It sound awful . " The screamin ' tyre , the bustin ' glass , the afflictive shriek that I heard last . " The lyrics in Wayne Cochran ’s hit song " Last Kiss , " first released in 1961 , go on to state listeners that the young man was able-bodied to find his dish after their car crash , despite the rain and the blood running in his eyes . When he did , " I lifted her head , she looked at me and said/‘Hold me darling just a petty while’/ I hold her finale , I osculate her our last kiss/ I found the love that I eff I would miss . "
You may be shiver – or snicker – at such lyric . Yet " Last Kiss " was one of many such stripling cataclysm songs write in the 1960s ( it was later recorded by Pearl Jam in the ' 90s ) , and part of an challenging cultural phenomenon known as " dying discs . " Ken Jennings and John Roderick cut into into the matter in an installment ofOmnibus , a twice - hebdomadal chronicle podcast . Jennings , who get ahead " Jeopardy ! " a disk 74 times in a dustup ( and now hosts it ) , and Roderick , an established player , take apart curious stories from the present and recent yesteryear in their podcasts .
Morbid teen daddy songs first get down hit the airwaves in 1959 and 1960 , when Mark Dinning ’s " Teen Angel , " and Ray Peterson ’s " Tell Laura I Love Her " debut , severally . As the ' 60s come along , so did the songs , which cut across all musical genres . There were " Ebony Eyes " by the Everly Brothers and " Johnny Remember Me " by John Leyton in 1961 , " drawing card of the Pack " by the Shangri - Las in 1964 and Bobbie Gentry ’s " Ode to Billie Joe " in 1967 . Many of the songs ' characters met their demise through railway car clang , and often the tunes ended with pleas for everlasting love . A spoken intermezzo or prelude was another unwashed characteristic .
What was behind the gruesome captivation with stripling death ? Some say one component was the break of the day of the reverse lightning age in the early sixties . Americans were abruptly capable to practice strain travel as a means of transportation . As they began doing so , somenotable crashesoccurred , include " The daytime the Music die " whenBuddy Holly , Ritchie Valens , the Big Bopper all perished in one plane clank in 1959 . Back in 1955 , actor James Dean was belt down in a car clank just as his vocation was taking off . As people see of these dread tragedies , it caused them to pull in that unseasonable death is a substantial possibility for anyone .
In addition , the songs were considered dark and a bit edgy . The BBCbannedmany of these melody , dubbing them " splatter phonograph record . " the great unwashed even save letters to the editor of Seventeen magazine publisher , Jennings enunciate , to say that " the proper young lady should not be listen to this kind of thing . " Of course , forbidding or ban something always increases its appeal , particularly to teens .
But in the end , the podcasters say , the principal reason death disc became so democratic may have been simple capitalism . The first few dark songs pressed into vinyl were striking . So other singers begin emulating them to cash in . That ’s not the aphrodisiac intellect for the emergence of destruction discs , but it may be the most accurate .
