On The Sixtieth Anniversary Of Her Death-Lady Day-Billie Holiday- She Took Our Pain Away Despite Her Own Pains- Happy Birthday To You-***When Radio Ruled The Air-Waves- "Stardust:Decca Records:Classics and Standards Collection"

Happy Birthday To You-

By Lester Lannon

I am devoted to a local folk station WUMB which is run out of the campus of U/Mass-Boston over near Boston Harbor. At one time this station was an independent one based in Cambridge but went under when their significant demographic base deserted or just passed on once the remnant of the folk minute really did sink below the horizon.

So much for radio folk history except to say that the DJs on many of the programs go out of their ways to commemorate or celebrate the birthdays of many folk, rock, blues and related genre artists. So many and so often that I have had a hard time keeping up with noting those occurrences in this space which after all is dedicated to such happening along the historical continuum.

To “solve” this problem I have decided to send birthday to that grouping of musicians on an arbitrary basis as I come across their names in other contents or as someone here has written about them and we have them in the archives. This may not be the best way to acknowledge them, but it does do so in a respectful manner.    

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Inkspots performing I’ll Get By.

CD Review

Stardust: The Classic Decca Hits and Standards Collection, various artists, Decca Records, MCA, 1994


I am a first generation child of the television age, although in recent years I have spent more time kicking and screaming about that fact than watching the damn thing. Nevertheless I can appreciate this little compilation of Decca hits and standard tunes from the 1940s and 1950s as a valentine to the radio days of my parents’ youth, parents who came of musical age (and every other kind of age as well) during the Great Depression of the 1930s and who fought, or waited for those out on the front lines fighting, World War II. I am just old enough though, although generation behind them, to remember the strains of songs like the harmonic –heavy Mills Brothers Paper Dolls (a favorite of my mother’s) and The Glow Worm (not a favorite of anybody as far as I know although the harmony is still first-rate) that came wafting, via the local Adamsville radio station WJDA, through our big box living room radio in the early 1950s. It seemed they, or maybe the Andrews Sisters, be-bopping (be-bopping now, not then, you do not want to know what I called it then), on Rum And Coca-Cola or tagging along with Bing Crosby on Don’t Fence Me In were permanent residents of the airs-waves in the Markin household.

I am also a child of Rock 'n' Roll but those above-mentioned tunes were the melodies that my mother and father came of age to and the stuff of their dreams during World War II and its aftermath. The rough and tumble of my parents raising a bunch of kids might have taken the edge off it but the dreams remained. In the end it is this musical backdrop, behind the generation musical fights that roils the Markin household in teen times, that makes this compilation most memorable to me. Just to say names like Dick Haymes (I think my mother had a “crush” on him at some point), Vaughn Monroe, The Inkspots (who, truth, I liked even then, even in my “high, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly days, especially on If I Didn’t Care and I’ll Get By-wow), and Lois Armstrong. Or songs like Blueberry Hill, You’ll Never Know, A- Tisket- A Tasket, You Always Hurt The One You Love and so gather in a goodly portion of the mid-20th century American Songbook. Other talents like Billie Holiday, The Weavers, and Rosemary Clooney and tunes like Lover Man (and a thousand and one Cole Porter Billie-sung songs), Fever, and As Time Goes By (from Dooley Wilson in Casablanca) came later through very different frames of reference. But the seed, no question, no question now, was planted then.

Let’s be clear as well going back to that first paragraph mention of television - there something very different between the medium of the radio and the medium of the television. The radio allowed for an expansion of the imagination (and of fantasy) that the increasingly harsh realities of what was being portrayed on television did not allow one to get away with. The heart of World War II, and in its immediate aftermath, was time when one needed to be able to dream a little. The realities of the world at that time seemingly only allowed for nightmares. My feeling is that this compilation will touch a lot of sentimental nerves for the World War II generation (that so-called ‘greatest generation’), including my growing-up Irish working class families on the shores of North Adamsville. Nice work.

***Out In The Be-Bop Night- The King Of The Skee Ball World

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for skee ball.

Markin comment:

I have plenty of my own carnival and amusement park stories to tell, and will, but today I am giving my space over to Frankie, Frankie straight up, Frankie in his own voice, and his story about how he became a skeet addict. The time of this story is just before I linked up with him in middle school, the old North Adamsville middle school (then called junior high school). Other stories, later stories, I was there as an eye witness so I can trust them a little this one though seems kind of well Frankie-like so let him take responsibility for telling it.

