Rolling Stone magazine’s new list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time leaves little doubt that not many of the experts who voted in that poll ever went to a sock hop in the 1950s.
There is not enough space here for a complete analysis of the latest ranking of great songs, but a lot of fifties classics dropped far down the list and others were left off altogether.
Even Elvis was not spared in this updated assessment of songs that should be considered the most enduring of all the countless musical numbers ever written and recorded.
When Rolling Stone’s first Top 500 Songs list was published in 2004, the Elvis hit Heartbreak Hotel was No. 45. It plummeted in the new rankings to 347.
Jailhouse Rock has some wacky lyrics, but it was the title song for an Elvis movie my senior year of high school in 1957 and was No. 1 on all the music charts. It fell from 67 to 216.
Mystery Train, one of the first Elvis songs I remember hearing on KWKH Radio in Shreveport, was No. 26 on the original list of Rolling Stone top songs but did not make the new rankings.
My appraisal of all this is admittedly biased since I was a huge Elvis fan and passed that passion for his music along to my sons.
I saw Elvis at the Louisiana Hayride a couple of times early in his career. He did songs at those shows like Don’t Be Cruel, Blue Moon of Kentucky, and Chuck Berry’s Maybelline.
After one of the Hayride performances, I waited in a long line to get his autograph just before the announcer proclaimed, “Elvis has left the building.”
He signed the front cover of my Louisiana Hayride program. I wish I still had it, but a pretty girl asked me for it before I got back to my seat, and I gave it to her.
When my sons were teenagers, we went to Elvis concerts in Monroe and Alexandria and heard some of his great songs like Can’t Help Falling in Love and It’s Now or Never.
He was overweight and short of breath and forgot words to songs he had done for years. His career and life were nearly over, but he had reigned in pop music for a quarter-century.
In my mind, there has never been better music than in the 1950s when we jitterbugged in our socks at the Springhill Recreation Center to Elvis, Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis records on an old Victrola.
Or learned from suave, big city girls from places like Shreveport the right way to close dance while the Northwestern Demonaires Band played The Platters and Sam Cooke songs at Wednesday night college dances.
Elvis songs are not the only ones from the 1950s that dropped or fell off the Top 500 list.
Chuck Berry’s Maybelline went from 18 to 101. Buddy Holly’s That’ll Be the Day dropped from 39 to 124. Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally was No. 57 in 2004 but didn’t even make the new list.
Great Balls of Fire by Jerry Lee Lewis sank from 96 to 242 and his Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On hit that ranked No. 60 on the original list is off completely.
So is Carl Perkins’ Blue Suede Shoes that was No. 94. Also off the list is Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven, which was No. 96 in the old rankings.
In the Still of the Night by a group called The Five Satins might have been the best slow dancing song of the fifties, and it dropped from No. 90 to 170.
With appreciation for 1950s music declining like this, it is not surprising that we don’t hear much anymore about jitterbugging, sock hops and close dancing.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES