Guest Post: On the Vapidity of the Popular Music of the 1950s

By London Ed.

Possibly vapid music

Bill writes ‘The creativity of the 1960s stood in stark contrast to the vapidity of '50s popular music’, citing as a prime example Perry Como’s Magic Moments (1960).

This is a sentiment I recognise and still identify with. I grew up with what is now called ‘British light music’, supposedly a ‘less serious’ form of Western classical music, a prime example of which would be Puffin' Billy, the theme of the BBC Light Programme's ‘Children's Favourites’, from 1952 to 1966. Note the Light Programme, one of precisely three radio stations in early 1960s Britain, the other two being the Home Service (news and interviews) and the Third Programme (classical music and improving highbrow stuff like interviews with Iris Murdoch). The idea of American style radio with disc jockeys and music other than serious and less serious was not entertained until the advent of pirate radio. When I first heard Burning of the Midnight Lamp (Hendrix, 1967), it was obvious the world had changed, and I joined my peers in a complete rejection of everything that had gone before. I still unconsciously divide all music into what came before 1967, and everything thereafter. 

That said, there is music that is not ‘serious’, but which clearly has a merit within its own genre and perhaps beyond, which never conformed to the 60s progressive ethos.  Once I grew up in the 1970s, I realised its value, and continue to listen with pleasure. Here is some of it: 

1. All The Things You Are (Jerome Kern 1938). In this version by Dorothy Kirsten and Percy Faith (1951) it is close to schlock. Yet it is transcendent, with its complex harmonic structure, and qualities that were recognised by jazz musicians from early on, particularly by the devotees of the bebop genre. This Charlie Parker version is a classic. 

2. You Win Again (Hank Williams 1952) is a simple and timeless story ‘of an utterly defeated narrator who cannot bring himself to leave his love despite her infidelities’. Country music like this was utterly despised by thinking people in the 1960s and 70s. I had a girlfriend who refused to let my Williams records in her apartment. Yet country music is really the same music as folk music, absent the left wing rhetoric. The timeless qualities it appeals to (women who cheat, lonely men drinking at bars) sadly cannot be politicised. 

3. Old Cape Cod (Rothrock/Yakus/Jeffrey 1957)  Best known in the version by Patti Page. While her earlier Doggie In The Window (1953) is without any redeeming properties, ‘Old Cape Cod’ was revived by hipster house music group Groove Armada in 1997, who clearly saw something of value therein. 

4. Route 66 (Nelson Riddle 1962) Not the well known Bobby Troup song. It was written by Riddle as the theme for the 1960s American television drama of the same name, after CBS decided to commission a new song rather than pay royalties to Troup. Riddle is best known for his schmaltzy backing arrangments for Nat King Cole, and his music never appealed to thinking people and leftists. Yet he is a master of arrangement, and the number is clever (in my view). 

5. Up Up and Away (Jimmy Webb 1967) Recorded by The Fifth Dimension and released in July 1967, barely a month before Woodstock, it is difficult to see how anyone would take this seriously, and it is exactly the sort of music the Woodstock generation loathed. But it was written by Jimmy Webb, who also penned Wichita Lineman, thought to be the  first existentialist country song, and MacArthur Park, another existential song recorded by many, including country artist Waylon Jennings in 1969. Listen to these two fine songs first, and then to ‘Up Up and Away’, upon which it becomes clear that they are by the same writer, and that what distinguishes the last two, also makes the first notable, at least in some odd way. 

6. September Song (Kurt Weill 1938). At last some material by a bona fide leftist, a people’s songwriter who cut his teeth in the Novembergruppe group of left leaning Berliners that included communist scribbler Bertold Brecht. Its intellectual credentials are solid, yet here it is in a fine version by Frank Sinatra (1965), sounding just like the sort of vapid 1950s muzak the progressives so despised. 

7. Dancing Queen (Andersson/Ulvaeus/Anderson 1975) recorded by the Swedish pop group ABBA. I like this version from the1999 film Mamma Mia for its uncompromising fluffiness. Its value is in conveying precisely the sentiment it wishes to convey. Intellectuals now take Abba seriously, but why didn’t they tell us so at the time, instead of making us listen to the Soft Machine?

