JOHNNY BURNETTE
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1955–1964 |
Early rock’n’roll |
Honey Hush (1956) |
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Album
released: Dec. 1956 |
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Tracks: 1) Honey
Hush; 2) Lonesome Train (On A Lonesome Track); 3) Sweet Love On My
Mind; 4) Rock Billy Boogie; 5) Lonesome Tears In My Eyes; 6) All By Myself;
7) The Train Kept A-Rollin’; 8) I Just Found Out; 9) Your Baby Blue Eyes; 10)
Chains Of Love; 11) I Love You So; 12) Drinking Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee, Drinking
Wine; 13*) Tear It Up; 14*) Youʼre Undecided; 15*) Oh
Baby Babe; 16*) Midnight Train. |
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It is hardly a coincidence that
both the Burnette brothers’ and their guitar player Paul Burlison’s primary
claim to fame before music was boxing: all three had been Golden Gloves
champions (in fact, this is where the brothers met Paul in the first place),
and there are obvious and frequent glimpses of pure boxing aggression in much
of their music — a perfect sublimational solution as far as I am concerned,
though it also brings a whole new subtext to the "holding a baseball
bat" line of ‘Honey Hush’, a line they did not invent but did appropriate
with delightful gusto. |
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You do have to
focus fairly hard on the sonic properties of the trio’s first single, ‘Tear
It Up’, to note what it is which makes it stand out from the general pool of
rockabilly copy-pastes recorded in the mid-Fifties. Although the song is
formally an original composition, its melody is more or less completely taken
from ‘Shake, Rattle & Roll’, and the arrangement is standard rockabilly
fare à la early Sun-era
Elvis. But while other performers would be content to simply imitate that
sound, the Rock’n’Roll Trio chose to push it one or two steps further — to
evolve it in a freer, wilder direction. To that end, Johnny Burnette delivers
his lines in an overdriven, ecstatic tone which throws restraint out of the
window, alternating them with series of football-fan-level yelps and howls;
and Burlison pushes the treble levels on his guitar as high as it could be
deemed prudent to go, creating a sound as self-indulgent as possible, one
that demands your full attention to itself much like a cat that has not been
fed for several hours. The only other guitar-based rockabilly band at the
time who could boast the same desire to jump out of its britches in order to
grab you were Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps — but the Rock’n’Roll Trio’s big
difference was that they preferred a cleaner, more in-your-face sound without
Gene’s echo-laden production style, which offers you a choice: the slightly
«voodoo-like» effect from Gene or the completely down-to-earth,
schoolyard-hooligan approach of the Burnette brothers. Both are equally valid
from my point of view. That said, ‘Tear It Up’ and its early sequels on their own are not
enough to consolidate and validate the legend that is the Rock’n’Roll Trio
(in fact, a few of them are mildly embarrassing, such as the fast acoustic
Western ballad ‘Midnight Train’, on which Johnny goes way overboard with a
faux Southwestern accent and plaintive intonations — this stuff should
probably be best left to Johnny Cash). The legend was not properly born, in
fact, until the fateful day when, according to his own words, Burlison
accidentally dropped his amplifier, dislodged a power tube, and came up with
the famous distorted sound of ‘The Train Kept A-Rollin’ and ‘Honey Hush’ —
two of the most, if not the most,
period, dangerous-sounding songs of 1956, next to which even the wildest
numbers ever recorded by Elvis sound like showtunes in comparison. The truly delightful thing about these songs is that even today, after
every technological breakthrough in sound production has been achieved, there
is nothing in the recorded repertoire that sounds quite like that sound — it
is truly a bit of a singularity in space and time. Distortion would soon be
taken to new, barely imaginable heights, yet the distortion of ‘Train’ and
‘Honey Hush’ is in a class of its own. It is a quiet, reserved type of
slightly grumbly distortion, a sort of grouchy echo that accompanies each
note of the riffage — and since the riffage itself, in a jazzy fashion, keeps
on varying and exploring the scale within reasonable limits, this creates the
effect of some intimidating, if not openly aggressive, predator menacingly
sniffing out every inch of your living space. Actually, while ‘Train’ is
clearly the more famous song out of these two (largely because its legend
would later be expanded by the Yardbirds and Aerosmith), ‘Honey Hush’ seems
