A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - Episode 52: “Twenty Flight Rock”, by Eddie Cochran

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

Episode fifty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Twenty Flight Rock” by Eddie Cochran, and at the first great rock and roll film Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Teen-Age Crush” by Tommy Sands. (more…)

A History of Rock Music in 500 songs by Andrew Hock. Episode 50 to 20 Flight Rock by Eddie Cockman. To tell the story of rock music, it's important to tell the story of the music's impact on other media. Rock and Roll was a cultural phenomenon that affected almost everything, and it affected TV, film clothing and more so today we're going to look at how a film made the career of one of the greats of rock and roll music with a record machine when it comes to rock and she's a queen Red Up to Day and so for Saturday night

All the Lone where I can hold her tight but she lives on the 20th floor of town The elevator's broken down so I walk one Fly three by pole Five six seven flight eight flight more Upon the 12th I'm starting to drag 50 before I'm ready to sign Get to the top I'm too tired to ride Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lee, Minnesota

Though in later life he would always claim to be an Oki rather than from Albert Lee. His parents were from Oklahoma. They moved to Minnesota shortly before Eddie was born, and they moved back to Oklahoma City when he was small, moved back again to Minnesota, and then moved off to California with the rest of the Oakees. Cochran was a staggeringly precocious guitarist.

On the road trip to California from Albert Lee, he had held his guitar on his lap for the entire journey, referring to it as his best friend. And once he hit California, he quickly struck up a musical relationship with two friends. Gebo Smith, who played bass, and Chuck Foreman, who played steel guitar. The three of them got hold of a couple of tape recorders,

which allowed them not only to record themselves, but to experiment with overdubbing. in the style of Les Paul. Some of those recordings have seen release in recent years, and they're quite astonishing. Cockvan plays all the guitars on that, except the steel guitar, which is Foreman, and he was only 14 years old at the time.

He played with several groups who were playing the Oki Western Swing and Photo Rockabilly that was popular in California at the time, and eventually hooked up with the singer from Mississippi who was born Garland Perry, but who changed his name to Hank Cochran, allowing the duo to perform under the name The Cochran Brothers. The Cochran Brothers soon got a record deal. When they started out, they were doing pure country music, and their first single was a Lovin Brothers-style close harmony song,

about Jimmy Rogers and Hank Williams. But while Hank was perfectly happy making this kind of music, Eddie was getting more and more interested in the new rock and roll music that was starting to become popular, and the two of them eventually split up over actual musical differences. Hank Cochran would go on to have a long and successful career in the country industry, but Eddie was floundering. He knew that this new music was what he should be playing, and he was one of the best guitarists around. But he wasn't sure how to become a rock and roller, or even if he wanted to be a singer at all, rather than just a guitar player.

He hooked up with Jerry Capehart, a singer and songwriter, who the Cochrane brothers had earlier backed on a single. The two of them The second The session The people jump And just like the cleaves on the house

The two of them started writing songs together And Eddie also started playing As a session musician He played on dozens of sessions In the mid-50s, mostly uncredited And scholars are still trying to establish A Full List of the Records he played on

But while he was doing this, he still hadn't got himself a record contract other than for a single record on an independent label. Cochran was in the studio, um, yes, yes, all the girls love you want to be. Cochran was in the studio recording demos for consideration by record labels when Boris Petrov, a B movie director, who was a friend of Cochran's collaborator, Jerry K-part, dropped in. Petroff decided that Cochran had the looks to be a film star

and right there offered him a part in a film that was being made under the working title, Ray Me. Quite how Petrov had the ability to give Cochran a part in a film he wasn't working on, I don't know, but he did, and the offer was a genuine one, as Cochran confirmed the next day. There were many, many rock and roll films made in the 1950s, and most of them were utterly terrible. It says something about the genre as a whole when I tell you that Elvis's early films, which are not regarded as cinematic masterpieces, are among the very best rock and roll films of the decade.

The 1950s were the tipping point for television ownership in both the US and the UK. But while TV was quickly becoming a mass medium, cinema going was still at levels that would stagger people today. Everyone went to the cinema. And when you went to the cinema, you didn't just go to see one film. The B-A-Main film,

a shorter film called a B-movie that lasted maybe an hour, and short features like cartoons and newsreels. That meant that there was a much greater appetite for cheap films that could be used to fill out a program, despite their total lack of quality. This is where, for example, all the films that appear in Mystery Science Theatre,

