The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Take One  

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I recently completed the first leg of this series which is intended to go through different stages of the American songbook as it has evolved since the 19^th century, especially music that could be listened to by the general population through radio, later television, and more recently the fantastic number of ways to listen to it all from computers to iPods. That first leg dealt with the music of my parents’ generation, that being the parents of the generation of ’68, those who struggled through the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s. This leg, centered on the music of my generation growing up in the Cold War 1950s, is a natural progression from that first leg since a lot of what we were striving for was to make a big musical break-out from the music that was wafting through many of our houses in the early 1950s.

The pitter-patter sound of stuff from Tin Pan Alley and sometimes from Broadway if they were not one in the same once they hit our muffled ears. You know Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree, Rum and Coca Cola, Tangerine, I’ll Get By, If I Didn’t Care, tear the goalposts down, grab a Tennessee waltz, and swing and sway with Big Buddha and some guy chomping on the chop sticks. The music of our “square” parents which was driving us to desperation for a new sound just in case those threatened bombs that we kept being warned about actually were detonated. At least that musical jail-break is the way we will tell the story now, although I, for one, have a little more tolerance for some of their music, those square parents still square but maybe there was hope if the listened to the Ink Spots crooning away at about seven million different songs with that great harmony, or the Duke taking that A train or better, much better sweet junkie Billie swaying a dark fruit, day and night, all of me, and whatever else Cole Porter could button up the night with. Some, I said, since I am unabashedly a child of rock and roll, now denominated classic rock. Jesus.   

Whether we liked it or not, whether we even knew what it meant, or frankly, during that hellish growing up absurd teenager time in the 1950s trying to figure out our places, if any, in the cold war red scare world, if there was to be a world, and that was a close thing at times, or whether we cared, our tribal music was as dear a thing to us, we who were in the throes of finding our own very different musical identities. Whether we knew it or not in the big world- historic picture scheme of things, knew what sacred place the music of the 1950s, rhythm and blues, scat be-bop, rockabilly, doo wop, flat out pure rock and roll those tunes held a primordial place in our youthful hearts. That was our music, our getting through the tough times music of post-World War II teen alienation and angst, that went wafting through the house on the living room radio (when the parents were out), on the family record player (ditto on the parents), or, for some, the television (double ditto the parents out, especially when American Bandstand hit us like a hurricane and we breathlessly rushed home very afternoon after school to make sure we were hip to the latest songs, the latest dances, the latest hair styles, boys and girls, and whether that brunette with the boffo hair-do and showing an edge of cleavage was ‘going steady” or whether we has a dream chance at her, or her “sister,” same boffo hair-do sitting across from you in seventh grade English class), and best of all on that blessed transistor radio, compact enough to hide in shirt pockets but loud enough when placed next to your ear to block out that mother-father-brothers buzz that only disturbed you more,  rear a that allowed us to while away the time up in our rooms away from snooping parental ears. Yes, that was the pastime of many of those of us who constitute the now graying fading generation of ‘68.

Some of us will pass to the beyond clueless as to why we were attuned to this music when we came of age in a world, a very darkly-etched world, which we too like most of our parents had not created, and had no say in creating. That includes a guy, me, a coalminer’s son who got as caught up in the music of his time as any New York City Jack or Jill or Chi town frat or frail whose father busted out of the tumbled down tarpaper shacks down in some Appalachia hills and hollows, headed north, followed the northern star, his own version, and never looked back and neither did his son.

Yes we were crazy for the swing and sway of Big Joe Turner snapping those big fingers like some angel- herald letting the world know, if it did not know already, that it did not mean a thing, could not possibly matter in the universe, if you did not whether your young febrile brain caught any or all of the not so subtle to experienced ears sexual innuendoes that drove Shake, Rattle, and Roll, if you did not rock with or without Miss La Vern Baker, better with, better with, her hips swaying slightly, lips moistened, swirling every guy in the place on Jim Dandy vowing be her man just for that smile and a chance at those slightly swaying hips. Mr. Elvis Presley, with or without the back-up boys, better with because they held the key to the backbeat that drove Elvis just a little bit hardy, rockier, and for the girls from about ten to one hundred sexier, belting out songs, knocking down walls, maybe Jericho, maybe just some teen-struck Starlight Ballroom in Kansas City blasting the joint with his Jailhouse Rock to the top of the charts. Elegant Bill Haley, with or without that guy blowing that sexy sax out into the ocean air night in some Frisco club, blowing out to the Japan seas on Rock Around The Clock. Bo Diddley, all banded up if there is such a word, making eyes wild with that Afro-Carib beat on Who Do You Love. A young Ike Tina-less Turner too with his own aggregation wailing Rocket 88 that had every high school girl throwing dreamy nickels and dimes into the jukebox, with or without fanfare. Buddy Holly, with or without those damn glasses, talking up Peggy Sue before his too soon last journey. Miss Wanda Jackson, the female Elvis, with or without the blues, personal blues, strung out blues too, singing everybody else’s blues away with that throaty thing she had (and that long black hair and ruby red lips to make a schoolboy dream funny dreams), that meaningful pause, on yeah, Let’s Have A Party. Miss (Ms.) Patsy Cline, with or without the bad moments, making grown men cry (women too) when she reached that high note fretting about her long gone man on She’s Got You, Jesus. (And you not caring for all the strung-out emotion, or hubris, still wanting Patsy for a last chance last dance close up song to take a whirl at that she you had been eying until your eyes got sore all night.)  

Miss (Ms.) Brenda Lee too chiming in with I’m Sorry. Mr. Jerry Lee Lewis doing a million songs fronting that wild piano off the back of a flat-bed truck in High School Confidential calling out, no preaching out the new dispensation to anybody who wanted to rise in that rocking world, with or without a horde of cashmere sweater girls breaking down his doors, putting everybody else to shame. The Everly Brothers, always with that soft -spoken refrain catch that nobody seemed to tire of, getting everybody nervous, everybody who had gone past curfew looking for a little, well, looking okay, and not reflecting enough on damn reputations except in the school pecking order determined first week of ninth grade in the girls’ lounge and boys’ “lav,” doing teary Wake Up Little Susie. The Drifters with or without those boardwalks. The Sherilles with or without the leader of the pack, the Dixie Cups with or without whatever they were doing at that chapel. Miss Carole King, with or without the boys, writing the bejesus out of last gasp Tin Pan Alley. Yeah, our survival music. 

We, the generation of ’68, baby-boomers, decidedly not what Tom Brokaw dubbed rightly or wrongly “the greatest generation,” decidedly not our parents’ generation, finally could not bear to hear their music, could not bear to think anybody in the whole universe would think that stuff was cool. Those of us who came of age, biological, political, and social age kicking, screaming and full of the post-war new age teenage angst and alienation in the time of Jack Kennedy’s Camelot were ready for a jail-break, a jail-break on all fronts and that included from “their song” stuff. Their staid Eisenhower red scare cold war stuff (he their organizer of victory, their gentile father Ike), hell, we knew that the world was scary, knew it every time we were forced to go down into some dank school basement and squat down, heads down too, hoping to high heaven that the Russkies had not decided to go crazy and set off “the bomb,” many bombs. And every righteous teenager had a nightmare that, he or she, was trapped in some fashionable family bunker and those loving parents had thoughtfully brought their records down into the abyss to soothe their savage beasts for the duration. Yelling in that troubled sleep please, please, please if we must die then at least let’s go out to Jerry Lee’s High School Confidential.  

We were moreover, some of us anyway, and I like to think the best of us, driven by some makeshift dreams, ready to cross our own swords with the night-takers of our time, and who, in the words of Camelot brother Bobby, sweet ruthless Bobby of more than one shed tear in this quarter, quoting from Alfred Lord Tennyson, were “seeking a new world.” Those who took up the call to action heralded by the new dispensation and slogged through the 60s decade whether it was in the civil rights/black liberation struggle, the anti-Vietnam War struggle or the struggle to find one’s own identity in the counter-culture swirl before the hammer came down were kindred. To the disapproval, anger, and fury of more than one parent who had gladly slept through the Eisenhower times. And that hammer came down quickly as the decade ended and the high white note that we searched for, desperately searched for, drifted out into the ebbing tide. Gone.

These following sketches and that is all they are, and all they pretend to be, link up the music of the generation of ‘68s coming of age time (and a few post-coming of age sketches as well) gleaned from old time personal remembrances, the remembrances of old time corner boys whom I hung around with on lonesome, girl-less Friday nights at Jack Slack’s bowling alleys just off Thornton Street in the Dorchester section of Boston, and from remembrances of events and personalities that I, we, heard about through the school grapevine (especially those obligatory Monday morning before school talkfests where everybody, boy or girl, lied, or half-lied about what they did, or did not do, over the steamy weekend), the media (newspapers or radio and television in those days) or through what is now called the urban legend network but then just called “walking daddy” talk.

The truth, the truth of each sketch is in the vague mood that they invoke rather than any fidelity to hard and fast fact. They are all based on actual stories, more or less prettified and sanitized to avoid any problems with lose of reputation of any of the characters portrayed and any problems with some lingering statute of limitations. That truth, however, especially in the hands of corner boys like Jimmy Jenkins, our leader Frankie Riley, Sam Lowell, Pete Markin, Billy Bradley, Dime Store Benny Kidd, myself and the other guys who passed through the corner at Jack Slack’s must always be treated like a pet rattlesnake. Very carefully. Still the overall mood should more than make up for the lies thrown at you, especially on the issue of sex, or rather the question of the ages on that issue, who did or did not do what to whom on any given occasion. The lies filled the steamy nights and frozen days, and that was about par for the course wasn’t it.    

But enough of that for this series is about our uphill struggles to make our vision of the our newer world, our struggles to  satisfy our hunger a little, to stop that gnawing want, and the music that in our youth  we dreamed by on cold winter nights and hot summer days.  

*********** 1 He and She-With Warren Smith’s Rock and Roll Ruby In Mind  "Rock And Roll Ruby" Well I took my Ruby jukin' On the out-skirts of town She took her high heels off And rolled her stockings down She put a quarter in the jukebox To get a little beat Everybody started watchin' All the rhythm in her feet She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul Now Ruby started rockin' 'bout one o'clock And when she started rockin' She just couldn't stop She rocked on the tables And rolled on the floor And Everybody yelled: "Ruby rock some more!" She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul  It was 'round about four I thought she would stop She looked at me and then She looked at the clock She said: "Wait a minute Daddy Now don't get sour All I want to do Is rock a little bit more" She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul One night my Ruby left me all alone I tried to contact her on the telephone I finally found her about twelve o'clock She said: "Leave me alone Daddy 'cause your Ruby wants to rock" She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul  Rock, rock, rock'n'roll Rock, rock, rock'n'roll Rock, rock, rock'n'roll Rock, rock, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul …he knew, knew deep in his bones, knew on the face of it too that he could not keep her, keep her to himself, keep her settled down and so he accepted that she would blow away like the wind on him sometime, that same wind would take her away as the one on which they had proclaimed, or maybe better he had proclaimed and she went along with, that their love was written on, and it was just a matter of how long he could keep her. It was not that he was perceptive about women and their needs, wants, desires, nothing like that, not women in any case, girls really since he did not know anything at all about women who were older than say twenty, twenty-one except relative women, mothers, aunts, grandmothers and what was there to know about them to help him, help him with a wild side woman they all placid and proper, or about anything like that. And even on the girl thing he was filled with as much mystery and awe as with any real knowledge, his knowledge like everybody else, every guy, in town acquired on the street, in the boys’ sports locker rooms, and on the corner when he hung out with guys, or did before she took up his time but a lot of that was just flat-out wrong, half church-truth, half-just getting it wrong, about what made them tick, and about how to hang onto them. And it was not like he could lay claim to as a wet-behind-the ears high school kid trying to survive in the doldrums 1950s some inside knowledge about what was going to happen when his generation, the generation which would post-war born be called baby boomers and who would not fall into the false security, or at least he did not think that then, that their from hunger parents craved, broke out of the straitjacket but he just knew that she was like the wind and would get caught up in everything that was breezing across the land. He knew in his knotted stomach that what was happening in the cold war red scare night could not be the end of things, the end of the world and that when the time came for the break-out all hell would break loose. She would imbibe, joyfully imbibe the “newer world” was the way she put it to him one night when she wanted to go to a dance and he wanted to just hold hands or something at the movies (they went to the dance and she danced like Fred Astaire going up the walls in some movie they had seen), everything that was coming whether about ways of getting high not just the illicit liquor but some drugs that were beginning to make their way into the neighborhoods among the hipped; ways of dressing, especially ways of dressing sexy without old prudes scolding or guys leering; ways of dancing, dancing free from the old forms; and ways of hearing the music that always seemed to exist in her head just below the surface of what drove her personality.    Him, well, he was what she called when she was angry at him when he would not dance, wanted to square parent hold hands, or got mad when she did dance with other guys or he was smothering her with his forever plans (her take, not his) a “square.” Jesus, a square and with his strict Jehovah upbringing and his “get out of from hunger and get ahead dreams” maybe he was. He knew that he would not be able to go with her when she broke out, knew that for sure. Knew from that one time some guy at a dance at the Surf Ballroom down by the beach gave them a couple of shots of rotgut Southern Comfort which she dug and on which he just threw up, knew that other time in downtown Boston when some college guy was giving her the once over and passed them a “joint” (marijuana for the squares like him) and she got all high and flirty (and he did too except he could not go with the flow of the thing); knew when she started wearing her dresses shorter showing her well-turned legs and challenging guys to look; knew when she got all esoteric in her dancing like she was of the she with the seven veils; knew that when she began to dig electric blues and some helter-skelter hipster jazz, that he would not be able to go with her. No question.       It hadn’t started out that way, at least he did not see it like that at the beginning, see that she was a wayward wind, see that she had the desire to  deeply imbibe the new wave coming across the continent. That wind born of the wild reckless feckless boys sunk knee-deep in alienation and angst, of outlaw motorcycle bikers who played for real and played rough, of surf city guys searching for perfect waves with golden-haired girls waiting patiently on shore for that event, of hot rod Lincoln “chicken run” guys with boffo girls sitting high-breasted wearing cashmere sweaters in that coveted passenger seat turning the radio dial reaction against the staid Great Depression and World War II parents’ generation search for the security blanket in a hostile red scare Cold War world where they, the parents, just wanted their Johnny coming home from the war music, big Cadillac, two car garage with two cars and stardust memories. You know what he meant, don’t you, the undefined but vital mood change that started when Elvis and a bunch of other hungry guys [and a few women like Wanda Jackson and Laverne Baker] ripped it up with a new sound, a new not your parents’ tinny sound, but blessed, no, twice blessed rock and roll. And then other guys, other be-bop guys who had been around but were just then getting noticed called the beat, called the beat down to rise up and play themselves true, no hassles man, no hassles. All under the umbrella of dropping that dragged out, square, red scare cold war night thing the ancients had everybody stirred up about. Yeah and all their old has-been crowd. A little later, in Billy and Jenny time, the he and she here to introduce them but they could have been any of ten thousand kids hooked on the visual bible of the new religion American Bandstand, standing on corners looking be-bop beat, or throwing nickels and dimes at some Doc’s Drugstore jukebox complete with soda fountain to abate hungers in order to hear the latest about twenty times the music changed up again, and square was nowhere to be. Billy sensed it, sensed before Jenny even but he with ten thousand worries in his head blew it off, called it at first a passing fad then got real scared when his Jenny got testy with him more often.       They had met conventionally enough in senior year at old North Adamsville High, although they had seen each other around for ages as most of the kids in town had been at endless school assemblies, rallies, dances together but what of that in teen life had, for as such things go, they had not paid particular attention to kids they knew for ages, or kids that were not in their clique.. Had moreover grown up together on the wrong side of the tracks and wore a few scars to prove it although mostly they just acknowledged the slights from the Brahmins, noticed the no nods, the no look of approval, their slightly under-cool cheap Bargain Center dressing against the latest hip thing from Filene’s or Macy’s and didn’t talk about it thinking it was uncool to talk about roots, about yesterday, about anything but the moment, and Billy all bunched up about the future. Something clicked though in that senior year as they both had responded to each other’s furtive glances in Miss Williams’ study hall, had furtively danced around each other at Doc’s Drugstore where all the kids hung out after school to listen the latest music, their music juke box, and had finally gone out on a double-date (he without a car at the time and so they had doubled up with her girlfriend Terry in her beau’s car, a “boss” Chevy since that beau was out of school and working as a welder down at the shipyard) at the local drive-in theater where she, sitting in the back seat with him, surprised him with her sexual advances. Stuff that Billy wasn’t all that familiar with but which he liked and which she knew that he liked. He, at least, was embarrassed when Terry and Eddie kept telling them to quiet down a little while Jenny was doing her thing on him. She on the other hand just to show how wild she could be if provoked took that as a signal to make him go   crazier. Terry later told Jenny there would be no more double-dates after she told her that Eddie had asked her to do what he called “doing the Jenny” on him before he left her off at her house. Terry said she did not know how to do that mouth thing and refused him flat when he said he would show her how. Jenny told Billy later after she had taught Terry the technique and Eddie coaxed her into doing it one afternoon after school she would chide Terry with a little “so did you do the Terry” again Saturday night down at the beach when they compared notes on their respective weekends before school on Monday morning. Somehow that “do the Terry” got around school and when Terry dumped Eddie guys would try to coax her into it. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. That is when Billy and Jenny would go back to double-dating with whatever new beau with a car that Terry had. Yeah, Billy liked it, liked it like any guy would, especially since Jenny was one of the prettiest girls in class and had a reputation for being kind of “unapproachable.”  (Billy later found out it was not so much the stuck-up thing as that she had been dating a college guy and at that time was strictly under his sway after they had a few sexual experiences which had kind of loosened her up. Joe College eventually took off with some girl from some college in Michigan once he was done with Jenny.) Yeah, he liked it but also thought to himself that night and the several other nights Jenny and he found themselves in some secluded spot on the beach (the Squaw Rock end not the Seal Rock end where parents and young kids hung out) when she did her thing to him, those times when she got all loud and screamy when he touched her where had she picked up that knowledge of what made a guy moan (and a girl all screamy). When he asked her about it later, not any of the nights when they were alone down the beach but a couple of weeks later, she just said girls knew stuff like that and she had learned it from her first boyfriend (that Joe College) who was older. Said that older guys, older guys who had been out in the world, guys who knew how to turn a woman on, and who expected to be turned on showed girls like her what was what. He let it pass.  So they were an “item” that last year of school and many a Monday morning before school when the other guys were speaking of so-called weekend conquests by the billion he just smiled a knowing silent smile.     Then, a couple, a few years out of high school, Billy working taking a few classes at the local junior college at night, Jenny working a couple or three nights a week as a high end restaurant waitress, the music at Doc’s jukebox changed, got more charged, frankly, got more sassy and sexual far different from their parents’ sappy sentimental stuff that didn’t get anybody’s heart rate up. And Jenny changed, well maybe not so much changed as got caught up in the new dispensation, the new moves. When they went on dates then it wasn’t to the movies or to some restaurant but to Smiley’s Bar & Grille on the outskirts of town where old Smiley had a hot new cover band, the Rocking Rockets, playing all the latest big beat stuff from guys like Warren Smith with his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby that she flipped out on. Not that she, like Warren said, would dance on the tables and stuff like that but that she would dance with lots of guys, would be flirty, tease flirty right before his eyes. When he questioned her on it she just said “don’t be a square, daddy” and refused to discuss it further. And then it began. Some nights when he called her mother answered to say she was not home, had gone out with the girls, or something like that. Yeah, he knew deep in his bones …        ******** …he had changed, Billy had changed too much for her tastes, changed into a “square” just like all the parents in town and all the kids who didn’t want to have fun and just be like them, be like their parents and worry like Billy’s parents’ Jehovah worried about the new devil’s music coming on the scene to replace, square, square Pat Boone and those clowns. Billy, Jesus, Billy worrying and just barely out of high school about some house, kids, dogs and two cars. Funny though he never complained, not one word, when she did her thing, her “doing the Jenny” thing they laughingly called it when they were in that mood, with him down at the beach. Oh, he asked, Jehovah hypocrite asked where she learned how to satisfy a man but he never asked her to stop but just moaned like every other man. She had learned all about sex from a college guy she had been dating before Billy when she was a sophomore in high school but who had ditched her for some college girl from Michigan. Had done a couple of sexy turn on one-night stands with some other college guys before latching onto Billy who she suddenly became attracted to senior year when they shared a study class together and she kept taking furtive glances his way until they began talking to each other after school at Doc’s Drugstore, the one place in town which had an up-to-date jukebox and a soda fountain, and that was that. He was fun at first, fun when she did her thing with him, went down on him, and he got all soft and stuff and she could have gotten anything she wanted from him. Then he started on his ten million plans for them. So she knew, knew sooner or later she was not sure which, she would have to drop him, drop him for somebody who was fun, who liked what she did and didn’t act the hypocrite about it. Hell, in one of her fantasy moments maybe drop him for the first guy who wanted to dance with her close and fast, maybe had some reefer or Scotch and didn’t ask forever how she knew what she knew about sex and just enjoy it (and enjoy her). The problem was that in square old North Adamsville that someone who was fun and the rest had not passed her door, but she had hopes. In the meantime she thought she would have to stick with old gloomy Gus as he fretted his life away.  As long as he kept his mouth shut  when she started swaying when the juke-box played some hot, latest rock and roll tune or the cover band at Smiley’s started her dancing to the beat on something like Warren Smith’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby. Started guys looking through Billy her way too, and licking their chops. Funny, as she thought back to that time a little over a year before when they had eyed each other in Miss Williams’ study hall that she was then attracted to his easy manner, his sly boyish-ness which she thought she could talk him out of with a little coaxing (he had made her laugh when after they became an “item” he said that the eyeing had really been furtive glances-he said funny things like that then). They had not spoken a word until they had spent what seemed like a lifetime dancing around each other at Doc’s Drugstore where he put in endless nickels and dimes in the juke-box and then just sat there dreamy-eyed looking at her until she had said enough and went over to him and stood right in front of him and dared him to ignore her with her look. He had surrendered easily enough and they became an “item” after a subsequent drive-in movie date where she had shown him a few things in the back seat of her friend Terry’s boyfriend’s car. He liked her doing that stuff and she knew he liked her doing that stuff although he was a very shy boy for the first few times. So this was how they had spent their last year of school together in some kind of bliss. Things changed though, changed a couple of years later when a new breeze came through the town, when Doc’s juke-box started to almost jump off the walls what with the latest rock tunes coming one right after another. But Billy did not catch on, wanted to stay mired in his parents’ music and so the frets began-his about marriage and settling down, hers about having fun rocking the night away. The worse times had been when  they went to Smiley’s, the hot-spot bar on the outside of town where there was plenty of booze and bop and guys who eyed her, maybe not  furtively shy like Billy had  but eyed her like they wanted to have a good time, wanted to have fun rather mope around and be square. He would just sit there and be mopey while she danced with a few guys, a couple of whom she had given her telephone number to although they in the end had not worked out. She began telling her mother sometimes that when Billy called to tell him she was out and to tell him that she didn’t know when she would be back.  Even when, like this night, she was just sitting up in her room waiting for a new guy who had danced her off her feet the night before who said he would definitely call and maybe, just maybe, want to have fun …      ***********  2 He’s Got It Bad-With Elvis’s Are You Lonesome Tonight -Take Two     Are You Lonesome Tonight? Lyrics   Are you lonesome tonight, Do you miss me tonight? Are you sorry we drifted apart? Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day When I kissed you and called you sweetheart? Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare? Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there? Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight? I wonder if you're lonesome tonight You know someone said that the world's a stage And each must play a part. Fate had me playing in love you as my sweet heart. Act one was when we met, I loved you at first glance You read your line so cleverly and never missed a cue Then came act two, you seemed to change and you acted strange And why I'll never know. Honey, you lied when you said you loved me And I had no cause to doubt you. But I'd rather go on hearing your lies Than go on living without you. Now the stage is bare and I'm standing there With emptiness all around And if you won't come back to me Then make them bring the curtain down. Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight? Songwriters: ROY TURK, LOU HANDMAN Are You Lonesome Tonight? lyrics © BOURNE CO., CROMWELL MUSIC   …he wondered, truly wondered, whether she missed him just then, missed her walking daddy, her walking daddy when they walked  down the street hand-in-hand and later when high as kites they messed up the pillows at her place, got those satin sheets all sweaty and love moist from their exertions when their fling was fresh and bright. Yes, he wondered for the millionth time that night, that seemingly endless sleepless night when he wondered once again whether  she missed him after all the slow meaningless time that had passed these past few months since their over-heated short love affair had gone down in flames almost as quickly as it had started. That walking daddy moniker by the way was a little term of endearment that she had tagged him with after they had, well, done the “do the do” and she though that she had him reined in, reined him in with kisses and a few little special things that he liked, and that she knew he liked even before he told her that he did. That “do the do” sex stuff was the least of their problems, he knew she liked his kisses and a few little special things that she liked, and that he knew she liked even before she told him that she did, although at the end maybe it was the sex stuff too that did them in when he started asking her to do stuff from the Karma Sutra and she who previously had been the aggressor practically pulling his pants down balked at a few of the kinkier positions described in that manual, it could have been everything jumbled together. But if anybody asked him he missed that part, no question.         He did not really believe underneath it all although he kept his doubts open based on a few odd facts about going the other way, that she did, did miss him. She was not built that way, had kind of a steel-trap mind on the subject of men and missing them after she was done with them (and others too, subjects she was steel-trapped about). He knew from the first, and she made the fact abundantly clear in all their conversations, that once she was done with a man that was that and she moved on, maybe to the next man, maybe just off to lick her wounds. She would illustrate the point  with examples citing, chapter and verse, whenever the subject came up ex-husbands and lovers, one husband of whom she said had asked if she needed a blackboard to help lecture him once she got on her high horse about the subject. Still he took a ticket, took a chance that he would be, what she called him at the beginning, oh yeah, her “forever” man and in a chillingly ironic shift a few short months later her “never” man although she did not say that word exactly he just plucked it out of the air one night, one early on sleepless night when he first thought about whether she missed him.  Yeah, so no question he was as sure as a man could be, a man who no longer was on speaking terms with her, that he would not be surprised to find out that she did not miss him.    He wondered too whether she was lonesome tonight for her walking daddy, a very different proposition than whether she missed him. He was not sure on that score, although he thought in the far recesses of his brain she might. See as she also explained in detail with those same ex-husbands and major lovers example complete with blackboard remark even if she was through with a man, had moved on to another man, or just went off to lick her wounds the way she put the fact in those same conversations about her way with men, she was as likely to be licking her wounds as looking for another man. As likely to be filled with solitary sadness as out on the town, out with another man.    That is where those two marriages and many love affairs came in, came in and softened rather than hardened her to life’s romantic ups and downs. She had mentioned to him one night that she had since childhood and a very savagely cruel upbringing had a hard time letting go, letting the past fade, and that it took her a long time to get over a man once they were through. How did he say she put it one night, oh yeah, she was fast to love a man when he got under her skin and slow to forget him. That fast love start had been her way with him in their whirlwind love affair smothering him with all kinds of undeserved accolades based on fairly limited knowledge of who he was, what he had been through, and his own spoken appreciations of his worth which added up to a profile of the usual man of clay, nothing more. All of the above smotherings by her not giving him time to breathe, to think things through, before trying to plan their future unto infinity after about a month into their relationship.    Yeah, in the far recesses of her brain might be just the right way to put it about whether she might be lonesome that night he spoke of but let me tell you what he told me one night about that night he was wondering and many other nights before and after while we were sipping white wines at a Boston bar, listening to some old time piped-in jazz music as background (could have been Cry Me A River starting out, in fact I think it was), which started him off to tell me  what exactly had happened the previous few months. Let me give you some of the story and you try to figure the damn thing out:       He had met her sitting at the bar in Cambridge, a rock and roll bar, an “oldies but goodies” bar, a 1950s classic age of rock and roll bar that he frequented when he needed to hear Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Jerry Lee or some Warren Smith rockabilly beat after some hard court case was done or he just needed to blow off steam when some appeals case was slipping away from him for lack of presentable issues that could win. Some nights, like that night, he wound up just slugging quarters in the juke-box, others, mainly weekend nights he would wind up listening to a live band, The Rockin’ Ramrods, covering the classics. He noticed that from his vantage point a few stools down she looked very familiar in a long ago way. After he slid down the few empty barstools between them to get beside her he had mentioned that fact to her as a come-on and offered and bought her a drink on that basis (a glass of red wine which she loved, loved to perdition as he would find out later) they spent the next several minutes trying to figure where that might have been. Work, no, some godforsaken political conference, no, another long ago bar, no, the Cape, no, College, no, and so on.     Strangely they found out once they discussed where they had grown up (she had told him at first she was from New Hampshire and he said that he lived in Cambridge so the subject of home towns did not come up on the first run) that the link had been  that they had gone to the same high school together, she a couple of years after him, North Adamsville High, located on the South Shore of Boston although they had not known each other, had not had any of the same classes back then (but since they had also gone to the same junior high school they agreed later after they were “smitten” with each other, her term, and wanted to make some symbolic “written in the wind” closeness count they must have been in the same space at some point if only the gym, auditorium or cafeteria). That revelation got them cutting up old touches that night for a while, well, a long while since they closed the bar that night. They agreed that they had some common interests and that they should continue the conversation further via e-mail and cellphone. See, since she lived up in New Hampshire in a town outside of Manchester, was a professor at the state university and had been in Cambridge to attend an education conference at Harvard getting together soon in person with her busy start of semester schedule was problematic.    So for a while, a few weeks, they carried on an e-mail/cellphone correspondence. Both were however struck by the number of things they had in common, things from childhood like growing up poor, growing up in hostile and dangerous family environments, growing up insecure and with nothing and nobody to guide them left to their own resources. Moreover they found that they had many similar teenage angst and alienation episodes in high school in common as well as current political and academic interests. Both agreed that they should meet again in person since they had already “met” in high school (somehow in the rush of things they discounted that they had really met in Cambridge in a bar, but such are the ways of love in bloom go figure).    And so they met again, met many times in neutral territory since they lived so far apart (they called their romance, the Merrimack romance for all the old mill towns they met in for half way convenient, Lowell, Nashua, Manchester, Haverhill, Amesbury and a couple of others I forgot), had many chatty dinners and did other things together like museums and took long walks along the river. He explained to me the powerful first dinner where they talked for hours and when he escorted her to her car in the parking lot for them to go their separate ways home she got teary-eyed and he caressed her hair to console her. Yeah, it was like that when it was good.   Before long they agreed to meet at a hotel in New Hampshire to see if they had a spark that way. Well you know they did since otherwise there would be no story to tell. You also know, at least you know what he thought about the matter, that they did very well in bed together.  Yes, they, he and she, were both smitten, both felt very comfortable with each other and were heading forward with eyes open.    Along the way she had discussed her two divorce-ended marriages, her serious love affairs and her attitudes toward relationships. Those were the times she would emphasize her take on men, her jealousies, expectations and her limitations. She also early on started her campaign to get him to go to stay with her in New Hampshire and leave Cambridge. He although not as well formed in his take on their relationship as she did likewise explained his two marriages, especially the hard fall of the second marriage which left him very stunned, and major love affairs, although he early on balked when she spoke of leaving the city for the Podunk country up north as he called her place, called the whole state of New Hampshire for that matter. So yes both sets of eyes were open, open wide.    She pulled the hammer down, pulled it down early. Within a couple of months she spoke of love, of living together, of sailing out into the sunset together. He, slower on the uptake, slower having been more severely burned in his last marriage than he let on to her or had thought had been the case, was a bit bewildered by her speedy emotional attachments to him. They went on a couple of trips away to New York and Washington together, had some good times, had some rocky times interspersed in between too when she tried to rein him in. He wasn’t afraid to commit exactly (well maybe he was as he confessed to me although not to her when it could have helped, maybe had a little “cold feet” problem but he insisted it was a small blip) as much as he wanted the thing to develop naturally, give him time to breathe although I have already said that air to breathe thing before didn’t I, there always seemed to be an air of suffocation every time she got on her high horse, got her wanting habits on, got the best of him sometimes. Then he made his fatal mistake, or rather series of mistakes, starting with strong words one night at one of their Merrimack River trail dinner when they both had had a bit too much to drink, too much wine, and she was going on and on as she did after her second or third glass depending on how tired she had been after a long day’s work. He admitted he got snappy, told her they needed to slow down and enjoy each other. She responded with a blast that shook him up but they were able to kiss and make up that night. The real mistake though was one time after they had not seen each other for a week or so when he sent her an e-mail speaking in sorrow of the drift of their recent relationship and he wanted the spark back that had go them going. She exploded at that e-mail seeing that as a callous rebuke of her actions rather than as what he thought was a plaintive let’s go forward love letter. What did he say she had called it, oh yeah, a closing argument, a damn lawyer’s closing argument (the “damn” part a result of having been married to a lawyer the first time out and now being with him). They agreed to meet at a neutral restaurant to discuss the matter (on the Merrimack River of course but I will not give the location since there still may be blood on the water).    When he thought about it later he could see where she had prepared herself to be confrontational toward him or at least be prepared to force the issue because the first words out of her mouth were an ultimatum-“come live with me or the affair is over.” The exchange got heated as she drank more wine on this night as well (he did not drink that night having learned a lesson from the last session). She said something that when we talked he could not for the life of him remember but they were fighting words. He exploded saying “I don’t need this,” threw money on the table and stormed out. That was the last he saw of her not even looking back to see how she took the matter.  Oh sure the next day he tried frantically to call several times knowing that a decisive turning point had been reached, no answer. Tried some e-mails-same response. Later that day he got a message on his voicemail from her giving her walking daddy his walking papers. She told him not to call, not to write as she would not respond. He never did. As he explained it to me he never did although he spent many a night thinking about whether he should call, about what he would say and thought too of an e-mail but he knew in his bones she would not answer like with his first attempts so he let it go. Knew her steel-trapped policies toward men, toward him in her walking papers summary. So he let it go to spend his time, his free time, fretting about what had happened. Jesus.    What he did do seriously in the few weeks after their break-up, what he was doing this night he spoke to me as well as months earlier  when he first fretted over what had gone wrong, was think through how it could have played out differently. Did that blame game in order to curb his own lonesomeness as he replayed their short affair, as he tried to try to figure out something that had bothered him since that fierce parting night. No, not about the specific details of what had caused his downfall, although he was still perplexed about why his concern about the over-heated pace of their relationship and his anger at that last meeting over her ultimatum should have been the irretrievable cause. He would accept that, had to accept that was the way she perceived the situation and that those were the causes of his downfall pure and simple. He didn’t like it but he has come to see where what she said in her voicemail message that she could never see him in the old way, the way she had in the beginning of their affair when their love flamed, precluded any future romantic relationship.     What he thought about mostly though concerned one point-how could two intelligent, worldly people, who individually had many strong and powerful inner resources gathered through surviving stormy childhoods and life’s hard knocks, not be able to figure a way to avoid letting their fragile relationship blow away in the wind, blow away without a trace after many professions of desire, devotion and fidelity. He fretted over how little energy they had devoted to using some of those personal inner resources in order to build the foundations of a strong relationship. He had been willing to take his fair share of the blame for his “cold feet” which had him, more often than not, attempting to walk away from not toward her. That last marriage had damaged him more than he had thought and it had still colored his worldview on intimacy, on commitment, no question. That walking away from her in fear as they got closer, as she started to get under his skin, always seemed strongest as he left her after some bad days when she was pushing him hard. Or when he thought the whole thing was hopeless since they lived too far away from each other to compromise on a living arrangement. Yeah, he would take his fair share of blame on that.    She had  infuriated him though with her interminable future plans while disregarding the present, although he could not speak for her and whether she believed his house of card blown in the wind idea about what had happened. She had plans for them to go to live in California when they retired, deemed it mandatory that he spent a certain number of days up in New Hampshire even while he had pressing business to take care of in Boston, but best, best as an example, was that she had their next Christmas and New Year plans already mapped out in March. All the time not paying attention to the drift of the tempo of their day to day relationship where he was, frankly, unhappy, very unhappy. In the end he was shocked by how little there had been to hold them together in a serious crisis which he conceded, or would have conceded if she had ever decided to talk to him again, was a serious crisis. Now that he thought about it for a while he told me, now that he had talked it through with me, he decided, no, whether she had a new walking daddy or not (or whatever new moniker she would make up for him) she would not be lonesome for him that night.                         ************ 3 The Teen Scene In Between- With Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 In Mind     You may have heard of jalopies, You heard the noise they make, Let me introduce you to my Rocket '88. Yes it's great, just won't wait, Everybody likes my Rocket '88. Gals will ride in style, Movin' all along. V-8 motor and this modern design, My convertible top and the gals don't mind Sportin' with me, ridin' all around town for joy. Blow your horn, Rocket, blow your horn Step in my Rocket and-don't be late, We're pullin' out about a half-past-eight. Goin' on the corner and havin' some fun, Takin' my Rocket on a long, hot run. Ooh, goin' out, Oozin' and cruisin' and havin' fun Now that you've ridden in my Rocket '88, I'll be around every night about eight. You know it's great, don't be late, Everybody likes my Rocket '88. Gals will ride in style, Movin' all along.

