Only Solitaire Reviews: Eddie Cochran

	SINGIN’ TO MY BABY
	Album released: Nov. 1957	V	A	L	U	E	More info:
		2	2	3	1	3
Tracks: 1) Sittin’ In The Balcony; 2) Completely Sweet; 3) Undying Love; 4) I’m Alone Because I Love You; 5) Lovin’ Time; 6) Proud Of You; 7) Mean When I’m Mad; 8) Stockings And Shoes; 9) Tell Me Why; 10) Have I Told You Lately That I Love You; 11) Cradle Baby; 12) One Kiss.
REVIEW Life had been supremely unkind to Ray Edward Cochran: not only did she push him into the embrace of Death at the age of 22, but she also made sure that during his lifetime he would see the release of only one long-playing record — and that none of his well-known compositions would be featured on it. It is understandable that Liberty Records could not fit in ‘Skinny Jim’, his first single on which he sang in a rough, crackling, hideously twisted voice and played a rough, crackling, chaotic rockabilly guitar solo — because that single was, after all, released on a different label (Crest). But why they could not bring themselves to include his first bona fide classic, the immortal teenage anthem ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ (originally recorded in the summer of 1956 and included into the soundtrack of The Girl Can’t Help It) is much harder to fathom. It has been suggested that the label was trying to groom him as an early teen idol — which would have made commercial sense a couple years later, perhaps, but in late 1957 kids still had the hots for rebellious rock’n’roll, and only a seriously moralistic record executive would want his guitar-swingin’ protegé sing orchestrated ballads instead. Then again, what exactly can we expect from a record label whose biggest commercial success was ‘The Chipmunk Song’?
The way I see it, Eddie Cochran had precisely one talent which made him somewhat special — he was a gifted and creative songwriter, putting his own special musical and narrative twist on the rockabilly formula whenever Mother Inspiration came down from the sky and cuddled him, which was not too often, but often enough for us to fondly remember him even after he became too old for the 27 Club. As a singer, as a guitar player, as a personality he was good, but no Elvis, no Chuck, and no Gene respectively. Therefore, any intelligent talent nurturer would have done the obvious — namely, let the boy write his own songs, and let him write them the way he wanted to. Alas, Singin’ To My Baby simply miscasts Cochran by (a) having only five of his compositions and (b) way too often featuring him as a young and rowdy crooner rather than a young and rowdy rock’n’roll troubadour. The average sound of this album is that of a Gene Vincent on tranquilizers: reverb- and echo-laden guitar and vocal tracks with a country-derived melodic basis, but slower, softer, more «gentlemanly» than the Blue Caps’ wild raves. A good example is the album opener ‘Sittin’ In The Balcony’, originally released by struggling country artist Johnny Dee — if you like the track and end up excited by it rather than bored, the rest of the record will be «completely sweet»; but I somehow find this kind of half-hearted «already not quite country, but not yet proper rockabilly» music traitorous to the spirit of both country and rockabilly, and would rather have me some Hank Williams and some Gene Vincent instead, rather than an emasculated mish-mash of both. Eddie does play a nice «twirling» guitar solo in the middle, though. The only song of Eddie’s own off this album, I think, which has been occasionally covered by other artists is ‘Completely Sweet’, with a non-trivial key and time signature change that makes it half-pop, half-blues rock — a quirky little trick, even if the sum of the parts ends up being more impressive than each individual part. The other four songs, however, are doo-wop-influenced pop ditties and ballads which seem to suck up to Elvis way too much: ‘Tell Me Why’ tries too hard to be ‘Loving You’, ‘Mean When I’m Mad’ tries too hard to be ‘Too Much’, ‘One Kiss’ tries too hard to be ‘Teddy Bear’, and although ‘Undying Love’ has no immediate prototype that springs to mind, its overall arrangement and style is still early RCA-era Elvis to the core. The problem is, while Eddie did have a fairly impressive vocal range and could plunge almost to the same trembling depths of warm bass as the King, it did not come as naturally to him as it did to Elvis — Cochran’s singing style on ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ and ‘Summertime Blues’ is far more his than this soulful stuff. And, of course, he never could boast the same studio resources as Elvis when it came to backing bands and sound engineers. And these are the self-penned songs: predictably, it gets worse when we get to outside songwriters. At least when the songs moderately rock out (Terry Fell’s ‘Cradle Baby’), the toe-tapping factor and Eddie’s nicely shaped guitar solos push back the boredom factor; but the ultra-slow, reverb-drenched, overdramatic rendition of ‘Have I Told You Lately That I Love You’ needs to be heard in order to much better appreciate the relatively listener-friendly Elvis version. Worst of all, after a brief while, even if the album itself is mercifully short, all the songs start to fall together — when you use the exact same production style to create the exact same atmosphere, you at least have to be AC/DC and provide memorable distinctive riffs to keep things afloat, and this is not the kind of material that requires distinctive riffs. The truly cruel thing, of course, is that in the next two years of Eddie’s career, when he was putting out a small, but steady flow of really great singles (‘Summertime Blues’, ‘C’mon Everybody’, ‘Somethin’ Else’), his record label never gave him a proper chance — all of his good stuff would appear on LPs posthumously. Perhaps he did not have the musical vision of a Buddy Holly, but he did have the potential to grow into a first-rate rock’n’roll songwriter, and although we certainly cannot blame the executives at Liberty Records for failing to foresee the tragedy of April 16, 1960, we most definitely can and should blame them for misjudging and misdirecting the talents of their most talented artist while he was still alive.

