1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die - 1958

I've spent a great deal of time complaining about the limitations of the 12 bar blues and how boring its dominance in 50s rock was. However, this bunch contains two really great songs that managed to become really great in spite of those limitations. Voting for "Summertime Blues", but "Johnny B. Goode" is another great example of the same. Those two songs are probably the best 12 bar blues based songs ever written.

Torn between Cochran and the Everlys. This is HARD.

voted for the Teddy Bears

sinatra's best moment

Stagger Lee like a motherfucker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCPutYaGFlE

"The night was claaare, and the moon was yellow..."

Johnny Fever - I'm torn between Cochran and the Everlys as well. Let me know which one you pick and I'll pick the other.

I'm always intrigued by the people/songs I've never heard of: Henri Salvador/"Dans Mon Ile"? "Johnny B. Goode," "Summertime Blues," "At the Hop," "La Bamba," and "All I Have to Do Is Dream" would have gotten my vote at different points in my life. I played "Summertime Blues" for my class last week, on the anniversary of Cochran's death. Truthfully, they're all a little overplayed for me, but I'll go with "Johnny B. Goode" on the grounds that it may be the only chance I get to cast a vote for Chuck Berry.

Most of those Non-English language songs in this book I understand are songs that have been influential on local trends that have later crossed over to influence Anglo-American popular music trends. I guess "Dans mon lie" is among those.

"Nel Blu Dipintu Di Blu" is of course better known as "Volare".

I totally missed "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu." I like that almost as much as some of the rock & roll on here.

Went for Chuck Berry, but if I was going to choose Sinatra at all I guess it would have been for this one

Johnny Fever - I'm torn between Cochran and the Everlys as well. Let me know which one you pick and I'll pick the other.

― EZ Snappin, Sunday, April 24, 2011 8:52 AM (7 hours ago)

I went Everlys in the end.

Then Cochran it is.

Voted "At the Hop" before I had too much time to think about it.

Went Everlys before seeing "Yakety Yak."

impossible, need a random number generator

if i'd be subjected to waterboarding, it would be probably 'lonesome town' (Cramps, Pulp Fiction, Rowland S. Howard)

dude I could vote for, like, 8 of these...

right now, gut's telling me At the Hop just barely over La Bamba & Yakety Yak

I'd vote "Fever" in a number of different years, too.

after digging around Youtube for a minute, I think the Coasters might be my favorite pre-Beatles band

oh God I've never heard the Cliff Richard song before...!

La Bamba: first garage-rock song

Move It: lays out the template for surf guitar

At the Hop: acrobatic backing vocals + proto-Velvets motorik piano

Yakety Yak: frenetic cowpunk

I've never heard the original Volare before, but I'm listening to it now and voting for it, years after first hearing it abused in a TV commercial and then getting to like it in a merengue version, etc.

LA BAMBA FTW

Teddy Bears' one is so fucking creepy

Spector details the whole back story in last year's documentary--the words were taken from his father's tombstone.

You guys aren't saying "Stagger Lee" enough. Get to voting.

Things you can do at the hop:

* rock it
* roll it
* stop it
* stroll it
* swing it
* groove it
* really start to move it
* get your kicks

Went with the Everlys over Chuck Berry and Eddie Cochran, but this is really hard; I could have talked myself into voting for eight or nine of these.

Somehow the existence of many prior recordings of "Stagger Lee" made Lloyd Price harder to vote for here, I don't know why.

I don't know either because lloyd's is the d2efinitive performance.

haven't voted yet: probably down to either Move It or At the Hop

voted Conway Twitty. was tempted by Lonesome Town and One For My Baby (And One More For The Road). the others will get their votes.

Spector details the whole back story in last year's documentary--the words were taken from his father's tombstone.

yeah, knew about this from one of his bios. still haven't seen that doc, waiting for my local store to get the DVD

stagger fucking lee

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