…she hadn’t thought about the upcoming date all that much, hadn’t thought about how Art was going to squire her to the first dance of the school year, the decisive Fall Frolic. She had been slow, late 1950s bewildered young woman who had gotten her “friend” late slow in the boy department (her period but every girl called it anything but that and she had come  to rely on that designation as being as appropriate as any although it was anything but a friend more like a curse). Although given her total logged time on the girlfriend telephone, many times the midnight telephone when she was lonely, lonely more so of late as she had been more distracted, with Jenny who was more up-to-date on matters of the opposite sex. And sex although don’t let that so-called advanced knowledge of Jenny’s part throw you off since most of what Jenny knew was wrong, wrong gotten from an older brother, Ted, who like all young men, young Catholic men and maybe every other religious upbringing too, got what he knew of sex from the streets just like everybody else and thus not surprisingly mostly wrong which almost caught her flat-footed in the pregnancy department one time when Sal “protection” might not have protected.  She, despite Jenny’s badgering, was certainly interested in boys and at least theoretically sex, although that interest had a quality of being sealed with seven seals and tied up, tied up with a big bow as she clung to that prevalent mores of saving herself for marriage, or some such thing, saving that is.

This Fall Frolic by the way had a long track record in creating class “items” come senior year. While it was not a formal dance, not even semi-formal like the junior prom, every young woman who planned to attend planned to have a “fox” dress fitting for the occasion and expected that her date would put some extra effort into looking good for the dance. All classes at old North Adamsville at least since 1951 when the underclassmen put up a stink about being shut out were entitled (and encouraged) to attend but no question the event reeked of a senior project. Most of the dance committee were well-known seniors and the band selection and theme of the year’s dance were a senior monopoly. It would take several more years and something like a civil war to break the senior monopoly but by then nobody was committed to an all-out defense of the old traditions. That was the 1960s when everybody was ready for a jailbreak and there was even talk by school officials that the damn thing would be canceled if the drug use could not be controlled (it was out of control as everybody got stoned in cars or in back alleys before the dance and at intermission and there were so many “far outs” uttered that even the senile chaperones knew something was off). So this was the environment which she was approaching her task ahead, a task involving getting the best date possible for the big dance of the fall.             

She knew, knew from Jenny, and knew from about six other sources that the lead-up here was decisive in that one’s date, one’s successful date, at that event usually foretold who one would be going to the senior prom with. Since the end of junior year that choice had come more and more to seen to be Art Graham. Art who began to talk to her in World History class after ignoring her and about every other girl in class as far as she could gather when she, not much for history, started to get peppered by Mr. Nolan, the World History teacher, who thought girls were dumb when it came to history and would publicly try to humiliate as many as possible. Toward the end of the year he had aimed his barbs her way. Art, a history nut and sort of Mr. Nolan’s pet, took pity on her and tried to coach her a little. The coaching paid off and old Nolan backed off a bit. Then she found herself talking to Art about other subjects and he didn’t seem to mind that they were not about history so she started to dream a little about Art, but just a little as summer break kind of ended what had started. They met at the beach a few times during the summer, spent a few hours together but not what any self-respecting girl in 1958 would call a date. So she laid her plans.        