3,000 come from, or many of them. And these B-movies would be made in a matter of weeks or even days, and so would quickly be turned round to cash in on whatever trend was happening right at that minute. And so, between 1956 and 1958, there were several dozen films, with titles like Rock, Rock, Rock, Don't Knock the Rock, and so on. in rock and roll that's all. Bebop and you can knock swing

say what you want about a henny old thing even though they all had they all had plots of sorts. They were just excuses to get footage of as many different hit acts as possible into the cinemas, ideally before their songs dropped off the charts. Many of them also contained non-hit acts, like Teddy Randazzo, who seemed to appear in all of them,

despite never having a single make the top 50. Randazzo did, though, go on to write a number of classic hits for other artists. Very few of the rock and roll films of the 50s were even watchable at all. We talked in the episode on Brown-eyed Handsome Man about the film Rock Rock Rock, which Chuck Berry appeared in. That was actually towards the more watchable end of these films,

terrible as it was. The film that Cochran was signed to appear in, which was soon renamed The Girl Can't Help It, is different. There are plenty of points at which the action stops for a musical performance, but there is an actual plot and actual dialogue and acting. While the film isn't a masterpiece or anything like that, it is a proper film. And it's made by a proper studio.

While, for example, Rock, Rock, Rock was made by a fly-by-night company called Vanguard Productions, the girl can't help it was made by 20th century Fox. and it was made in both colour and cinema scope. The budget for Rock Rock Rock was $75,000, compared to the $1.3 million spent on The Girl Can't Help It. Indeed, it seems to be as much an attempt to cash in on a Billy Wilder film as it is an attempt to cash in on rock and roll. The previous year, the seven-year itch had been a big hit,

with Tom Ewell playing an unassuming middle-aged man, who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman played by Marilyn Monroe. The film had been a massive success, and it's responsible for the famous scene with Monroe on the Air Great, which is still homaged and parody to this day. And so the decision was taken to cast Tom Ewell as an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted

to a much younger woman, played by Jane Mansfield, doing her usual act of being a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. Just as the film was attempting to sell itself on the back of a more successful hit film, the story also bears

a certain amount of resemblance to one by someone else. The playwright Garson Cannon had been inspired in 1955 by the tales of the jukebox wars. He'd discovered that most of the jukeboxes in the country were being run by the mafia, and that which records got stocked and played

depended very much on who would do favours for the various gangsters involved. Gangsters would often destroy rivals jukeboxes and threaten bar owners if they were getting their jukeboxes from the wrong set of mobsters. Cannon took this idea and turned it into a novella, Do Re Me, about a helpless slub who teams up with a gangster named Fatso to enter the record business, and on the way, more or less accidentally, makes a young woman

into a singing star. Do Re Me later became a moderately successful stage musical, which introduced the song, Make Someone Happy. Meanwhile, the plot of the girl can't help it has a helpless schlub team up with a mobster named Fats, and the two of them working together to make the mobster's young girlfriend into a singing star. I've seen varying accounts as to why the girl can't help it was renamed from Doe Me, and wasn't credited as being based on Canon's novella. Some say that the film was made without the rights having been acquired and changed to the point that Canning wouldn't sue.

Others say that 20th Century Fox acquired the rights perfectly legally, but that the director, Frank Tashlin, changed the script around so much that Canon asked that his credit be removed, because it was now so different from his novella that he could probably resell the rights at some future point. The latter seems fairly likely to me, given that Tashlin's next film, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter, which also starred Jane Mansfield, contained almost nothing from the play on which it was based. Indeed, the original play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter

was by the author of the original play on which the seven-year itch was based. The playwright had been so annoyed at the way in which his vision had been messed with for the screen, that he wrote Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter as a satire about the way the film industry changes writers' work, and Mansfield was cast in the play. When Tashlin wanted Mansfield to star in The Girl Can't Help It, but she was contractually obliged to appear in the play,

Fox decided that the easiest thing to do was just to buy up the rights to the play and relieve Mansfield of her obligation so she could star in The Girl Can't Help. it. They then, once The Girl Can't Help It finished, got Frank Tashlin to write a totally new film with the title Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter, keeping only the title and Mansfield's character. While the Girl Can't Help It has a reputation for satirizing rock and roll, it actually pulls its punches to a surprising extent. For example, there's a pivotal

scene where the main mobster character, Fats, calls our hearing. after seeing Eddie Cockburn on TV. Why does he want us to watch him? I can give you the dialogue. Okay, so Jerry can't sing. Well, that guy ain't got a trained voice either, and he's one of the top record stars in the country. Why?

Because he has a new sound. So Jerry has a new sound. You cut a record with her tomorrow. You're kidding, Mr. Miller. Am I? Listen. Yes, Fats. Well, that guy ain't got a train voice.

Cedar and he's one of the top record stars in the country. Note the wording there and what he doesn't say. He doesn't say that Cochran can't sing, merely that he ain't got a trained voice. The whole point of this scene is to set up that Jerry Jordan, Mansfield's character, could become a rock and roll star even though she can't sing at all.

And yet when dealing with a real rock and roll star, they are careful to be more ambiguous. Because, of course, the main thing that sold the film was the appearance of multiple rock and roll stars, although stars is possibly overstating it for many of those present in the film. One thing it shared with most of the exploitation films was a rather slap-dash attitude

to which musicians the film would actually feature. And so it has, the genuinely big rock and roll stars of the time, Little Richard, the Platters and Fats Domino, the one-hit wonder, Jean Vincent, but what a one hit to have? And a bunch of less well-known people, like the Traneers,

a jump band who'd been around since the 40s and never really made a major impact. Or Eddie Fontaine, about whom the less said the better, or the ubiquitous Teddy Randazzo, Performing here with accordion accompaniment. She's got sugar dip trimming, sugar dip trimming sprinkled with lime

and a heart of a loving is cooking all the time cooking all the time well she's a cake-picking baby oh what a baby and I love her pies but she's a cinnamon sinner selling lollipop live

And Cochran was to be one of those lesser-known acts. So he and Capehart had to find a song that might be suitable for him to perform in the film. Very quickly, they decided on a song called 20 Flight Rock, written by a songwriter called Nelda Fairchild. There has been a lot of controversy as to who actually contributed what to the song, which is copyrighted in the names of both Fairchild and Cochran. Fairchild always claimed that she wrote the whole thing entirely by herself, and that Cochran got his co-writing credit for performing the demo,

while Cochran's surviving relatives are equally emphatic in their claims that he was an equal contributor as a songwriter. We will almost certainly never know the truth. Cochran is credited as the co-writer of several other hit songs, usually with Capehart, but never as the sole writer ever hit. Fairchild, meanwhile, was a professional songwriter, but pieces like Freddy the Little Fur Tree don't especially sound like the work of the same person who wrote 20th light rock.

As both credited writers are now dead, the best we can do is use our own judgment, and my personal judgment is that Cochran probably contributed at least something to the song's writing. The original version of 20 Flight Rock, as featured in the film, was little more than a demo. It featured Cochran on guitar, Gebo Smith on double bass, and K-parts slapping a cardboard box to add percussion. Cochran later recorded a more fully arranged version of the song, which came out after the film, but the extra elements, notably the backing vocals, added little to the simplistic original.

It was a fly to fly, five, six, seven, flight, eight, flight more. I'm in bed a bedding to drag. Fifty before I'm already to sign. Get to the top. I'm too tired to rock. Where did she call to me up on a telephone? She come on over a hunter. I'm all alone.

I said, baby, you're might as sweet, but I'm in bedroom with an ache and feet. This went on her for a couple of days, but I couldn't stay away. So I want one, two, five, three, four. It was that simpler version that appeared in the film, and which took its place alongside several other classic tracks in the film's soundtrack. The film was originally intended to have a theme tune recorded by Fats Domino, who appeared in the film performing his hit Blue Monday. But when Bobby Troop mentioned this to Art Roup,

Rup, Rup suggested that Little Richard would be a more energetic star to perform the song. and I'm sure this was entirely because of his belief that Richard would be the better talent and nothing to do with Roop owning Richard's label but not Domino's. As a result, Domino's role in the film was cut down to a single song, while Richard ended up doing three. The title song, written by Troop, Reddy Teddy by John Marascall Coe and Bumps Blackwell, and She's Got It.

We've mentioned before that John Mariscalco's writing credit sometimes seem to be slightly exaggerated and She's Got It is one record that tends to bear that out Listen to She's Got It, which has Mariscalco as the sole credited writer A little girl that lives down the street Some people say she's square but I say she's sweet

You can see her every day scrolling up and down the way Looking so pretty and this is what I say She's got it And now listen to I got it, an earlier record by Richard, which has Little Richard credited as the soul writer. There's a little old man with a billy go cut.

He was thinking crazy, but I'd say smart. You can see him every day, gone up and down the street, always hollin out something good to eat. I've got it. Hmm. The girl can't help it was rather poorly reviewed in America. In France, it was a different story. There's a pervasive legend that the people of France revere Jerry Lewis as a genius. This is nonsense. But the grain of truth in it is that Cahier du Cinema, the most important film magazine in France by a long way, the magazine for which Goddard, Truffaut and others wrote,

and which popularised the concept of hauteur theory, absolutely loved Frank Tashlin. In 1957, Tashlin was the only director to get two films on their top ten films of the year list. The girl can't help it at number eight, and will success spoil Rock Hunter at number two. The other eight films on the list were directed by Chaplin Fellini, Hitchcock, Bunwell, Ingmar Bergman, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang and Sydney Lume.

Tashlin directed several films starring Jerry Lewis, and those films, like Tashlin's other work, got a significant amount of praise in the magazine. And that's where that legend actually comes from, though Cahier did also give some more guarded praise to some of the films Lewis directed himself later. Tashlin wasn't actually that good a director, but what he did have is a visual style that came from a different area of filmmaking than most of his competitors.