	EDDIE COCHRAN
	Album released: April 1960	V	A	L	U	E	More info:
		4	3	3	2	3
Tracks: 1) C’mon Everybody; 2) Three Steps To Heaven; 3) Cut Across Shorty; 4) Have I Told You Lately That I Love You; 5) Hallelujah, I Love Her So; 6) Sittin’ In The Balcony; 7) Summertime Blues; 8) Lovin’ Time; 9) Somethin’ Else; 10) Tell Me Why; 11) Teenage Heaven; 12) Drive In Show; 13) Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie; 14) Pocketful Of Hearts; 15) Don’t Ever Let Me Go; 16) Teresa; 17) Pretty Girl; 18) Bo Weevil Song; 19*) I Remember.
REVIEW Now this is more like it: a compilation, for sure, but one that is much closer to reflecting the real legacy of Eddie Cochran than the misguided Singin’ To My Baby. There may have been plans on the part of Liberty Records to release something like this even before Eddie’s death, given how quickly the album was pushed out — yet the original date of release, usually given as simply April 1960, was clearly after April 17, considering that the liner notes ("when the world is deprived of a fine talent, it is impossible to measure the loss...") read like an obituary. And the LP has a somewhat complicated discographical history. The original pressings came with at least two different sleeves — sometimes simply titled as Eddie Cochran, sometimes (rather fictitiously) subtitled 12 Of His Biggest Hits. A little later still, the album received the more solemn title of The Eddie Cochran Memorial Album and was released as such on London Records for the European market — with a seriously modified track listing that made much more sense and ultimately remained as the leading model for subsequent re-pressings and CD editions. (Note that the current Wikipedia entry on the album lists it under the Memorial title, but actually gives the track listing for Eddie Cochran).
Disentangling the chaotic track listing, we can see that Liberty did indeed try to include here most of Eddie’s A-sides that managed to chart during his lifetime — from 1957, ‘Sittin’ In The Balcony’ (#18 — already released on Eddie’s first LP) and ‘Drive In Show’ (#82); from 1958, ‘Summertime Blues’ (#8) and ‘C’mon Everybody’ (#35); from 1959, ‘Teenage Heaven’ (#99) and ‘Somethin’ Else’ (#58); and from early 1960, ‘Three Steps To Heaven’ (#108, but, ironically, #1 in the UK — apparently, since Eddie perished while on tour in the UK, this was a bigger piece of news for the British public than the American one, and they responded by sending his latest single to the top of the charts, especially since it was so gruesomely and prophetically titled). The most glaring omission in this list of classics is, of course, ‘Twenty Flight Rock’, which still remains as one of the best-remembered Cochran songs — but since it did not chart (rather, its fame was tied in to the popularity of The Girl Can’t Help It movie), there is at least some logic behind this which we can understand, if not forgive. To this was added a cover of Ray Charles’ ‘Hallelujah, I Love Her So’ from 1958 (did not chart in the US, but did chart in the UK — actually, I believe that, rather than the original, served as the role model for the Beatles’ early cover version); ‘Cut Across Shorty’, the B-side to ‘Three Steps To Heaven’; and three more songs taken from Singin’ To My Baby to pad out the record. The European release wisely deleted all that stuff, replacing it with the somewhat unjustly forgotten ‘Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie’ from 1958 (#94 on the US charts), the non-charting ‘Teresa’ (also from 1958), and a bunch of additional B-sides, most of them rather lightweight but still a better choice than filling up the empty space with previously released LP tracks that clearly did not belong there. All in all, if you only threw ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ into the bargain, this Memorial Album would likely be the only Eddie Cochran album to own for a general lover of Fifties’ rock, as opposed to a particular admirer of Eddie as an individual genius of his generation. While he did leave behind a surprisingly bulky body of material, allowing Liberty Records to feed off his hard-working ethics for another half-decade (in much the same way that Coral Records would go on feasting on Buddy Holly’s legacy), I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that pretty much everything that truly matters about Eddie is to be found here — at the very least, do not expect to find any additional depth or breadth to his talent while rummaging through all those other posthumous albums. But then again, you can more or less fit everything that truly mattered about guys like Little Richard, Carl Perkins, or Gene Vincent onto one CD as well — and none of those guys died in a car crash when they were just 