I
knew nothing about pop music from the 50s and early 60s until about 2015. The flowering of the revolutionary rock and roll of the 60s via the greats of the Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, and the rest is well-established in our culture, but the true oldies are not nearly so well-preserved. There were of course a handful of earworms that have survived in the general consciousness, but unless you lived close to the era, or had an enthusiastic relative who did, there's a fair chance that the 50s are just "old silly music", from before we "knew what we were doing".
I remember stumbling across The Flat Duo Jets for the first time, and being enchanted by their particular punkified aesthetic of 50s music -- but this was before I even knew what they were referencing. There's an interview in which Dexter Romweber of the Duo Jets recalled that as a teenager, he used to get extremely high and just listen to pop music from the middle of the 20th century, reveling in its "purity". I remember thinking "that's a crazy thing to do!" Isn't that music all...bad?
Then I found a local radio station that played exclusive the old midcentury hits, and I realized that I knew nothing at all. It was amazing how powerfully the music struck me -- how could I not have known all of these great songs? I felt like I was living through that time period, possessed of the same excitement that was palpable in the music even seventy years later. It was profoundly obvious that these musicians, and their audience, were captivated by something new, and I felt the newness myself, through my ignorance. The radio station did eventually get repetitive, but for a long time, maybe more than a year, I was hearing a new, wonderful song every couple of days, like they were being written live.
I'm not much of an amateur music researcher, and what's funny is just how few bands, singers, and even albums I became familiar during that most exciting of years. The station rarely mentioned who the song was by, or what year it was written, or even what the name of the song was. I can't speak intelligently about the scene, and now that the radio station defunct, there are many songs lost to memory, that I wouldn't be able to find if I tried. I only have left a deep appreciation for that era, brimming over with enthusiasm, if not, strictly speaking, inventiveness or profundity. There is a mesmerizing simplicity to the soul of 50s music, a last triumphalist whoop! before it was all washed away -- and everything changed.