Song 26:
"After the Lights Go Down Low" by Al Hibbler
Peak: 10
Year: 1956
Year end position: 70
Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/3
Chronological Songs by Artist: 3/3
Video?: No
Spotify?: Yes
Today we get to the third in our half dozen song look at
titles that begin with the word "After". Like yesterday's song, this song also sounds
like it might have come straight out of the 1920s. The difference is that yesterday's song
sounded a little like Swing music, and today's song sounds a little like old
school Jazz.
This also marks the second song we've had from the 1950s,
and is also the earliest song we've seen thus far, as it came out a year before
"An Affair to Remember". Like
"An Affair to Remember", I had never heard of this song before I
started writing this blog. Nor had I
ever heard of Al Hibbler, but he seems like an interesting character.
I wasn't at all familiar with Al Hibbler, but he is one of
seven acts that had exactly 3 songs make the top 20, where all 3 hit the charts
in 1956 or before. As you might guess,
there are not a lot of big names on that list.
I think Tennessee Ernie Ford ("Sixteen Tons") might be the
best known of the 7. If you are up on
your mid-century singers, then the names Don Cornell, Jo Stafford, Julius
LaRosa, Les Baxter and Johnny Desmond will be familiar to you as the remaining
five. The bad news is that most people
nowadays probably have never heard of those people. The good news is that we have a chance to
become familiar with them as their songs come up in this blog.
Such is the case with Al Hibbler. Similar to Vic Damone earlier, he had most of
his chart success in the 1940s. One
difference between them is that Vic Damone had his success as a solo act while
Al Hibbler had his success as a vocalist for Duke Ellington's Orchestra. Hibbler sang with Duke Ellington's Orchestra
from 1943-1951, leaving after a dispute over wages. From what I can tell, he bounced around, singing
with a few other orchestras and doing some solo projects for much of the
1950s. In the late 1950s and 1960s, he
got involved in the civil rights movement, which started to scare off record
labels. Apparently, Frank Sinatra signed
him to his own record label in the mid 60s, but he was more or less finished
with his active recording career by then.
This song sounds a lot like an extended pick up line. From what I can get from the song, "When
the lights go down low" is similar to the equivalent of the "ugly
lights coming up" at a modern club.
It sounds a lot like Al is sitting at the bar with some woman he has
been hitting on all night and is making his last pitch for taking her home. He's establishes pretty early that "the
dancin' is through / and folks will be few", so it's pretty late into the
evening. I think my favorite line in the
whole song is "And we can cuddle up near without any fear / Cause I've got
some sweet talk that you want to hear".
That line is amazingly presumptuous of Al Hibbler. It's the one time in the song where I feel Al
breaks a little bit from his pleading with this girl, and switches to a line
that is similar to "You know you want to go home with me". It's like a flash of arrogance that doesn't
seem to come up anywhere in the song.
I think this song hold up pretty well. Guys have been hitting on women since time
immemorial, and this song is just the first example we will get to. I feel like I go to a bar tonight and hear a
drunk guy telling some woman "Together we could have a good
time". There are some things about
the song that make it somewhat dated. It
seems rooted in the jazz era, which is not heard much on pop radio anymore. The phrasing of "When the Lights Go Down
Low" to refer to the end of the night seems a little strange now as
well. Those things hold the song back a
little bit. Plus, the fact that kids
nowadays probably don't listen to many songs from the 1950s in general. I think this song is a decent example of why
maybe they should give them a listen. There are some real hidden gems there, and I
think this song qualifies as one.
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