more wholesome to me because of how perfectly its aggressive instrumental
tone matches the (allegedly misogynistic, but oh well) anger of the lyrics
and the vocals — that is a whole frickin’ wall of pissed-off attitude right
here, one that was so impressive on fiery teenagers around the globe that
forty years later, even Paul McCartney himself would decide to revive the
attitude on his album of oldie covers (he failed, of course). It has actually been claimed that it was not, in fact, Burlison, but
rather session legend Grady Martin who played on many of the Rock’n’Roll
Trio’s recordings — including these two. Regardless of whether this is true
or not (if it is, Grady must obviously be given his due), the fact remains
that the sound here is unique, and neither Burlison nor Martin ever explored
it further, perhaps due to being unable (or unwilling) to reproduce the exact
conditions in which it had been generated. But this does not mean that the
rest of the album is worthless — even if a track like, say, ‘Lonesome Train
(On A Lonesome Track)’ is kind of like a twin brother to ‘Honey Hush’, but
without the cool distortion, it still carries a swaggy, menacing groove and
features Johnny at his most... let’s say, psychopathic. Traditional
country-western singers tended to get all melancholic and moody when boarding
those lonesome trains; Johnny Burnette sounds as if he’d been shoved head
first into the luggage compartment inside a straightjacket. Likewise, when they choose to cover Fats Domino’s ‘All By Myself’, a
song that, typically for Fats, used to embody all the cheerful independence
of the New Orleanian spirit, Johnny and the boys leave virtually nothing of
the original spirit, replacing it with the same rebellious attitude — like it
or not, they make this stuff theirs and nobody else’s. Same with the old
R&B classic ‘Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee’ from the late 1940s — what used
to be a friendly advertising for alcohol on the part of Sticks McGhee and his
boys turns into a musical impersonation of a frenzied barroom fight. Not too aggressive, mind you — not to the
point of sounding hateful or anything, rather just reminding you that those
days of Golden Gloves are not as far away as one might have thought. Of course, the Rock’n’Roll Trio were just as capable of tenderness and
affection — it would, after all, otherwise be completely unclear how Johnny
Burnette would go from rock’n’roll rebel to sweet teen idol in just a few
years. It is in the sphere of tenderness and affection, in fact, that their
greatest songwriting achievement lies — the slightly Latin-influenced dance
ballad ‘Lonesome Tears In My Eyes’, catchy, seductive, and brawny at the same
time enough to attract the attention of the Beatles, whose live BBC
performance of the tune is now well remembered. However, it is also clear
that Johnny emerges as the dominant force on just about every one of their
slow blues and ballads, and that this soulful force is not as unique or even downright
interesting as the band’s collective rockabilly power. I mean, when you play
Big Joe Turner’s and the Burnettes’ ‘Honey Hush’ back to back, you can
clearly see the progress; when you do the same with ‘Chains Of Love’, it is
far less obvious if the brothers actually bring anything fresh to the table.
Johnny may have tried to be versatile, for sure, but essentially there is one
thing he truly excels at, and that is screeching his head off like there was
no tomorrow. A calm and sentimental Johnny, one who has just taken his shots
and been temporarily removed from the straightjacket, is simply not much use
to society, if you know what I mean. Still, despite a certain proportion of mediocrity, The Rock’n’Roll
Trio is indispensable listening for all those who are interested in the
high peaks of 1950s rock’n’roll — and all those who simply like themselves a
bit of timeless rock’n’roll. The album is now most frequently available in a
well-packaged CD edition called The Complete Coral Rock’n’Roll Trio
Recordings, collecting all the A- and B-side singles, unreleased tracks
and alternate takes from the sessions — a bit of overkill, especially due to
some novelty doo-wop numbers like ‘Butterfingers’, but at least giving the
impression that all the proper dues have finally been paid to this extremely
short-lived, but unique and influential combo. Had the band found proper
commercial success, things might have turned out differently; as it is, their
brand of rock’n’roll somehow fell through the cracks of the public conscience
— and maybe, back at the time, it was easier for a professional musician to
truly appreciate that uncommon distorted sound than for the general public.
