Searching for Chuck Willis

It was Episode 4 of "Call The Midwife" where I struggled to identify the singer. Thanks to Iain, the music supervisor, I now know it was Chuck Willis. He started making records in 1952 when twelve bar blues were crossing over into rhythm and blues, the very early origins of rock and roll. In 1954 he wrote and sung I Feel So Bad (later to be recorded by Elvis) and bigger hits followed in 1957 with C.C. Rider  and 1958 with What Am I Living For.

Despite my growing interest in American music around this time, I missed out on Chuck. But that was not the case for one of his contemporaries: Fats Domino. Fats was making records before Chuck and his December 1949 recording of The Fat Man is often cited as one of the very first rock and roll records. Check it out on YouTube. Musicologist Ned Domino said that this was rock and roll before anyone had heard those words and says that " Domino crossed a line by playing a stripped-down, more aggressive boogie woogie piano with a series of "piano-triplet-and-snare- backbeat hits".

The common denominator between Chuck and Fats is that both developed the blues into something upbeat that would influence bands to this day. The first album from The Rolling Stones is nearly all rhythm and blues, Little Red Rooster being pure blues.

One of my treasured possessions is a 1978 edition of "The Book of Golden Discs (The Records That Sold a Million)" compiled by Joseph Murrells. On further study as part of this article, it seems to be an important document in the history of the development of rock and roll and all it's derivatives.  The book starts in 1903 with Enrico Caruso but it's not until 1923 that Bessie Smith appears with Downhearted Blues. Country makes an appearance in 1928 with The Carter Family and Jimmie Rogers. Bing Crosby had his first million seller in 1937 and a year later Ella Fitzgerald was joined by the jazz orchestras of Tommy Dorsey, Harry James and Artie Shaw. Big bands and crooners dominated the charts in the 1940's until "bang" - here is Fats Domino in 1948 (a year earlier than listed in Wikipedia) with The Fat Man. Rhythm and Blues had hit the big time.

Onto 1951 and still the domination of singers: Tony Bennett, Doris Day, Perry Como, Nat "King" Cole, Frankie Lane Guy Mitchell, Patti Page, Johnny Ray, Debbie Reynolds and Jo Stafford. Not forgetting from CTM, Rosemary Clooney singing Come-On-A My House, her first million seller. Fats Domino was still prolific, but none sold a million that year. But Hank Williams and Slim Whitman did, so country and western, popular songs, jazz and rhythm and blues were competing for the record buying public.

So it was no surprise when, in 1954, someone combined all these genres and made it rock and roll. Bill Haley and his Comets released Shake, Rattle and Roll and Rock Around The Clock that year. Not sure about jazz? Just listen to the sax solos. I must have been around eleven years old when I used to stay (with my brother) at my maternal grandmother's house in Rotherham most summer holidays years. My uncles who also lived there were younger than my mother, and as well as owning the LP of Rock Around The Clock also had Rock Island Line by Lonnie Donegan, so that was 1955. I always preferred the latter, and his brand of folk still influences my preferences today with bands like First Aid Kit being a modern development of the genre. Lonnie was my favourite artist for a few years with songs like Cumberland Gap in 1957 and Tom Dooley the following year. I lost faith when he went to comedy songs.

Just as an aside, on the same page as Bill Haley is Kitty Kallen with Little Things Mean a Lot, another song featured in "Call The Midwife". Fats Domino is back in 1956, 1957 and 1958 with some big hits. And there in the last of those years is Chuck himself with What Am I Living For. Popular music was now seeing the rise of young stars like Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Ricky Nelson and of course Elvis. By the following year I was listening to Radio Luxembourg where the first British DJ's were bringing American music to the UK for the first time. My mother was obviously quite  unique in letting me listen to this kind of music on that old radio.

Here are some of my favourites from the late 1950's:
Something Else - Eddie Cochran
Wake Up Little Susie - The Everly Brothers
Peggy Sue - Buddy Holly
Diana - Paul Anka (only because of Kensington Gardens - see CTM posting)
Little Darlin - The Diamonds
At The Hop - Danny and The Juniors
It's Only Make Believe - Conway Twitty (my karaoke song in a different life i.e. I could sing)
Rockin Around The Christmas Tree - Brenda Lee (my favourite Christmas song)
Who's Sorry Now - Connie Francis (I have the old LP - how cheesy is that)
Roll Over Beethoven - Chuck Berry
Earth Angel - The Penguins (although the better version is by Marvin Berry and the Starlighters from the film "Back To The Future" where there is the best edit ever in movie history)
Travellin Light - Cliff Richard (only because it was the first record we bought)
Singing The Blues - Tommy Steele
He'll Have To Go - Jim Reeves (only because it was a standard at my 1964 dancing class)

I was so lucky to have been born in 1944 as at the age of  fifteen or sixteen I was writing down the playlists from shows on Radio Luxembourg such as Jack Jackson's Jukebox. These are some I would have listed, all pre-date the coming of  The Beatles:

Dreamin - Johnny Burnett
Rubber Ball - Bobby Vee
Poetry in Motion - Johnny Tillotson
Sea of Heartbreak - Don Gibson
Running Bear - Johnny Preston
Handyman - Jimmy Jones
Cathy's Clown - The Everly Brothers
Runaway - Del Shannon
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do - Neil Sedaka
Hello Mary Lou - Ricky Nelson
Green Onions - Booker T and The MG's
Sheila - Tommy Roe
The Locomotion - Little Eva
Pallisades Park - Freddy Canon
Wonderful Land - The Shadows
Runaround Sue - Dion
Sweet Nothing - Brenda Lee
Goodbye Cruel World - James Darren
The Wanderer - Dion (again)
Only The Lonely - Roy Orbison
Alley Oop - The Hollywood Argyles

Will any of these feature in the next series of "Call The Midwife" We'll have to see. If I had to choose a record, it would have to be by Lonnie.