Tashlin had started out as a cartoon director, working on Warner Brothers cartoons. He wasn't one of the better directors for Warner's, and didn't direct any of the classics people remember from the studio. He mostly made forgettable porky pig shorts. But this meant he had an animator's sense for a visual gag, and this gave his films a unique look. For Advocates of Oter Theory, that was enough to push him into the top ranks.

And so, the girl can't help it became a classic film, and Cochran got a great deal of attention, and a record deal. According to Cy Warenker, the head of Liberty Records, Eddie Cochran getting signed to the label, had nothing to do with him being cast in The Girl Can't Help It, and Boarenkker had no idea the film was being made when Cochran got signed.

This seems implausible, to say the least. Johnny Olin, Abby Lincoln and Julie London, three other Liberty Records artists, appeared in the film, and London was, by some way, Liberty's biggest star. Not only that, but London's husband, Bobby Troop, wrote the theme song and was musical director for the film. But whether or not Cochran was signed on account of his film appearance, 20 Flight Rock wasn't immediately released as a single. Indeed, by the time it came out, Cochran had already appeared in another film, in which he had been.

had backed Mamie Van Doren, another Marilyn Monroe imitator in the same vein as Mansfield, on several songs, as well as having a small role and a featured song himself. Oddly, when that film, Untamed Youth, came out, Cochran's backing on Van Doren's recordings had been replaced by different instrumentalists, but he still appears on the EP that was released of the songs, including this one, which Cochran co-wrote with Cameron. part. It had already been 20 Flight Rock as Cochran's first single on Liberty to coincide with the film's release. But then it was put back for several months as Cy Warrinker wanted Cochran to release sitting

at the balcony instead. That song had been written and originally recorded by John the Loudermilk. Warenka had wanted to release Loudermilk's record, but hadn't been able to get the rights, so he decided to get Cochran to record a note-for-note cover version and released that instead. Cochran was not happy with that Cochran was not particularly happy with that record, though he was happy enough once the record started selling in comparatively vast quantities,

spurred by his appearance in The Girl Can't Help It, and reached number 18 in the charts. The problem was that Cochran and Warrenker had fundamentally different ideas about what Cochran actually was as an artist. Cochran thought of himself primarily as a guitarist, and the guitar solo on sitting in the balcony was the one thing about Cochran's record which distinguished it from Laudermilk's original,

and also as a rock and roller. Warenker, on the other hand, was convinced that someone with Cochran's good looks and masculine voice could easily be another Pat Boone. Liberty was fundamentally not geared towards making rock and roll records. Its other artists included the Hollywood composer Lionel Newman, the torch singer Julie London, and a little later novelty acts like the chipmunks.

The three chipmunks, Alvin, Simon and Theodore, being named after Al Bennett, Sywaranker and Theodore Keep, the three men in charge of the label. And their attempts to force Cochran into the moment. mold of a light entertainment crooner produced a completely forgettable debut album singing to my baby which has little of the rock and roll excitement that would characterize cockfran's better work and a warning for anyone who decides to go out and listen to that album anyway one of the few tracks on there that is in cockfran's rock and roll style is a song called mean when i'm mad

which is one of the most misogynist things I have heard, and I've heard quite a lot. It's basically an outright rape threat. So if that's something that will upset you, please steer clear of Cochran's first album, while knowing you're missing little artistically. 20 Flight Rock was eventually released as a single in its remade version, in November 1957, almost a year after The Girl Can't Help It came out. Unsurprisingly, coming out so late after the film, it didn't chart, and it would be a while yet before Cochran would have his biggest hit. But just because it didn't chart doesn't mean it

didn't make an impression. There's one story, more than any other, that sums up the impact both of The Girl Can't Help It and of Twenty Flight Rock itself. In July in 1957, a skiffle group called The Quarrymen, led by a teenager called John Lennon, played a village fate in Walton, a suburb of Liverpool. After the show, they were introduced to a young boy named Paul McCartney by a mutual friend. Lennon and McCartney hit it off, but the thing that persuaded Lennon to offer McCartney a place in the group was when McCartney demonstrated that he knew all the words to Twenty Flight Rock. Lennon wasn't great at remembering lyrics, and was a was impressed enough by this that he decided that this new kid needed to be in the group

That's Where I'm gonna' Where it comes to rock And she's a queen Go do we dance on Saturday night All along where I can hold a tight Lids on the 20th far uptown Elevator's broken down

So I'll 4 2-5-5-6-7 flat-y-mow I'm on 12th I'm starting to say 15 before I'm ready to drag Get to the top I'm too tired to rock That's the impact that the girl can't help it had, and the impact that 20 Flight Rock had. But Eddie Cochran's career was just starting, and we'll see more of him in future episodes.

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