It wasn’t that she was crazy for Art, not in the way best friend, Jenny, was crazy over Sal, Sal with the wavy black hair and athletic build, crazy enough over Sal to let him do what he wanted with her, but she did see him as one part of her “item” for the senior year if only he showed a little spark her way. Although she knew exactly what Jenny let sexy Sal do with her since Jenny burned many a midnight telephone call describing what went down in the town’s lovers’ lane section of the beach she had no intention of letting Art have his way with her, she wasn’t like that. She began to think less of Jenny the more she told her about her sexual experiences but she wanted that dance date and was frustrated when Art kept her at arm’s length.

Damn, she almost had to force the issue and invite him to the dance herself after they had spent some time together in school talking once classes resumed in September and she relied on him to bail her out in Problems in Democracy class where she was more under water that in World History, if that was possible. Then he started walking her home after school, talking, talking about his big future plans, talking about maybe they could go to the movies or to the school football games together. Anything but that damn dance (her term so she, not given to swearing, was certainly frustrated). They spent their time together like that before the date of the dance was getting perilously until one afternoon she asked him if he liked to dance, he said he did although he cushioned the remark with “I’m not very good” and they kind of by osmosis made a date for the Fall Frolics.

And so we move forward to the big night and she was now up in her room (and darting to the bathroom as well) preening herself, fluffing her hair, tightening that damn girdle to make her more slender than she already was, applying yet another touch-up on the make-up, as expected of any girl going to the Frolics with a guy that might form part of an “item” for senior year. She just hoped, hoped to high heaven that he, not known for being a sharp dresser like Sal, would look okay and also not forget to bring her a corsage so she would not be the only girl without one, especially since she practically had to order the thing herself.

She wasn’t sure when she heard the rumble of the engine coming up the street, maybe just before the car stopped in front of her house, but she definitely heard it before Art knocked on the door downstairs as her mother welcomed him in while she was finishing her last preparations. As she came down the stairs she noticed that he looked especially handsome in his suit and with his hair parted just so. Things already looked up for the evening. She did not know the half of it though until he opened the front door for her as they were leaving and she spied that big old Cadillac sitting in front of her sidewalk. Seems that old Art, once he got the message from the time they had danced around the dance invitation, started his own version of the courting ritual and convinced his friend, Spider Mack, to let him borrow his souped-up Caddy. Spider was well known around town, notorious to many parents, especially girl parents for getting the back seat of that vehicle messed up around midnight or maybe later after so two o’clock “chicken run” victory and he collected the spoils of war, some wet girl thrilled by the prospect of that backseat with the king of the North Adamsville muscle car night.

So she knew that if Art had such an automobile and moreover that Spider trusted Art with his most precious possession that the night might be interesting, and she might make it interesting for Art once she thought about that possibility. And off they went, first to pick up Jenny and Sal, she proud to be seem in the company of a man who knew how to bring a girl to the dance in style, and she too thinking how envious Jenny was that she was sitting in the front seat of Spider’s car just like she belonged there.

But that was only the beginning of it once they got to the school gym when the Frolics were held annually. She could hardly believe the transformation of the old smelly medicine ball gym into something that looked like a downtown hotel setting (even if only a hokey North Adamsville setting) with flowers festooned all over, tables covered with school colors white and blue tablecloths, the walls filled with various rock posters to hide the creepy cinderblocks, and the entrance with a trestle also garlanded with flowers. Yes, special. But more special Art seemed a man transformed as the cover band hired for the evening by the Fall Frolic senior committee (like I said before it was always a senior-sponsored affair back then, a kind of last gift to their fellow schoolmates leaving or to be left behind), the Ready Riders, kissed off the old classics, you know Patti Page, Frank, Dean, those guys, that had guided previous dances and kicked out the jams. Kicked out the ones guaranteed parent approved and hence boring, or something like that. She noticed that Art, a guy who said he had two left feet and maybe he did but he looked, well, sexy, had become almost a whirling dervish as he rocked by himself in her direction, that was no other way to put it since previously everybody did a waltz or a variation at school dances also parent approved, to some older rhythm and blues stuff and then laid out the full program when the band tore into a big riffing dose of Ike Turner’s Rocket 88.

That was the tune that everybody at Doc’s Drugstore over on Main was dropping endless nickels and dimes in the juke-box to hear over and over. Although it was actually an older song, maybe the early 1950s, Doc had refused to place it on his jukebox (or rather he was pressured to not put it on his jukebox by those meddlesome parents) since it was considered a “colored” record, you know a race record, back then. Jesus. But the kids, late 1950s kids including apparently Art, flipped out over it. And so the night went as she got more in tune with Art’s new form of dancing and mimicked his moves to his delight. As the dance ended, ended with a slow one by the Dubs’ Could This Be Magic, she, they ran into Jenny and Sal, and she, she who had so often secretly scorned the stuff Jenny told her that she and Sal did down at Adamsville Beach, suggested that the foursome take Spider’s car and go down to that very beach to, well, she said “cool off” after the dance. But you know what she meant just in case her parents might be around, or some girlfriend who would have plenty to say come Monday morning before school girls’ lav talk about how she had come of age, had come into the time of her time. So, yes, if anybody was interested she and Art were an “item” that year …              

*********
4

 

***Billie’s Fifteen Minutes of Fame-With Bill Haley And The Comet’s Rock Around The Clock In Mind

Rock Around The Clock
recorded by Bill Haley
written by Jimmy DeKnight and Max Freedman
G
One two three o'clock four o'clock rock

Five six seven o'clock eight o'clock rock

Nine ten eleven o'clock twelve o'clock rock
                 
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight


Put your glad rags on and join me hon
           G7
We'll have fun when the clock strikes one
            C
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight
            G
We're gonna rock rock rock 'til broad daylight
            D7                               G
We're gonna rock gonna rock around the clock tonight

When the clock strikes two three and four
If the band slows down we'll yell for more
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight
We're gonna rock rock rock 'til broad daylight
We're gonna rock gonna rock around the clock tonight

When the chimes ring five six and seven
We'll be right in seventh heaven
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight
We're gonna rock rock rock 'til broad daylight
We're gonna rock gonna rock around the clock tonight

When it's eight nine ten eleven too
I'll be going strong and so will you
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight
We're gonna rock rock rock 'til broad daylight
We're gonna rock gonna rock around the clock tonight

When the clock strikes twelve we'll cool off then
Start a rocking round the clock again
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight
We're gonna rock rock rock 'til broad daylight
We're gonna rock gonna rock around the clock tonight

I, seemingly, had endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing a commercially- produced classic rock series over the past few years. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we, we small time punk in the old-fashioned sense of that word, we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kids’ stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billie who I will talk about later, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.

Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery- operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Yeah right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob Crosby and The Bobcats (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway) were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings.

In many ways 1956 was the key year, at least to my recollection. And here is why. Elvis may have been burning up the stages, making all the teenage girls down South sweat, making slightly older women sweat and throw undergarments too, and every guy over about eight years old start growing sideburns before then but that was the year that I actually saw him on television and started be-bopping off his records. Whoa. And the same with Bill Haley and the Comets, even though in the rock pantheon they were old, almost has-been guys, by then. And Chuck Berry. And for the purposes of this particular flash back, James Brown, ah, sweet, please, please, please James Brown (and the Flames, of course) with that different black, black as the night, beat that my mother (and others too) would not even let in the house, and maybe not even in our whole white working- class neighborhood. But remember that transistor radio and remember when rock rocked.

Of course all of this remembrance is just so much lead up to a Billie story. You know Billie, Billie from “the projects” hills. William James Bradley to be exact. I told you about him once when I was reviewing a 30th anniversary of rock film concert segment by Bo Diddley. I told the story of how he, and we, learned first-hand down at the base, the nasty face of white racism in this society. No even music, and maybe particularly not even music, was exempted then from that dead of night racial divide, North or South if you really want to know. Yes, that Billie, who also happened to be my best friend, or maybe almost best friend we never did get it straight, in elementary school. Billie was crazy for the music, crazy to impress the tender young girls that he was very aware of, much more aware of than I was and earlier, with his knowledge, his love, and his respect for the music (which is where the innocent Bo Diddley imitation thing just mentioned came from although that story was later than the story I want to tell you now).

But see we were “projects kids,” and that meant, and meant seriously, no dough kids. No dough to make one look, a little anyway, like one of the hot male teen rock stars such as Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis. Now this “projects” idea started out okay, I guess, the idea being that returning veterans from World War II, at least some vets like my father, needed a leg up in order to provide for their families. And low-rent public housing was the answer. Even if that answer was four-family unit apartment buildings really fit for one family, one growing three boy family anyway, and no space, no space at all for private, quiet dreams. Of course by 1955, ‘56 during the “golden age” of working- class getting ahead (or at least to many it must seem so now) there was a certain separation between those who had moved on to the great suburban ranch house dream land and those who were seemingly fated to end up as “the projects” fixtures, and who developed along the way a very identifiable projects ethos, a dog-eat-dog ethos if you want to know the truth. It ain’t pretty down at the base, down at the place where the thugs, drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters feed off the rough-edged working poor.

That didn’t stop Billie, or me for that matter, from having our like everybody else dreams, quiet spaced or not. In fact, Billie had during his long time there probably developed the finest honed-edge of “projects” ethos of anyone I knew, but that came later. For now, for the rock minute I want to speak of, Billie was distractedly, no beyond distraction as you will see, trying to make his big break through as a rock performer. See Billie knew, probably knew in his soul, but anyway from some fan magazine that he was forever reading that old Elvis and Jerry Lee (and many of the rockers of the day, black and white alike) were dirt poor just like us. Rough dirt poor too. Farm land, country, rural, shack, white trash, dirt poor which we with our “high style” city ways could barely comprehend.

And there was Elvis, for one, up in big lights. With all the cars, and not junkie old fin-tailed Plymouths or chromed Fords but Cadillacs, and half the girls in the world, and all of them “hot” (although we did not use that word then), or so it seemed. Billie was hooked and hooked hard on that rock star performer fantasy. It consumed his young passions. And for what purpose? If you answered to impress the girls, “the projects” girls right in front of him, hey, now you are starting to get it. And this is what this little story is about.

