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repertory: old-fashioned-sounding songs from the 50s and 60s


pogo97

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I generally confine my gig repertory to songs written before 1950. It's my thing.

 

But the other day a very nice couple wanted something from 1967 because that's when she was born or they were married or something. By sheer good luck and clean living, I could do "What a Wonderful World" and they were very happy. Otherwise I would have had to play "The Letter," which I know but really doesn't suit the vibe.

 

So today, I sat down at the computer and searched the "Billboard Year-End Hot ## singles of ####" lists on Wikipedia to try to gather some songs that were popular each year from 1950 to 1969 but that were written before 1950 *or* sounded like they maybe could have been (extra points if I already knew the song). I've posted the list below. The pickings get pretty thin after 1960. It's a quick draft and I'm wondering if perhaps some of my elders on this forum could toss out some suggestions.

 

1950 / Tennessee Waltz / Rag Mop

 

1951 / Mockin’ Bird Hill / Down Yonder / Undecided

 

1952 / Half as Much / Slow Poke

 

1953 / Don’t Let the Stars get in Your Eyes / Vaya con Dios

 

1954 / Secret Love / Stranger in Paradise

 

1955 / Sixteen Tons / It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie

 

1956 / My Prayer / On the Street Where You Live / Blueberry Hill

 

1957 / I’m Gonna Sit Right Down / Dark Moon

 

1958 / It’s all in the game / All I Have to Do is Dream / Twilight Time

 

1959 / Mack the Knife / Smoke Gets in Your Eyes / A Fool Such as I

 

1960 / Where or When / Let It be Me

 

1961 / I Fall to Pieces / Blue Moon / The Way You Look Tonight

 

1962 / Roses are Red (My Love) / You Don’t Know Me / Moon River

 

1963 / Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer / Maria Elena / The End of the World

 

1964 / A Summer Song / Everybody Loves Somebody / We’ll Sing in the Sunshine

 

1965 / Unchained Melody / How Sweet It Is

 

1966 / Sunny / Walk Away Renee / Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind? / If I Were a Carpenter

 

1967 / Can’t Take My Eyes off You / I Got Rhythm / What a Wonderful World

 

1968 / Angel of the Morning / Cab Driver

 

1969 / My Cherie Amour /

 

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Assuming she was married - not born - in 1967, she's on the downside of 50s pop, but too old for most R&R hits. You'd think her request wasn't really about one particular year, regardless of how she worded it, so I would have checked my list for any late 60s song.

 

Leon Russell said that he was always trying to write songs that would be considered standards in the same way that you use the word, and IMHO he clearly achieved that with "A Song for You" written in 1970. I lot of Beatles tunes also have bridges, use turnarounds, and sound good with altered chords, but as you've noted they're few and far between. I'd look through the Paul Simon, Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb, Stevie Wonder, and Randy Newman catalogues. Another approach is to search for older songs that were recorded later but were album fillers, rather than successful solo releases. It helps if they mention their favorite artists of the era in question.

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It's way before my time but weren't radio hits before the 50's more big band or orchestra based?

 

Not necessarily. Often just a piano accompaniment, sometimes guitar and vocal (The Mills Brothers) sometimes a band, which evolved from early recordings with military-style or New Orleans Jazz band to big band. Like today or anyday, lots of approaches to performing songs. I play piano and sing, but I don't much care what the early arrangements were, I care about the quality and style of the song itself.

 

The pre-50s songs are before my time, too -- I know them because my parents played them or from years of listening to and researching that music. It's hard for me to dissociate, as senorblues suggests, the Beatles songs etc. from my own sense that they are modern songs because they were written within my own memory. Some, like "When I'm Sixty-Four" were deliberately old-fashioned sounding, which is dandy. Same with Randy Newman's songs, many of which are very 1920s, harmonically.

 

[video=youtube;DKdOyNQRuoc]

 

[video=youtube;abaf_77JML8]

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I'm wondering if perhaps some of my elders on this forum could toss out some suggestions.

