On the Canonization of Rock and Roll: Which Version Is Correct?

One inroad into my ongoing exploration of the canonization rock and roll is a query into the meaning of a song's existence. Time was that a song was a combination of sound and words emitted in a singular moment in time, and whoever sang it was singing the song in that moment for whoever heard it. Though some songs were attributable to one composer or another, for the most part a song lived for the moment it was uttered, by anyone and in any location or style.

The creation of musical celebrity was inevitable. A person may have a voice of a distinct and/or superior quality and therefore they are regarded as the go-to performer. And, perhaps a particular song is done favorably by this performer to the degree that the song and performer become linked (e.g., Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas"). Such links have been observed for centuries.

But in the wake of Thomas Edison's 1877 invention of recorded sound, a song can be more than a living vibration sent into the ether by a mouth to the ear and lost once is has been absorbed. Now, one can hear a previous moment in time, a past captured for the future. That, my friends, is a paradigm shift if ever there was one. That we can hear today the performance of John Philip Sousa and the U.S. Marine Band performing "The Washington Post March" from a recording made over a century ago is nothing short of miraculous. (Ironically, Sousa hated the concept of recorded music, saying, "These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country... Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Philip_Sousa)

With the nearly coincident advent of radio at the turn of the century and the subsequent shift on radio over the years from live performance to the easier (and cheaper) playing of phonograph records, you end up with not just a repeated song but a repeated playing of the same recorded performance of song. When a song is attributed to one recording/performer/songwriter, there develops an expectation that if a song is to be presented, you expect it to be THE recording of THE version of THE song by THE performer you've heard so many times before. Imagine hearing "Stairway to Heaven" but not caring who the performer is. Compare that with hearing Beethoven's fifth symphony. Would you say that there is only one recording of that work that is legitimate? (Well, okay, there may be some who argue that YES, there is one recording Beethoven's Fifth that they consider to be definitive, but you get my point).

Here's an example. I am collector of Beatles records. I have over 100 distinct Beatles albums - a considerable number when you consider they really only made 12 albums in their career (14 including two collections of their non-album recordings). How can such collecting gluttony be explained, much less supported? Well, their records were released worldwide in coincident markets and during a moment when the technology (and therefore listening experience) was balanced on an aural divide. First, Beatles records were made in London, and released as they intended in the UK, but sent to the U.S. where they were reshuffled into a greater number of releases (e.g., three British albums of 14 songs are turned into four 10-11 song albums, so Capitol Records gets an extra few bucks out of you -- it's the American Way.). Second, for a time records were released in two versions, stereo or monaural. At the time, mono was preferred by many, since not everyone had two speakers with their hi-fis, and stereo was a new concept just gaining ground in the 1960s. The two versions were often markedly different. They did not take the stereo mix and simply squash the left and right channels into one. They used the master tapes and mixed the album separately for each version (and for a while the mono was the favored mix). Third, the U.S. releases were often reprocessed by Capitol engineers who thought the records needed to sound more "American." (Who were these American idiots who thought they knew better than George Martin and the lads? Though we know who they were, their names are so insignificant that it insults the Beatles to utter them in the same sentence). Long story short, the net result is numerous incarnations of ideally singular recordings. Hence, my meticulous collection of different versions of the same recordings: Revolver on Capitol Records in mono, Revolver on Capitol Records in stereo, Revolver on Parlophone in mono, Revolver on Parlophone in stereo, etc. That the US and UK versions of many Beatles albums did not share the same song listings warrants a whole other blog posting, which may come along someday...

Now, the Beatles and their contemporaries clearly didn't yet think of their recordings as having one explicitly definitive version, or they wouldn't have made distinct mono and stereo versions. But over time, certain versions came to the fore. As FM album-oriented radio won out over AM single-oriented radio, the stereo recordings gained acceptance as the definitive versions, and in America, the American versions were the accepted and expected recording. When the Beatles' albums were released on CDs in the 1980s, any Americans were not only surprised but dismayed to find that the versions they'd spent years absorbing were not to be heard on CD because the original EMI/Parlophone (British) recordings were to be exclusively produced in digital form.

But then, a few years ago Capitol decided to release the American versions of the albums (both mono and stereo) not seen in record stores since they ceased pressing LPs in the late 1980s. American fanatics (myself included, standing outside Tower Records at 8am on the drop date), knowing full well that this was a generous gift, eagerly consumed the new releases with their CD-sized cardboard replicas of the American LP covers. Some were quick to note, however, contrary to the promise that we were being given the original, authentic US releases, that some of the CDs were not actually taken from the correct master tapes. The mono version of Rubber Soul, for example, was merely the stereo album compressed into monophonic form, evident by the appearance of several clues (including the false starts on "I'm Looking Through You") that should only have appeared on the stereo version. Our adamant dismissal of the "inauthentic" version given to us is a perfect example of the expectation that a song is not merely a song unless it is THE recording of THE version of THE song to which we've become accustomed.

A contrasting example, though, from a few years earlier: the week of February 9, 1957, Sonny James had a number 1 pop hit with "Young Love," for one week, supplanted the week of February 16, 1957 by Tab Hunter's recording of – amazingly – "Young Love." Can you imagine in this day and age if Bruce Springsteen's recording of "Radio Nowhere" were topped by a Tom Petty version of the same song a week later? Not going to happen. These days, if it ain't Bruce singing his hit songs, what's the point?

Granted, maybe everyone else isn't like me (in most respects, quite possible), and maybe they aren't as uptight about the "correct" recording being considered. Not everyone has over 100 Beatles albums, I'll wager. But what if I told you that Hank Ballard's recording of "The Twist" precedes Chubby Checker's by several months, is very nearly an identical recording, and is in many ways superior? Chubby Checker copied everything, even Hank Ballard's vocal quality, which makes it seem rather strange that Chubby carries on about how important his recording was (and that he invented aerobics! hmph.) On that note, I maintain that Carl Perkins's prececdent "Blue Suede Shoes" bests Elvis's cover, and The Valentino's "It's All Over Now" is far superior to The Rolling Stones cover of that song that too-immediately followed. Yet the latter recordings have been accepted as the definitive versions by the public.  I could go on ad nauseum with more of those examples, but the point is, for some listeners it doesn't matter who was the creator, rather it is the version that is the most familiar that gets placed in the pop lexicon and is eventually placed in the rock and roll "canon."