From Folk to Something Entirely New
The more simple structure trend was augmented by first pop folk boom, signaled by “Lavender Blue”, an actual folk song, covered by Burl Ives, which charted by after being featured in Walt Disney’s So Dear To My Heart. Simultaneously, new songs that had a definite folk song feel, like “Ghost Riders In The Sky”, “Mule Train” and “Cry Of The Wild Goose”, were huge hits. The folk boom really arrived in 1950 with the Weaver’s “Goodnight Irene” and “On Top Of Old Smokey”. Frank Sinatra and Jo Stafford were both in the Top 10 with covers of “Goodnight, Irene”, as was the duet version by Red Foley and Ernest Tubb, though it just squeaked in.
The Weavers represented folk music’s commie/lefty/academic aspect, but mainstream pop artists were quick to jump on the folky bandwagon. Sammy Kaye recorded “Wonderin’”, and there were other folk-song-inspired hits, like “Truly, Truly Fair”, “Shrimp Boats Are Coming”, “The Roving Kind”, “Gandy Dancer’s Ball” and “Rose, Rose, I Love You”. The Weavers had their last hits with “Wimoweh” and “Around the Corner (Beneath the Berry Tree)” in 1952, after which they were shot down by the House Un-American Committee’s witchhunt. Guy Mitchell, who had a number of folkish hits in 1951, quickly recorded “The Only Red I Want Is The Red I Got In The Good Ol’ Red, White, and Blue”, with the line, “It’s a brave red, not a slave red, and it is a red that’s true”. We got it, Guy, you’re not one of those. “Sugarbush”, another folkish song, of South African origin, was also popular that year. There was a record called “Hambone”, recorded by the Original Hambone Kids––three Black boys, between eight and twelve years old, who had appeared on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour, a TV show that had successfully crossed over from radio. The big prize went to performers who won three times in a row, which the Original Hambone Kids did. The program’s tradition is that an act performed the same number each week. The OHK, dressed in identical bib overalls and straw hats, sat on a bale of hay and proto-rapped, “Hambone, Hambone, where you been?” then slapped their thighs in unison, adding, “BOMP diddy diddy diddy BOMP BOMP BOMP (Round the world and back again, BOMP etc.)”, with no accompaniment of any kind. I loved it. Everybody loved it. They recorded it, and it became a hit. And it was pure 19th century Americana, as close to actual folk music as anything on pop radio had ever been. It proved to be the last gasp of Folk Boom #1.
The strange part is that was the same year Harry Smith’s Anthology––the old weird America––was released. And stranger still, this was about the time when rock ’n’ roll––the new weird America––was born. What Unseen Force could have caused those unlikely events to occur simultaneously? And what on earth could that unseen force have possibly been thinking? I suspect it was the same unseen force that was behind the Black/Jewish conspiracy that formed modern American music. No, the Blacks and the Jews were not conspiring. An unseen force was.
Speaking of conspiracies that weren’t really conspiracies, there seems to be a simple chord structure meme being passed from Country music to folk music, too, as folk music was exorcised from the pop charts, rock ‘n roll, which was beginning to appear. My first awareness of rock ‘n’ roll was about in 1954. I began to hear that there were these dirty records that bad kids did dirty dances to. Being 15 years old, I was intrigued. “Work With Me Annie”. “60 Minute Man”. Yup, they were really doing it in the songs alright. The dirty dances were, among others, the Grind and the Fish, which involved mutual pelvis grinding. Yup, that’s dirty alright.
By the early ‘50s a substantial amount of pop music had attained a degree of blandness perhaps without precedent in this century. “Mocking Bird Hill” (that’s: tra-la-la, twiddle dee-dee-dee, it gives me a thrill to wake up in the morning on mocking bird hill), “How Much Is That Doggy In The Window”, “I Love Those Dear Hearts And Gentle People Who Live In My Home Town” (They will never let you down), and “Let The Sun Shine In” (Let the sun shine in, face it with a grin, smilers never lose, and frowners never win)––you get the picture.
Another curious detail about this moment in American history is the all-out attack on comic books that had been going on since the ‘40s, culminating in the industry forming a self-censoring group: the Comics Code Authority. The claim was that comic books caused juvenile delinquency. Proof? All juvenile delinquents read comic books. No one mentioned that all children read comic books. Even in households that banned them, all a kid had to do is read his friend’s comics. Nor did anyone with a brain mention that at least half of all comic books were bought by adults. Indeed, after censorship commenced in July 1955 sales dropped by half (Mad comics eluded censorship by becoming a 25-cent magazine with issue #24) while juvenile delinquency continued to climb. But the funny part is––while all these assholes thought, “Well! We got rid of comic books! That takes care of juvenile delinquency!”––along comes rock ‘n’ roll. You think comic books were a bad influence on youth? Ha! In fact, that same year, the movie Blackboard Jungle was released, featuring Bill Haley’s “Rock Around The Clock”, immediately merging juvenile delinquency and rock ‘n’ roll in the public eye. I was thrilled to hear rock ‘n’ roll coming from the big screen. It felt like some kind of validation, even if the “high school students” in the movie were probably 27 years old.
I revered Steve Allen, who invented the Late Night TV show format, but he hated rock ‘n’ roll. He used to read rock ‘n’ roll lyrics, especially Little Richard’s, as “poems”, his delivery dripping with sneering contempt. Suddenly I wanted to punch my hero in the face. He would then read a Great American Songbook gem, like “Moonlight In Vermont”, which is, yes, a beautiful piece of writing. Points for shrewdly constructed agitprop. He also did a skit in which he “interviewed” a rock ‘n’ roll group, three White guys dressed in the style of Marlon Brando in The Wild One––black leather jackets, motorcycle caps, and sneering expressions. One of them had an upright bass. Allen asked him how he was introduced to the bass, and the faux rock ‘n’ roller replied, “The first time I saw a bass, I thought it was some cat, so I mugged it”, then punched his fist through the bass which had obviously been set up in the fashion of the breakaway chairs which people in movies would get hit in the head with. Two years later Steve Allen had Jerry Lee Lewis as a musical guest. Oh, money. It changes everything. As Bob Dylan wrote later on, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.”
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