 

1950 / Tennessee Waltz / Rag Mop

 

1951 / Mockin’ Bird Hill / Down Yonder / Undecided

 

1952 / Half as Much / Slow Poke

 

1953 / Don’t Let the Stars get in Your Eyes / Vaya con Dios

 

1954 / Secret Love / Stranger in Paradise

 

1955 / Sixteen Tons / It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie

 

1956 / My Prayer / On the Street Where You Live / Blueberry Hill

 

1957 / I’m Gonna Sit Right Down / Dark Moon

 

1958 / It’s all in the game / All I Have to Do is Dream / Twilight Time

 

1959 / Mack the Knife / Smoke Gets in Your Eyes / A Fool Such as I

 

1960 / Where or When / Let It be Me

 

1961 / I Fall to Pieces / Blue Moon / The Way You Look Tonight

 

1962 / Roses are Red (My Love) / You Don’t Know Me / Moon River

 

1963 / Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer / Maria Elena / The End of the World

 

1964 / A Summer Song / Everybody Loves Somebody / We’ll Sing in the Sunshine

 

1965 / Unchained Melody / How Sweet It Is

 

1966 / Sunny / Walk Away Renee / Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind? / If I Were a Carpenter

 

1967 / Can’t Take My Eyes off You / I Got Rhythm / What a Wonderful World

 

1968 / Angel of the Morning / Cab Driver

 

1969 / My Cherie Amour /

although debatable as to whom is who's 'elder' in this forum ;) ...

Born in 1967? I've got socks older than that!

okay, songs....

what about Winchester Cathedral [1966]?

Theme to A Summer Place [Percy Sledge 1959, the re-released around '66 by the Lettermen]

Girl From Ipanema [1965]

Patches [Dicky Lee 1965]...heck Dicky had tons of soppy tunes back then, Tell Laura I love Her, etc.

Love is Blue [Paul Mauriat 1967]

and show tunes...tons, from Take Me Along[1959], Brigadoon [1954], Once Upon a Mattress [this show was the big break for Carol Burnett 1959], Oliver! [1960], A Funny Thing Happened [on the Way to the Forum] 1966....

and all those Ramsay Lewis covers of pop tunes like In Crowd...

 

R-A-G-G-M-O-P-P- raggmopp!

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Patches -- over my dead body

Summer Place -- Percy *Faith* (I wondered!) and he's Canadian -- a little goopy for my taste, but who knows?

Girl from Ipanema -- good call, I can play about ten bossas and can easily trot those out

I'll go mining those musicals, too. Plus Lerner & Loewe and anything Rogers & Hammerstein.

Can we still sing "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" without being arrested?

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My friend and I were discussing nursing home gigs a few days ago. I said I didn't have the material to do it. We both agreed however, that in a few years we're gonna be hearing some great classic rock played in those nursing homes!!!

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Platters songs like "Only You", "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", "My Prayer", "Harbor Lights" etc., many were written before 1950s and revived, and seem very popular for a broad range of older folks.

 

"Beyond The Sea" ('47 Charles Trenet, '60 Bobby Darin), "At Last" ('43 Glenn Miller, '61 Etta James, '03 Celine DIon), "Darling Je Vous Aime Beaucoup" ('35 Hildegard also Nat King Cole and Natalie Cole), etc.

 

Am I on the right track here?

 

Notes

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If the woman in question got married when she was 20, she's my age. The range of musical styles that got traction on Billboard was huge, so I don't think you can know what she will and won't like without a longer conversation. Now if she was five years older, R&R was still in its infancy and she was stuck with what I consider to be a much more limited range of musical choices.

 

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She was primed to like whatever I played -- why would I make it harder for myself?

 

I disagree with your last sentence. If you take any period of music and study carefully what people were listening to, you'll find that they're all pretty heterogenous in terms of origin, style, subject matter and several other things that don't come to mind.

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Waterloo Sunset is a great song. It wasn't a hit here (I don't recall, anyway) but we had cousins in Yeoville Somerset and a couple of Christmases they sent us 45s of hit songs. Waterloo Sunset was one of them. Listened to it yesterday, in fact.

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I "attended" a short concert by the Platters, if only the current version. We were stuck in the airport in St. Kitts WI, coming home from visiting my in-laws. The current approved touring version of the Platters was transferring off a cruise ship and waiting for the same plane to Miami. They very kindly grouped up and sang a couple of the old hits for us all. Nice.

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The Louis Prima versions of just about everything are better than anybody who copied them. We used to do GIgolo/Nobody but it's fallen out of favor. I commend David Lee for doing it, but the Prima version is Primo. Same for Jump, Jive and Wail. Setzer version is good, Prima version better. Of course that's my personal opinion YMMV

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