About This Time 70 Years Ago… It’s The Hits Of April-ish 1955!

The Hottest Hit On The Planet…

Mambo wasn’t built to last.

More a fun word to say than a sustainable musical genre, mambo – or at least fun little novelty records packed with mambo puns, like:

• “Mambo Italiano”
• “Papa Loves Mambo”,
• “Mambo Baby”,
• “We Want To See Santa Do The Mambo”

…. and so on …

…was the hottest groove around in the couple of months leading up to Christmas 1954. By the time New Year’s came around though, by the time everyone was presumedly singing “Auld Lang Mambo,” all the puns had been done, and the mambo boom was fast turning into a mambo crash.

And that should have been the end of Perez Prado, “The King Of Mambo” and his exclamatory mambo grunts. But just before the market for mambo completely dried up, Perez scored the biggest record his career!

A colourful instrumental cha-cha called “Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White.” AKA: that delightful little record that sounds as though it’s broken – or maybe it’s the record player that is broken? – because it keeps on slowing right doooowwwnnnn, before springing and speeding back up again!

Perez may have been unable to enjoy his Mexican success however, since it was about this time that the Mexicans deported him. I’d like to believe that it was because he wrote a mambo arrangement of the Mexican national anthem, but apparently that’s just an urban myth.

Recording a mambo version of a national anthem is, however, exactly the kind of thing that Perez Prado would do.

You want a mambo version of “St Louis Blues”? Then listen to “St Louis Blues Mambo.” You want a mambo version of “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”? Then there’s “Mambo de Chattanooga.”

Perez was mambo-izing everything! He made mambo versions of movie film scores, and a mambo version of “Skokiaan”, that huge 50s pop hit originally performed by The African Dance Band of the Cold Storage Commission of Southern Rhodesia. Perez’s 1954 album, Mambo Mania also includes a little something called “Marilyn Monroe Mambo:”

Which is just a mambo with the occasional shouting of “MARILYN MONROE!” over the top:

So why not mambo-ize a French pop hit called “Cerisiers Roses et Pommiers Blancs”?

“Cerisiers Roses et Pommiers Blancs” had been written a few years earlier by a guy called Louiguy, who had previously written Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en rose.” Louiguy presumedly lived a fascinating life, but if there’s any interesting Louiguy trivia out there, it must be written in French.

The earliest recorded version of “Cerisiers Roses et Pommiers Blancs” was by Andre Claveau, a crooning chanson singer.  This means that it had lyrics. French lyrics translated into English as such:

“When we played hopscotch
Rosy cherry tree and white apple tree
I thought I would die of love for her
while kissing her In a young lady’s way,”

There is sadly no section where Andre slows his singing right down before speeding it up again.

There also appears to have been a couple of early German versions, so presumedly “Cerisiers Roses et Pommiers Blancs” was a bit of a hit across Europe. Not so much in America – not at least until Perez’s version blew up in 1955.

Perez may have been riding the wave – and consequent crash – of mambo-mania in 1955, but this was not the main reason why “Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White” blew up.

It was also on the soundtrack to a much hyped, and considerably less-viewed, cinematic experience:

Underwater! cost millions to make – back when “millions” was a lot of money – and three years to film. The first press screening occurred underwater! Film critics had to wear scuba-diving equipment in order to watch it!!

Jane Russell apparently dances to “Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White” in the film. I can’t find a clip of that – the entire movie is available on multiple dodgy Russian streaming sites if you feel you need to watch it – but an extremely slow and un-mambo-like rendition is played over the trailer.

Although nobody has ever admitted to watching Underwater!, “Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White” suddenly exploded, and a whole bunch of covers magically appeared.

The Brits got trumpet player Eddie Calvert, and his version went to Number One over there. But it’s so similar to Perez’s– maybe a tiny bit heavier – that it’s barely worth embedding. Someone called Georgie Auld & His Rockin` Rhythm recorded a jump blues version, though…

For those who wanted a crooner version in English, there was Alan Dale:

The English lyrics were not the same as the French. Not even close. There’s no hopscotch, for one thing. Too many mentions of the titular trees in case you forgot the name of the song:

“It’s cherry pink and apple blossom white
When your true lover comes your way
It’s cherry pink and apple blossom white
The poets say

The story goes that once a cherry tree
Beside an apple tree did grow
And there a boy once met his bride to be
Long long ago”

Those lyrics were written by Mack David, the same guy who wrote the lyrics for the English version of “La Vie en rose.” Mack was also the brother of Hal David, who… let’s just say he got the talent in the family. Maybe Mack should have let Hal look the lyrics over first.