On the other hand, it is useless to feel sad that the Rock’n’Roll Trio’s
prime days lasted less than a year — after all, even the best rockers from
that decade, who would go on to have lengthy extended careers, usually made
their own legend with but a small handful of genius singles and, at best, one
or two great LPs. In that respect, the Rock’n’Roll Trio’s worthwhile musical
legacy is only a tad skimpier than that of Little Richard, Chuck Berry, or
Jerry Lee Lewis. And it’s all here, on one disc! |
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Album
released: 1960 |
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Tracks: 1) Dreamin’; 2) Lovesick Blues; 3)
Please Help Me, I’m Falling; 4) Haul Off And Love Me One More Time; 5) Love
Me; 6) Kaw-Liga; 7) Settin’ The Woods On Fire; 8) I Want To Be With You
Always; 9) Cincinnati Fireball; 10) My Special
Angel; 11) Finders Keepers; 12) I Really Don’t Want To Know. |
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REVIEW Poor, poor Johnny Burnette. Most
of the original rock’n’rollers, cursed with the «Fifties’ Curse», had it one
of two possible ways — they either underwent a «spiritual death» (or, at
least, some sort of debasement) by doing dumb things and embarrassing
themselves socially, or by watering down their sound and selling out
commercially; or suffered the real
thing, like Buddy Holly or Eddie Cochran. Johnny Burnette, however, had it
worse than most, going through both
of these phases — first, he traded in his rock’n’roll rebelliousness for a
teen-pop sound that completely destroyed his artistic reputation; and then he died in 1964, going out the
live-fast-die-young way like Buddy and Eddie, rather than fading away like he
was supposed to. No doubts about it — some bumbling executive in the Heavenly
Chancellery must have messed up a couple of folders, because no unfortunate soul
deserves two executions in a row. |
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And from the
point of view of eternity, that first execution was far more brutal than the
final one: Johnny Burnette’s solo career has pretty much been condemned to
total oblivion, other than a vague memory of J. B. as the creepy guy who
first sang ‘You’re Sixteen’ — although let us be fair about it: the Beatles
only sang "well, she was just
seventeen" because a trisyllabic numeral fit the rhythm of the song
better than a bisyllabic one — and even that bad karma has since largely been
reshouldered on Ringo, who would update ‘You’re Sixteen’ for the 1970s and
somehow make it sound much sleazier than the original. Honestly, though,
Johnny Burnette didn’t mean anything offensive. He was a decent chap, and
while his solo career was somewhat
embarrassing, and is unquestionably a big letdown after the monumental
singles with the Rock’n’Roll Trio, it has its share of enjoyable moments that
deserve to be revisited. The slide into
banality was, as it often happens, gradual, and, as it happens even more
often, more a result of Johnny Burnette yielding to peer pressure than his
own innate conformity and/or ruthlessness. After the ultimate disintegration
of the Trio, with brother Dorsey heading into his own direction, Johnny, as the
former frontman of the band and, thus, its most recognizable member, easily
landed a contract with Freedom Records, a short-lived subsidiary of the
larger Liberty label that only lasted for about a year. (Apparently, liberty is a concept more appealing to
the population of the United States than freedom,
whatever that is supposed to imply!). The three
singles that Johnny managed to release in that short period did not chart and
certainly were no masterpieces, but they did retain a certain noble integrity
from the good old days. ‘Kiss Me’ was a fun little pop-rocker that somehow
managed to mesh Elvis’ Sun-era rockabilly style with Buddy Holly’s melodicity
and vocal harmonies — derivative for sure, but a nice type of synthesis all
the same. Musically more impressive was the B-side, ‘I’m Restless’, driven
by a magnificent, tightly ringing out arpeggiated guitar riff (there is no
certainty about who plays it, but some sources suggest Chips Moman) that
feels like a cross between country-western, surf-rock, and the early,
‘Telstar’-era, «space rock» (Joe Meek would be proud), while Johnny’s lead
vocals are shadowed by not one, but two
layers or deep-set vocal harmonies, a male doo-wop chorus and a faintly heard
female operatic backup. The combination of all these elements is quite unique
for its time and sure makes me wish the song were better appreciated in its
time — had people sat up and noticed, this might have pushed Johnny into a
different direction. The second
single was not too bad, either: for ‘Me And The Bear’,
Johnny invented a humorous tale about the disadvantages of the hunting trade,
mixing vaudeville with Biblical imagery, and, if you listen closely, actually
set it to the riff of ‘Train Kept A-Rollin’, played here in a colorfully
ringing manner rather than the grumbly distorted one of the original but
still retaining its magical effect on your body — it is pretty damn hard to
sit still while it’s on. The B-side, ‘Gumbo’, then took the listener away
from the Northern forests and into the Delta for some shrimp fishing and
rhythms that are, perhaps, a little too Latinized for the environments of New
Orleans, but still fun, if not nearly as rocking as that bear song. Finally, for
