The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Just Before The Sea Change - With The Rolling Stones In Mind
A YouTube film clip of the Dixie Cups performing their 1960s classic (who brought the house down with this number about 15 or 20 years ago at the Newport Folk festival of all places to show an example of a song with staying power Chapel Of Love
From The Archives Of Allan Jackson
[In a recent introduction part of this series, see archives dated February 28, 2017 on the subject of 1960s icon writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters who set a certain tone for part of what that whirlwind decade meant to those in the Generation of “68, I noted that after some exhaustive investigation I had found out where the previous site manager of this publication, Allan Jackson, my old high school friend and a founder of the hard copy edition of this space as I was, was hiding out. The reason that was important was that we had lost contact with him in the aftermath of the vicious internal struggle where he was essentially “purged” after he was given a vote of no confidence mainly by the younger writers who though he had gone off the deep end last year in demanding wall to wall coverage of the 50th anniversary commemoration of the famous Summer of Love in 1967 centered in San Francisco and environs.
When Allan went “underground” to use a term of art used in the 1960s for a lot of situations when people dropped off the face of the earth it seemed the rumors flew high and wide since he cut communications with all his old high school and 1960s friends who whose writing and adventures had formed one of the bases for this publication. Some rumors mentioned that he had been done away with in some nefarious way by the incoming new site manager Greg Green and his hand-picked Editorial Board. As I have mentioned before that seemed ludicrous on its face like this was some kind of replay (as farce as Karl Marx once said about second time around events) of the infamous Stalin-Trotsky war to the death which all the older guys were always knee-deep talking about in their radical 1960s pasts. (That Board by the way mandated by the younger writers to avoid some of the problems caused by Allan’s increasingly single-minded devotion to “re-living” the 1960s especially in the decisive 50th anniversary of the myriad events that dotted the landscape of 1968.)
A persistent rumor had him turning tail and placing himself in self-imposed exile out in the American Siberia Utah sucking up to the Mormons in order to get a by-line in one of their dink publications. Things got so out of hand that he had been alleged to have written reams of trash about the virtues of their wearing white underwear and the hardships of having five wives at one time. Worse, worse of all sucking up to a lizard, a chameleon like Mitt Romney who is running for U.S. Senate out there in order to be his press secretary. It got worse in the rumor mill as he was alleged to be living with, living off of some twenty-something part-time waitress surfer girl out in La Jolla who had a father fixation and who was “doing the do” an expression from the old days every chance she got with him and was teaching his to surf to boot. In a more sinister vein which could bring him big legal and maybe bang-bang troubles he was alleged to be putting together a big drug deal on credit with some guys down in Mexico who were looking to make a name in the States. Along the same lines was the rumor that he was running a high-class international whorehouse in Argentina with his old lover Madame La Rue catering to the strange whims of Asian businessmen. There were others, mostly along the same lines, but one last one will suffice to give an idea of what was essentially a smear campaign against the man. Supposedly he was in Frisco dating a transvestite who was connected with the opium trade and he was living high off the hog on Russian Hill stoned to the gills all the time.
The way we, Sam Lowell and I, as I said among his oldest friends from back in the old Acre working class neighborhood in North Adamsville where we all grew up and came of age was simplicity itself. We checked with his third ex-wife Mimi Murphy to see if he had sent her an alimony check. He had and since he was still sweet on her (she had left him for a younger guy when he got too wrapped up in the 1960s for her taste) he told he not only about the purge which she actually already knew about from Josh Breslin but where he was to see if she wanted to “come up to see him” in his hours of despair. That “come up to see him” a telltale sign that he was not on the West Coast but up in Maine, up in Bar Harbor where he always went when things were tough. Had owned a house there until his parcel of kids from those three wives started college and he almost went bankrupt before he bailed out of that place to pay the freaking tuitions. So Sam and I headed up to see him, see what the real story was. More later except some of those rumors were actually at least partially true. That should keep things interesting.
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Meanwhile story time
There were some things about Edward Rowley’s youthful activities that he would rather not forget. That is what got him thinking one sunny afternoon in September about five years ago as he waited for the seasons to turn almost before his eyes about the times around 1964, around the time that he graduated from Wattsville High School, around the time that he realized that the big breeze jail-break that he had kind of been waiting for was about to bust out over the land, over America. It was not like he was some kind of soothsayer, could read tea leaves or anything like that but in his senses which were very much directed by his tastes in music, by his immersion into all things rock and roll kind of drove his aspirations and that music had the cutting edge of what followed later, followed by about 1964 when that new breeze arrived in the land.
That fascination had occupied Eddie’s mind since he had been about ten and had received a transistor radio for his birthday and out of curiosity decided to turn the dial to AM radio channels other that WJDA which his parents, may they rest in peace, certainly rest in peace from his incessant clamoring for rock and roll records, concert tickets, radio listening time on the big family radio in the living room, had on constantly and which drove him crazy. Drove him crazy because that music, well, frankly that music, the music of the Doris Days, the Peggy Lees, The Rosemary Clooneys, the various corny sister acts like the Andrews Sisters, the Frank Sinatras, the Vaughn Monroes, the Dick Haines and an endless series of male quartets did not “jump,” gave him no “kicks,’ left him flat. As a compromise they had purchased a transistor radio at Radio Shack and left him to his own devises.
One night when he was fiddling with the dial he heard this sound out of Cleveland, Ohio, a little fuzzy but audible playing this be-bop sound, not jazz although it had horns, not rhythm and blues although sort of, but a new beat by a guy named Warren Smith who was singing about his Ruby, his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby who only was available apparently to dance the night away. And she didn’t seem to care where she danced by herself on the tabletops or with her guy. Yeah, so if you need a name for what ailed young Eddie Rowley, something he could not quite articulate then call her woman, call her Ruby and you will not be far off. And so with that as a pedigree Eddie became one of the town’s most knowledgeable devotees of the new sound. Problem was that new sound, as happens frequently in music, got a little stale as time went on, as the original artists who captured his imagination faded from view one way or another and new guys, guys with nice Bobby this and Bobby that names, Patsy this and that names sang songs under the umbrella name rock and roll that his mother could love. Songs that could have easily fit into that WJDA box that his parents had been stuck in since about World War II.
So Eddie was anxious for a new sound to go along with his feeling tired of the same old, same old stuff that had been hanging around in the American night since the damn nuclear hot flashes red scare Cold War started way before he had a clue about what that was all about. It had started with the music and then he got caught up with a guy in school, Daryl Wallace, a hipster, or that is what he called himself, a guy who liked “kicks” although being in high school in Wattsville far from New York City, far from San Francisco, damn, far from Boston what those “kicks” were or what he or Eddie would do about getting those “kicks” never was made clear. But they played it out in a hokey way and for a while they were the town, really high school, “beatniks.” So Eddie had had his short faux “beat” phase complete with flannel shirts, black chino pants, sunglasses, and a beret (a beret that he kept hidden at home once he found out after his parents had seen and heard Jack Kerouac reading from the last page of On The Road on the Steve Allen Show that they severely disapproved on the man, the movement and anything that smacked of the “beat” and a beret always associated with French bohemians and foreignness would have had them seeing “red”). And for a while Daryl and Eddie played that out until Daryl moved away (at least that was the story that went around but there was a persistent rumor for a time that Mr. Wallace had dragooned Daryl into some military school in California in any case that disappearance from the town was the last he ever heard from his “beat” brother). Then came 1964 and Eddie was fervently waiting for something to happen, for something to come out of the emptiness that he was feeling just as things started moving again with the emergence of the Beatles and the Stones as a harbinger of what was coming.
That is where Eddie had been psychologically when his mother first began to harass him about his hair. Although the hair thing like the beret was just the symbol of clash that Eddie knew was coming and knew also that now that he was older that he was going to be able to handle differently that when he was a kid. Here is what one episode of the battle sounded like:
“Isn’t that hair of yours a little long Mr. Edward Rowley, Junior,” clucked Mrs. Edward Rowley, Senior, “You had better get it cut before your father gets back from his conference trip, if you know what is good for you.” That mothers’-song was being endlessly repeated in Wattsville households (and not just Wattsville households either but in places like North Adamsville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where guys were wating for the new dispensation and wearing hair a little longer than boys’ regular was the flash point) ever since the British invasion had brought longer hair into style (and a little less so, beards, that was later when guys got old enough to grow one without looking wispy).