Given how BIG “Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White” was – the biggest song of 1955! Number One for 10 weeks!! –  not to mention how catchy – and with its discombobulating trumpet smear, how instantly recognizable – it’s surprising the extent to which it appears to have been largely forgotten. Almost as forgotten as Underwater!

To the extent that “Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White” is remembered, it’s as the last Number One before “Rock Around The Clock:”

Held up as an example of everything we lost in the revolution. It turns out that we lost music that was just as much fun as rock’n’roll itself.

“Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White” is an 8.

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Meanwhile, in Rock’N’Roll Land:

Speaking of rock’n’roll, Bo Diddley had the rock’n’roll rhythm to rule them all.

Bo Diddley had the Bo Diddley Beat. It goes like this: “Chunk-a chunk-a-chunk a-chunk a-chunk ah”

A quick clarification before we go on. “Bo Diddley” is not the song that goes “HEY!!! BO DIDDLEY!!!”… that’s “Hey! Bo Diddley.” It’s confusing, I know.

“Bo Diddley” should also not be confused with:

• “Diddley Daddy”
• Or “Diddy Wah Diddy” (which in turn should not be confused by “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy”)
• Nor “The Story Of Bo Diddley”, “Bo’s A Lumberjack”, “Bo’s Bounce”, “Bo’s Twist”, “Diddling”, “Bo Diddley Is Loose” or “Run Diddley Daddy”.

Bo Diddley liked to sing about himself a lot. He sang about what he knew. Bo Diddley also liked the play the Bo Diddley Beat.

The thing that makes the Bo Diddley Beat special, is not the actual rhythm, but how dirty it sounds. How the only word that really captures the way it sounds is “chunk”: “chunk-a chunk-a-chunk a-chunk a-chunk ah.” If the rhythm you are playing doesn’t go “chunk-a chunk-a-chunk a-chunk a-chunk ah” – if it goes “bum-a bum-a-bum a-bum a-bum ah”, or “doo-be doo-be-doo be-doo be-doo doop” – then it’s not really the Bo Diddley Beat.

Not even all Bo Diddley songs have the Bo Diddley Beat. Other Bo Diddley songs have other beats. So really it ought to be the “Bo Diddley” Beat.

Those maracas, just as much as the “chunk-a chunk-a-chunk a-chunk a-chunk ah” transforms “Bo Diddley” from your typical Chicago blues – of the type made by Bo’s fellow Chess/Checker Records artists like Muddy Waters – and into instant party music!

“Bo Diddley” was originally called “Uncle John”, but apparently that version was too rude – lyrics appear to have included “Uncle John’s got corn ain’t never been shucked/Uncle John’s got daughters ain’t never been… to school”, also a line about “the bowlegged woman told the cock-legged duck… you ain’t good looking but you sure can crow”- so Bo had to rewrite it.

“Bo Diddley” is the G-rated version; the version kids could listen to. Which may be why it seems to be based on a nursery rhyme’ specifically “hush little baby don’t say word. Mama’s going to buy you a mockingbird.”

Bo probably didn’t have the nursery rhyme in mind when he wrote “Bo Diddley.” Though, he probably had this one in mind:

Which includes… well, pretty much all of “Bo Diddley”s first verse, sung in the style of a schoolyard chant. “Hambone” is even more fun than “Bo Diddley.” It’s almost certainly the most fun song you will hear today; or quite possibly ever.

But even when singing nursery rhymes and schoolyard chants, Bo Diddley wants to remind you that he is a man: a manly man, one who could skin a bear cat to make his pretty baby a Sunday hat. Now that’s true love!

He liked to remind people that he was a boxer. Not professionally or anything, just as a teenager, as a member of the not-tough-sounding-at-all Little Neighborhood Golden Gloves Bunch. So many of Bo’s songs involve attempts at convincing the world of his prowess as a lover, a gunslinging cowboy, and to accept that he was – according to the title of his 1965 album:

Bo started this campaign early. The B-side of “Bo Diddley” was “I’m A Man.” How do you spell that Bo? I spell M… A… N!!!!

“I’m A Man” does not have the “Bo Diddley” Beat. “I’m A Man” has the “Hoochie Coochie Man” Beat.