Francis Xavier Riley comment:

Walking on tiptoes its seemed, it always seemed, I enter Playland not much of a name by today’s hyped-up standards for any fly-by-night operation but then an enchanted castle in my youthful skinny dreams, at least at night when one did not notice the daytime noticeable missing slats on one of the outside walls or the desperately needed painting, maybe two coats, or the angry smell of the refuge left behind by the who spent and lost, like the skimpy winnings were going to change somebody's whole life around.

Ya, I enter, a solemn entry, quietly as I eye (or spy) the doings and adjust my hearing to the ear-splitting sounds of twenty (or more) pinball machines getting plenty of play. Some guy, some older guy, meaning over sixteen and allowed to play the pinball machines that we younger ones could only watch (and wait for our sixteen turn), slender, sleek, slinky girl friend hanging from his side is on a roll at one of the machines, Madame LaRue’s from the look of it. That’s the one with the full-busted, vivacious women (maybe lusty is better, but all of this is mere refection on innocent, or almost innocent dreams) looking back from the point total/games remaining total area (or whatever it is called), urging the player on and on, like they were the prize and not the twenty extra games that you “win” by beating some score. This guy, this guy on a roll is working that old lady of a machine like crazy, this guy is a pro, because he knows just how to sway those hips of his to get his points, and I notice that his sweetie is alternating between looking at that old pinball hitting the banks as it rolls down the chute, and those swaying hips. All this, of course, had only subterranean meaning then, I would get hip to the thing when I had my own sixteen sweetie, and was hoping, hoping against hope that she was checking out my own wobblier swaying hips. Ya, Playland was nothing but sexual tension in the air from the “get-go”, if you knew the signal, that’s what drove rationale guys to place their honor and their manhood on the line for those extra games. But that is later, now it is all chaste, my chaste, and for all I knew we could have been in church.

Sure the place had sex, if you understood that in the widest sense but it also had strictly kids stuff, stuff virile eleven and twelve year old boys like me wouldn’t give the time of day, stuff like stick-a-dime-in-the-machine and “ride” the wild bronco, or donkey, or whatever. Or, get this, put your dimes in the machine to “win” a prize if you can successfully navigate this crane mechanism and hold it long enough to get to the chute that opens up and gives you the prize. Or step on some weight machine and get your fortune ticket, or at another get your name placed on a metal I.D. tag, or farther on get pictures of your favorite cowboy actors, or other favorites by inserting coin in machine. Or, and this is strictly for lamesters, crank out your dough on one of the bubblegum machines. See what I mean, strictly kid's stuff.

Then I mosey (ya, that’s what I did, I moseyed, I swear ) around the back and be-still my heart I am, in fact, in church there are the skeet ball lanes. Now I have been in any number of amusement parks, carnivals, county fairs, and the like, from back-county fair Frieburg, Maine to New York's Coney Island to the California Santa Monica pier, and sometimes it is called skee ball and in other places it is called skeet ball. Hey, they are both the same. At least every place that I have ever been, under either name they have had the same set-up. You don’t know skee ball. Seriously? No, sure you do. It’s kind of like bowling, poor man’s bowling, I guess. You put your dime (at the time) in and down a chute come ten small wooden (sometimes ceramic) balls. That’s the bowling-like part. The lane is tilted up with a bump barrier that leads into a bulls-eye type target area made up of different values (10, 20, 30, 50, obviously the higher the value the harder the shot) and you have to get your hand-held small ball into the hole to score points. The more points the bigger the prize (at some point), although you need very high point totals to win anything beyond gee-gads. What this is, and this is probably the first attraction reason why I fell, and fell hard for the game, was beyond a certain degree of eye-hand coordination you can be an un-coordinated, clumsy, hit your head on everything, stumble on everything kind of boy and still do pretty well.

