The Best Songs of 1955

What you should have been listening to seventy years ago.

Index of best songs 1955-2015 is here.

A few months back I wrote a list of the best songs of 1985. I was responding to a boring and mostly monochrome Spin list, which flattened the diversity of the era—a particularly ugly thing to do right now, when our government is making an all out effort to erase our past in the name of neosegregation and hate.

I figured the 1985 list would be it…but my brain had other ideas. I ended up making a list of the best songs of 1955, 65, 75, 95, 05, and 15. I figured I’d share them over the next little bit, because why not?

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The 1950s are a watershed in popular music; it’s the decade when rock solidified as a genre, when albums became a standard creative form, when iconic performers like Elvis and Miles Davis made their most famous and influential recordings.

There was a lot out there in the mid 50s that’s less iconic as well, though, and (as with the 80s list), I’ve tried to include a range of familiar and less familiar performers and genres. Global music industries were less developed in the 50s, and our current cornucopia of microgenres was not really a thing. Still, then as now, lots of different people were making lots of different music. Hopefully there’s a track or two here you haven’t heard, along with the more expected rock n’ roll titans.

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12.
“Reincarnation”
Lord Invader

The huge calypso craze didn’t really hit until Harry Belafonte’s wildly successful album Calypso in 1956. Trinidadian Lord Invader had been performing since the late 30s though, both at home and in the active scene in New York. His recordings for Folkways include this loopy Kafka meets Sir Mix-A-Lot goof, in which Invader imagines himself reincarnated as a bedbug who gets to “bite those young ladies' buttocks/Like a hot dog or hamburger,” with a special preference given to “big fat women.” The gentle island rhythm rolls cheerfully along as Invader spins out his horny fantasy of juicy oral consumption, pausing only to assure listeners that he will not bite men because their skin is “harder than concrete.” Lots of popular music from rock to hip hop to disco has reveled in sexual fantasy, but even at this late date, Invader’s cheerful body-transformation fetishism remains uniquely bizarre.

11.
“Love for Sale”
Hank Mobley Quartet

Tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley has largely been forgotten, but this track from his first Blue Note album is as delightful a slice of hard bop as anything recorded in the era. His big fat tone dances and weaves lightly around Cole Porter’s wonderful melody, with able backing from Horace Silver on piano, Doug Watkins on bass, and the amazing Art Blakey—with a frenetically lyrical solo—on drums. Simultaneously deep and effervescent, the track is a joy, and just about perfect.

10.
“Sugar Sweet”
Muddy Waters

“Sugar Sweet” is a showcase for the greats of the Chicago blues scene; Jimmie Rodgers on electric guitar, Otis Spann on piano, down and greasy harmonica from the inimitable Little Walter, and of course Muddy Waters singing those lyrics about his sweetheart’s charms in a knowing growl that turns innocent observations into entendres that are barely double. The real star here, though, may be Francis Clay on drums, whose gritty shuffle foreshadows decades of big nasty rock beats to come. His final insouciant fill suggests that sweet, nasty business picks up right where the song ends.

9.
“September Song”
Sarah Vaughan and Clifford Brown

Sarah Vaughan has a decent claim on being the greatest singer of all time, and her album with trumpeter Clifford Brown is widely considered her masterpiece. The two performers wander up, down, and around in an endless version of Kurt Weil’s marvelous “September Song,” caressing, drawing out, and luxuriating in each autumnal phrase with an assist from Herbie Mann on flute and Paul Quinichette on tenor sax. When Vaughan draws out “these precious days…I’ll spend with you,” you never want it to end.

8.
“Tomorrow Night”
LaVern Baker

LaVern Baker isn’t a household name today, but in the 50s she was a huge star and a major influence on Elvis. It’s not hard to figure out what Presley saw in her; she has an enormous, bluesy voice, as earthy as Bessie Smith (whose music she covered on a memorable album). “Tomorrow Night” finds her in a hazy, slow torch song doo wop setting; she lightens her voice to fit in with the smooth backing and then tears that backing apart with a growl. A stunning performance.

7.
“Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White”
Pérez Prado

Cuban bandleader Pérez Prado led the mambo craze of the 50s His biggest hit was a cover of French musician Louisguy’s “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” which was recorded in 1953 but took two years to break in the US. Prado paired the slinky bump and grind rhythm with the plangent trumpet of Billy Regis, whose heavenly glissandos soar into the stratosphere and honk like a dyspeptic mallard. Multi-national, soulful, sold out, glorious and ridiculous, it’s a blueprint for the sublime eclectic sensuous silliness of pop to come.

6.
“Cry Cry Cry”
Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash’s four decade career had a lot of highlights, but few surpassed this short, perfect, country kiss off anthem. Cash’s patented choo choo beat chugs along as he spits defiance into that hollow, eerie Sun Records echo. “I lie awake at night to wait till you come in/You stay a little while and then you're gone again/Every question that I ask I get a lie, lie, lie/For every lie you tell you're gonna cry, cry, cry.” The song is a distillation of empty space and snarl, with the latter trying, and not altogether succeeding, in slashing apart the former. It’s a song that’s desperate in its defiance and defiant in its desperation; Cash has rarely sounded tougher or more vulnerable

5.
“Bo Diddley”
Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley’s eponymous signature song is all rhythm, talk-singing rhyme, and attitude; a primordial rap hammered like a stake into the first stirrings of primordial rock n’ roll. The melody is only more infectious because of the way it’s virtually buried in the pounding polyrhythmic grunge, the stinging guitar rising with raucous optimism out of the murk. Diddley’s atavistic sophistication was the launching pad for everyone from Buddy Holly to Nirvana, James Brown to Konono No.1. Yet no matter how many imitators banged their head to that beat, there’s still only one Bo Diddley—the one who, as the man says, has been up to your house and gone again.

4.
“Goomba Boomba”
Yma Sumac

Multi-octave Peruvian novelty exotica singer Yma Sumac released her mambo album in 1955, complete with bombastic orchestration, hip thrust shimmy, and vocals that soared from whistle note yodel to gargling baritone growl. “Goomba Boomba” is a yipping vehicle of nonsense jaw dropping operatic bazoonga; it’s like listening to Mariah Carey transforming, with pain and joy, into a warthog. No one on earth has ever sounded like Yma Sumac.

3.
“Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine)”
Penguins

Los Angeles vocal group the Penguins recorded “Earth Angel” in a garage. They released it as a demo to gauge interest, intending to record overdubs later. But the rough unpolished recording was the perfect background for the aching harmonies of lead Cleveland Duncan, bass Curtis Williams, tenor Dexter Tisby, and baritone Bruce Tate. Duncan’s pleas echo like he’s singing to an empty room, transforming the doo wop clichés into something raw, urgent, and hopelessly romantic.

2.
“Cry Me a River”
Julie London

Pin-up girl and actor Julie London didn’t have the vocal firepower of torch song peers like Sarah Vaughan or LaVern Baker. But her sensuous, husky, insinuating half-whisper was the perfect vehicle for this classic Arthur Hamilton song of broken hearts and turned tables. Her voice drips spite, menace, and sex as she caresses the opening syllables of schadenfreude—“Noooow, you say you’re lonely/you cry the whole night through…” Whoever the dipshit is who walked away from that, no wonder he’s crying a river.

1.
“Tutti Frutti”
Little Richard

Of course, how could anything else be number one? The greatest song of 1955 has a strong claim to be the greatest song ever, as Richard converts that New Orleans roll into a yodeling, queer thrust of rock and sex and yawp. Filth has never sounded so fun. A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop, A-lop-bam-boom!