Canard
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- Sep 30, 2020
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I was given two large boxes of 78 RPM records the other day. I have been slowly working through them.
I found a 50s recording of Guy Mitchell doing the Melvin Endsley song, Singing the Blues. Marty Robbins had recorded the tune slightly earlier. Tommy Steele recorded it slightly later. All three versions were released almost simultaneously in 1956. All three charted, but Mitchell's version blew the other two out of the water for sales.
I remember this song from my very youthful youth. It was standard jukebox fare in the cafes and coffee shops my family would stop at on road trips, and it was in heavy rotation on radio, crossing over between Country and Pop/Rock.
It is interesting listening to it and its B side now. It is almost Rockabilly/Rock and Roll, just missing a that extra bit of Tom Cat edge/attitude.
And the band! WT#! It's Ray Coniff, perpetrator of some of the most saccharine, schmaltzy stuff in my parents' record collection.
Mitchell had a great voice and could have been a successful Rock and Roller, but he and/or his management choose the MOR path.
Here he is musically nuetered on the Ed Sullivan Show, any dangerous Tom-Cat strut reduced to a mere caricature:
I found a 50s recording of Guy Mitchell doing the Melvin Endsley song, Singing the Blues. Marty Robbins had recorded the tune slightly earlier. Tommy Steele recorded it slightly later. All three versions were released almost simultaneously in 1956. All three charted, but Mitchell's version blew the other two out of the water for sales.
I remember this song from my very youthful youth. It was standard jukebox fare in the cafes and coffee shops my family would stop at on road trips, and it was in heavy rotation on radio, crossing over between Country and Pop/Rock.
It is interesting listening to it and its B side now. It is almost Rockabilly/Rock and Roll, just missing a that extra bit of Tom Cat edge/attitude.
And the band! WT#! It's Ray Coniff, perpetrator of some of the most saccharine, schmaltzy stuff in my parents' record collection.
Mitchell had a great voice and could have been a successful Rock and Roller, but he and/or his management choose the MOR path.
Here he is musically nuetered on the Ed Sullivan Show, any dangerous Tom-Cat strut reduced to a mere caricature: