Joe Reisman * 45: “Mobile” / “I Hate to Say Hello” * Billboard Territorial Best Sellers: #9 (Kansas City)

Julius LaRosa was an Italian-American singer from Brooklyn who, fresh out of the Navy, became a TV darling on Arthur Godfrey and His Friends. His popular run as a regular on “the old redhead” Godfrey’s show started in 1951 and ended in 1953 when, after an on-air performance, Godfrey announced to the audience that that was the last they’d be hearing of LaRosa. Nevermore to be known, after this surprising incident, as quite so affable a fellow, the host had apparently felt his protégé was getting too big for his bowtie. Here was a precedent, then, of an orange-hued entertainment figure attaching himself to the catchphrase “you’re fired.” (Hear Stan Freberg lampoon him on “That’s Right, Arthur,” an unreleased track that aired only once on the radio in 1956.) After the firing, LaRosa had a #2 hit with “Eh Cumpari,” one of the era’s great red sauce celebrazione records. In late ’54, LaRosa offered up a track called “Mobile,” a title that certainly roused anticipation for a pop canzone treatment of Verdi’s famous “La donna è mobile.” It turns out, though, that the song didn’t salute Italia so much as Alabama. Nifty enough tune, but unexpected. The chart placements fizzled out by 1962, and you have to wonder if a little topical discipline could have prevented that.

“Birmingham Bounce” – Hardrock Gunter (1958) * Written by Hardrock Gunter * EP: “Gonna Be a Fire”/”Down in the Holler Where Sally Lives” (Bill Browning) “Juke Box Play for Me”/”You Gotta Go” (Cook Brothers) “You’re Just a Baby”/”Ida Red Rock” (Buddy Durham) “Birmingham Bounce”/”Rock-A-Bop Baby” (Hardrock Gunter) * Label: Island

Alabama’s Sidney Gunter Jr.—given his better-known nickname “Hardrock” after a truck’s hood clonked him on the head with no damage done—secured an eventual slot in the rock ‘n’ roll Pantheon with his 1950 single “Birmingham Bounce,” a vintage specimen of R&B + hillbilly coexistence. That same year Red Foley turned his version of the song, which would become Gunter’s lifelong calling-card, into a top-selling country hit. Seminal as Gunter’s own 1950 record is, his 1958 redo for Cleveland’s Island Record Co. on a jam-packed 8-song sampler EP jumps out as one with special attention-getting electricity, thanks in part to his newfound taste for slapback echo (which had inspired him, a year before, to try out a version of “We Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me)”). Since 1950, Gunter kept pumping out records for various labels, including the new rock-royal Sun, until retiring from the music business in the mid-sixties (and resurfacing momentarily for the avid European rockabilly community in the late ’90s).

“Easter Parade” (1957) – Eddie Mitchell and His Orchestra * Written by Irving Berlin * 45: “Easter Parade” / “Freddie’s New Calypso” * Label: ABC-Paramount

A 1950 version on the Derby label (for whom tenor sax player Eddie Mitchell led the house band) has greater notoriety as a left-field hit. It reached #7 on the R&B chart, draping Irving Berlin’s candied squaresville melody in cavernous sounds, clanking saloon piano, and spontaneous vibes. But this 1957 redo on ABC-Paramount has more grab to it, sounding premeditated in the sense that the players knew a) that it would work and b) that they were in for a good time.

“Chicken Gumbo” (1957) – Josephine Premice * Written by Walter Merrick, Joe Willoughby, and Evans * Produced by Barney Kessel * LP: Caribe: Josephine Premice Sings Calypso * Label: Verve

When Josephine Premice released her late ’50s Calypso records, she had a respectable showbiz track record, having debuted in the 1945 Broadway revue Blue Holiday. Born in Brooklyn, Premice was the daughter of a Count in the deposed Haitian aristocracy. Her father, Lucas Premice, had escaped prison chains and eventually wound up in the USA, where Josephine received an upper class education and attended Columbia University. Sounding like a rescued treasure from the shores of Haiti, her Caribe album is actually a product of the LA session guitarist Barney Kessel and a fleet of pro songwriters, including Joe Willoughby and Walter Merrick, who composed “Chicken Gumbo,” the album’s tribute to the healing powers of the Haitian dish alongside “okra water.” (A mystery songwriter named Evans also receives credit for “Chicken Gumbo” on the label.) Such surprises of origin take nothing away from Caribe‘s aural pleasures. In the ensuing decades, Premice would make a handful of TV appearances, including one on The Jeffersons, where she played Louise Jefferson’s sister Maxine.

“The Letter” (1958) – Don and Dewey * Written by Don Harris and Dewey Taylor * 45: “Koko Joe” / “The Letter” * Label: Specialty

Little Richard label mates Don and Dewey, from Pasadena, California, were apparently too cool for mass appeal, but they inspired successful admirers such as the Righteous Brothers and introduced material that became better known when sung by others (“I’m Leaving It Up to You,” “Big Boy Pete,” and “Farmer John,” to name a few.) The B-side of their Sonny Bono-penned “Koko Joe” is a Johnny Ace-flavored Dear Jane weeper they wrote themselves called “The Letter,” and it features one of the worst apologies on record: “Throw away my picture/ Darling, forgive me/ I wrecked your life/ But, then, you let me.” In return for the “Koko Joe” favor, Sonny covered “The Letter” with Cher in 1965.

Antonio Giron – “Corrido a Honduras” (1955) * Written by Antonio Giron * LP: Songs and Dances of Honduras * Label: Folkways

Tucked away on this 1955 Folkways release, which otherwise has a coarse field-recording sound, is a quite polished “ballad for Honduras.” The song’s main thrust is loyalty to the beautiful Central American country, but it also name-checks both the national hero Morazán (a freedom fighter and eventual president of the Federation of Central American States who fell to an assassin in 1842) and the Virgin of Suyapa, patroness of Honduras.  Why do the liner notes, written by Doris Stone, go out of their way to keep the suave-sounding performer of “Corrido a Honduras” a mystery? This is a mystery in itself. Is it to preserve an aura of authenticity for Peter K. Smith’s field recordings? Performing credits go to “Instrument: Guitar,” and a footnote cranes its head in to point out that the contracted usage of “que ellos” is typical of songs “not sung by a professional singer.” Writing credit, though, is given to a man named Antonio Giron, so I’ll assume that the performance, worthy of much better recognition and respect, is also by him.

“Canoeiro” (1959) – Dorival Caymmi * Written by Dorival Caymmi * LP: E Seu Violão * Label: Odeon

After the Brazilian singer-songwriter, actor and painter Dorival Caymmi died at 94 in 2008, the New York Times‘ Douglas Martin wrote of him as the man who “helped lay the foundations of bossa nova, [who] wrote Carmen Miranda’s first hit and gave legendary voice to the romance of the beaches, fishing villages and bathing beauties of his native Bahia.” He also refers to a quote from his colleage Ben Ratfliff, who called him second only to Antonio Carlos Jobim in “establishing a songbook” of “Brazilian identity.” Caymmi’s songs charm you with their humble simplicity. His “Canoeiro” (canoeist), for example, is a three-minute voice-and-guitar piece expressing an ocean of gratitude for a solitary fisherman’s craft.