the third single Johnny settled on a ballad: ‘I’ll Never Love Again’ places
the emphasis strictly on the crooning vocals, and although the busy guitar
strum and swirling angelic backup vocals are not «tasteless» by any means,
the song is clearly aimed at swooning romantic ladies rather than teen
rebels. However, the B-side, ‘Sweet Baby Doll’, still returned us back to the
sweet and seductive realm of rock’n’roll, with another funny tale of an
unfortunate womanizer chased away by an angry parent — nothing innovative
here by any means, but Johnny got plenty of ironic energy to deliver the
message, and the rhythm section, rocking guitars, and boogie-woogie piano are
nothin’ to shake a stick at. And then? And
then Freedom Records folded, with Johnny’s contract going over to its parent
label — Liberty Records. This was supposed to be good news for Mr. Burnette,
since the bigger label had more promotional capacity. However, in order to
properly promote Johnny, it was necessary to update his image to more modern
standards, and Liberty Records sure knew a thing or two about modern
standards. After all, this was the label that had first signed Henry Mancini;
made its first really big money with ‘The Chipmunk Song’; and, by 1960, was
enjoying another wave of major recognition with the incredible career start
of Bobby Vee. In almost everything they did, Liberty’s motto seems to have
been: "Everything is always better
with more strings!" This is why, for instance, the only original LP
by Eddie Cochran released in his lifetime was a collection of sentimental
ballads, oversaturated with easy-listening violins. At least in
Eddie’s case, Liberty still had the good sense to allow him to put out his
rock’n’roll singles the way he liked — raw and rocking. No such luck awaited
Johnny Burnette, who joined the label at the end of 1959 and was immediately
paired with the aspiring young producer Tommy ‘Snuff’ Garrett, four years
younger than Johnny and, apparently, fourty-four years the savvier. Garrett
would go on to have a long and productive career, becoming somewhat of a
legend in his own rights, but, honestly, «easy listening» would forever
remain his specialty, with the likes of Nancy Sinatra and Cher being his
typical clients in future decades. For now, though, his task was simple: he
had to «gentrify» the wild rock’n’roll sound of Johnny Burnette, which had
already become relatively polished during his year at Freedom, but there was
still plenty of room left to improve. So, what really makes the difference
between freedom and liberty? «Liberty» = «Freedom» +
«Strings»! The formula was
first tested in November ’59, with the release of a cover of Hank Williams’
‘Settin’ The Woods On Fire’. Opening with a mighty string swoosh and goofy
poppy vocal harmonies, the song is literally an embodiment of what might be
called «early symph-rock»: the strings fully and completely replace both
rhythm and lead guitars, leaving Burnette’s agitated vocals as the tune’s
only authentic trace of a rock’n’roll soul. Ironically, some electric guitar
is visible only on the B-side, a cover of Bill Monroe’s ‘Kentucky Waltz’,
which does not even pretend to be in any way related to rock’n’roll; much to
Johnny’s honor, though, he still gives an impressive performance, bringing a
bit of that old rockabilly hiccup along to make it all sound a little more
earthy and humorous than rigorously serious and pathetic. In any case,
though, the first attempt at catching the public eye with this brand of
easy-going lite-rock failed: the single flopped just like all of its three
Freedom predecessors. In an even
hickier attempt to turn the tide, Garrett and Burnette’s next recording would
be ‘Patrick Henry’, a total novelty pop tune written by a couple novelty pop
songwriters and adorned with the trappings of sounding like an «authentic»
Revolutionary War marching band musical number. The chorus may have been
intended as a subtle pun on the name of Johnny’s record label — I’m sure all
the executives had a blast chanting "give
me liberty or give me death!" in those young and innocent days of
March 1960 — but ultimately, the tune is so corny that its semi-patriotic,
semi-vaudevillian spirit reeks of quiet desperation. At least the B-side,
‘Don’t Do It’, a country-cum-rockabilly number with reverberating guitars and
an Elvis-style vocal performance that Johnny wrote himself, still saved a bit
of reputation. But it was only a B-side, and the single did not chart anyway.
Apparently, Patrick Henry was not all that much on the agenda of American
record buyers in the days of Bobby Vee and Frankie Avalon. And then it
finally happened. ‘Dreamin’, an unabashed pop song combining a twist-like
danceable rhythm with a little bit of sentimental yearning stuck somewhere
halfway in between the Everly Brothers and Elvis — and, of course, soaked
heavily in Garrett’s swooping strings — rose all the way to #11 on the
charts, and, surprisingly, became even more of a hit in the UK, where it
reached #5. In its defense, I have to say that the song is indeed catchy,
that Johnny’s vocal delivery is not too over the top or devoid of true
feeling, and that the arrangement of the «dialog» between the voice and the
strings shows signs of creativity and professionalism. Also, I’d certainly
have it over ‘Patrick Henry’ any time of day or night. But it still fails to
pass what I call the «adequacy test»: sentimentality, pathos, and production
