Whatever happened to instrumentals?

In case you're too young to remember, instrumentals were songs that had no lyrics/words. They were purely instrumental, played on the guitar and drums and other instruments. They were very popular in the fifties/sixties but don't seem to be nowadays. If you take a look at any current list of the Top 10 or even Top 50 songs most played in the U.S. this week, I doubt that you'll find a single one that is purely instrument-based.

For the record, I don't include jazz or classical recordings here, as those are largely instrument-based (except opera, which is classical but with words/lyrics, albeit often in a foreign language.) And I know that great instrumental music is still being composed/recorded/sold -- but not to the fans of popular music, especially the young who download thousands of songs onto iPods. Virtually nothing of what they download qualifies as "instrumentals".

What I mean is that, forty or fifty years ago, when young people were first listening to songs on the radio -- rejecting Bing Crosby and Sinatra in favor of rock and roll -- many of those songs that were popular and that set us to dancing were instrumentals. They competed on the pop charts with Elvis and Dion and the Belmonts. If you're any kind of student of rock and roll history, I'll bet you recognize at least a few titles: "Walk, Don't Run" by The Ventures or "Pipeline" (by the Chantays?) or "Raunchy" by Bill Justis or "Rebel Rouser" by Duane Eddy (and his twangy guitar) or "The Happy Organ" by Dave "Baby" Cortez or "Sleepwalk" by Santo and Johnny or "Memphis" by Chuck Berry or "Apache" (by who?) or "Telstar" (by who?) or "Tequila" by The Champs or "Rumble" by Link Wray, or even Mason Williams' "Classical Gas."

And this is only a sampling: they were everywhere, all over the radio, played at so many proms.
Wasn't that final dance of the night always Floyd Cramer's "Last Date," played soulfully on the piano? Try it out for yourself and see if you can resist the impulse to pull your best girl or guy closer. They were part of the soundtrack of an age gone by, but they stick in the mind and the viscera.

So why no instrumentals in this current age of music? Again, I mean popular music, what's being bought and/or down-loaded by the younger generation. Was it because early rock and roll was just experimenting with the possibilities of the guitar, and that caught everyone's attention? Think Jimi Hendrix and his electric rendition of the national anthem. Maybe. And a lot of those songs I just mentioned are guitar-based. But not all. Ever heard "Stranger on the Shore," (by Mr. Ackerbilt, I think, whoever he was)? The horn in that song is plaintive and sad and so evocative that it transfixed young people a few decades ago. But what else comes to mind in the past couple of decades? Marvin Hamlisch plunked out Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer", a catchy song with no words. But can you name another purely instrumental tune that has caught our attention lately and made anybody any money? I do recall one more: "Cast Your Fate to the Wind", but I have no idea who did it -- do you?

For some reason, instrumental music has ceased to exist in the pop arena. Try to imagine crowds of fans nowadays filling an arena and listening to a song with no words. No way. Maybe I'm just out of touch -- a distinct possibility -- but it seems to me that we're not hearing the kind of purely instrumental music we used to hear and that, in its time, was as popular as any pop song.

Rock has transformed into rap and hip-hop, but neither features instrumentals. It's all about the words now, which isn't a bad thing -- being literate is actually always a good thing -- but where are the composers who put together purely instrumental songs that lodged in our memories and had us humming along?

In the meantime, there have been memorable instrumental movie theme songs -- "Rocky" and "Chariots of Fire", among others -- but, for the most part, we're bereft of those composing instrumentalists that define a generation. Are they waiting for themes worthy of composition? Hello, they're all around us: bad wars, unemployment, disillusionment, moral decay. Or are they holding fire, waiting for a new generation of lyricists to give them the words? My advice: don't wait. The words will come. Give us your music.