1. Elvis Presley – All Shook Up. Yay, more Elvis! This one is more in the vein of “Don’t Be Cruel” than “Heartbreak Hotel,” which is to say that it’s a pretty normal rock ‘n’ roll tune with a boogie-woogie piano part, a catchy tune and a countryish vibe. There’s a great moment in the middle when the accompaniment drops out and Elvis’s voice jumps up a sixth to sing the line, “My heart beats so, it scares me to death.” It’s not that big a leap, but it’s the only time in the song that he reaches that high, so it really stands out — a good example of how very limited styles make tiny deviations seem enormous. The other thing I keep thinking about as I listen is the way Elvis’s nervous, staccato vocal style — something that, as far as I can tell, had no precedent in popular music — has suddenly been given a narrative meaning, as he sings about being so “shook up” by the girl he likes that his “insides shake like a leaf on a tree.” Last post I compared him to the early New Wave vocalists, and this time he reminds me of David Byrne spitting out syllables in the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” as if to prove that he really is “real live wire.”

2. Pat Boone – Love Letters in the Sand. I feel like I’ve heard people make fun of Pat Boone, but I don’t hear anything that silly here. It sounds like a crooner tune with a doo-wop accompaniment. I guess the instrumental part is pretty formulaic — OK, it kind of sounds like a Casio keyboard — but that’s hardly an offense worthy of ridicule. Boone does a whistling solo when the bridge comes back, and he includes a few pretty impressive licks towards the end. As the song continues, the drumming gets strangely intense, keeping the song engaging just when you might start getting sick of it. In short, it’s totally inoffensive, with a few nice touches. And inoffensive is usually pretty hard to make fun of, isn’t it?

3. The Diamonds – Little Darlin’. My dad tells me that this song was intended as a joke, but I think it’s great. Yeah, the falsetto vocals sound kind of like Frank Zappa’s doo-wop parody-tributes, but they also feel like a harbinger of things to come, specifically the Beach Boys’ early singles, and they lend the song a sort of hyperactive energy. There are a lot of other elements thrown in, apparently without much regard for whether they would fit the style: castanets and flamenco guitars, a low-voiced spoken section in the middle that recalls the Ink Spots, and wild piano runs that bear only a tenuous harmonic relationship to the rest of the song. I guess you could cite all of that as parody too, but to me it just makes the song more exciting, especially compared to the inoffensive but bland “Love Letters in the Sand.”

4. Tab Hunter – Young Love. Hunter was 26 at the time “Young Love” was released, so he probably meant this tribute to high-school relationships to be nostalgic. My guess, though, is that the kids took it at face value, and I can see why: it’s actually a beautiful little song. The lyrics are a bit simple-minded, but the music is simple in an elegant way, from the yearning suspensions on the recurring word “I” (a B resolving to an A over an F major chord on “I-I kno-ow” and an A resolving to a G over a G7 chord on “I-I’ve fo-und”) to the unexpected cadence on the word “mine,” creating a six-bar phrase where you expect a four-bar one. The chorus is also based on six-bar phrases, as is the laconic guitar solo based on it. The song opens, though, with two four-bar phrases (basic “Heart and Soul”-style accompaniment), which means Tab Hunter is tricking you.
[Edit: Clearly I need to brush up on my counterpoint. They're not suspensions, they're appoggiaturas. Either way, though, they're beautiful.]

5. Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra – So Rare. Here’s someone I didn’t expect to see on here again, considering that his last hit was 13 years ago. He seems to be trying to keep up with the times by including voices singing “doot doo-doo” and “doo-wah” in the background of one section, but it’s really a big-band song, with a huge, aggressive brass section, jazz drumming and extensive sax solos. Except there’s this choir, and when they’re not singing nonsense syllables, they’re screaming at the top of their lungs just to be heard over the band: “You are perfection!!!! / You’re my idea!!!!! / Of angels singing the Ave Maria!!!!!” The nonsense syllables are just sung by men, but these lines are sung by everyone, including super-high sopranos with wild vibrato. It’s really kind of scary, and not very pleasant.