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The 1950's ---- Musical variety at its best!

Wanted" is a song written by Jack Fulton and Lois Steele. The recording by Perry Como was the most popular version. This RCA VICTOR Record with the accompaniment of the Winterhalter orchestra and chorus, and was recorded at Manhattan Center December 29, 1953. This record reached No. 1 on Billboard's chart in 1954. The song also reached No. 1 on the Cash Box chart in the same year.
 
This song first appeared in the Martin & Lewis comedy film The Caddy, released by Paramount Pictures on August 10, 1953. Lewis commissioned Warren and Brooks to write songs for Martin to sing in the movie. According to Lewis, he personally paid them $30,000 secretly in the hope that one would be a hit for Martin. In the film the song is performed mainly by Martin, with Lewis joining in and THAT's AMORE was born The song was a hit in both 1953 and '54.
 
"O mein Papa" is a nostalgic German song, related by a young woman remembering her beloved, once-famous clown father ---- written by Swiss composer Paul Burkhard in 1939 for the german musical. "Oh, mein Papa", an instumental version by trumpeter Calvert in 1954, was also a hit #1 in the UK, while a Top 10 hit in the United States. It was adapted into English by Turner and Parsons under the title OH! MY PA PA. A recording by EDDIE FISHER with Winterhalter's orchestra and chorus that was made at Webster, Hall, NYC, debuting on the Billboard chart December 12, 1953. It was released by RCA VICTOR. This recording became a No. 1 hit in the US. Ironically, Fisher's version made the top 10 in the UK.
 
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THE HAPPY WANDERER became a US hit in 1954, and was recorded by various record companies with various choirs and orchestras. Apparently, the catalyst was a recording by german war orhpans in 1953 that hit the airwaves in the UK that year. . This was followed by other Happy Wanderers...:)
 
The Little Shoemaker based on the French song, "Le petit cordonnier," by Rudi Revil. The original French lyric was written by Francis Lemarque. English lyrics were written bg Goeffry Parsons, Nathan Korb (Francis Lemarque) and John Turner. In the US, the best-selling version was by The Gaylords, charting in 1954. In the UK, the song was the first charted hit for Petula Clark the same year. I loved her in the 1960's (Downtown)
Here are The Gaylords on the Colgate Summer Comedy Hour on August 18, 1954
 
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In 1954 an upbeat style of music appeared that still was being called "Rhythm and Blues" for lack of a better term. This song would introduce Bill Haley and his Comet to the planet; however, he wasn't the originator of this song (nor the first to record it in 1954 ------ SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL: Big Joe Turner

Oddly enough, there ain't nothing new under the sun. In 1919 Al Bernard recorded a ragtime song written in 1910 titled YOU'VE GOT to SHAKE, RATTLE, and ROLL :
 
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In 1953 Bill Haley and His Comets had a hit that reached 54 on the top 100 chart for that year ---- CRAZY MAN CRAZY ---- It used some of lingo of the "BEATNIK" crowd: It wouldn't be until about 1954-55 that Rock'n Roll would become the label for the style of music. And it wasn't popular with a wide crowd. But things they were a changing. Crazy MAN CRAZY is considered the 1st "Rock'n Roll" hit to be played on TV. NEW MUSIC for a NEW audiance!
 
Stranger in Paradise is a song from the musical Kismet (1953). Like almost all the music in that show, the melody was borrowed from music composed by Borodin (1833–1887), in this case, the "Gliding Dance of the Maidens", from the Polovtsian Dances in the opera Prince Igor (1890). It would be a big hit for Tony Bennett in 1954, and there would be not a few versions by other singers that same year! And here is the ORIGINAL by Alexander Borodin (A lot of good music comes from a lot of good music)
 
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This song was written in 1950, but was not releast until 1953. The song became popular because it became the theme song for the movie SUSAN SLEPT HERE in 1954. The song is HOLD MY HAND and would be Don Cornell's last record to reach the number 2 spot:
 
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Perry Como would have yet another big RCA VICTOR hit with PAPA LOVES MAMBO in 1954: In the mid 1940's Mambo replaced Rhamba as the popular Latin dance. The Mambo was considered more sophisticated.