Comments

[BV]

Excellent commentary, Ed.

>>Country music like this was utterly despised by thinking people in the 1960s and 70s. I had a girlfriend who refused to let my Williams records in her apartment. Yet country music is really the same music as folk music, absent the left wing rhetoric. The timeless qualities it appeals to (women who cheat, lonely men drinking at bars) sadly cannot be politicised.<<

That the timeless qualities cannot be politicized enters into the explanation of why intellectual types, who reliably tilt leftward, loathe it so.

I had an insecure status-seeking colleague who used to brag that he listened to classical music only. But when a student of mine visited him at his house, the student discovered that he had a huge jazz collection.

Your quondam girlfriend did not appreciate the catholicity of your tastes.

[The Happy Ostrich]

Yes.

[David Bagwill]

Interesting commentary!
I'm very interested in your phrase 'without any redeeming qualities', especially in the word 'redeeming' as it pertains to music.
What would it mean for any particular piece of music to have/lack such a quality? Is there any 'good' non-redemptive music?
In what way could instrumental music be 'redeeming'? I'm thinking here of a guitar solo I listened to, that was part of an extended stream of instrumental music for evening listening - Grover Washington, Enya, Liz Story, William Ackerman, Andreas Vollenweider - that prompted me to say to my wife - "I don't know who that was, but I would bet he/she is a Christian artist". Either by luck or by piercing artistic sensibility, I was right.
The 'flavor' took the place of lyrics. It felt redeeming.
https://youtu.be/_mYdIKl27vs

[BV]

Dave,

Your question is to Ed, but I don't think he is using 'redeeming' in anything near to a religious sense. He is just saying that the Patti Page doggy song has no positive qualities that compensate for its negative qualities.

What struck me was that Ed wrote 'redeeming properties' whereas 'redeeming qualities' is the more idiomatic expression, at least in American English, which may diverge from British English in this regard. I don't know.

[David Bagwill]

Bill - I knew he was not referring to a religious sense; I was inquiring as to the use of 'redeeming' in a secular sense, and whether he was using it off-hand, as we all do, to mean ' positive qualities' or if he actually recognizes an edifying aspect of some music.
I did use a Christian example, out of habit, but did not mean for the example to exhaust the possibilities.
In any case, an enjoyable read.

[The Happy Ostrich]

I was indeed just saying that the Patti Page doggy song has no positive qualities that compensate for its negative qualities. I used 'properties' as an elegant variation.

Fortunately no one spotted that Woodstock was not in July 1967, but two years later.

The Phil Keaggy sounds to me derivative of The Final Peace by Jeff Beck. There was a trinity of guitarists in the 1960s, Clapton, Page and Beck, and of these Beck was probably the greatest, but he was one of those great people who never really got the fame or recognition they deserved.

David’s question of whether there is an edifying or sublime aspect of some popular music, or whether it is just ‘light’ entertainment is a difficult one, and deserves further discussion. Julian Barnes was once asked if he thought Dylan was as good as Keats, and he replied that Dylan was a great folk singer, Keats was a great poet, or something like that.

[BV]

Yes, Woodstock was two years later. When exactly was the Altamont fiasco?

[David Bagwill]

I could make a case for Carlos Santana being right up there with the trinity of 60's guitarists. Agree with you that Beck, overall, is still great and can still surprise.
(for pleasure: https://youtu.be/qizABmgE9Ss - so tasteful, so appropriate to the title of the song. I heard it one afternoon at Hyatt Prairie Lake here in southern Oregon, and the wonderful earthiness of the scene - kids playing on the shore, a pine forest stretching in all directions, a Little Breeze playing through the tree tops, a few sailboats moving slowly up and down in the sparkling water, and the sound of happy voices - complemented by that piece of music, was - is sublime the word, I wonder?)

But on to the question of edification/sublimity. As I've reflected on it, I see the question going in many different directions, too many for me to get a good grasp on. Still worth thinking about, though.