My first encounter with popular music (as opposed to so-called classical music) was necessarily different from that of American kids for one obvious reason: I was born and raised in Poland. Country music was then an unknown genre among young Poles, and Polish jazz, although eventually acknowledged internationally, was not yet popular enough for me to bother with. And frankly, I have never developed any appreciation for it and could live very well without it.
It was early Polish pop/rock that first caught my attention, the first really successful Polish pop/rock band being “Czerwone Gitary” (Red Guitars), which was called the “Polish Beatles” and which even had a fan club in London. But then my real love was awakened when instrumental rock was born. “Apache” was pure magic when it was released by the Shadows in 1960. (There were countless other covers of this masterpiece by Jerry Lordan, but for me they were all vastly inferior (even those by the Ventures and by the Danish guitarist Ingmann). Not worth a moment of my musical attention. Incidentally, it was Ingmann’s version that became popular in the States, not the Shadows’. This is just another example of how bizarre Amerikka can be. I could give other such examples of goofy bizarreness made in the USA.
On the other hand, it was America that actually made “Apache” possible. But it was one of the worst manifestations of vulgar American culture that gave eventually rise to “Apache”. Lordan, who wrote the piece, was “inspired” by an imbecilic Hollywood movie (yet another one), released in the early 1950s. Here is a quote. I must quote because it is not possible to paraphrase such bottomless stupidity:
“Jerry Lordan got the idea for this song after watching the 1954 film Apache, starring Burt Lancaster as the Apache warrior Massai. Said Lordan: ‘I wanted something noble and dramatic, reflecting the courage and savagery of the Indian.'”
Burt Lancaster playing Massai! Savagery of the Indian! What did the morons who made the movie know about Massai! Or Apache in general! Could anything be more astoundingly idiotic. Every time I happen to try to watch that puke-inducing movie, I end up … well, puking after only a few minutes. So I have never been able to watch this big pile of Amerikkan racist movie shit. And never will.
Anyhow, Hank Marvin (and his buddy, Jet Harris, who remarkably enough played the first Fender bass guitar in England, just like Hank, who played the first Fender Stratocaster guitar) came up with the revolutionary American/British formula for the magic of their instrumental hits:
Fender Stratocaster + Fender bass + VOX 30/50 amp = Instrumental rock magic
Btw: Harris, a famous bass guitarist, as good as any other, got his legendary Fender bass guitar from Cliff Richard, who later fucked his wife. How’s that for a logical sequence of events! The fucker successfully fucked up Harris, who never really recovered and essentially drank himself to death.
To sum up: The music technology of the late 50s and early 60s was as magical as the music it helped to produce. But for me, the real hero was not really Chuck Berry but Hank Marvin. Also Billy Kuy, whom I missed at the time, another British guitarist who suddenly burst upon the scene in 1961 and who unfortunately was too good to be fully appreciated. And then he vanished. Billy Kuy was in the original line-up of the Outlaws, the British Outlaws, that is. Because, of course, there were also American Outlaws, about whom I couldn’t care less.
As for a sample of the magic on Planet Earth to be sent across the universe on another Voyager to some hiding aliens, I’d suggest “Husky Team” by the Outlaws inspired by the incomparable earthly beauty of the Aurora Borealis and the unbounded joy of husky dogs pulling a sleigh in the untouched wilderness of northern Canada or Norway. I tried to capture the magic the best I could in my cover of “Husky Team,” which I have posted on YouTube.
Kaz