SO, what is MAMBO?!? Remember West Side Story:
 
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The BIG HIT of 1955 was WHAT!?!?! APPLE PINK CHERRY BLOSSOM WHITE. The tune came out in 1950, but the big hit that ran as number 1 for 10 weeks was by Perez Prado in 1955 :
 
Okay, okay ---- the number two spot was indeed ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK. The BIGGEST hit for Bill Haley and the Comets. The years was 1955. Rock'n Roll would never get any better. It's funny how one song can define a decade. Don't get me wrong! Please I love the song. It is fast, very danceable. I'd give it a 9 out of 10, Mr Horn. :cool: ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK was number 1 for 8 weeks.
Anyway, The Comets would do for the UK what the Beatles did for the US. Now oddly, Mr. Haley was compared to being a grocer with a spit curl. He certainly knew how to wear a plaid dinner jack...
 
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The song that knocked Rock Around The Clock out of the #1 spot after 8 weeks was THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS. I'm not making this stuff up! It was the 1950's and there was more than just teenage crap played on radio stations back then! The earliest known version of this song is found in Christy's Plantation Melodies. No. 2 Songbook, published in Philadelphia in 1853. Don George reworked the original version of the song, which Mitch Miller made into a popular recording in 1955. Miller's version was featured in the 1956 motion picture Giant, and reached #1 on the U.S. pop chart the same week Giant star James Dean died.
 
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I need to mention that Stan Freberg did a parody of THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS (in 1955)----- which was a real hoot back in the day when heard on the radio. Of course again, years later--- this version would be played on the Dr Demento show along with other novelty songs that made people laugh throughout recorded history. This song also became somewhat of a hit, riding on the coattails of the Mitch Miller version ---- sometimes played back to back. Speaking of Mitch Miller, he always reminded me of a beatnik from the neck up --- that goatee & mustache. Not that common in the clean shaven 1950's. Enjoy:
 
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1954 would produce a song that remained quite popular into 1955 The Ames Brothers version is to me the best and the one I most remember. THE NAUGHTY LADY OF SHADY LANE was a song with a twist. It implided one thing but the reality makes it one of the most endearing songs of that decade. The punchline comes at the end with the seemingly dapper, tuxedoed, nightclubing guys becoming rather protectively parental...
 
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A Big Hit in 1955 was DANCE WITH ME - HENRY. A few years later the song would reappear with another singer. This is a MERCURY Record by Georgia Gibbs.
 
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What a cool thread. Here's one from the 50s my dad used to play all the time, complete with an awesome trombone(!) solo:


 

Gisele MacKenzie - Dance with Me Henry on YOUR HIT PARADE (May 7th, 1955)​

YOUR HIT PARADE was a very popular television program; however, it was the ever encroaching rock'n roll which would finally kill the program. It became more and more difficult to impossible to replicate the "rock" band sound which would begin to take a bigger and bigger chunk of the music industry... Hit the WATCH ON YOUTUBE to view!
 
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Here's another great song I heard often when I was a kid:


 
Pat Boone would reach the top of the charts with his second single, Ain’t That a Shame, which appeared in July of 1955. Pat Boone was not in competition with the original release of the song by Fats Domino (which also came out in July 1955 and was originally called AIN'T IT A SHAME) to the contrary: White teens often bought the original single after they heard Boone's version. People often liked both Boone's recordings and the originals. He was the major force in introducing white audiences to Rhythm & Blues music, because the original recordings were not being played on white radio stations:
 
This is a song my four year old niece loves to sing along with, and it's the cutest thing you've ever seen.

 
In 1955 UNCHAINED MELODY was "unchained". Al Hibbler would be the first of many who would record this lovely song and It would reach #3 that year. Again the 78rpm record was still available with some labels This one is DECCA:
 
In 1955 a song was written with Perry Como in mind; however, his promoters turned it down. The song was sung by a Canadian group called The Four Lads, and the rest has become another moment to remember. It is hard to imagine that teens and college students were ever this nostalgic for the past. However, life was very different then, and so was much of the music that the public was generally exposed to. I can't help looking at these photos and many others from the period and it seems to me that kids in general were far more mature (grown up) and respectable back then. I did live as a little kid during this period, and it really was like a LEAVE IT TO BEAVER --- FATHER KNOWS BEST moment...
 
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The Perry Como version of PAPA LOVES MAMBO seems to have vanished, so here is another copy if your interested: This fills the original post about 15 postings above.
 
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