21 years old, so Eddie at least can be excused. And the first thing that truly mattered about Eddie on this particular album is, of course, ‘Summertime Blues’. Prior to that one, all of Cochran’s singles were strictly about the ladies, either in terms of achievement (‘Drive In Show’) or temporary failure (‘Twenty Flight Rock’); ‘Summertime Blues’ single-handedly established him as the leading rock philosopher of the teenage mind set — what Mose Allison said in a more generalized manner with "a young man ain’t got nothin’ in the world these days", Eddie was professing with more specific examples, pointing out how the entire world, from his parents to his employers to even his politicians seems to be conspiring to keep him away from his girls and his fast cars. Musically, too, ‘Summertime Blues’ remains his highest achievement, with a boogie bass line from the rockabilly stock, a swingin’ acoustic riff from the Buddy Holly pop textbook, and the comic deep vocal response by the song’s antagonists (allegedly inspired by the Kingfish character from Amos ’n’ Andy, although the most obvious musical associations would probably be with the vaudeville bits from the Coasters). It’s a bit sad how the original recording has been pretty much obliterated by the heavy versions of the Sixties — Blue Cheer, T. Rex, and especially The Who, downplaying the song’s original lightweight humor in favor of emphasizing its rebellious-aggressive potential. The cheery Buddy Holly vibe would be completely wiped out, replaced by distorted power chords, and while T. Rex and Blue Cheer would at least preserve the original riff, Townshend shifted the accent from its last beat to the first one, thus completing the song’s transformation into an in-yer-face-motherfucker! rock anthem. Naturally, I’m a simple man and I’ll take the Who’s version over Eddie’s any time (if anything, there is simply no competition for John Entwistle’s handling of both the bass melody and the "no-dice-son-you-gotta-work-late" bass vocals), but I do somewhat miss the easy-going nature of the original (actually, T. Rex’s version still retains some of that — of all the classic rockers, Marc Bolan was perhaps the most nostalgia-bound when it came to modernizing the golden oldies). One shouldn’t perhaps forget that the actual lyrics to ‘Summertime Blues’ were credited not to Eddie, but to his manager, Jerry Capehart — ten years older than Eddie, with his teenage years largely falling on World War II — and it was he who also wrote the words to the song’s two most obvious «sequels». The first one was ‘C’mon Everybody’, clearly intended as a stylistic follow-up to the success of ‘Summertime Blues’ — exact same bass line, similar acoustic riff, similar vocal melody, similar stop-and-start structure, though without the deep vocals — but this time, Eddie wants to be the solution rather than the problem: since none of the grown-ups in this world are available for assistance, let’s just fuck it and party all night long. Who cares? C’mon everybody! It’s a fun little romp alright, but, let’s face it, it is essentially just a «sunny-side-up» rewrite of ‘Summertime Blues’ in the end, which obviously explains its relative drop in the charts (#35 after ‘Summertime’s #8) and its relative failure to be as much of an influence on future generations — I think the most (in)famous cover version this time would be by the Sex Pistols on the Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle album, which is sort of telling. You’d think that people would be generally easier to lure in with a nonchalant happy vibe than a bitter one, but not this time — seems like ‘Summertime Blues’ really struck a nerve with both the American and the trans-Atlantic teen, whereas ‘C’mon Everybody’ might have hit the same teen as somewhat less realistic. I mean, just how many of them could actually experience that lucky moment of "the house is empty and the folks are gone", so that "the house’ll be a-shakin’ from the bare feet a-slappin’ on the floor"? Looks more like a wet dream to me — and there’s something a little disconcerting about that "hoo! c’mon everybody!" call to action that gets no response whatsoever. (Perhaps what the song really needed was a Phil Spector production and tons of backing vocals from boy and girl choirs alike). For their next single, then, Cochran and Capehart tried a slightly different approach. ‘Teenage Heaven’ is nowhere near as musically innovative or interesting as ‘Summertime Blues’ — essentially, it sounds like a mid-tempo country-rock song à la Bill Haley — but at least it does go into another musical direction, throws in a lively saxophone solo, and features two verses of fantasy lyrics that get straight to the point and remain relevant well unto the 