Eddie Cochran - Summertime Blues b/w Twenty Flight Rock (1990)
UK chart peak - Number 18 (for Summertime Blues, in 1958)
Not an official release, this one, it appears instead to be one of those mail order things that got you a couple of THE HITS delivered to your door in those HEADY pre-internet days - an idea now consigned to the Jurassic era along with the likes of Britannia Music Club. Eddie's looking quite HOT on the sleeve, isn't he?
A quick Google image search proves out his TEEN HEARTTHROB status. I can only imagine the thirst if LPSG had existed back in 1958.
Eddie is obviously up there with the LEGENDS of the first wave of rock & roll idols along with Elvis, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry etc. Once, years back, I decided on a madcap quest to listen to every UK number 1 in order after reading the Freakytrigger blog that was doing the same. The umpteenth Westlife number 1 killed me off around 2004, but God, the first few years of the charts from 1952 were a SLOG. There's the odd good song, & I got an appreciation of how someone like Frank Sinatra STOOD OUT back then, but there's a lot of SUGARY CRUD that all blurred into one. One thing it did showcase to me was the musical KICK UP THE ARSE given by rock & roll. I felt palpable relief when Bill Haley, Elvis, (surprisingly) Lonnie Donegan etc showed up. For the first time I understood what my parents meant when they said they felt music REV TO LIFE with rock & roll.
"Summertime Blues", Ed's signature song, is a huge part of this SEISMIC CULTURAL SHIFT. It just scraped into the top 20 here on release, & peaked at number 8 in the USA, but it's lasted well over the years for a relatively minor hit. Apart from its catchy, influential RIFF, its lyrical concerns of DISAFFECTED YOUTH have ensured the song hasn't aged in the same way as some of its peers. We've all been able to relate to the frustration of the narrator of this song at some point. This also seems to be a song that EVERYONE knows. I grew up with it, but can only assume it's a favourite of the nostalgia stations.
"Twenty Flight Rock" was my Dad's favourite rock & roll song, & presumably the reason he purchased this, as it was never released as a single in its own right in the UK & I'd assume became hard to find as the years passed. It was known as it featured in a long forgotten film, "The Girl Can't Help It", & was the first song a youthful Paul McCartney played for John Lennon, FACT FANS. It's played at a frantic fast pace as a tale of a man whose girlfriend lives twenty flights up in a building with NO LIFT. It gets faster & faster as the narrator gets tireder & had me & Mr S FRUGGING round the place (well just me actually, he was trying to do the dishes - SPOILSPORT). It's one of the few songs that has a comedic element that works & doesn't make me want to throw it across the room, & like the flip side it doesn't outstay its welcome, coming in at a BRISK 2 minutes.
Sadly, like many of his peers, Eddie died young. He was killed at age 21 in a car accident in Wiltshire, UK at the end of a successful UK tour with fellow rock & roller Gene Vincent. Gene survived (along with Eddie's girlfriend Sharon Sheeley) but suffered injuries that likely contributed to his own early death in 1971. Not long after, Eddie got his only UK chart topper with the gentle ballad "Three Steps To Heaven" (a song I played at both my parents funerals, & can therefore never listen to again) but left us with a frustrating sense that there was a lot more to come. This single demonstrates how his status as a teen music idol continues to live on.
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