Nobody could sing and nobody could write and, in any case, nobody gave a damn

British pop in the fifties was pure farce.

Nobody could sing and nobody could write and, in any case, nobody gave a damn. The industry surivuved in a state of perpetual self-styled hysteria, screaming itself hoarse about nothing in particular.

N. Cohn, Awopbopaloobop, Awopamboom (1969), 54

On his first British tour, he used to study the evening paper nightly and check to see if there had been any fluctuation in rates of exchange

He [Chuck Berry] was arrogant, rude. When he liked to turn it on, he could be most charming, but often he couldn't be bothered. First and last, he was amazingly mean.

There's an authenticated story about him that, on his first British tour, he used to study the evening paper nightly and check to see if there had been any fluctuation in rates of exchange. If there was any deviation in his favour, no matter how small, he'd demand payment in cash before he went on. On one night, this supplement came to 2s. 3 1/2d.

Still, all of this is irrelevant when you hear his records again.   

N. Cohn, Awopbopaloobop, Awopamboom (1969), 36

If Elvis Presley was the great pop messiah, Ray played John the Baptist

As a prototype for pop though, Johnnie Ray was much closer [than Sinatra], the Nabob of Sob, the Million Dollar Teardrop himself. If Elvis Presley was the great pop messiah, Ray played John the Baptist.

...

Elvis is where pop begins and ends. Hes the great original and, even now, he's the image that makes others seem shoddy, the boss. For once the fan club spiel is justified: Elvis is King.

N. Cohn, Awopbopaloobop, Awopamboom (1969), 3 & 14

Reality they could do without

It's one of the cliched laws of showbiz that entertainment gets sloppy when times get tough and, what with the depression, the war and its aftermath, times had gotten very tough indeed. Hemmed in by their lives, people needed to cling tight in the dark of dancehalls, to be reassured, to feel safe again. Reality they could do without. 

N. Cohn, Awopbopaloobop, Awopamboom (1969), 1-2

Men who, if their primordial capitalist bosses had not given them rum, would have done something to get their wages raised

In that sudden roar the word you make out is "Daiquiri." Yes, yes, I know. I have alluded to rum before, we must not deny hat it exists and it is drunk, and as a historian I must give it its due. It gave us political freedom and negro slavery. It got ships built ans sailed, forests felled, iron smelted, and commercial freight carried from place to place by men who, if their primordial capitalist bosses had not given them rum, would have done something to get their wages raised. 

B. DeVoto, The Hour (1951), 55

There are only two cocktails

There are only two cocktails. The bar manuals and the women's pages of the daily press, I know, print scores of messes to which they give that honorable and glorious name. They are not cocktails, they are slops. They are fit to be drunk only in the barbarian marches and mostly are drunk there, by the barbarians. .... I have shown that our forefathers were a great people: they invented rye and bourbon. They were also a tough people: nothing so clearly proves it as they survived the fearful mixtures they also invented and then drank.

B. DeVoto, The Hour (1951), 50-51

This is the most famous line in this hard-edged gem of a book. It makes me want to engage with Martinis, and bourbon. 

Almost no birds today have vernacular names

Almost no birds today have vernacular names. Bird names have become standardized, homogenized, conscripted into what is considered proper by scientists for classification. A century ago a birder could have told what county, even what village, he was in by the folk name for a long-tailed tit. In his Treatise on the Birds of Gloucestershire, W. L. Mellersh collected no fewer than 10 local names for Aegithalos caudatus, the long-tailed tit, among them long Tom, oven-bird, poke-pudding, creak-mouse, barrel Tom, and in the south of the county, long farmer. For John Clare in Northamptonshire the long-tailed tit was, delightfully, the 'bumbarrel'.

J. Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland (2014), 97