I am a child of rock ‘n’ roll, no question. And I have filled up many sketches in my notebooks with plenty of material about my likes and dislikes from the classic period of that genre, the mid-1950s, when we first heard that different jail-break beat, a beat our parents could not “hear,” as we of the generation of ’68 earned our spurs and started that long teenage angst and alienation process of going our own way. Still, as much as we were determined to have our own music on our own terms, wafting through every household, every household that had a radio in the background, and more importantly, had the emerging sounds from television in it was our parents’ music- the music, mainly of the surviving the Great Depression (the 1930s one not the one we are in now in 2012) and fighting (or frantically waiting at home for news) World War II period. And that is what Lena Horne’s Stormy Weather evokes in these ears as I write this sketch. Or click above in contrast and listen to Dinah Washington (apologies, okay Ms. D.) vanilla kitten croon (nice, huh) What A Difference A Day Makes.
In an earlier piece noted that some the World War II era music “spoke” to me, or at least it did not offend my ear (especially a classic like Lena Horne on Stormy Weather). Some later stuff, however, as it intersected my generation’s jail-breakout rock beat, or should I say interfered with that breakout, is something else again. This material was nothing but a rearguard action, for the most part, to keep everything quiet, to be nice and, to hope, hope to high heaven that they (and you know, if you are of a certain age, who the “they” were) didn’t drop the bomb and ruin a Saturday chaste date. The cover art featured on one such compilation had a boy and girl sitting dreamily in a car (maybe dad’s, maybe in discretionary dollars new teen America, his own, but his, one way or another) looking out at the expanse says it all. This ain’t some reckless little rock ‘n’ roll scene, not even sweet, beatified be-bop. This is the music of older, "square" brothers and sisters caught in between “jump” forties and “rock” mid-fifties.
It is almost impossible to do anything with certain songs except draw and quarter them and make apologies to someone like Tony Bennett who actually did some better stuff later but here is all I can even come close to advising anyone under the age of one hundred (today) to hear:
Memories Are Made Of This, Dean Martin (martini, or whatever, in hand, Dino ain’t rocking, he’ll leave that for his son); Just In Time, Tony Bennett (already noted above); What A Difference A Day Makes, Dinah Washington (Jesus, what is a serious, be-bop jazz singer, “torch” too, and with great phrasing doing in this thing-except to prove my overall point as the exception).