gloss here clearly override the song’s melodic value, making it impossible to
«give in» to the magic of the music. My money,
instead, is on the B-side — ‘Cincinnati Fireball’ is a hilarious and totally
enjoyable rocker from the songbook of Aaron Schroeder, written in the
humorous tradition of people like Larry Williams and Huey ‘Piano’ Smith. It’s
bluesy, it has some stinging electric lead playing, it returns Johnny to a
proper predatorial mood, and even the obligatory strings sort of recede into
the background. It’s kinda strange that almost nobody of merit ever covered
the song: I’d imagine it would have been perfect for the likes of «occasional
revivalists» from The Flamin’ Groovies to Cheap Trick, but perhaps Schroeder,
whose fame chiefly lies in writing songs for Elvis in the early Sixties, had
a bad reputation with these guys. In any case,
the sudden and serious success of ‘Dreamin’ finally put Burnette back on his
feet, and this was, of course, the perfect occasion to follow it up with an
entire LP. The record would include ‘Dreamin’ itself (and, predictably, be
named after the song), along with ‘Cincinnati Fireball’ and ‘Setting The
Woods On Fire’ — thankfully, no ‘Patrick Henry’ — and the rest of it would be
somewhat evenly split between ‘Dreamin’-style ballads and ‘Woods’-style
«symph-pop-rock» versions of classic tunes, including two more Hank Williams
covers. Making a rough generalization, Dreamin’
is really a country album, and
should perhaps be approached as such to avoid any additional disappointment —
the country melodies may be a little sped up, a little obscured with
incessant string flourishes, a bit roughened up by Johnny’s
rockabilly-addicted voice, but essentially it’s just good old Nashville all
over the place. And it’s not
too bad: ‘Lovesick Blues’, for instance, is one of the most interesting vocal
reinterpretations of Hank’s classic I have come across — Burnette replaces
Williams’ creaky worn-and-torn intonations with the fuss-and-agitation of a
young rockabilly guy, and, strange enough, it works. Maybe it’s just on a
technical level — Johnny seems to have no trouble whatsoever hopping all
across the rather complicated range and yodeling bits of the song — but in
any case, he manages to be charismatic enough to push the tune into a
slightly different plane from Hank’s. (The same, unfortunately, cannot be
said of ‘Kaw-Liga’, the sad and corny story of a cigar store Indian that was
never one of Hank’s best songs in the first place and with which there ain’t
not too much remaining for Johnny to do). Another decent «upgrade» is for
Wayne Raney’s ‘Haul Off And Love Me One More Time’, an old country hit from
1949 sped up to an insane tempo and featuring Johnny go from falsetto to
guttural roar in less than two minutes. Not all that jaw-dropping, but a
reasonable transformation — unlike, say, his formally commendable, but
ultimately pointless exactly because of its by-the-bookishness, Elvis
impression (‘Love Me’). Overall, the
album clearly follows a filler formula, but the formula is not nearly as
horrendous as it could be for any aspiring «teen idol» of the early 1960s.
Burnette’s heart is still clearly wedged in the rip-it-up plane of being, as
much as he is being held back by the choice of song material, the «polite»
approach to musical performance, and Garrett’s omnipresent strings that, per
Liberty Records’ ideology, were on their way to reclaim territory which had
only temporarily been occupied by those uncultured barbarians with their
noisy electric guitars. In some strangely perverted way, this combination of
a rock’n’roll heart with «easy listening» elements has a sad charm of its own
— like watching some downcast ancient Greek hero tragically trapped for
eternity in some unescapable situation, while still trying to make the best
out of it for himself. |
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Tracks: 1) You’re
Sixteen; 2) Crying In The Chapel; 3) Dream Lover; 4) Oh Lonesome Me;
5) I Beg Your Pardon; 6) I Love My Baby; 7) Dreamin’; 8) It’s Only Make Believe;
9) Singing The Blues; 10) You’re So Fine; 11) I Go Down To The River; 12) Let’s Think About Living. |
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REVIEW Way before Karl Martin Sandberg,
better known as ‘Mad Max’ Martin, turned a certain cuddly «Mouseketeer» into
the world’s most controversial sex symbol, there were the brothers Robert B.
Sherman and Richard M. Sherman, two entrepreneurial descendants of Tin Pan
Alley veteran Al Sherman, who helped the original
cuddly Mouseketeer, Annette Funicello, break into the Billboard Top 10 with ‘Tall Paul’ in 1959 —
the first «rock’n’roll» song by a female artist, according to Wikipedia, to
reach that level of success (I was all set to gloat about how they are wrong
because Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree’ came out in 1958,
but then I remembered that it did not actually chart until the re-release for
the 1960 Christmas season, so I guess we have to thank Annette for that,
too). Of course, in spirit ‘Tall
Paul’ is about as much «rock’n’roll» as ‘Baby One More Time’, but in form it was a fairly passable
imitation — actually, that moderately wild sax break in the middle could fool
you into conjuring Little Richard for a couple dozen seconds — and it put the
Sherman Brothers up both on the Disney market (‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’!)
