Pop Music: The Golden Era, 1951-1975

Like listening to AM radio in the 50s and 60s, but without the cigarette ads

Many people (including me) tend to think of rock-and-rollers when the subject of 50s and 60s music comes up.  Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Beatles, the Stones, and so on.  But in many ways, those acts were the rebels of the musical world.  What dominated the commercial music business well into the 1960s, and what the rockers were in part rebelling against/building on, was pop music.  And this two-disc album contains some of pop’s most popular selections of the era.
 
On disc 1, there’s Frank Sinatra singing “The Birth of the Blues,” Johnnie Ray emoting on “Cry,” and the always cool Louis Armstrong performing a classic version of “Mack the Knife.”  Other performers include Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Andy Williams, and Bobby Vinton (singing “Blue Velvet” when it was still just a pop song).  Disc 2 moves into the Nixon era with songs like “Young Girl” by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, “Carrie-Anne” by the Hollies, and “I Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash.
 

 

And here’s a discovery I made when grooving along with this collection: if you listen closely to “Summertime, Summertime”, you’ll hear a harpsichord playing in the background.  It’s the only song I know that includes harpsichord.