Word: chime
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Topping last week's bestseller list was Mr. Sandman (Cadence), featuring the piping voices of the Chordettes, beginning with chime effects ("bum, bum, bum, bum") and paced by the clip-clop sounds of Archie Bleyer slapping his knees. Sample Mr. Sandman lyric: "Give him a lonely heart like Pagliacci, and lots of wavy hair like Liberace." No. 4 bestseller: Teach Me Tonight (Abbott), with the DeCastro Sisters in a twangy, eagerly enunciated request for seduction. The melody is in the contralto, while the other girls warble country-alto above. No. 11 but climbing fast: The Naughty Lady of Shady...
...Bellboy! (Gloria Wood and Pete Candoli's Orchestra; Capitol). A surrealistic ballad in bop. The only words are the title, called out coaxingly, then petulantly, then desperately, and always answered with comic effect by a chime. In between, Songstress ' Wood noodles breathlessly along with the high clarinet, leaving the listener to imagine what it all means...
Across the U.S. last week, air waves, nurseries and barrooms echoed with a song called / Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. To a tune that is basically old reliable corn syrup, with occasional chorus and chime effects added, it tells the story of a child who does some Christmas Eve snooping when he (she) should have been asleep. Nothing else in the lyrics is quite up to the title-line. Sample...
...consoles, beating on xylophone-like strips of metal with wooden hammers. In the rear hung three huge, deep-humming brass gongs. At the foot of the temple steps, two men sat and fluttered butterfly fingers against tubular drums. The music of a Balinese gamelan can clang steel-hard or chime gold-soft, Manhattanites discovered -and the rhythm was as exact and exciting as a drum solo by Gene Krupa...
...parties, her friends seldom ask her to sing, but if Sinatra or Crosby happens to be mooing on the radio, she is apt to chime in with a corned-up accompaniment. Back in Victor's good graces again, she has recorded some popular songs...