Ya, sure, that sure-fire, low-level skill idea may have been the first reason, maybe, that I fell for skee ball, but think about it, I was an eleven year old boy and while sex, eleven year old ideas about it anyway, were not uppermost in my mind, and I didn’t then quite have it figured about girls, or rather their about charms overcoming their incessant giggles their scent was in the air. So, maybe, I would have played a few games here and there, and dropped it as too easy, too kid’s stuff, or too boring like me and every other kid did with lots of things, and moved on to, oh, archery, let’s say. But you know there has to be a woman, or really a girl, come into this story somewhere, else why tell the story in the first place. There is plenty about carnivals and amusement parks to describe without bringing women in, right? And certainly no one is going to hold their breathe for more than six seconds over the mysteries of skee ball, straight up. At least I hope that‘s the case.

Okay, to the story. Ya, it was a dame, a dame, well, maybe, a mini-dame let’s say that led me to a life of skees. And it wasn’t intentional, or at least I don’t think so, but reflecting back you never know. See, after a while, whenever we went to Playland, or rather to the beach where Playland was, I bowed out of going on rides, playing the odd-ball carny-type games like putting a quarter down on a number and have some barker spin a wheel for fame and fortune or trying to hit milk bottles to win a prize, or throwing darts at balloons, or, well, you get it, I was single-mindedly devoted to skees. After six or seven times I got good at it, or at least figured out the torque angle on the thing that got you to the bigger point circles in the target area. Ya, ya, I know this is not rocket science or even close but a small victory to an awkward-gaited kid.

Now skee then, and now probably, is not exactly a game that world-beating pinball wizards then (or video game masters-of-the-universe today) would even give an off-hand tumble. Nor would girls who were crazy for pinball wizard guys, with their swaying hips and all. But, maybe, just maybe, kind of awkward, wayward eleven or twelve year old girls might, mightn’t they? Well, that idea, that possibility is what drives this story. I was
minding my own skees business when this twist (girl, although I didn’t call them twists then, just girls) came up to a skees lane a couple of lanes over (no waiting in skee-world), puts her money in and starts playing. I don’t know exactly which one it was but either on her second or third roll she went “crazy” and rolled the ball so hard that it bounced over into my lane. Naturally, skee master of the universe that I was got miffed, no more than miffed. She came over to apologize and I could see that she really was sorry-so what are you going to do, right?

Now in the universe of female beauty, even eleven or twelve year old female beauty, this girl, this Mary Beth when she told me her name later, was nothing but middling, and that may be giving her the best of it. But here is the thing and I picked up on it right when she came over to offer her apologies, she had this very winning, very winning smile. Well, like I say what are you going to do. Obviously this maiden in distress needed a little help in the skee department and before I could offer her some tips she boldly asked me if couldn’t, pretty please, pretty please, please help her with her game. Well, ya, what are you going to do, right.

So naturally we go back to her lane and, after showing her one of my moves on the target, I got behind her a little to show her the right way to do it. Whee! I probably had been closer to a girl before, dancing, or some quick-artist petting party kiss thing but this was the first time that I seriously noticed that girls had curves, curves that kind of fit nicely together. And she noticed that I noticed to because she did not back away, or anything like that. But, come on now, I am a serious skee man and so after showing her the ropes I excused myself, and head back to my own lane. A couple of minutes later after she had finished her game she came over to my lane and offered me her coupons (these coupons automatically came up after your game and gave you the appropriate amount based on your score. You later redeemed them for prizes, etc.) saying that she wouldn’t be using them. And get this she said, and I give an exact quote here, “Wasn’t it too bad that I couldn’t be good enough at skee like you to win a prize and go home happy.”

Ya, I know, I know, I know now the oldest trick in the book. But then, well I did try to help her with her game and maybe she could learn something by watching me, and she had those curves and all. So naturally, I was compelled to win a little trinket for her. And I am off. I will say having sweet Mary Beth at my side inspired me and I scored pretty, pretty well. Well, enough in skee world language to win her a lucky rabbit’s foot key chain. Pretty good, right. She thought so, and was so delighted by her prize that she said she would keep it forever and wouldn’t I like to go for walk down to the sea wall and talk. Well, she had my head spinning, for sure, but like I said before I was eleven and didn’t have the girl thing, the girl charm thing, quite figured out then. I said, I needed to keep playing to hone my skills but maybe some other time. She said yes, in a voice a little hurt now that I think about it, some other time. I went to those skee lanes plenty of times later when I wised up about girls and their charms, hoping, looking to see an awkward girl with curves and a rabbit’s foot key chain dangle named Mary Beth but I never saw her again. But maybe, just maybe, that is why I roll skees still.