and on the general pop market, which was where they happened to meet Johnny
Burnette, and dirty history was born. |
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If you go to
YouTube and punch in ‘You’re Sixteen’, the first links you are going to
receive — with millions of views,
as opposed to Johnny’s measly hundred thousand — are for the Ringo Starr hit
version from 1973. There are two forgivable reasons for this — one, because
this is Ringo Starr, after all, and two, because this is 1973 rather than 1960
and 1973 remains predictably cooler and trendier on the nostalgic radar of
today than 1960. There may also be one scandalous reason for this: when Ringo
recorded his cover in 1973, pretty much everybody
understood the line "you’re
sixteen, you’re beautiful, and you’re mine" the only way it could be
understood — a sleazy middle-aged (Ringo was pushing 33, but that was considered pretty old in those
days) rocker’s infatuation with fresh underage pussy, sort of a common thing
in the original era of jet plane-riding rock superstars that, er, uhm, has
not aged all that well in itself,
so to speak. (Fun fact: Carrie Fisher, who starred in Ringo’s TV special in
1978, singing the song with him, actually was
16 in 1973, though she certainly was not on the poor guy’s radar at the
moment). However, when Johnny Burnette released the song back in
October 1960, he was just 26 — and, more importantly than his biological age,
was working specifically for the teen-oriented section of the musical market.
Likewise, although the Sherman Brothers themselves were in their
mid-thirties, they — just as they
did with ‘Tall Paul’ — were writing specifically with the teen market in
mind. The original ‘You’re Sixteen’ is, therefore, merely a love serenade
between two young people, no more and no less than that. And it has to be
taken in the context of ‘Tall Paul’, not
in that of ‘Bang A Gong’, ‘Whole Lotta Love’, and whatever Gary Glitter was
doing in his alleged prime. In this proper
context, ‘You’re Sixteen’ is bubbly, catchy, toe-tappy, and hardly any worse
than any such typical Elvis Presley pop song from the same time period. Both
the lyrics and the music, driven as usual by Snuff Garrett’s string
arrangements, are far more giddily romantic than expressly sexual — you
really couldn’t prove, based on the song, that its heroes have already
ventured anywhere beyond first base — and the veni-vidi-vici triple punch of the main lyrical hook, want it or
not, is pretty much the perfect
summation of one’s feeling after scoring a date with the prettiest girl in
class, right? It’s simply the kind of emotional language that went extinct a
long time ago, but there was nothing unhealthy about it back in 1960 (well,
maybe apart from the music business’ idea that middle-aged Tin Pan Alley —
make that Teen Pan Alley, heh —
songwriters would be more adept at mastering teenage emotional language than
teenagers themselves; but then again, Johnny Burnette was not really that
much of a songwriter himself, so we can’t really put the blame on Liberty
Records). With the song
riding high up the charts, providing Johnny with an even bigger break than
‘Dreamin’, it was decided that this smash success had to be quickly backed up
with another LP. The bulk of the self-titled Johnny Burnette consists of fresh recordings from a five-day
Hollywood recording session in late November / early December of 1960, during
which Johnny was backed by the same musicians as on ‘You’re Sixteen’ — most
notably including Buddy Holly & The Crickets’ original drummer Jerry
Allison, as well as some lesser known members of «The Wrecking Crew».
Actually, Allison’s presence is not as unimportant as one might think — if
you somehow manage to block Garrett’s orchestrations out of your ears for a
while, the rhythmic textures on many of the songs here have a very distinct
Buddy Holly-like tinge to them, and overall, the album delivers quite a
passable pop-rock vibe; nothing like a return to the glory days of the
Rock’n’Roll Trio, but not particularly offensive to the rock’n’roller’s
taste, either. The main
problem is the lack of interesting material: other than ‘You’re Sixteen’,
there are very few songs here that have not been done earlier by somebody
else, and, as a rule, done better and/or with a sharper sense of purpose. The
obvious exception is the original B-side to ‘You’re Sixteen’, a mid-tempo
country ballad called ‘I Beg Your Pardon’ and credited to Burnette himself;
as I said, the lad wasn’t much of a songwriter, so this sounds like a cross
between Hank Williams and Carl Perkins, without the vocal attraction of the
former or the imaginative guitar playing of the latter. Drop the strings,
replace Johnny with Elvis, and you could have a little something there...
