jingle jangle mornings

All this talk about the Byrds got me to thinking about the origins of jangle.  Where did it come from?  The Byrds got it from the Beatles, but then again the Beatles refined and further developed their jingle jangle after hearing the Byrds.  You could go back and forth with this all day. Let’s put the question this way:  Who was jangling before the Beatles?  Buddy Holly was pretty jangly and it’s well-known that Lennon and McCartney were big fans. But Buddy Holly’s music was an outgrowth of country and western, refracted through Elvis Presley.  Now that I think of it, the Nashville Sound that Chet Atkins pioneered has a definite jangle to it. But I don’t think you can you talk about Atkins’ innovations without reference to traditional folk music and bluegrass, to say nothing of Django Reinhardt… You can get caught in an infinite regression with these things.  One of the difficulties involved in telling a historical story is that you have to pick a non-arbitrary starting point to the narrative, one that says this is my an admittedly artificial but well reasoned first instance of this thing that I’m interested in (in this case jangle). Right now I have some hunches, but I don’t really know where jangle comes from in a deep historical sense.  I think it’ll be fun to do a little research and try to find out, and also to trace the development of jangle from its immediate precursors all the way up to REM, the Feelies, the Bangles, and so on.  The deep historical stuff may take some time, especially since a lot of the music from before the advent of rock ‘n roll is much less familiar to me.  But while I’m snooping around looking for beginnings, I’ll post some of my favorite jangly songs, along with my ongoing thoughts on the Byrds.  I hope it will be as enjoyable for readers as I know it will be for me… So here’s the inaugural song for this series, an absolute jangly classic to take you into this hot summer weekend…