21st century (I can kind of imagine Jimmy De Santa from Grand Theft Auto V adopting them as his personal anthem — "I want my own Coupe de Ville, make my Dad pay the bill..."). It’s kinda cute that the protagonist wishes for just "shorter hours in school" — you can tell that we’re still a long way away from the age of Alice Cooper — but on the whole, the expressed sentiments here are even more rebellious than in ‘Summertime Blues’. However, I don’t think the single flopped because Eddie’s teenage fans all shared a strong work ethic and were deeply ashamed of sharing the song’s fantasies; I think it just lacked a strong musical hook, instead putting most of its attractive power into the lyrics. And then it all came back together again for the last part in Eddie’s four-part teenage symphony: ‘Somethin’ Else’, which was actually co-written by Eddie’s brother Bob and Eddie’s then-girlfriend Sharon Sheeley (Sharon already had a reputation of a professional songwriter before she met Eddie, with ‘Poor Little Fool’ for Ricky Nelson and other stuff). The song is quite firmly rooted in Little Richard’s arrangement of ‘Keep A-Knockin’, right down to the opening drum-and-bass «knocking» intro, giving it a deep, rumbling, steady rock’n’roll energy that had up till then been lacking in Eddie’s recordings — clearly the hardest-rocking number in all of his catalog — but what is just as impressive is its lyrical structure, in which the two first verses continue the subject of teenage fantasy (get the girl, get the car), the third verse outlines a strategy for making that fantasy come to life ("work hard and save my dough", nothing too outrageous), and the fourth verse triumphantly presents the results of realizing the American Dream (well, partially at least — "just a ’41 Ford, not a ’59" — I like that struggle for accurate realism in the lyrics). So here, at the end of things, is Eddie being both the problem and the solution in just slightly over two minutes, with a pumping groove to boot that must have been one of the top candidates for «best highway speedin’ song of all time» before Deep Purple’s ‘Highway Star’ (which was, without a doubt, both musically and lyrically influenced by ‘Somethin’ Else’, essentially «upgrading» it for the next generation of rockers). Also, unlike all the other Eddie Cochran songs, ‘Somethin’ Else’ was never covered by anybody in a better way than the original (I like the Move and the Flamin’ Groovies versions, but they really add nothing to Eddie’s; and I absolutely abhor Robert Plant butchering it on the Led Zeppelin live cover — his vocal style simply does not fit the mood one bit). Perhaps Eddie, too, felt that with ‘Somethin’ Else’ he’d taken the «Teenage Dream Fantasy» genre as far as it could go, and perhaps it isn’t even a coincidence that the teenager anthems stopped appearing right after he turned 21 — that was on October 3, 1959, and a little over a month later he came out with a significantly more «grown-up» sound, exemplified by a cover of Ray Charles’ ‘Hallelujah, I Love Her So’. It’s not a complete waste of vinyl — there’s something odd about how the corny, syrupy string arrangement contrasts with the surprisingly tough, rocking electric guitar solo, and Eddie’s passion for the song clearly comes out in the vocal delivery — but if you’re really going to put ‘Hallelujah’ on the white boy market, you’d at least need somebody of, say, Eric Burdon’s caliber to make it work. All I really can say here is — well, thank God he did not take the alternate decision to celebrate his 21st birthday with ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’. Those who sincerely believe in Fate and ill omens shall, of course, grieve over Eddie’s inauspicious decision to team up with the remainders of the Crickets in order to record the very Buddy Holly-esque bouncy ballad ‘Three Steps To Heaven’, on which he plays a fairly tight, crunchy, almost martial acoustic riff (various sources like to mention how Bowie would later appropriate it for ‘Queen Bitch’, but I actually hear just as much, if not more, similarity with the anthemic acoustic riff played by Townshend at the beginning of Tommy’s ‘Overture’!) while Jerry Allison weaves his ringing electric ‘Words Of Love’-like lead in and out of it. It’s not particularly complicated or original, but the idea of using a very Holly-style guitar melody with decidedly non-Holly-style vocals is interesting (even if the vocal melody itself feels a bit old-fashioned and croony, not to mention the lyrics which, this time around, read more like a parental lecture to the young offspring rather than the young offspring’s personal take on life — "step one, you find a girl you love, step two, she falls in love with you..." — scratch that, that’s