otherwise, just move on. Another
exception from the rule is ‘I Love My Baby’, a song that, I believe, was
specially written for Johnny by Barry De Vorzon and Ted Ellis — the authors
of ‘Dreamin’ — but the problem is that, believe it or not, it is merely a
transparent re-write of ‘You’re
Sixteen’, very slightly amending the melody of the verse and totally leaving
in place the melody of the bridge section. In order, perhaps, to introduce a
teeny weeny bit more of disparity, Johnny sings the tune with a little extra
nasal twang and general braggadocio (his ‘Cincinnati Fireball’ voice), but in
the end "I love my baby and my
baby loves me" just ended up so less seductive than "you’re sixteen, you’re beautiful, and
you’re mine". (If you want a song in which that line does sound seductive, do a timewind to
1964 for Elvis’ ‘C’mon Everybody’ in Viva
Las Vegas!). Finally, there
is ‘(I Go) Down To The River’, credited to Ben Weisman, one of Elvis’ chief
songwriters — and again, it does
sound like Elvis, being probably the most soulful and even slightly
gospel-influenced (as if you could not tell from the title alone) track on
the record, but the very inevitability of the comparison already reflects
poorly on Johnny; this is a song that should
have been delivered straight to Elvis’ breadbasket. As for pop
standards like ‘Crying In The Chapel’, ‘It’s Only Make Believe’, ‘Dream
Lover’, ‘Singing The Blues’, they are done passably, but are really only
worthy of your attention if you have a soft spot for Garrett’s light
orchestral arrangements — admittedly, they are somewhat idiosyncratic for their
era, which is hardly something I could say about Johnny’s voice or manner of
singing. Dion could make Bobby Darin’s ‘Dream Lover’ ring anew with his
subtle microtones; Johnny Burnette, once again, just makes it sound like
Elvis without all the subtle
microtones. One thing I’m
grateful to this record, though, is introducing me — because of my total
inexperience with country music — to Bob Luman’s ‘Let’s Think About Living’,
a hilariously ironic tune written by Boudleaux Bryant (of the Everly
Brothers’ fame) that satirizes artistic obsession with negative emotions and
the subject of death ("In every other
song that I heard lately / Some fellow gets shot / And his baby and his best
friend both died with him / As likely as not / In half of the other songs
some cat’s cryin’ / Or ready to die / We lost most all of our happy people
and I’m a-wonderin’ why"). Again, Johnny does exactly nothing
interesting with the song that Bob has not done already, but I would have
never heard Luman’s original if not for Johnny, so there’s that. Well, maybe,
in a way, the song felt close to Johnny’s heart because most of his major
successes were, after all, very much sogs about livin’, lovin’, a-hoppin’ and
a-boppin’, but (a) he’s had his fair share of tear-jerking ballads, too, and
(b) he still does not look like the 100% epitome of a happy playboy to me. I
mean, less than two months after completing those sessions, they hospitalized
the poor guy with a ruptured appendix — how’s that for thinking about
a-hoppin’ and a-boppin’? Anyway, the
only worthwhile song off this album that is not readily available on various
best-of compilations is ‘(I Go) Down To The River’, and you have not missed
much if you never heard it. ‘You’re Sixteen’ shall always remain a classic —
an innocent classic or an immoral classic, depending on the degree of our
stuck-uppishness but completely disregarding our individual opinions — and
‘Let’s Think About Living’ is good satire. Everything else is for those who
enjoy roleplaying as early Sixties’ teenagers and covering their walls with
posters of American Graffiti.
(Which, come to think of it, is probably not the worst way to go; but I am
still very much on the fence over whether I actually prefer Annette Funicello
to Britney Spears or if it’s the other way — probably one of those hormonal
things). |
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Tracks: 1) Little Boy Sad; 2) Mona Lisa;
3) I’m Still Dreamin’; 4) In The Chapel In The Moonlight; 5) Red Sails In The
Sunset; 6) Big Big World; 7) Ballad Of The One Eyed Jacks; 8) The Treasure Of
Love; 9) The Fool; 10) Blue Blue Morning; 11) Memories Are Made Of This; 12)
Pledge Of Love. |
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REVIEW It is probably safe to say that
people did not turn ‘Dreamin’ and ‘You’re Sixteen’ into big hits because of
Johnny Burnette or Snuff Garrett — they just happened to be catchy songs with
sharp romantic hooks. Johnny had a good
singing voice to put to them, but not an outstanding
one; also, it was a voice that probably worked best when set to «hiccupy
rockabilly rasp» mode, and that mode was no longer in fashion by 1960. As a
romantic singer, he had neither the sweep-you-off-your-feet power of Elvis
nor the seep-under-your-skin melancholic subtlety of Ricky Nelson. What this
meant for his own career was simple enough: Johnny Burnette + strong original
songwriting = potential success; Johnny Burnette + lazy songwriting or cover
versions = boring failure. |
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Country
songwriter Wayne Walker’s ‘Little Boy Sad’, written for Johnny and recorded
by him on the very first day of the same session that yielded most of Johnny Burnette, showed that well
enough when, released as a single, it failed to break into the Top 10. It was
a relatively energetic country-rocker with a distinctly rocking high-pitched
electric guitar riff (quite pleasantly flowing together with Garrett’s light
strings), but it did absolutely nothing melodically that a couple dozen Carl
Perkins or Elvis songs had not already done, and the world had relatively
little use for it (in fact, I strongly suppose that most people bought it on
the strength of ‘You’re Sixteen’ and ended up disappointed). It fared a
little better in the UK than in the US, though, and even ended up being
covered six years later... by Herman’s Hermits. Uhm, well, that’s life. (The Hermits cover is
much more interesting, by the way — turned into a crunchy sugary slice of
mid-Sixties’ bubblegum-hard-rock at its, well, bubbliest). Things took an
even odder turn from there. In February 1961, Johnny returned to the studio
to record ‘Big Big World’, an even more generic number that completely left
the «rock» out of «country-rock» and replaced it with loud backing vocals and
obnoxious strings (here they really fill up all the space, as opposed to
Garrett). It was rootsy enough to avoid any straightforward accusations of
plunging head first into «teen-idolism», but so toothless and hookless that
it absolutely did not matter anyway. The B-side was at least on the weird
novelty level for Johnny: ‘Ballad Of The One-Eyed Jacks’ was, indeed, a
rambling story-based country ballad à
la Marty Robbins, apparently written as a «musical companion» to Marlon
Brando’s only directorial experience, the 1961 Western movie One-Eyed Jacks. While the movie did go
on to become a bit of a cult classic, the song (which, as far as I know, was
written about the movie rather than
part of the actual soundtrack) never really went anywhere. It tries to
conjure up a little of that Western mystique, but Johnny’s voice has nothing
mystical about it and the arrangement is as formulaic in every little detail
as they come in the field of Western soundtracks. Well... the only good thing
I can say about it is that at least Johnny Burnette is a little more credible
as a cowboy than he would have been as a surfer. Even though
‘Big Big World’ fared even worse than ‘Little Boy Sad’, Johnny was given the
green light for yet another short LP — comprised of these two singles, a few
outtakes from the November 1960 sessions and the results of one new extensive
session in March 1961 that yielded seven new tracks, all of which are here. These
are mostly covers of relative oldies, with one notable, but unnecessary exception:
‘I’m Still Dreamin’, as one might have easily guessed, is a shadow-sequel to ‘Dreamin’,
written by the same people and working as a «happy ending» to the original: "I’m still dreaming / But not like before /
Though I’m dreaming / I’m lonely no more". Perhaps it would have
made sense if the original had a properly tragic atmosphere and the sequel
would be the melodramatic resolution. As it is, the original was already
syrupy enough for the sequel to send you into the spasms of sugar shock. Slightly more
interesting is the decision to turn Nat King Cole’s ‘Mona Lisa’ (after a
deceptive slow intro) into a rollickin’ pop-rocker that is melodically closer
to ‘Jambalaya’ than Tin Pan Alley — even if, ultimately, this has more shock
value than common sense (and even the shock value would be appreciated by
only a handful of people). Invading the territory of Fats Domino (‘Red Sails In
The Sunset’) and Clyde McPhatter (‘The Treasure Of Love’) does not work too
good, either, because Johnny shares neither Fats’ quirky sense of New Orleanian
humor nor the pristine angelic beauty of Clyde’s vocal cords. And then there’s
a Dean Martin cover (‘In The Chapel In The Moonlight’) which is all about
trying to modernize the romantic Broadway ballad of the 1950s, but who really
gives a damn? One song that
makes me a little more happy than the rest is ‘The Fool’, a song that was
first released by Sanford Clark in 1956 and, if I am not mistaken, first
dragged out of the country circuit and exposed to a wider market by Johnny on
this LP (subsequently covered by Johnny Kidd & The Pirates in 1966, by Elvis
in 1971, and even by Paul McCartney for his Unplugged performance in the early 1990s). ‘The Fool’ is notable
for basically being the very first song submitted to the world by the genius
of Lee Hazlewood — in this case, «genius» consisting of taking the riff of ‘Smokestack
Lightning’ and adapting it to a country tale of self-deprecating depression,
showing how pretty much the exact same melody, with but a slight tonal shift,
can be used to express both extroverted menace and introverted sarcastic melancholy.
Unfortunately, Johnny’s version does not expand the song’s potential beyond
whatever Sanford Clark had
already done with it. But it’s a likely bet that this is the version all
those UK kids heard first, so there’s that. In any case, Johnny’s
second LP from 1961 does not really show him sliding significantly deeper
into the precipice of cheese and irrelevance than the levels of his first
one. ‘Little Boy Sad’ and ‘Mona Lisa’ show that he still vaguely remembered
how to rock, while oddities like ‘Ballad Of The One Eyed Jacks’ show that he
was certainly not happy about the idea of being branded as one of the «teen
idols». But he still hadn’t learned to write his own material, nor could he
afford collaboration with professional songwriters who could write songs
specifically for his needs — creatively, he was more or less on the level of Gene
Vincent, whose own slide into mediocrity followed similar lines (except that Vincent
was never lucky enough to find a gold nugget like ‘Dreamin’ or ‘You’re Sixteen’
in that time period). |
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