JOHNNY BURNETTE
Recording years |
Main genre |
Music sample |
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, wre on their way to reclaim territory that was only temporarily
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. |