by Lee
Ann Sontheimer Murphy
Some of the greatest rock and roll tunes found airplay
during the 1950’s but near the end of the decade a different
kind of music found its way to the forefront and to the top of
the charts. A folk music revival kicked into high gear after the
Kingston Trio found a hit song in their reprise of Appalachian
ballad Tom Dooley in 1958. Their version of the lyrics first set
down on paper by Alan Lomax spawned a short-lived trend that
made story or saga songs very popular.
In a decade dominated by tunes like the Everly Brothers
Wake Up, Little Susie and Bill Haley’s rocking Shake, Rattle,
and Roll, music fans went wild for the slower pace of
traditional ballads – even when the ballads were manufactured to
top the charts.
After Tom Dooley, the Kingston Trio became so popular
that the group released four albums in 1959 and their picture
graced the cover of Life in August of that year. Their success
led the way for other ballads to find airplay. Although the new
chart contenders were not classic folk songs, they were
folk-style songs and the listening public found an appeal in
such ballads.
Marty Robbins penned his classic El Paso and took it to
the top of the charts in 1959. He later would write two more
songs, Felina and El Paso City based on the original song. Other
ballad songs released that year included Johnny Preston’s
Running Bear and the granddaddy of all story songs, The Battle
of New Orleans. Although the song as most know it is not a
traditional folk song, it is based on an older song.
The song sold more than two million copies and thrust
Horton from middling fame on The Louisiana Hayride into the
national spotlight. Jimmy Driftwood, who was a teacher and
school principal who hailed from Arkansas, penned the song based
on an old fiddle tune The Eighth of January. That song
celebrated Andrew Jackson’s victory over the British during the
War of 1812. Although Driftwood himself recorded the song along
with others he wrote, it didn’t hit big until Johnny Horton
added his voice.
The song carried Horton onto the Ed Sullivan Show where
he sang the hit dressed in a period costume as costumed
pseudo-soldiers cavorted in the background. A cannon was fired
onstage and Horton’s picture appeared in Life Magazine in 1959.
Until Battle of New Orleans became a major hit, Horton’s
career had focused on Rockabilly tunes and country-style
crooning. The story song was the rage from April 1959 through
the summer months so he rode the tide of folk-style tunes with
another saga, this one penned by his good friend, Merle Kilgore.
Johnny Reb was a salute to a fallen Confederate soldier and was
very popular throughout the South. Other story songs soon
followed, including When It’s Springtime In Alaska (It’s Forty
Below), a Klondike gold rush tune that drew on Horton’s own
Alaskan experiences, Sink the Bismarck, theme song for a movie
of the same title that told the story of the German battleship,
and Horton’s last song, North To Alaska, another movie theme
song. John Wayne starred in the movie, which remains popular
today, and like When It’s Springtime In Alaska, hearkened back
to the days of the Alaskan gold rush.
Horton recorded an album titled Johnny Horton Makes History.
All the songs on the album were saga songs and included other
Driftwood tunes like Sam McGee. Columbia Record executives sent
Johnny Horton to perform in the short-lived Bronx answer to
Disneyland, an amusement park called Freedomland. The history
theme park featured Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, the American frontier,
and other American history themes. Horton spent the last summer
of his life making frequent appearances at the park as his fame
for story songs spread.
Until his death in a head-on highway collision in
November 1960, Horton’s fame remained based on his historical
saga songs. Schoolteachers across the nation used his songs to
jump-start bored students’ interest in history.
The folk song craze and the saga songs outlived Johnny
Horton by a few years. Fellow Louisiana Hayride singer Claude
King scored a hit with Wolverton Mountain, a story song penned
for Horton by Merle Kilgore. True folk groups like the Brothers
Four, Kingston Trio, and Peter, Paul, and Mary continued to see
success with their music into the Sixties but the brief spurt of
pseudo folk songs was over by 1963, less than five years after
it began with Tom Dooley.
Although the Fifties music scene was dominated by early
rock-and-roll, there was a period in which traditional style
music found a voice and an audience. Horton’s music, including
his saga songs, remains popular today, more than forty years
after his death. Fans of the late Marty Robbins still consider
El Paso to be one of the singer’s best songs while other singers
like Webb Pierce and Jim Reeves are often neglected. That may be
because they didn’t record story songs or folk style ballads, a
style of music that rocketed Johnny Horton and others to lasting
fame.
