Category Archives: 1950s

Nat King Cole – Unforgettable (1951)

by 1950s • Tags: , , ,

Unforgettable is a popular song written by Irving Gordon. The song’s original working title was Uncomparable. The music publishing company asked Irving to change it to Unforgettable. The song was published in 1951. The most popular version of the song was recorded by Nat King Cole in 1951, with an arrangement written by Nelson Riddle. A non-orchestrated version of the song recorded in 1952 is featured as a bonus track on the CD reissue of 1955′s completely instrumental (save the bonus material) Penthouse Serenade. Cole recorded the tune anew in 1961, in a stereo version of the Riddle arrangement, for the album The Nat King Cole Story. His version of the song was included in its entirety in the 2009 film Watchmen during the Comedian’s death scene. Nat Cole’s original recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000.




natkingcole

[via Lars Villemoes - dedicated to A.P.]

Link Wray – Rumble (1958)

by 1950s, Rock • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

“Rumble” is an influential rock instrumental by Link Wray & His Ray Men. Originally released in 1958, “Rumble” utilized then-unexplored techniques like distortion and feedback. The song is one of very few instrumental single banned from the radio airwaves.” It is also described as the first song to use the power chord, the “major modus operandi of the modern rock guitarist”.







Tennessee Ernie Ford – 16 Tons (Go-Go Version) (1965)

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by 1950s, 1960s, Country • Tags: , , ,

Ford scored an unexpected hit on the pop charts in 1955 with his rendition of Merle Travis’ “Sixteen Tons”, a sparsely arranged coal-miner’s lament that Travis wrote in 1946, based on his own family’s experience in the mines of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Its fatalistic tone contrasted vividly with the sugary pop ballads and rock & roll just starting to dominate the charts at the time:

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store…

With a unique clarinet-driven pop arrangement by Ford’s musical director, Jack Fascinato, “Sixteen Tons” spent ten weeks at number one on the country charts and eight weeks at number one on the pop charts, and made Ford a crossover star. It became Ford’s ‘signature song.’










[via Harriet Amster in Arlington, Texas]