not even a parental lecture, it’s a ChatGPT recommendation!). In any case, ‘Three Steps To Heaven’ came out in March 1960, and the very next month some stupid idiot in God’s personal bureaucratic chancellery took the title too literally and arranged for Eddie to take the third step — "you kiss and hold her tightly" — as it’s been reported that he actually threw himself over Sharon Sheeley during the car crash to protect her, saving her life at the cost of his own, a very simple formula for Heaven indeed. Of course, the song itself implies nothing of the kind, and today, only those who know their rock’n’roll history well enough shall be intrigued by the eerie coincidences; back in April 1960, though, I dare say this was quite an event in people’s minds, directly confirmed by the already mentioned huge popularity of the single in the UK. Was ‘Three Steps To Heaven’ indicative of any major changes / breakthroughs in style, though, and did Eddie’s untimely death deprive us of a major songwriting career? This question is even more difficult to answer than the identical one about Buddy Holly himself — because Buddy had a very definite personality and an immediately recognizable songwriting style, whereas Eddie was less distinctive and more diffuse. Clearly, those last few months of his life show that he wanted to expand and grow beyond the «teenage troubadour» status; whether he would have been truly capable of that is something we shall never know for sure. The remaining, not yet mentioned «lesser» A- and B-sides sitting on this record are of widely varying quality; they show that Eddie was quite a Renaissance rocker indeed and wanted to be a little of everything — and, as it often happens in such situations, ended up somewhat mediocre in most of these initiatives. Sometimes, for instance, he wanted to be a bit of a folk-bluesman, recording his own version of the classic ‘Bo Weevil Song’ reinvented as a Coasters-like pop ditty with supporting doo-wop vocals. It wasn’t very good, but Eddie did not despair and later made a similar, a bit more convincing attempt with ‘Cut Across Shorty’, another whimsical tale of country life whose ridiculous pointlessness, for some reason, brings on associations with ‘Rocky Raccoon’ (another long-winded tale that ultimately amounts to nothing), except ‘Rocky Raccoon’ is a flat-out goof, whereas ‘Cut Across Shorty’ is kind of sung with conviction. (Rod Stewart later made an entire epic out of it on Gasoline Alley — but the overall message more or less remained similarly bizarre). Sometimes, on the other hand, Eddie wanted to be a suave, honey-drippin’ crooner, as he was on ‘Teresa’, his only single from 1958 that did not chart at all. The gimmick of ‘Teresa’ is that almost each bit of Eddie’s corny serenade is picked up by a sex-kitten-purr-mode choir of girly backing vocals — the idea, I suppose, being that of a lady swooning over her seducer’s every compliment (because how can a girl truly withstand lines like "you’re a honey, worth more to me than money"?). I can only presume that even the average horny teenager of 1958 was embarrassed to play something like this for his sweetheart — although, in retrospect, ‘Teresa’ comes across as quite a hilarious experience. And sometimes Eddie wanted to be Elvis — not only on the ballads, but on the pop-rockers as well: ‘Pretty Girl’, the B-side to ‘Teresa’, is Cochran in full-on rockabilly Presley mode, lowering his voice, hiccuping, putting the bass hooklines on the «stop» moment of the stop-and-start structure, the works. Given that Elvis had temporarily left the building and all, I can certainly see the commercial sense in this (although it didn’t work — nobody really ever bought into the idea of Eddie becoming the new Elvis), but in the long run, this chameleonesque nature of Eddie’s, when he would be Buddy Holly on one day, Carl Perkins the next one, and Elvis the day after that, did him a serious disservice. In the end, despite all the diversity of approaches and the somewhat fascinating story of self-searching that emerges from this general retrospective of Eddie’s brief career, we still inevitably come back to his «teenage quadrilogy», from ‘Summertime Blues’ to ‘Somethin’ Else’, as the sweet short stretch that gives Eddie Cochran his own unique imprint — the simple, but sharp and «superficially deep» vocalization of the dreams and insecurities of the late Fifties’ American teen, sung and played with enough wit and feeling to remain relevant for the American — heck, I’d say the worldwide, or at least the «first world» — teen even today. Who knows, perhaps the fact that Eddie was taken away from this world so early was just meant to signify that he should not have even tried to overstep those boundaries?..

	NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN
	Album released: January 1962	V	A	L	U	E	More info:
		3	3	3	2	3
Tracks: 1) Weekend; 2) Long Tall Sally; 3) Lonely; 4) Nervous Breakdown; 5) Cherished Memories; 6) Twenty Flight Rock; 7) Boll Weevil; 8) Little Angel; 9) Milk Cow Blues; 10) Sweetie Pie; 11) Love Again; 12) Blue Suede Shoes.
REVIEW The second of Cochran’s posthumous albums released on the Liberty label, Never To Be Forgotten is probably also the last of these releases that deserves a special discussion, since, with but two exceptions, it consists almost exclusively of «fresh» material extracted from the vaults; pretty much everything that followed were confusing mish-mashes of alternate mixes, previously released LP-only tracks and B-sides, and a few extra freshly dug-out outtakes. If you are a ferocious completionist, you can hunt for Somethin’ Else!, a gigantic 8-CD box set on Bear Family Records that probably contains every single scrap of recording tape that Eddie left behind, along with an impressive coffee table book that has all the info you ever needed to know about Eddie and more. Unfortunately, I do not have it, so I have no current access to Eddie’s detailed sessionography, and all I know about these tracks is that they were recorded «between 1956 and 1960», which isn’t much (for Eddie, this is the equivalent of a Bob Dylan album said to be recorded «between 1961 and 2024»). But then again, Eddie did not have a particularly dynamic career arc, so I guess exact chronology does not matter that much in this particular case.
The album’s chief asset is, of course, ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ — the song that more or less made Eddie Cochran but, for some reason, ended up left off the 1960 self-titled album, possibly because it was not an official hit single. Never To Be Forgotten corrects that mistake, although in this particular setting ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ all but towers — all of twenty flights — over almost everything else on the LP. While the song is hardly the most angry or aggressive product of the rockabilly era, it is one of its tightest and most tense creations — that frenetic middle section is like Carl Perkins on extra amphetamines, with Eddie playing his solo in a style that ideologically predicts Ten Years After’s Alvin Lee: not particularly inventive or challenging, but driving and engaging series of licks, played as fast as possible for head-spinning effect. But there’s more: surely your senses have suggested to you that there is a serious rhythmic change from the more «wobbly» pattern of the verse to the more straightforward drive of the chorus — this is because (as several people have previously written already) Eddie actually uses a fast habanera-style rhythm for the verse, exchanging it for flat-out boogie in the chorus. (This is even more noticeable, for instance, in this live cover by the Stones from 1981 where it feels like the entire band is drunk off its feet on the verses, only to shake it off for the chorus). This odd alternation of «stuttering» and «speeding» rhythms, I think, was quite deliberately engineered to match the song’s lyrics — an even odder tale of struggle and defeat that reads like an extension of old broken-elevator-in-skyscraper jokes and could be interpreted any old way, from a lament on man’s fatal dependence on modern technology to an allegory of impotence caused by all of life’s troubles. Ripped out of context, the line "get to the top and I’m too tired to rock" by itself reads like a gypsy fortune teller’s prediction for Elvis Presley (just six months after ‘Heartbreak Hotel’). Put back in context, the whole thing might feel like a lightweight joke — not to be taken seriously at all — but since Cochran’s general vibe was usually all about how «it’s so hard to be a young man in this modern world», I insist on the symbolic significance of the broken elevator. I mean, admittedly, sometimes a broken elevator is just a broken elevator, but this here case ain’t the sometimes I’m talking about. "They’ll find my corpse draped over a rail" might formally be just a joke, but on another plane of existence it’s some pretty dark James Dean-type stuff. (There is a curious story about the writer’s credits for ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ which, already on the original release, were split between Eddie himself and a certain ‘Ned Fairchild’, who, upon closer inspection, emerges as Nelda Fairchild, an aspiring country-western songwriter associated with the BMI agency. Sources differ on the identity of the primary songwriter, with some evidence pointing