Posted on 09/27/2020 5:09:31 PM PDT by Twotone
Sixty-five years ago - September 1955 - America was reeling under one of those blockbuster Number Ones, so blockbuster indeed that it toppled "Rock Around the Clock" from the top spot. What does it take to knock off rock's first great iconic anthem? A beautiful Sinatra love ballad? A showstopping Rodgers & Hammerstein eleven o'clock number? Not a chance: To see off Bill Haley, all it takes a century old folk-song, heavy on the snare drums. And next thing you know you're blasting from every radio and jukebox:
(video at link)
Mitch Miller was a prodigious hitmaker of the early Fifties, but credit where it's due: That particular smash starts with a fellow called Bill Randle who, one day in 1955 suggested to the songwriter Don George that a relatively minor folk song might have the makings of a pop hit. Randle is an obscure figure now but back then he was a bigshot Cleveland disc-jockey who cut an impressive swathe in the music biz. A man with an eye for up and coming talent who played a role in advancing the careers of Tony Bennett, Bill Haley and Elvis Presley, Randle also had a good sense of more idiosyncratic possibilities: He was the guy who suggested the whiter-than-white Crew-Cuts should cover a black "race records" song, "Sh-Boom".
So, when Randle drew Don George's attention to an old Civil War song, his songwriting friend listened. By that stage in his life, George was a respected Tin Pan Alley journeyman, a man who made a nice living writing special material for Nat King Cole and others but not a consistent hitmaker. The song Randle wanted him to take a look at had its origins in one of the decisive engagements in the Texan war of independence...
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
For later
I love that song and wanted it played at our wedding, but Hubs’ cousin on the piano’s a wee bit stuffy and swapped it out with Ode to Joy by Beethoven.
I've got one like that from Texas living next door to me. Am working on it!😎
I always thought the song was about a white cowboy in love with a mulatto girl.
One little piece of support for the Yellow Rose story is that Santa Anna was wearing a dress when captured. He escaped the battle area but couldn’t get across the river because my GGGG uncle Deaf Smith and another man burned Vince’s Bridge the day before the battle. Deaf got back in time to get a little sleep and fire the first shot in the famous Battle of San Jacinto early the next morning.
Texians rule.
In the movie version of “Giant,” its playing on the juke box in a diner during and epic fight between Rock Hudson and a anti-Mexican bigot. First time I remember hearing it. Think it was the Mitch Miller version.
I was 8 when I heard it and still remember that Mitch Miller performance, but it still came in 2nd for me to the Ballad of Davy Crockett.
Who was the Yellow Rose of Texas?
https://medium.com/@OfficialAlamo/who-was-the-yellow-rose-of-texas-750c95617241
Possibly true.
Very enjoyable!
This version was on the flip-side of a record that somebody gave me when I was a boy. I didn't connect any racial implications then, of course. I knew nothing of such things. When I was much older and realised that the Yellow Rose was probably a mulatto girl.
I found the lyrics quite touching and lovely and remembered them more as poignant poetry than as song.
There's a yellow rose in TexasI still like this version best.
I'm goin' there to see.
No other feller knows her,
Nobody, only me.
She cried so when I left her
It like to broke my heart,
And if we ever meet again
We never more will part.She's the sweetest little rosebud
A feller ever knew.
Her eyes are bright as diamonds.
They sparkle like the dew.
You may talk about your Clementine
And sing of Rosa Lee,
But the Yellow Rose of Texas
Beats the belles of Tennessee.
Back around ‘56 or so, I near wore out our LP of Mitch Miller & the Gang doing Yellow Rose and Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech. Third on my hit parade was Antoine Domino’s Blueberry Hill.
I’ve traveled just a skosh, and can easily say that Texas is the only state I’ve ever had a bucket list desire to visit. Still await’n to lower my feet on crossing the state line.
Jokingly read that a preview of Eternity is to drive across West Texas in the summer with no A/C and the windows down.
Bob Wills remains the King.
The Yellow Rose’s name was EMILY MORGAN & YES she was Black.
In the era of our TEXICAN Revolution, she was said to be the second most beautiful woman in Texas, 2nd only to HARRIET ANNE AMES POTTER, the beloved wife of Robert S. Potter, who was the last President of the Caddo republic & also Texas Secretary of the Navy.
(Harriet, in northeast Texas where I’m from, was known as, “Our very own Texas Wildcat & lovely Seductress”. = She was NO angel, for sure.)
Harriet & Emily Morgan were best friends & Emily often visited the Potter’s home on Caddo Lake after the Revolution.
Yours, TMN78247
When I was a young boy, my mother wanted me to learn to play the piano. There was a local teacher who I took lessons from. We had a recital (group of young people, more girls than boys) at our local church. That song was the one I played. Of course I did not know the possible context to the battle of San Jacinto.
“Beats the belles of Tennessee.”
The version I played then ended with:
“Is the only one for me”
“Bob Wills remains the King.”
Yes. The music of that period in Country music will never totally go away.
He was from a nearby part of Texas, not that far from where I live. He was not from a big town.
It’s always fun to hear from folks with personal knowledge of these stories. :-)
Emily Morgan, in later years, often referred to herself as “LA CULEBRA”, i.e., the poisonous snake “in ,the bed of The Dictator, GEN Santa Anna”.
Emily was the was the Texican’s principal SPY for GEN Sam Houston, who every night slipped out of Santa Anna’s tent to meet with GEN Houston’s courier & tell him The Dictator’s plans/intentions.
FYI, after The Revolution,(in mid-August of 1837) The Texas Republic’s Congress granted Emily 2 sections (1280 ACRES) of prime real estate & the money to build/furnish a nice home (in what is now Collin County, TX) for her, “Invaluable contributions to Texas Liberty”.= Emily Morgan was suddenly one of the richest women in all of The Texas Republic & “the most sought after bride in all of Texas”.
(As far as I can determine, Emily never married.)
Yours, TMN78247
My mother didn't approve of the record, not because of some racial overtones, which escaped her as completely as they escaped me at the time, but because she considered western/country music barbaric. Such music was so outrageous that she laughed out loud when she heard it.
I have read over the years a slightly different version of the story in that the “Yellow Rose” was a very young Mexican girl picked up my Santa Anna just after he crossed the Rio Grande into Texas with his army. Story is she was standing in her family’s front yard watching the army pass by, he saw her and “took” her.
Whatever the exact story it seems odd to me that no movie has ever been made about it. Think about it, particularly with todays Hollywood culture. You would have a strong mature woman destroying an evil dictator in the case of Emily Morgan. With the young Latina you could have her being the cause of the victory, but her role being covered up, so that the Anglos did not have to give any credit to a lowly Latina girl. Sandra Bullock are you listening? I have thought about the story line in more detail, Don’t want any money maybe just a credit line on the movie for the concept.
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