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To limber up the blogging muscles again, I present a 50-year-old gem from the twilight of Kennedy Rock.
NPR had a piece about this tune on Friday, which I half-heard out of the corner of my ear. It comes from the brief era of Top 40 radio when adult middle-of-the-road hits could chart alongside hot rod and surf music on Clark Weber's Silver Dollar Survey countdown. I've always loved the spring-loaded trombone ensemble schmaltz mixed down just right.
The genre of Kennedy Rock is a personal conceit that popped into my head about 20 years ago. Examples fall along a spectrum of jazz-inflected pop and slickly produced pop with soft-rock "sonorities." Many examples, such as Bobby Vee's "The Night Has A Thousand Eyes", are arranged around nifty chamber orchestras and recorded in rooms whose acoustics you can actually hear. Other, like "Our Day Will Come" by Ruby and The Romantics, start exploring the use of the studio as an "instrument" instead of just a room to record in. I imagine that Kennedy Rock was targeted at young housewives and working girls who hung onto their AM radio listening habit after graduating high school.
All of this is strictly in my own head, you understand. I've been meaning to systematically analyze the "genre's" characteristics, though, because I actually feel that it's a real thing. Two difficulties I've had: one is that this flavor of oldie gets very little airplay, so it's just plain hard to call examples to mind; the other is that I've found it risky to buy MP3 oldies singles because companies that license these songs for reissue often ratfuck the original mixes, thereby spoiling the listening experience. So my research and enjoyment of this (imaginary) genre has been thwarted by sleaze merchants.
Anyway, go ahead and revel in this one, from the age of "Sputnik" bubble gumballs, Universal Studios monster trading cards, and bald, bespectacled AM rock disk jockeys.
Sukiyaki, Kyu Sakamoto (1963, Capitol Records [catalog number not known]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.
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Hey, I was in that bald DJ's WLS studio in early June, 1963 (school field trip) when he announced Sukiyaki had taken the #1 spot for the week in Chicago. To the dismay of some of the (loudest) girls in our class, who preferred It's My Party (Leslie Gore), which was #2.
ReplyDeleteIn the mid-80s I remember reading about Kyu Sakamoto dying in a huge plane crash in Japan. As I recall, it was about as horrific a crash as could happen-- passengers literally had a half hour to contemplate what was happening, as the plane flew around rudderless in the mountains.
If I remember correctly, your class was there in the Stone Container Building "under the auspices of Mr. Glen Honsbruch."
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