This was late 1956, maybe early 1957, anyway it’s winter, a cold hard winter in the projects, meaning all extra dough was needed for heat, or some serious stuff like that. But see here old Billie and I (as his assistant, or manager, it was never clear which but I was to be riding his star, no question) had no time for cold, for snow or for the no dough to get those things because what was inflaming our minds was that a teen caravan was coming to town in a few weeks. No, not to the projects, Christ no, but downtown at the high school auditorium. And what this teen caravan thing was (even though we were not officially teens and would not be so for a while) was a talent show, a big time talent show, like a junior American Bandstand television show, looking for guys and girls who could be the next teen heartthrobs. There were a lot of them in those days, those kinds of backwater talent shows and maybe now too.

This news is where two Billie things came into play so you get an idea of the kind of guy he was back then. First, one night, one dark, snowy night Billie had the bright idea than he and I should go around town and take down all the teen caravan announcement advertisements from the telephone poles and other spots where they were posted. We did, and I need say no more on the matter. Oh, except that a couple of days later, and for a week or so after that, there was a big full-page ad in the local newspaper and ads on the local radio. That’s one Billie thing and the other, well, let me back up.

When Billie got wind of the contest he went into one of his rants, a don’t mess with Billie or his idea of the moment rant and usually it was better if you didn’t, and that rant was directed first to no one else but his mother. He needed dough to get an outfit worthy of a “prince of rock” so that he could stand out for the judges. Moreover the song he was going to do was Bill Haley and The Comet’s Rock Around The Clock. I will say he knew that song cold, and the way I could tell was that at school one day he sang it and the girls went crazy. And some of the guys too. Hell, girls started following old Billie around. He was in heaven (honest, I on the other hand, was indifferent to them, or their charms just then). So the thought that he might win the contest was driving him mad (that same energy would be used later with less purpose but that story is for another day)

Hell, denim jeans, sneakers, and some old hand-down ragamuffin shirt from an older brother ain’t going to get anyone noticed, except maybe to be laughed at. Now, like I said, we were no dough projects boys. And in 1956 that meant serious problems, serious problems even without a damn cold winter. See, like I said before the projects were for those who were on the down escalator in the golden age of post-World War II affluence. In short, as much as he begged, bothered and bewildered his mother there was no dough, no dough at all for the kind of sparkly suit (or at least jacket) that Billie was desperate for. Hell, he even badgered his dad, old Billie, Senior, and if you badgered old Billie then you had better be ready for some hard knocks and learn how to pick yourself up off the ground, sometimes more than once. Except this time, this time something hit Old Billie, something more than that bottle of booze or six, hard stinky-smelling booze, that he used to keep his courage and television-watching up. He told Mrs. Billie (real name, Iris) that he would spring for the cloth if she would make the suit. Whoopee! We are saved and even Billie, my Billie, had a kind word for his father on this one.

I won’t bore you with the details of Mrs. Billie’s (there you have me calling her that, I always called her Mrs. Bradley, or ma’am) efforts on behalf of Billie’s career. Of course the material for the suit came from the Bargain Center located downtown near the bus terminal. You don’t know the Bargain Center? Sure you do, except it had a different name where you lived maybe and it has names like Wal-Mart and K-Mart, etc. now. Haven’t you been paying attention? Where do you think the material came from? Brooks Brothers? Please. Now this Bargain Center was the early low- rent place where I, and about half the project kids got their first day of school and Easter outfits (the mandatory twice yearly periods for new outfits in those days). You know the white shirts with odd-colored pin-stripes, a size or two too large, the black chinos with cuffs, christ with cuffs like some hayseed, and other items that nobody wanted someplace else and got a second life at the “Bargie.” At least you didn’t have to worry about hand-me-downs because most of the time the stuff didn’t wear that long.

I will say that Mrs. B. did pretty good with what she had to work with and that when the coat was ready it looked good, even if it was done only an hour before the show. Christ, Billie almost flipped me out with his ranting that day. And I had seen some bad scenes before. In any case it was ready. Billie went to change clothes upstairs and when he came down everybody, even me, hell, even Old Billie was ooh-ing and ah-ing. Now Billie, to be truthful, didn’t look anything like Bill Haley. I think he actually looked more like Jerry Lee. Kind of thin and wiry, lanky maybe, with brown hair and blue eyes and a pretty good chin and face. I would say now a face that girls would go for; although I am not sure they would all swoon over him, except maybe the giggly ones.

So off we go on the never on time bus, a bus worthy of its own stories, to downtown and the auditorium, even my mother and father who thought Billie was the cat’s meow when I brought him around. Billie’s father, Old Billie of the small dreams, took a pass on going. He had a Friday night boxing match that he couldn’t miss and the couch beckoned (an argument could be made that Old Billie was a man before his time in the couch potato department). However all is forgiven him this night for his big idea, and his savior dough. We got to the school auditorium okay and Billie left us for stardom as we got in our rooting section seats. A few minutes later Billie ran up to us to tell us that he was fifth on the list so don’t go anywhere, like out for a cigarette or something.

We sat through the first four acts, a couple of guys doing Elvis stuff (so-so) and a couple of girls (or rather trios of girls) who did some serious be-bop stuff and had great harmonies. Billie, I sensed, was going to have his work cut out for him this night. Finally Billie came out, prompted the four-piece backup band to his song, and he started for the mike. He started out pretty good, in good voice and a couple of nice juke moves, but then about half way through; as he was wiggling and swiggling through his Rock Around The Clock all of a sudden one of the arms of his jacket fell off and landed in the front row. Billie didn’t miss a beat. This guy was a showman. Then the other jacket arm fell off and also went into the first row. Except this time a couple of swoony girls, girls from our school were tussling, seriously tussling, each other for it. See, they thought it was part of Billie’s act. And what they didn’t know as Billie finished up was that Mrs. Billie (I will be kind to her and not call her what Billie called her) in her rush to finish up didn’t sew the arms onto the body of the jacket securely so they were just held together by some temporary stitches.

Well, needless to say Billie didn’t win (one of those girl trios did, and rightly so, although I didn’t tell Billie that). But next day, and many next days after that, Billie had more girls hanging off his arms than he could shake a stick at. And you know maybe Billie was on to something after all because I started to notice those used-to-been scrawny, spindly-legged, pigeon-toed giggling girls, their new found bumps and curves, and their previously unremarkable winsome girlish charms, especially when Billie would give me his “castoffs.” So his losing was for the best. My “for the best.”

************

 5

A Misstep- With Elvis’s That’s When Your Heartache Begins In Mind

 

That's When Your Heartaches Begin" was written by Fisher, Fred / Raskin, William / Hill, William.

If you find your sweetheart in the arms of a friend
That's when your heartaches begin
When dreams of a lifetime must come to an end
That's when your heartaches begin
Love is a thing you'd never can share
When you bring a friend into your love affair
That's the end of your sweetheart
That's the end of your friend
That's when your heartaches begin
If you find your sweetheart
In the arms of your best friend, your brother
That's, that's when your heartaches begin
And you know, when all your dreams
When all your dreams of a lifetime
Must, must all come to an end
Yeah that's, that's when your heartaches begin
Oh, you see love is a thing that
That you never can share
And you know, when you bring a friend
Into your love affair
That's the end of your sweetheart
That's the end of your friend
Well, that's when your heartaches begin

…Laura Simpson and Fiona Sims were inseparable friends from that first day in ninth grade at North Adamsville High School in 1960 when due to the vagaries of the alphabet and homeroom class row seating rules they sat one in front of the other in Miss Williams’ home room class. Maybe it meant nothing in the great mandela of things but neither Laura , named after the title of the 1940s film noir thriller Laura starring Gene Tierney which her mother had seen three times  nor Fiona, named after great stonewall cottage Irish Fionas going back a few generations, liked their first names and that had been their first substantial conversation once they left Miss Williams’ convent-like homeroom and got a chance to talk in the second-floor girls’  “lav” that had been beyond memory set aside as the freshmen girls’ lav (others might enter as needed depending on urgency and no one would have crabbed if they had used other lavatories in the building but that was acknowledged freshman girls’ headquarters. Oh, wait a minute, they and sophomore girls as well, were not permitted under penalty of death in the fourth floor junior and senior girls’ lounge, not if they wanted to live to tell the tale since those girls guarded their prerogative as fiercely as anyone).       

[This Miss Williams as both Laura and Fiona would be the first to tell you once they had completed four years of her home room craziness had been a Miss for a reason, not so much because she was one of the plainest women in America and wore no make-up to wash away some of that plainness but because she demanded, demanded do you hear, that everybody be absolutely quiet in homeroom, homeroom for chrissake. It was not until years later when the winds changed in a more confessional age that these young women found out that as a result of her own youthful indiscretion Miss Williams had secretly befriended many girls, some known to them, who had gotten in “trouble,” gotten “in the family way” and she had helped them out. Sometime somebody from North Adamsville should write that story, write it in big letters too.] 

So Laura and Fiona sat next to each other and sensed in each other that subtle fear of the unknown that every, or almost every, freshman has felt since, well, since Socrates’ time, maybe before. So they sought shelter from the storms together, and later with a small coterie of other adrift teen girls who gathered round them when those other girls sensed that they were not alone in their angst and ignorance and that Laura and Fiona seemed to have a better grip on what ailed them collectively. Why they also had that subtle fear but this story is about Fiona and Laura so we will let that latter settle in the background. And of course since they were teenage girls they all were bothered by the same set of anxiety associations that have bothered teenage girls since about sixteen hundred or whenever teen-age hood was developed. You know about boys, about their fearsome sexual appetites and cunning ways to get nice girls in compromising situations, about expectations in being girls getting ready to be wives, mothers, helpmates and every other menial task that his lordship “delegated” to them, about getting recognized for serious achievement in a male-dominated world, especially the professional world where there were few role models but where they wanted to head, about sex, not the boy part, that they had down as well as could be expected, but what to do about those raging hormones that were causing them sleepless nights without “getting in the family way,” having to go to Aunt Ella’s for the duration.

