CLASSIC POP SONGS OF ALL TIME!

Again thanks to Jeff Harris at Behind The Grooves

We as a family had the 78 (ask your grandparents! Great grandparents?) what a 78 was. We had this by Bill Hailey & The Comets, Lonnie Donegan's 'Puttin' On The Style', 'My Old Man's a Dustman' ! [yes really!] and Rock Island Line' which I think my brother will have found as mum and dad's repertoire on the 78 front ran to Paul Robeson at best and I began too to find things as a teenager like 'Thirty Flight Rock' by Eddie Cochran and yet somehow it was always the Lonnie Donegan that stayed with me for so long. You wound up the handle and brought down the horn with it's needle the size of a wooden knitting needle and away we went! 

On this day in music history: April 12, 1954 - “Shake Rattle And Roll” by Big Joe Turner is released. Written by Jesse Stone under the name Charles E. Calhoun, it is the biggest hit and signature song for the Kansas City, MO rhythm & blues legend. Stone (“Don’t Let Go”, “Money Honey”) writes the song after Atlantic Records chief Ahmet Ertegun suggests that he come up with an uptempo blues number for the singer. Turner record the song on February 15, 1954 at Atlantic Studios in New York City. The single is an immediate hit upon its release, spending three weeks at #1 on the R&B chart and peaking at #22 on the Pop Best Sellers chart. “Shake” is covered by numerous artists over the years most notably by Bill Haley & His Comets (#7 Pop) and Elvis Presley. Big Joe Turner’s original recording of “Shake Rattle And Roll” is inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 1998.

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