Every lassie digs a laddie

Continuing my trip back through the 1956 album charts.

09/12/56 : Rock 'n Roll Stage Show - Bill Haley And His Comets

I think "Rock Around The Clock" is the only Bill Haley track I know - I'm expecting this to be pretty similar, but apart from that I've got nothing.

Well, it's similar in places but very different in others - I certainly wasn't expecting an accordion-lead instrumental to feature ("A Rockin' Little Tune") and it sounded just like the sort of thing you hear when you're put on hold on the phone.  As a whole, it felt "safer" than I was expecting - it feels like parent approved rock and roll, with it feeling more related to the 40s big band style than what came after.  I'm sure that those who understand these things better than me will scoff at my reductionist nonsense, but I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as I enjoyed Lonnie's music history lesson.  But with twelve tracks in thirty minutes, I certainly can't complain about it outstaying its welcome.

We're at #3 in their second week of a two week run, with it having had a six week run earlier in the year, spending one week at the top - given how few albums there appear to have been around at the time this doesn't feel like a great run.  The rest of the top five were TKAI OST (a re-entry at the top - you don't see many of those these days!), Lonnie Donegan, Elvis Presley and Carousel OST.

Wikipedia tells us this is their fourth album, but their first studio album and also the first to feature new material - which is somewhat impressive because the first three albums were singles compilations and feature 32 tracks between them!  It doesn't have a lot else to say about the album other than that they gave everyone a turn at having their moment in the spotlight, which I guess explains some of the stranger tracks on the album.  I was also somewhat surprised to learn in passing that NME actually started in 1952 - I struggled to imagine what kind of content it had and having looked at this, I still struggle.

"Customers also listened to" Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochrane, Johnny Burnette and Little Richard - I'm aware of three of those names and can quite see the connection.  I took this as another music history lesson (and it probably won't be the last) and I found it interesting, but surprisingly tame and oddly strange in places.

02/12/56 - Very old-fashioned
16/12/56 - Fun, if somewhat silly

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