We moreover are concerned not so much with Laura and Fiona’s high school days except to note that is where their huddled friendship started and to note some of the highlights that strengthened their friendship, not always in good ways but who knows maybe in not so bad ways. You know getting through that first few months of freshman year in one piece in an anonymous big high school environment after the incubator closeness of junior high school, preparing for that first school dance, that first high school dance where they got all dressed up, bought new shoes and all, and doubled-dated two older guys from the school, two seniors who were known around school as nothing but skirt-chasers but who had a car and both girls decided to fling caution to the wind if it came to that (it did and they did although keep that to yourself since they both had reputations in freshman year of being “unapproachable,” meaning in the language of the times virginal), latter getting caught up with each other’s single date sexual escapades what with little trysts down at the secluded end of old Adamsville Beach (the Squaw Rock end where only teenagers trended, no nosey cops, no ill-disposed families with children to spoil the mood), then senior year after both got accepted to the state university the few wild parties they attended before graduation where when drunk they got carried away with some unusual behavior, for them, which maybe foretold what might happen in the future. That last set of escapades included an exchange of boyfriends, not those long gone seniors from freshman year but fellow seniors, for the night on a lark (those boyfriend who were more than willing to go along, did not have to be coaxed into doing that task).

Both later said nothing had happened with the other’s boyfriend, noting sexual anyway, and maybe nothing did, but a very slight wariness set in between them after that night, especially on Laura’s part who was somewhat possessive of her men. (Later Ben one of the boyfriends, Laura’s, bragged about how he could hardly keep up with Fiona’s urges  once he got her into bed but that was in the Monday morning jock locker room talkfest and could be discounted as so much bravado, and has been since Socrates’ time, maybe before.) But that was a mere bump in the road for both were excited about finally graduating and heading away from home and on their own (this getting away from home was epidemic among the early 1960s young including the writer so he knows how important learning to fly on their own was to Fiona and Laura). Moreover having both grown up on the “wrong side of the tracks” (although in different sections of that wrong side) with tough family lives including drunken fathers they were more than ready to move on.      

Duly noting those high school experiences, for good or evil, we are rather more concerned with their young adulthood, the time when in 1964 and later they came of age, came to able to carry on their own affairs after leaving home for college, the state university at Amherst with all its possibilities and with all its anonymousness. One thing that both Fiona and Laura had agreed on after graduation from high school was that they would start college unattached. And they did so shedding their boyfriends, their lukewarm boyfriends by August when they went up to freshman orientation and dorm selection (they had already signed up as roommates). (Those boyfriends, Ben and Alex,  by the way who maybe were or maybe were not sorry for the break-ups but one wonders whether they were left unhappy about that future of no prospects of being exchanged on a lark. We will never know since we are following Laura and Fiona and the boys’ whereabouts were unknown when this story unfolded.) When the big day came they were both excited, excited to be on their own, excited that that subtle fear that both felt, felt as every, well almost every, freshman, has felt since, well, since about Socrates’ time, if not before would find them with a known kindred spirit when the hugeness and anonymousness of the place got to them.

 

This tale however is not about surviving in an alien environment with a cluster of friends or some sociological study about the mores of 1960s youth and their reactions to the jailbreak wave that was cresting over them with newfound liberties and freedoms (for a while anyway) that earlier generations could not dream of but rather about how a firm female friendship got blown to the four winds when one of the friends got her wanting habits on. As one might figure with young women away from home (or men, for that matter), consciously unattached, and with broods of males everywhere one looked that two good-looking, smart, adventuresome young women would have no trouble finding male company. They didn’t lack for company or invitations to frat parties and other bashes. Didn’t suffer that lack from that first Freshman Mixer when they again like some high school deja vu double-dated two fellow freshman from one of their classes (College Math) whom they met after class in the dorm cafeteria where the guys worked behind the counter and they “hit” on the two most beautiful girls in any of their classes they said through to a couple of serious affairs, one by Fiona with a married man, until the time of this part of the story junior year.

Fiona tended to be flirty and, well, not monogamous. Laura somewhat the opposite, although that usually depended on whether she had a steady boyfriend or not. At the time we are talking about, junior year, Laura did have a steady boyfriend, Lance Taylor, a senior at Williams, located some miles up the road, who planned to go to graduate school, and who had plans, sketchy plans, that involved marriage to Laura at some future point. Laura having met Lance at the Art Museum out in Williamstown while doing a project for her graphic arts design class, assumed that same thing, except hungrier for security, her plans were far from sketchy as she practically had them in that proverbial white house with picket fence, three kids, and two dogs. And so she dreamed. Now this Lance, naturally, as with all guys named Lance or so it seemed was good-looking, smart, came from some money (important to working-class town Laura) and was a go-getter. Just the things that Fiona found appealing as well. So anytime Lance showed up at their dorm room and she was around she would get very flirty with old Lance. Laura had to warn her off a couple of times but Fiona dismissed her concerns as nonsense that she was just having fun with her new “brother-in-law.”

Things settled down for a while until toward the end of junior year Laura took a trip to Boston in order to interview for a senior year internship with an advertising company to spice up her graphic arts resume. She had expected (and Fiona had too) to take three days for the trip but the firm after the first interview decided to take her on as an intern and she headed back early. (People who know knew she was an exceptional up-and-coming graphic artist and that proved true later before she gave it up for marriage and kids.)

Well, you already know the rest, and if you don’t you really haven’t been paying attention, Laura caught Lance and Fiona in flagrante in their dorm room. You also know that was the end of the long friendship between Fiona Sims and Laura Simpson. What you don’t know is this-ten years, ten long years later at their high school class reunion, Laura Taylor, Lance in tow (the details of their after dorm reconciliation need not concern us here except that somehow Lance convinced Laura that Fiona had “made” him do it which for her own white picket fence reasons Laura was willing to accept)not even drunk but cold stone sober, tossed a drink, a whiskey sour, down the length of Fiona Sims shiny shimmy dress and then walked out of the hall. Jesus.                        

***********

 6 

They Shoot CD Players (Or iPODs) Don’t They- With Elvis’ Version Of Harbor Lights In Mind

 

Harbor Lights Lyrics
(words & music by H. Williams - J. Kennedy)

I saw the harbor lights
They only told me we were parting
Those same old harbor lights
That once brought you to me.
I watched the harbor lights
How could I help it?
Tears were starting.
Good-bye to golden nights
Beside the silvery seas.
I long to hold you dear,
And kiss you just once more.
But you were on the ship,
And I was on the shore.
Now I know lonely nights
For all the while my heart keeps praying
That someday harbor lights
Will bring you back to me.

Some people have asked, although I am not one of them, if there was music before 1950s rock ‘n’ roll, before what is now called the classic age of the genre. Usually such people are young, or were born well after what is now called the classic age of rock and roll became the classic age. So they ask was there music before hip-hop nation beat down the doors, or if any other genre that has struck their interest like techno-rock that might have formed the basis for their question. In fact having thought about the question for a while I got jolted one day when I listened on the radio one day to an interview with a famous classic rock star who put the question a different manner-will rock and roll ever die? His answer, and this is the part that shocked me for a moment, was there would always be a niche, a niche for Chrissakes, for rock even as now it has moved from the center of the music universe. The shock coming from my own impression that rock and roll as an old time song had it would never die. So rock will fade to the sidelines and be just another piece of entertainment like our pre-rock parents and their swing and jitter-buggery.    

But rock, rock as I knew it, I, Frank Jackman, who lived for the latest 45 RPM records (those were single song two- sided pieces of vinyl which you can find examples of on YouTube when somebody puts a classic rock song up) to hit the stores along with my corner boys was the basis for the question back then. Back in the 1950s when the world was young and America, young America, still had that capacity to wonder before the lamp went out in the next decade. Wonder just like Scott Fitzgerald pointed out about those who founded places like New York City, the Mecca for a lot of things, including the production of those 45 RPM records that I mentioned. People like those Dutch sailors with the Van names must have felt when they saw that “fresh green breast of the new world” coming up the Long Island Sound. And wondering rightly so since what we heard before, heard to perdition was some vanilla stuff that our parents liked but I will get to that later.

In other words time, new millennium time, has left classic rock for the aficionados or for, well, old fogies, you know the AARP-worthy denizens whose demographics form the basis for rock musical compilations and “oldies but goodies” revivals with now ancient heartthrobs from back in the day who have lost a step or three coming out on some massive dwarfing stage bright lights lit and lip-synch, yes, lip-synch their greatest hits (or hit in the case of those important musical one-hit johnnie and janies who formed more of the industry than usually is acknowledged). But there, believe it or not, but “take my word from me” like old Rabbit Brown used to say his song James Alley Blues, were other types of music, music that helped formed rock and roll that I found out about later after I had had my fill of 45 RPM records and corner boys and wanted to dig into the history of the American songbook, see what drove earlier generations of the young to seek their own jailbreak out from their parents music.     

So of course there was music before rock, I had better say classic rock so nobody gets confused, and I have taken some pains to establish the roots of rock back to Mississippi country blues around the turn of the century, the 20^th century, when all those freed slaves who thought they were economically free and not just manacle-free wound up working for Mister in his twenty-eight thousand acres of the best bottomland in Mississippi for a pittance. Kept in line, and here is where the bitch of the thing is by a guy, well, not really a guy but a way of life, a legal, political, economic and social way of life, named after a guy maybe, one Mister James Crow, and so those freed blacks who slaved on Mister’s land had to blow off steam and that was the basic of the blues, and I don’t mean blues like when a guy has a good girl who done him wrong on his mind. Hell that problem was easy to solve. What I mean is when Mister, or his Captain, pushed the pace all week (half a day Saturday included) and every worthy buck and every good-looking gal, big thighed or not, hit Jimmie Jack’s juke joint to listen to some itinerant brother with a broken down guitar (hell maybe just a board and string if times were tough) wail away about that damn Captain, his, the singer’s, unfaithful women and about how “the devil’s gonna get him” if he didn’t stop chasing those very women, drinking that applejack, and gambling his wages away in some back alley crap shoot, for nickels and dimes in the pot (and some of Jimmie Jack’s homemade brew) and got the crowd swaying and clapping their hands to the beat on See See Rider or Mississippi Highwater Rising. Yeah, that’s the start. Okay.

