‘There in the night was a wonderful scene / Mom was dancing with Dad to my record machine / And while they danced only one thing was wrong / They were trying to waltz to a rock and roll song!’ The chorus premise tells you everything you need to know about this cute little number: the ‘generation gap’ both crystallised and smoothed over. The tune is a hybrid itself, naturally, swing attempting a d’tente with the new music, and ‘Rock And Roll Waltz’ amuses for a few listens. Twenty-odd years later Cheap Trick came home and found their parents doing a lot more than waltzing to rock music: thematic mixtape makers should find a use for Kay Starr as she opens the loop they close.
Score: 5
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Cute-ish but clunky, and you can hear Kay’s unease with the corn if you play it alongside Comes Along A Love’s unabashed party spirit. This may have been a crass attempt to bridge the suddenly emerging generation gap, but it surely made it grow exponentially.
Ooh, only one comment. I expected Popular to be far more harsh: I get the impression the record is really hated by RnR fans. Perhaps it’s because I can appreciate both types of music that I find it so hard to dislike this record. I kinda agree with wichita; it’s cute. Though it’s probably most useful nowadays as an illustration of social history at the time, rather than being a record one would choose to play.
There probably were more comments once upon a time, Eli, but a lot got lost before we noticed haloscan wasn’t archiving them.
28 years on, here’s Kay giving it plenty in a 1983 UK TV performance. She turns 90 this year and according to Wiki was still performing as of 2010. Hats off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB0dsuuQpd0&feature=related
Tom’s 5/10 seems fair here.
I agree with the ‘cute’ assessment, and the 5/10. It’s fluff, and Kay knows it, but she sells it like a pro. Interesting that rock ‘n’ roll was enough of a cultural phenomenon to warrant being the subject of a novelty single like this, way before it had actually established itself as a chart-topping force.