999,858: The Chords — Sh-Boom; 999,857: Stan Freberg — Sh-Boom; 999,856: The Crew Cuts — Sh-Boom

When first recorded by The Chords in 1954, the seminal doo-wop number "Sh-Boom" made sense to virtually no one and stoked fears in "polite" society of a coming race war (actually, that was Charles Manson's interpretation of "Helter Skelter", but I lacked a good "grabber" for "Sh-boom"). Anyway, it was a dopey, infectious song containing an obscene-sounding nonsense word whose subtext advocated sex, mild creepiness ("If only all my precious plans would come true", gollum) and, with "If I could take you up to paradise up above", could have been interpreted by an uptight person as a misguidedly suggested murder-suicide pact.

Luckily, parodist Stan Freberg was available to make sense of this R&B hit for white audiences, so accustomed to a demure musical landscape of slow-tempo crooning. Freberg pilloried The Chords in the guise of The Toads, who affect unintelligible accents in order to sell records to a mindless audience who wouldn't care what the lyrics said anyway. (Yikes, Stan Freberg). The exuberant performance of The Chords was mocked angrily, as Freberg shrieked sarcastically along to the scat-singing refrain. That tone of fuming condescension (with and without the histrionics), would be aped by white comedians against the encroachment of rock n' roll for years to come (notably with Steve Allen's treatment of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog").

The Crew Cuts, however, took a different tack, one used so successfully by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra for decades: they would record a slower, staider, non-threatening version of "Sh-Boom" so that upstanding white citizens might feel comfortable buying the record. With their lily-white, college glee-club stylings, (and utterly bloodless delivery, right down to the embarrassing ditto-machine job on the scat solo), the Crew Cuts made "Sh-Boom" a pop chart smash, even while making the Stan Freberg parody seem like a faithful adaptation. At least Stan put some emotion into it.