"The 50s Progression"

How about from the 50's. Oldies like "Sh-boom" and "Be-bop-a-lu-lah"?
- User Grandpa R


The Mark:

Ah yes, the 50s. A simpler time, when one can just give themselves a complete personality/looks makeover to win-over their high school sweetheart... right, Sandy?? That Danny Zuko is totally worth it, huh??

Sigh... 

My Connection:

I suppose my first real connection to the music of the 50's is Grease. Don't get me wrong, I sigh *very* heavily nowadays looking back on some the... liberties... Grease takes with the laws of space and time, but the songs do a tremendous job at capturing the variety of sound found in 50's music.

Sigh...

When I first read the suggestion for writing a song for the 50s, I had some struggles. The songs from Grease cover all sorts of genres that were quite active in the 50's, from straight up rock and roll and Doo Wop to "Love Ballads."

Sigh.... Yes, you are.

Do I try to write a Doo Wop song? A Chuck Berry shuffle rock? Elvis the Pelvis??? Then, I had an idea - why not talk about something that connects a lot of these different *kinds* of 50's music, STRAIGHT from a Grease track, then do my best to use a 50's progression of my own and see what happens?

Style Notes/Structure:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50s_progression - for reference

For those of you not clicking through that link to read, here's a brief synopsis:

There's a set of chords used together, in a certain order, that were so commonly used together that they've been dubbed 'the 50's progression.' As "Those Magic Changes" so clearly lays it out with their backup singers, this progression commonly manifested itself as something like:

C CC CCCA AA Am(inor) F FF FFF G GG G7

But wait... not *all* "50's progression" songs use those exact same chords, but I can tell that the chords start high, go a little lower, come a little higher, then drop a little lower than all the rest... What's going on???


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_containing_the_50s_progression - for reference


Rather than try to type it out here, I made a little video to help explain it below. -

So, you take a few chords from the "Do Re Mi" major scale, put them in an order, repeat that order over an over again... that's a progression! This '50's' progression is I, VI, IV, V written the proper way. Me, I just go with '1, 6, 4, 5' since it's marginally less complicated.

The Simpsons - Lemon of Troy
"Rocky V plus Rocky II equals... ROCKY VII - ADRIAN'S REVENGE"

My Take:

For today's track, I went for a retelling of my first 'date' with Abby. I don't think either of us went into it thinking of it as a date, but it kinda just... clicked for both of us. Not that I'm complaining. ~

Anyways, because meeting up for bar trivia at a pub and sharing a pizza doesn't really fit into the 50's vibe I was going for, I took some major liberties with describing the evening's events. Enjoy!

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Bonus Fun Fact: 

In my research for this post, I discovered that Stockard Channing (Rizzo) was 

the oldest cast member to portray a high schooler in the Grease movie. She was 34.