Now-and-then music: 1956

It’s time to start wrapping up Now-and-Then Music for this year, during which we took a look at a couple of new releases, as well as a glance backwards at popular music released in 1956, 1981, and 1996. I didn’t get around to reviewing nearly as many collections as I wanted to, particularly for 1956 and 1996 (for some reason, 1981 wasn’t much to my tastes). I won’t pretend to have listened to enough new music released this year to make a Top Ten list for 2006, but I’ll post lists for 1956, 1981, and 1996 during the holiday season, before flipping the calendar forward one year and doing it all over again.

Top Albums of 1956

Rock Around the Clock
Bill Haley
released June 1956
(Decca)

Decca had already released most of the cuts here the year before, but that album—Shake, Rattle, and Roll—didn’t sell, so they repackaged it and tried again after Elvis Presley broke upon the national scene in the Spring of 1956. Haley was 30 when he helped invent rock n’ roll; most of his ‘peers,’ if one can call them that, were mere kids. Maybe that’s why Haley never quite got his due for helping spawn the genre of pop music that would dominate the next 40 years.


Pithecanthropus Erectus
Charles Mingus
released 1956
(Atlantic)

A difficult record from a difficult man. I would say that Mingus was before his time, but I’m not sure that jazz ever caught up to him. Still, this collection is a tough one to like. A concept album, full of colliding fragments of tone and theme, Pithecanthropus Erectus may be overwrought, may be self-indulgent, but it is definitely one of the finest statements of literary Modernism disguised as popular music.


At Basin Street
Clifford Brown/Max Roach
released 1956
(EmArcy)

Phenomenal jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown died in the summer of 1956 at the age of 25, and At Basin Street represents one of the last recordings of his brief career. Along with drummer Max Roach, Brown leads a sterling cast of players, including saxophonist Sonny Rollins, through a fine catalogue of songs here, such as the Cole Porter classic “What Is This Thing Called Love?” and “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.” Over the years, this CD has been re-released with the addition of some bonus tracks.



Ella and Louis
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
released 1956
(Verve)

I suspect most jazz purists would not rate this collection among the finest for either Ella or Louis, but I love this disc. Ella and Louis is loaded up on old pop standards, including a few from the Gershwin brothers, a Hoagy Carmichael song (“The Nearness of You”), and the Irving Berlin classic “Isn’t This a Lovely Day?” Even if the set of songs doesn’t necessarily do it for you, Ella and Louis sound like they’re having a blast making the record.


Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
released March 1956
(RCA)

See my review of Elvis Presley here.






Elvis
Elvis Presley
released October 1956
(RCA)

RCA’s follow-up to Elvis Presley has Presley covering contemporary songs made famous by others, such as Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally,” as well as a couple of old chestnuts. Although some of Presley’s biggest hits of 1956 were not on either album from that year, subsequent re-releases have included them.


‘Round About Midnight
Miles Davis
released 1956
(Columbia)

See my review of ‘Round About Midnight here.






Fontessa
The Modern Jazz Quartet
released 1956
(Atlantic)

I’ve always felt that pianist John Lewis was an underrated figure in jazz, and maybe that lack of respect is a result of his somewhat ‘cooked’ approach and his willingness to incorporate classical-music touches to his work, but no matter, Fontessa is a great disc, as the quartet shows its chops on a wide variety of subject matter. While no song here touches 1953’s “Django,” Fontessa is nonetheless an interesting collection of music.


Saxophone Colossus
Sonny Rollins
released 1956
(Prestige)

These five cuts, clocking in at just under 40 minutes, might be the best jazz collection of the 1950s. The last two songs—Kurt Weill’s “Moritat” (“Mack the Knife”) and Rollins’s “Blue 7”—account for well over half the collection and tend to attract most of the attention, aside from, perhaps, the beautiful “St. Thomas.” Rollins’s take on “Moritat” certainly evokes Bertolt Brecht’s original Dreigroschenoper lyrics better than many subsequent breezy pop numbers, such as that of Bobby Darin, and “Blue 7” has been considered for 50 years as one of the best jazz-blues performances ever, highlighted by dazzling solos, one by drummer Max Roach and the others by Rollins himself. This collection is tough to beat.


Brilliant Corners
Thelonious Monk
released 1956
(Riverside)

One needn’t choose among Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, but it seems one does (I’m for Ellington), but no matter your opinion of Monk’s work, Brilliant Corners usually scores pretty highly for fans and non-fans alike. It’s a very fine record, anchored by the 13-minute Monk original “Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are,” which is a graceful, melodic beauty of a song, but maybe you shouldn’t trust an Ellington fan to point you toward Monk’s music. Try Brilliant Corners for yourself. Even if you’re lukewarm on Monk, there’s plenty to like here, including the side work of Sonny Rollins and Max Roach.