***Just When You Thought It Was Safe To… Be-Bop-No Doo-Wop-Redux

 

A YouTube film clip of the Capris performing There's A Moon Out Tonight.

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

Confused by the headline? Don’t be. All it does is refer to a previous seemingly endless series of Oldies But Goodies CD reviews in this space a while back. (Cold war, red scare, jail break-out 1950s-1960s , there at the creation, there when Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck, Wanda and their brethren were young and hungry and we were too, oldies but goodies, just so you know.) That gargantuan task required sifting through ten, no, fifteen volumes of material that by the end left me limping, and crying uncle.

Christ who am I kidding I was ready for the sweet safe confines of some convalescent home just to “dry out” a little and prepare myself for yet another twelve-step “recovery” program and I hadn’t even gotten to 1960 before I went off the deep end. See, as I explained in the last few reviews of the series, just when I thought I was done at Volume Ten I found that it was a fifteen, fifteen count ‘em, volume series. In any case I whipped off those last five reviews in one shot and was done with it. Praise be and all of that. I would rather cover six non-descript American presidential campaigns straight up than go through that again. Make that seven presidential campaigns, including that of some dingbat over in New Hampshire named “Red Bucket” whose “campaign” consists of mocking everybody who even has pretensions to the vaunted oval office.

The reason for such haste at that point seemed self-explanatory. After all how much could we rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories, teen memories, teen high school memories mainly, from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs, others have died, mercifully died, and gone to YouTube heaven to be clicked “like” by about three people, including the up-loader, and probably “Red Bucket”) in the reviewed compilations. How many times could one read about guys with two social left feet (and I won’t even mention geeky clothes and shoes brought on by an onslaught of, well, family poverty in my case), the social conventions of dancing close (and not being hip to mouthwash and deodorant wisdom, although very hip to that fragrance a certain she was wearing, that maddening come hither fragrance), wallflowers (and their invisibleness) , the avoidance of wallflower-dom (at all costs, including cutting loose on long- time friendships with geeky future lawyers, professors and doctors, jesus) , meaningful sighs (ho-hum), meaningless sighs (ah, gee), the longings, eternal longings from tween to twenty, for certain obviously unattainable shes (or hes for those of the opposite sex then, or maybe even same sex but that was a book sealed with seven seals then, maybe more, maybe more than seven seals that is), the trials and tribulations associated with high school gymnasium crepe paper-adorned dances, moonlight-driven dream thoughts of after dance doings, and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. And there and then I threw in the towel, I thought. Bastante.

Well now I have “recovered” enough to take a little different look at the music of this period-the doo wop sound that hovered in the background radio of every kid, every kid who had a radio, a transistor radio, to keep parental prying ears at arm’s length, and who was moonstruck enough to have been searching, high and low, for a sound that was not just the same old, same old that his or her parents listened to. Early rock and rock, especially that early Sun Record stuff, and plenty of rhythm and blues met that need but so did, for a time, old doo wop-the silky sounds of lead singer-driven, lyrics-driven, vocal-meshing harmony that was the stuff of teenage “petting” parties and staid old hokey school dances, mainly, in my case, elementary school dances.

As I mentioned in those oldies but goodies reviews not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to, or meant to be, playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability, slow danceabilty, to make any Jack or Jill start snapping fingers then, or now. Of course that begs a question. As I asked in that previous series and is appropriate to ask here as well what about the now seeming mandatory question of the best song of the times-doo-wop variation. The one that stands out as the inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumble-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar).

Here The Capris’ There’s A Moon Out Tonight fills the bill. And, yes, I know, this is one of those slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, as I have noted before, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason than to “impress” that certain she (or like before he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your sexual preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?

P.S. Okay, okay I’ll “confess” but only because I know that if don’t somebody, maybe even someone who was at one of those damn dances, will pry it out of me with some mean and evil method of torture. And if there is one thing in life that I have had enough of after a long career in the public prints, even if they were mainly alternative rags and trendy radical chic reads, is threats of public exposure and other ill-advised methods of “getting the truth out.” Yes, I took dancing lessons to try to cover up those two social left feet.

But wait! It wasn’t just some generic moonbeam boy meets girl thing but for “her.” Her being in this case, one Lydia MacAdams, and yes, if that name sounds familiar, from the MacAdams Textiles family. The ones who seemingly make every towel placed in every hotel in America, and maybe beyond for all I know. Lydia was a granddaughter of the founder, although I never did quite catch the full details on the exact relationship. The MacAdams mills used to be located in Olde Saco, Maine where I grew to manhood and employed most of the town, including my father, before they headed south for cheaper labor from what I remember. The Lydia branch stayed put in Olde Saco over on Elm Street where all the fancy Victorians were located (and still are, more recently refurbished for old-time house crazies).

Lydia and I went to Olde Saco East Junior High School (now Middle School) together and first met in art class in eighth grade. We used to talk, serious and funny talk, all the time. I never did anything about it that year, although I think that Lydia expected me to ask her out. Maybe it was me just wishing but that’s what I thought then. Of course “asking out” (read: date, okay) meant going after school over to Jimmy Jack’s Diner over on Main Street just down from East for something to eat but really to listen to Jimmy Jack’s jukebox that had all the latest be-bop rock, doo wop hits and stuff like that on it. Like I said I never got that far. Why. Well that’s where coming from the “wrong side of the tracks” comes in, the Albemarle “projects” wrong side of the tracks over in back of the old mills. No dough, okay. And no dough meant no go with Lydia in my head.

So that is where the dancing lessons came in. I caddied over at the Olde Saco Country Club all summer to save up money to take lessons (and for dough in case I got Jimmy Jack’s lucky). Why? Well two whys. One to “ be ready” for the Olde Saco High freshmen mixer in October when I was planning to take dead-aim at Lydia for the last dance of the night. The last slow dance, see. Two, because one Lydia MacAdams was also taking dance lessons at Miss Jean’s over on Atlantic Avenue. Do not ask how I found that out I will not tell and you can torture me all you want on that one.

But do feel free to ask about this, about the lead-up to that mixer night. The first day, the very first day of dance class after school in September just shortly after we had entered august Olde Saco High, Lydia came up to me and said, no, commanded, that whether or not I somehow thought she had two left feet because I had not asked her to the mixer, we, she and I, were going to dance the last dance. She also said she hoped that it would be that dreamy There’s A Moon Out Tonight that she loved to play on Jimmy Jack’s jukebox. I was stunned and blurted out that if she wanted me to take her I would. No dice, no dice because in my timidity she had accepted Lance Allison’s invitation to take her, take her as a friend she said with a wicked look like “see what you missed out on, buster.”  She did say that if I invited her to the Thanksgiving Dance that she was free, if I was stopped being so timid and asked her. Well, what’s a fellow to do when he is “commanded” to do something by Lydia MacAdams. I can still smell that maddening come hither fragrance, bath soap or perfume I don’t which but maddening, she wore that mixer night as we danced that last dance  night away so close it would have taken an army to separate us. And no I did not ask her to the Thanksgiving Dance, not because I was timid though, but because we were an “item” after that last dance and naturally we would be going, going two left feet or not.