Of course when one was thinking about the British invasion in the year 1964 one was not thinking about the American Revolution or the War of 1812 but the Beatles. And while their music has taken 1964 teen world by a storm, a welcome storm after the long mainly musical counter-revolution since Elvis, Bo, Jerry Lee and Chuck ruled the rock night and had disappeared without a trace, the 1964 parent world was getting up in arms.
And not just about hair styles either. But about trips to Harvard Square coffeehouses to hear, to hear if you can believe this, folk music, mountain music, harp music or whatever performed by long-haired (male or female), long-bearded (male), blue jean–wearing (both), sandal-wearing (both), well, for lack of a better name “beatniks” (parents, as usual, being well behind the curve on teen cultural movements since by 1964 “beat” except on television was yesterdays’ news). Mrs. Rowley would constantly harp about “why couldn’t Eddie be like he was when he listened to Bobby Vinton and his Mr. Lonely or that lovely-voiced Roy Orbison and his It’s Over and other nice songs on the local teen radio station, WMEX (he hated that name Eddie by the way, Eddie was also what everybody called his father so you can figure out why he hated the moniker). Now it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a cranky-voiced guy named Bob Dylan that has his attention. And that damn Judy Jackson with her short skirt and her, well her…
Since Mrs. Rowley, Alice to the neighbors, was getting worked up it anyway, "What about all the talk about doing right by the down-trodden Negros down in Alabama and Mississippi. And Eddie and that damn Peter Dawson, who used to be so nice when they all hung around together at Jimmy Jacks’ Diner (corner boys, Ma, that is what we were) and you at least knew they were no causing trouble, talking about organizing a book drive to get books for the little Negro children down there. If Eddie’s father ever heard that there would be hell to pay, hell to pay and maybe a strap coming out of the closet big as Eddie is. Worst though, worst that worrying about Negros down South is that treasonous talk about leaving this country, leaving Wattsville, defenseless against the communists with his talk of nuclear disarmament. Why couldn’t he have just left well enough alone and stick with his idea of forming a band that would play nice songs that make kids feel good like Gale Garnet’s We’ll Sing In The Sunshine or that pretty Negro girl Dionne Warwick and Her Walk On By instead of getting everybody upset."
And since Mrs. Rowley, Alice, to the neighbors and mentioned the name Judy Jackson, Eddie’s flame and according to Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talk, Judy’s talk they had “done the deed” and you can figure out what the deed was let’s hear what is going on in the Jackson household since one of the reasons that Eddie was wearing his hair longer was because Judy thought it was “sexy” and so that talk of doing the deed may well have been true if there were any sceptics. Hear this:
“Young lady, that dress is too short for you to wear in public, take it off, burn it for all I care, and put on another one or you are not going out of this house,” barked Mrs. James Jackson, echoing a sentiment that many worried North Adamsville mothers were feeling (and not just North Adamsville mothers either) about their daughters dressing too provocatively and practically telling the boys, well practically telling them you know what as she suppressed the “s” word that was forming in her head. "And that Eddie (“Edward, Ma,” Judy keep repeating every time Mrs. Jackson, Dorothy to the neighbors, said Eddie), and his new found friends like Peter Paul Markin taking her to those strange coffeehouses instead of the high school dances on Saturday night.
And endless talk about the n-----s down South and other trash talk. Commie trash about peace and getting rid of weapons. They should draft the whole bunch and put them over in front of that Berlin Wall. Then they wouldn’t be so negative about America."
Scene: Edward, Judy and Peter Paul Markin sitting in the Club Nana in Harvard Square sipping coffee, maybe pecking at the one brownie between, and listening to a local wanna-be folk singing strumming his stuff (who turned out to be none other than Eric Von Schmidt). Beside them cartons of books that they are sorting to be taken along with them when head South this summer after graduation exercises at North Adamsville High School are completed in June. They have already purchased their tickets as far as New York’s Port Authority where they will meet other heading south. Pete Paul turns to Edward and says, “Have you heard that song, Popsicles and Icicles by the Mermaids, it has got great melodic sense.” Yes, we are still just before the sea change. Good luck, young travelers.
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