toward Nelda — allegedly, she was paid undivided royalties for the song, indicating that Eddie’s name was simply added for the sake of publicity. But I find some cracks in this story: first, the evidence does not really seem to indicate that the royalties were undivided (all it does is certify that Nelda was being paid), and second, it hardly makes any sense for Nelda Fairchild — most of whose other songwriting credits come from rather generic country ballads and jokey Christmas numbers such as Gene Autry’s ‘Freddie, The Little Fir Tree’ — to have written, all by herself, such a risqué, not to mention melodically inventive, number as ‘Twenty Flight Rock’, and then never ever follow it with anything even remotely reminiscent of this style. It seems more likely to me that Fairchild’s songwriting credit was the result of some typical financial scheme of the publishing industry, the exact details of which we shall probably never know; as for the true writer, he/she may have been Eddie himself, or, perhaps, some anonymous genius whose identity shall never be disclosed.) In any case, the simple fact is that ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ is one of the most outstanding creations in the brief history of classic rockabilly — and this makes it all the harder to gather up comparable excitement for the other songs on Never To Be Forgotten, most of which, needless to say, have been soundly forgotten by everybody except for ardent rockabilly enthusiasts. Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting to hear Eddie’s take on such standards of the genre as ‘Long Tall Sally’ or ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, but his young-man-in-overdrive delivery, so well suited for his original material, does not reveal anything interesting about these songs that Little Richard, Carl Perkins, or Elvis had not yet revealed on their own. And when he tries to put a different spin on Kokomo Arnold’s ‘Milk Cow Blues’ by reverting it back to a slow 12-bar blues crawl (from the rockabillified Elvis version), he comes across as a bit of a clownish parody on classic Chicago blues, mainly because of all the embarrassing vocal exaggeration. (Lesson #1: if you cannot growl, the best decision is to choose not to growl. Applies equally to Eddie Cochran and, say, Ray Davies). So, naturally, my eye is first and foremost drawn here to fresher songs, credited to Eddie himself in collaboration with Jerry Capeheart, or those written by Sharon Sheeley. The best known one is probably ‘Nervous Breakdown’, later covered by Bobby Fuller and a variety of garage-rock acts — and here, too, the songwriting situation is a bit enigmatic: the song is officially credited to Mario Roccuzzo, a TV actor whose career began in 1960 with a part in The Untouchables and who is absolutely not known for any other contributions to the world of songwriting, singing, or musical performing (in addition, Eddie’s recording is from 1958, when Mario was 18 years old). Furthermore, musically the song sounds exactly like a calculated, formulaic sequel to ‘Summertime Blues’ — recycling the latter’s trademark riff, bass line, and part of its vocal melody. Absolutely the only element through which I could, in my mind, link it to «Mario Roccuzzo» is the slight whiff of an Italian accent with which Eddie delivers the "I’m-a havin’-a... nervous breakdown!" introduction, but that’s hardly sufficient evidence for an entire songwriting credit. My gut feeling is that somebody in the publishing offices screwed up again, deliberately or not — the song is most likely a Cochran/Capeheart original. A separate mystery about ‘Nervous Breakdown’ is that, as far as I can tell, the song stayed in the vaults until its eventual release on this LP (and only later, in 1963, as an actual single) — yet musically and thematically, it also has very strong connections to ‘Shakin’ All Over’ by Johnny Kidd over in England: the whole "see my hands, how they shiver / see my knees, how they quiver" bit, the stop-and-start structure with the «quivering» hook of "n-n-n-ervous breakdown!...", and even that bass line would largely re-emerge unscathed in ‘Shakin’ All Over’. (And when you think of it, the fact that The Who would later chain-link ‘Summertime Blues’ and ‘Shakin’ All Over’ for their classic live act becomes more than pure random coincidence). My only possible blind guess is that Eddie may have performed the song during his ill-fated first and last tour of the UK (January to April 1960), and that Kidd may have been in the audience at one time to hear it and be influenced by it — but that’s just groping in the dark. The single unassailable