The Best of 1959

Looking back 65 years to the best the end of the fifties had to offer.

Nov 01, 2024

Eisenhower was President, Castro came to power in Cuba, Barbie was born, Gunsmoke was the number-one show on TV, and Rod Serling's Twilight Zone premiered. 1959 was also a big year musically, not only for this hot new craze called rock'n'roll the kids were somehow still dancing to, but rhythm and blues were slowly but surely making its way across radio dials and into white kids' ears and homes. Country music enjoyed major crossover success with Marty Robbins, while the jazz world would be exposed to several landmark albums in 1959 alone.

Disclaimer: Except for jazz, the album format was not a focal point in 1959. The new sounds were being heard by way of 45 rpm singles. For this year, I'm combining singles and albums to complete the list.

Ray Charles - "What'd I Say (Parts 1 & 2)"

Ray Charles took the gospel out of the church, replaced God with sex, and soul music was born. He'd been doing it since 1954's "I Got a Woman" lifted the melody to the Southern Tones's "It Must Be Jesus," but on "What'd I Say" he took it to the bedroom. The full six-and-a-half minute version was originally spread over two sides of a 45 and kicks off with a tension-building classic boogie piano intro. It concludes with a call-and-response with the Raelettes that still requires a cold shower after listening.

Marty Robbins - Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs

The Beatles recorded Please Please Me early in 1963 in a single day - just under 13 hours, in fact. Impressive, but Marty Robbins would like to kindly invite you to hold his lasso. In one eight-hour session in April of 1959, Robbins recorded "Big Iron," "Cool Water," "A Hundred and Sixty Acres," "They're Hanging Me Tonight," and the rest of Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, the album that put the Western in Country & Western. Oh, and it also contained that little song about a border town and a girl named Maria.

The Drifters - "There Goes My Baby"

The Drifters are responsible for one of the most complex histories in rock'n'roll. So many iterations, so much drama, so much great music. By 1959, a young singer, Benjamin Nelson from Henderson, NC (just about ten miles and a county over from where I grew up) had a song he felt was good enough for this new lineup of the Drifters (formerly the 5 Crowns). Producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller agreed with the re-christened Ben E. King and "There Goes My Baby" became the first hit for the second - and best - incarnation of one of R&B's greatest vocal groups.

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

When someone you know says they don't like jazz, hip 'em to Kind of Blue. It's the most accessible, yet most universally lauded, of all jazz albums. You can listen to it and fully enjoy it without ever knowing how groundbreaking the music was: how Miles decided to rewrite the rules - again, just as he'd done before, and would do again many times over. Oh, and with a core band that included John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, Bill Evans, and Jimmy Cobb, there was no other choice but to make the best jazz album of all time.

Chuck Berry - "Little Queenie"

"Meanwhile, I was still thinkin'..." While Chuck Berry Is On Top was basically a collection of singles - par for the course before the "album era" took hold almost ten years later - one of its songs, "Little Queenie," became one of Chuck's most primal rockers, which is saying something. The melody is the groove while the guitar and Berry's vocals are as percussive as Fred Below's drums. It would become - like most all of Chuck's songs - a rock'n'roll standard, with cover versions too numerous to mention.

George Jones - "White Lightning"

Released just six days after The Day The Music Died (when Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson died in a plane crash), George Jones's take on the Big Bopper's ode to illegal alcohol in the hills of North Carolina ended up being his first number one hit. It has the trademark Big Bopper personality, but Jones makes it his own with that incomparable phrasing that would eventually make him the One True King George, with a string of hits that remains unequaled...and mighty, mighty pleasin'.

The Louvin Brothers - Satan Is Real

Charlie and Ira Louvin let everyone know what fire and brimstone were all about in this uncompromising classic. As the title song illuminates in sermon form, not only is God real and to be feared, but you also have to watch out for old Scratch, too, because he's the one that'll get you in trouble, then you have to answer to Dad. Some folks today will call these songs "judgy," but others may see them as warnings, especially "drunkards" apparently. A bonafide classic (the Byrds would cover "The Christian Life" on their groundbreaking Sweetheart of the Rodeo album less than a decade later), Satan Is Real is fun to look at, but, depending on your belief system and lifestyle, it may be difficult to hear without breaking a nervous sweat.

Wilbert Harrison - "Kansas City"

Another North Carolina native (see the Drifters entry above), Wilbert Harrison took a song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (again, see the Drifters above) and originally recorded by Little Willie Littlefield, changed the name from K.C. Loving to Kansas City, and made an all-time classic that's been covered - and adapted - by everyone from Little Richard to Paul McCartney. A couple of years later, he'd write and record another oft-covered classic, "Let's Stick Together," which would become "Let's Work Together" in 1970, making him much more than a one-hit-wonder. He was inducted posthumously (he died of a stroke in 1994) to the NC Music Hall of Fame in 2009.

Santo & Johnny - "Sleep Walk"

Santo and Johnny Farina, with their uncle Mike Dee on drums, took the most appropriately named instrumental in rock'n'roll history to the top of the charts in the fall of 1959. Covered by everyone from Brian Setzer to Jeff Beck, and an inspiration to everyone from Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac to Modest Mouse, "Sleep Walk" is a master class in steel guitar, and as eerie as it is romantic. It's hard to decide if the true star of the song is the steel guitar or the space that fills the air around it.

The Flamingos - "I Only Have Eyes For You"

Speaking of eerie yet romantic, no better song fits that description than the Flamingos’ version of the standard, "I Only Have Eyes for You." Other artists, from Peggy Lee to Art Garfunkel would attempt it, but the Flamingos' sophisticated, reverb-heavy arrangement, and - most importantly - those "shoo-bop-do-bops," would cause it to become the classic slow dance floor filler or creepy stalker theme, depending on where you're coming from. Either way, it's still the greatest doo-wop song of all time.