So close was “I’m A Man” to “Hoochie Coochie Man” – the main difference being that Bo’s version only contains one single chord, and also the fact that Bo doesn’t really sound anywhere near as manly as Muddy – that Muddy recorded an answer record, “Manish Boy”, the title of which feels like a dig that Bo Diddley was something of a boy-ish looking man. It was a 50s blues diss-record battle!

“Manish Boy” isn’t a diss track, exactly. Muddy didn’t invest much time coming up with zingers. In fact, it’s mostly the same lyrics. Both Bo and Muddy spell out M.A.N. The difference is that Muddy also spells out B.O.Y.

Muddy makes it extremely clear that he’s not a B.O.Y.

The dissing in “Manish Boy” is in the delivery. It’s an exercise in showing how a real man would sing “I’m A Man”. This makes Muddy’s claim that he’s 21 – and so consequently he and pretty baby can have a lot of fun – seem a little unlikely. When Bo makes the same claim it’s more believable; he was in his late 20s.

It’s the unhinged cheering in the background, every time that Muddy claims that manhood! All sources suggest that cheering is from an “unidentified female chorus.” Given Muddy’s themes of sexual potency, having girls go ecstatic over the mere sound of Muddy growling “MANNNNNNN” would make sense, but I’m not convinced that it’s not just the other guys in the band.

When standing next to a full-grown man like Muddy Waters, any other man is going to sound like a girl (“Manish Boy” is a 9.)

The “Bo Diddley” Beat is cool and all – not to forget Jerome Green on maracas – but what is probably even more distinctive is Bo’s eerie and warped guitar sound. A sound most people had never heard before. A sound created by the DeArmond Tremolo Control, quite possibly the world’s first guitar effects pedal!

That’s the gadget that created that warped guitar sound. That warped guitar sound was not the result of Bo Diddley’s guitar being square. Bo Diddley didn’t have a square guitar back then. He wouldn’t design his square guitar until 1958 – maybe 1957 – a square guitar that he gave the coolest name imaginable: The Twang Machine.

Bo needed that square guitar. With the square guitar he looks like a cross between a smooth-talkin’ rock’n’roller and a mad professor.

A square guitar – usually referred to as a cigar-box guitar – was not an entirely original concept. Blues players had been building their own guitars out of whatever was lying around since the very beginning. Quite often “whatever was lying around” was a rectangular cigar case. Bo knew all about such old traditions. After all, Bo’s first band, back when he was ten, had included a washtub player, the “whatever was lying around” version of a bass.

Now, I’ve seen suggestions that Bo may have built a square guitar in 1945, but it wasn’t like his regular guitar or anything.

None of his press clippings seem to mention it, either. Newspapers were more likely to describe Bo as a “harmonica king.” Which is weird because, although both “Bo Diddley” and “I’m A Man” contain harmonica, it’s not Bo playing it.

Neither is it Little Walter, Chess’ go-to harmonica genius.

He even took a harmonica instrumental – “Juke” – all the way to Number One on the R&B charts in 1952 (for EIGHT WEEKS! It’s a 7). Little Walter made the harmonica so popular that, since Sonny Boy Williamson had been shot dead in 1948, another harmonica player took his name called Aleck Miller took his name, pretended to be Sonny Boy Williamson, and got a record contract with Chess out of it!

Little Walter had played on all the Muddy Waters classics – “I’m A Hoochie Coochie Man”, “I Just Want To Make Love To You” – but he was too busy to play on any of the songs in this column because he was too busy with a hit of his own: “My Babe.” (it’s an 8.)

Between “Bo Diddley”, “Manish Boy” and “My Babe”, Chess Records were on fire in early 1955!

“Bo Diddley” is a 9. It would be a 10, but it’s just too short. If I have one criticism of Bo Diddley, it’s that his songs are too short. You can’t invent the all-time greatest rock’n’roll rhythm and not ride that groove as long as possible!

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Meanwhile, in Senseless Death Land:

It’s never the ones you expect.

What am I saying? It’s almost always the ones you expect.

Was anyone actually surprised that Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, Jim Morisson, or Jimi Hendrix ended the way that they did? I’m not saying that it was preordained or anything, but those deaths didn’t exactly come as a shock. That Ozzy Osbourne is still alive… now that’s a shock!

People must have been shocked however when they heard that Johnny Ace had died. When they heard how he died. Not necessarily people in his circle; they had long known he was a wild card. But those people listening to his radio hits at home? They must’ve been shocked. Nothing in Johnny Ace’s oeuvre exactly screams out “will come to an end, shooting themselves in the mouth, whilst playing around with guns.” Nothing in Johnny Ace’s oeuvre screams out at all.

Putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger for fun, is not the kind of end you would expect when listening to Johnny Ace’s posthumous smash, “Pledging My Love.” But then there’s very little about Johnny Ace and his backstory that gels with the way his smash hits tended to sound.

Listening to Johnny’s hits – not just “Pledging My Love”, but “Cross My Heart” and “My Song” – he doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who would drop out of school to join the Navy, and then be discharged from the Navy for continuously disappearing into the night to find a club in which to play. Johnny doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who join a group called the Beale Streeters with blues icons like B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland.

Instead of sounding like the kind of guy who would form a gang with B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland, Johnny sounds more like the combination of the two pop acts that he was reputedly named after: Johnny Ray – aka the guy who always cried in his songs – and barbershop quartet, The Four Aces.

The Beale Streeters were less of a band, and more of a gang, who played together on the local Memphis radio station. And also on each other’s records.

And it was whilst in the studio for Bobby “Blue”’s first session that Johnny was accidentally signed himself,and accidently recorded his first hit.

It turned out that Bobby “Blue” couldn’t read and consequently couldn’t learn the songs the label wanted him to sing. Meanwhile, Johnny was sitting in the corner playing a Ruth Brown song on the piano. After changing the lyrics, and renaming the song “My Song”, it became his first hit. It was, as all Johnny’s hits would be, a treacly ballad.

When Johnny played his songs – songs so sentimental they weren’t just called “love ballads”, but “heart ballads” – he’d sit shyly behind his piano, and you’ve got to believe the girls loved that! Johnny loved them back. Johnny Ace sounded like the kind of guy who liked women, far, far more than he liked guns, but in reality, he seems to have liked them both about equally. He appears to have been a big fan of shooting at signs as he zipped past them on his way to his next show.

Johnny Ace never appeared to be seen without a girl, or a gun. One night, backstage, at a Christmas show in 1954, he put his gun in his girlfriend’s mouth. He pulled the trigger. No bullet came out. Lucky girlfriend.

Those around him, shocked, and thinking that this would convince Johnny to put the gun away before somebody got hurt, challenged him to put in his own mouth. Rationalizing that although the gun did contain one bullet, that there were five chambers still remaining, Johnny had to ask himself one question, did he feel lucky… soppy R&B balladeer?

Johnny did feel lucky, so he put his pistol in his mouth. But he felt it wrong, and he shot his head off.

“Ends” his “Career”? Really? Great to see The Memphis Press-Scimitar is focusing on the right things?

“Pledging My Love” was released about a week later. Or a week before.

Johnny Ace didn’t write “Pledging My Love.” The owner of the label did. Either that of he paid a proper songwriter to write it for him, but then give him the credit. That’s how things were done in those days. Particularly when the label owner was Don Robey:

Don Robey wasn’t exactly the kind of guy that you’d expect to write such lyrics as…

Forever my darling our love will be true
Always and forever I’ll love just you
Just promise me darling your love in return
May this fire in my soul dear forever burn

But this story is full of people doing what you least expect them to do, and anyway, it’s his name on the credits.

Also on the credits is Johnny Otis.

Already on a hot streak for, amongst other things, writing and producing Etta James’ “The Wallflower”, and – a few years earlier – producing Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog,” Johnny Otis also plays vibraphone on “Pledging My Love”. And it sounds kind of nice. I almost have to respect their dedication to doubling down on the treacly sounds.

Johnny Ace was already a major R&B star before he recorded “Pledging My Love”, or more importantly, before he died a stupid death. It probably would have become a hit anyway, even if he hadn’t shot himself in the mouth.

A hit so big, and so sad, that grown men and women called radio DJs up with tears in their eyes, asking them to stop playing it.

It didn’t turn him into an icon though.

People who like their rock’n’roll icons to be seriously unhinged, armed, dangerous, and to die in tragic, sad and stupid deaths at the age of 27, and they don’t usually like sugary heart ballads.

And those who like sugary heart ballads tend to prefer their performers reflect the same traditional values.

There’s little place in the world for tragic figures who sing treacly mush. Johnny Ace has slipped through the cracks.

“Pledging My Love” is a 6.

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