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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Hardly the most feminist diatribe! But then it is Rock 'n' Roll! The orginal here by Big Joe Turner but the 'white' version hit big over here in the UK and I have the Bill Haley and The Comets version on 78 (ask your grandparents! ED) which is best? Well that's difficult because I LOVED the Bill Haley version but I really LOVE the original with it's lyrics that may just may have needed changing!

I'm like a one-eyed cat peepin' in a seafood store. Well, I can look at you tell you ain't no child no more . . . . . . .I get over the hill and way down underneath. I get over the hill and way down underneath. You make me roll my eyes, even make me grit my teeth" What CAN he be singing about?!

Here he is LIVE! (I was one years old)

The remastered record version

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.