Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Jody Reynolds performing the classic Endless Sleep.
Markin comment:This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard working, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to back in the day.
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JODY REYNOLDS
"Endless Sleep"
(Jody Reynolds and Dolores Nance)
The night was black, rain fallin' down
Looked for my baby, she's nowhere around
Traced her footsteps down to the shore
‘fraid she's gone forever more
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.
Why did we quarrel, why did we fight?
Why did I leave her alone tonight?
That's why her footsteps ran into the sea
That's why my baby has gone from me.
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.
Ran in the water, heart full of fear
There in the breakers I saw her near
Reached for my darlin', held her to me
Stole her away from the angry sea
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“You took your baby from me away.
My heart cried out “she's mine to keep
I saved my baby from an endless sleep.
[Fade]
Endless sleep, endless sleep
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I want the iPhone number and e-mail address of the person who wrote this one. Whoever that person is (or they are, as the case may be) should be made to run the gauntlet, or put on a lonely desert isle, or, and this would be real justice in this case made to follow Socrates, who also corrupted the morals of the youth of his time. Why all the hubbub? Well, read the heart-breaking teen angst lyrics here on Endless Sleep. Old Lee (let’s call him that, although as in most cases with these 1950s teen lyrics, frustratingly, the parties are not named except things like teen angel, earth angel, etc.) and his honey, Laura (again name made up to give some personality to this sketch) had a spat, a big one from Laura’s reaction, and now she has flipped out and, as teenagers often will in a moment of overreaction to some slight, gone down to the seaside to end it all. Lee in desperation, once he hears from some unnamed third party apparently what she has done, frantically tries to find her out in the deep, dark, wave-splashed night. All the while the “sea” is calling out for him to join her.
And that last part, the part that practically begs for a joint teen suicide pact is where every right thinking person, and not just enraged parents either, should, or should have put his or her foot down and gone after the lyricist’s scalp, to speak nothing of the singer of such woe begotten lines. Ya, I know old Lee saved his honey from the endless sleep but still we cannot have this stuff filling the ears of impressionable teen-agers. Right?
Of course, from what I heard third-hand, this quarrel that old Lee speaks of , and that Laura went ballistic over, was about whether they were going to go bowling with Lee’s guy friends and their girls down the old Bowl-a-drome on Saturday or to the drive-in theater for the latest Elvis movie. Lee, usually a mild-mannered kid, reared up at that thought of going to another bogus Elvis film featuring him, the king, riding around in a big old car, having plenty of dough in his pocket and plenty of luscious young girls ready and waiting to help him spent that dough. Of such disputes the battle of the sexes abound, and occasionally other battles, war battles as well. However, after hearing that take on the dispute I think old Lee had much the best of it. And, also off of that same take I am not altogether sure I would have been all that frantic to go down to the seaside looking for dear, sweet Laura. Just kidding.
But that brings something up, something that I am not kidding about. Now I love the sea more than a little. But I also know about the power of the sea, about old Uncle Neptune’s capacity to do some very bad things to anything that gets in his way. From old double-high storm-tossed seawalls that crumble at the charging sea’s touch to rain-soaked, mast-toppled boats lost down under in the briny deep whose only sin was to stir up the waves. And Laura should have too. So I am really ticked off, yes, ticked off, that Laura should tempt the fates, and Lee’s fate, by pulling a bone-head water's edge stunt like that.
It reminds me , although in contrast, of the time that old flame, old hitchhike road searching for the blue-pink great American West night flame Angelica, old Indiana-bred, Mid-American naïve Angelica, who got so excited the first time she saw the Pacific Ocean, never having seen the ocean before, leaped right in and was almost carried away by a sudden riptide. It took all I had to pull her out. And that Angelica error was out of sheer ignorance. Laura had no excuse. When you look at it that way, and as much as I personally do no care a fig about bowling, would it really have been that bad to go bowl a couple of strings. Such are the ways of teen angst.
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