truth here is that the two songs are very clearly related. But ‘Shakin’ All Over’ is the better one: it manages to specifically pick out the subtle elements of darkness and insanity present in ‘Nervous Breakdown’, throw out the lightweight playfulness, and tap even deeper into the depths. The other originals are ‘Boll Weevil Song’, which I already discussed previously, and ‘Sweetie Pie’, an outtake from 1957 with Eddie at his most Gene Vincent-like; the song oozes stereotypical rockabilly simplicity to a proto-Ramonesque degree by featuring the most rudimentary chords and the most laconic lyrics (the writers could not even be bothered to come up with two different verses), but the problem is that Eddie Cochran does not have his own rockabilly overcoat, and when he does not amplify his image with a captivating bit of unique teenage drama, all he does is peddle formula, and I like my formula peddled in a more idiosyncratic manner. Not that it ain’t fun or anything: after all, you gotta admire a man whose only message is "she’s my steady girl, ’cause she’s my sweetie pie" and who is sticking to it through thick and thin. From the loving writer’s hand of Sharon Sheeley come three more songs, all of them ballads this time: the liveliest of these is ‘Cherished Memories’, a curious hybrid between a doo-wop serenade and a merry military march that I could picture Eddie whistling along with his brother-in-arms on a lively jog from the barracks to the training grounds. Neither doo-wop nor martial tunes are among my favorite musical genres, but at least the novelty nature of their crossing makes the song more memorable than ‘Lonely’ and ‘Love Again’, standard slow ballads that at least deserve a better singer than Cochran, even if his lower range was fairly impressive for a guy who chiefly built his reputation on his mid-to-upper range. Finally (or rather initially, since it opens the LP), there is ‘Weekend’, an Elvis-type pop song (albeit subtly based on a smoothed-out variation of the Bo Diddley beat) credited to «Bill and Doree Post» — whoever they were, they at least knew a thing or two about what sort of material to submit to a guy like Eddie, as the song, once again, continues the issue of «all we want is have some fun but those nasty grown-ups don’t let us». It’s certainly less socially conscious or musically ass-biting as ‘Summertime Blues’, but it is quite in line with the former — not only are those nasty grown-ups preventing us from finding decent work for good wages, they are doing everything in their power to spoil our party fun as well. Unfortunately, the meek arrangement and especially the irritatingly infantile la-la-la backing vocals push the song toward Jan & Dean territory; I certainly do not see swarms of terrified parents losing sleep over the song in my mind’s eye. All in all, this is an enjoyable record, even if ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ — and, perhaps, also ‘Nervous Breakdown’ for all of its curious features — are likely the only two songs on it that somewhat justify the title. Even Sharon Sheeley, whose liner notes on the back of the LP ("Eddie’s love will always be my most precious possession") are conventionally touching, would «forget» about Eddie rather quickly, marrying Jimmy O’Neill in 1961 and going on to create the Shindig! show with him. Liberty Records would also continue to diligently gather the dregs from the vaults for years, but it never really gets better than this one LP. And perhaps that’s the way it was always going to be. Of all the heroes of the rockabilly era, Eddie Cochran was arguably the one who flashed his «young man blues» tag more flamboyantly than anybody else in the business — and then was taken away from us once the celestial powers understood that he’d never be fit for much of anything else in this world anyway. So do not waste time trying to guess whether he would have gone on to something bigger; like most of his peers from the same era of music-making, he would have not — the likeliest alternative to dying would be turning into a nostalgia act, playing ‘Summertime Blues’ at county fairs and «rock’n’roll revivals» for the rest of his life. Yet this sober realization should by no means diminish the power of his best songs, all of which still pack more spirit, intelligence, and authenticity than any random selection of glossy, auto-tuned «rebellious» teen-pop crap from the hit charts of the 21st century — and yes, of course you saw that one coming, but how else am I going to justify these reviews in the face of the new reality?

Recording years	Main genre	Music sample
1955–1960	Early rock’n’roll	Summertime Blues (1958)