Too far back for you, too much root? Okay let’s travel up the river, the Big Muddy, maybe stop off at Memphis for a drink, and to nurse the act, before hitting the bitch city, Chicago, hog butcher, steel-maker and every other kind of tool and appliance-maker to the new industrial world just ask Carl Sandburg. But also maker by proxy of the urban blues, those old hokey plantation Son House/Charley Patton/ Blind Blake (and a million other guys with Blind in front of their names) juke joint Saturday night full of homemade blues turned electric with the city and turned guys like plain boy Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf (you would laugh at their real names although you would not do that in their presence, especially the Wolf because he would cut you bad, real bad) into the kings of  Maxwell Street and all the streets around with back-up and all putting just the right twist on Look Yonder Wall, Rocket 88, Hoochie Goochie Man and Little Red Rooster (with kudos to Willie Dixon on that one too but first heard not by Wolf but by the “classic” rock the Stones, so how is that for cache). So, yeah, electric blues as they traveled north to the heartland industrial cities

Jazz too maybe a little Duke and Benny swing as it got be-bopped and hurried up the beat, for the drum action, for the “it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing” that took over after a while once the old tine Scott Fitzgerald Jazz Age got waylaid by the Great Depression and World War II. But Dizzy, Charlie, Thelonius too with that cool, detachment mood that spoke to the beat down, the beaten down, the big blast beaten fellahin world. Certainly throw in rhythm and blues, north and south, throw in big time one Mister Big Joe Turner toot-tooting his sweet mama to Shake, Rattle and Roll that had all those alienated, angst-ridden white guys (whether they knew they were alienated or not like some model James Dean) lined up to cover the damn thing. Yeah guys like Elvis (when he was young and hunger working the hayride circuit for nickels and dimes, and an off-hand willing woman), Bill Haley when he needed to kick his act up a notch, and Jerry Lee when he needed to put fire into that piano.

Then came alone a strange mix and match, rockabilly as it came out of the white small town South, Tupelo, Biloxi, Lake Charles, Lafayette, a little Cajun thrown in. Jesus, the smaller the town it seemed the more the guys wanted to breakout, wanted to push the envelope of the music, wanted to get away from that “from hunger” look, wanted that big bad Caddy they saw in the golden age of the automobile magazines. Came out with those same boys lining up to sing Joe Turner, hungry Elvis, Carl, Johnny, Jerry Lee, to sing black along with that good old boy Saturday night moonshine tucked in the back seat of that bad ass Chevy looking, looking for danger, and looking for women to sing to who were looking for danger. Country boys, yeah, but not hokey George Jones country boys these guys wanted to breakout of  Smiley’s Tavern over on Highway One, wanted girls to dance on the tables, wanted guys to get up and dance with those Rubys and red-headed girls. Yeah, they mixed it and matched like big time walking daddies (and I hear had fun doing it, hell, it beat eking out a living clerking at Mister Smith’s feed store.  

What rock and roll owed little to, or at least I hope that it owes little to, is that Tin Pan Alley/ Broadway show tune axis part of the American songbook. You know Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Oklahoma, Singing in the Rain, Over The Rainbow stuff. That part of the songbook seems to me to be a different trend away from that jailbreak song that drove us wild and one that was reflected in a CD compilation review I did one time (for the young, maybe the very young, CDs were discs loaded with a bunch of songs, some you liked, maybe three, and the  rest you had to buy as well because you desperately wanted those three not like today when you just hopped on some site to grab something you liked one at a time and download it, presto), The 1950s: 16 Most Requested Songs, which really was about the 16 most requested song before the rock jailbreak of the mid-1950s. Yeah, not exactly stuff your parents liked but stuff that maybe was good if you a “hot” date that did not turn out well and you listened to it endlessly on your defeated way home. Yeah, let’s be clear about that, that stuff your older brothers and sisters already halfway to that place where your parents lived swooned over, not you.

I have along the way, in championing classic rock as the key musical form that drove the tastes of my generation, the generation of ’68, contrasted that guitar-driven, drum/bass line driven sound to that of my parents’ generation, the ones who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and fought or waited impatiently at home World War II, and listened to swing, jitter-buggery things and swooned (they really did check YouTube if you don’t want to take my word from me) over big bands, brass and wind swings bands, Frank Sinatra, the Andrews Sisters and The Mills Brothers, among others. In other words the music that, we of the generation of ’68, heard as background music around the house as we were growing up. Buddha Swings, Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree, Rum and Coca-Cola, Paper Dolls, Tangerine, and the like. Stuff that today sounds pretty good, if still not quite something that “speaks” to me. That is not the music that got us moving to break out and seek a newer world, to try to scratch out an existence in a world that we had not say in creating and dream, dream do you hear me, about turning the world upside down and keeping it that way for once. I remember writing in that review that the music in that compilation drove me up a wall and I was ready to shoot my CD player, the instrument that I heard it on, once I heard it (younger reader just put “shoot your iPod” and we will be on the same page.

No, this was the music that reflected, okay, let’s join the cultural critics’ chorus here, the attempted vanilla-zation (if such a word exists) of the Cold War Eisenhower (“I Like Ike”) period when people were just trying to figure out whether the Earth would survive from one day to the next. Not a time to be rocking the boat, for sure. Once things stabilized a bit though then the mad geniuses of rock could hold sway, and while parents and authorities crabbed to high heaven about it, they found out that you could let that rock breakout occur and not have everything wind up going to hell in a hand basket. Mostly. But this music, these 16 most requested songs were what we were stuck with before then. Sure, I listened to them then like everyone else, everyone connected to a radio, but this stuff, little as I knew then, did not “speak” to me. And unlike some of that 1940s stuff still does not “speak” to me.

Oh, you want proof. Here is one example. On that compilation Harbor Lights was done by Sammy Kaye and his Orchestra. This was cause number one for wanting to get a pistol out and start aiming. Not for the song but for the presentation. Why? Well, early in his career Elvis, when he was young and hungry while he was doing his thing for Sam Phillips’ Memphis Sun Records operation, covered this song. There are a myriad Elvis recordings during the Sun period, including compilations with outtakes and alternative recordings of this song. The worst, the absolute worst of these covers by Elvis has more life, more jump, dare I say it, more sex than the Kaye recording could ever have. No young women would get all wet, would get all sweaty and ready to throw their underwear at the drop of a hat for Sammy’s version. Elvis you know or heard about what women were ready to do. Case closed. And the compilation only got worse from there with incipient things like Frankie Lane’s I Believe, Johnny Mathis’ It’s Not For Me To Say, and Marty Robbins’ (who did some better stuff later) on A White Sports Coat (And A Pink Carnation). And you wonder why I ask whether they shoot CD players. Enough said.

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7

 

When The Sea Changed -With Elmore James’ Look On Yonder Wall In Mind  

Elmore James – Look On Yonder Wall Lyrics

Translation in progress. Please wait...Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman, baby, yon' come your man
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman and, uhh, baby, yon' come your man
Your husband went to the war,
And you know it was tough, uhh
I don't know how many men he done killed,
But, I know he done killed enough.
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman, now baby, yon' come your man
Oh yeah
I love you baby, but you just can't treat me right,
Spend all my money and walk the streets all night
But, look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman, and baby, yon' come your man

Songwriters: ELMORE ELMO JAMES, MARSHALL SEHORN

Look On Yonder Wall lyrics © GULF COAST MUSIC LLC
…who knows when he first began to notice the difference, notice that the music, his parents’ music, the stuff, as they constantly told him, that got them through the “Depression and the war,” (that Depression being the Great Depression of the 1930s when all hell broke loose and guys and gals were on the ropes, on the road, onto sometime they could never figure out and the war, World War II in which they slogged through or waited anxiously at home) on his ears. Of course they, his parents specifically, no question, and their kindred later designated the “greatest generation” by younger fawning pundits and now considered accepted wisdom as they have begun to die off and no longer play on center stage although this sketch is about his generation, the self-designated generation of ’68, so we will let that issue pass. The parents having gained that distinction for having suffered the pangs of hunger, displacement, the struggle for survival, the train smoke and broken dreams heading west (hell maybe in any direction that was not where they lonesome, separate, at luck’s end were) looking for work, looking for a new start in the 1930s. Then gathering themselves up when the war clouds turned into live ammunition lined up to fight whatever evil had reared its head in this wicked old world in the 1940s, or waited at home fretfully reading the casualty lists as they were posted in home towns across America.

Of course like every generation since they invented that term “generation” and put some special onus on each one going back to Adam and Eve, maybe before, they had their own tribal music to get them through the tough spots, to dance to or just to find some secluded spot and listen to. And that would have been fine with him that secluded spot idea (although at the first grating on the ears time he was too young to be aware of what that secluded spot stuff portended but he picked the idea up easily later when he came of age, girl noticing came of age) except he had to face that big old family RCA console radio plucked right down in the living room every day blaring away while his mother did her housework, his father listened after work, and  they both got all dreamy together over WJDA every Saturday night when for five hours, five hours count them, the station endlessly played “the songs that got them through the Depression and the war.”  Jesus.            

Still although it was a daily plague on his ears he was not sure when he noticed that he had had enough of silky-voiced Nat King Cole all smooth and mellow and ready to put him to sleep (or worse), the Inkpots spouting off  and gumming things up by talking the lyrics for half the song on If I Didn’t Care or his mother’s favorite I’ll Get By (the song she said that got her through the war what with her working as a clerk down at the Naval Depot in Hullsville at the time his father was Marine island-hopping in the Pacific and while she fretted over those casualty list postings in front of the Daily Gazette office), Bing Crosby (not the 1930s Bing of Yip Harburg’s Brother, Can You Spare A Dime but the later pretty-boy mellow White Christmas stuff) and the like. He had moreover become tired unto death of the cutesy Andrews Sisters and their antic bugle boy, rum and Coca-Cola, under the apple tree music, tired of Frank (later called the “chairman of the boards” but still way too placid for him although he remembered his mother showing him a photograph of perfectly sane looking girls in bobby-sox swooning all over the place to get next to him at some theater in New York City ), Frankie (Lane okay) and Dean (before Jerry), tired of Tony fly me to the moon, Benny and his very tired clarinet Buddha swing, the whole Harry James/Jimmy Dorsey/Tommy Dorsey/Duke/Count/Earl/King and whatever other royalty they could latch onto big band sound and even blessed Charley/Dizzy/Miles be-bop, be-bop jazz (stuff that he would later, way later, crave when he went “beat” joined, joined late that big beat fellahin world Jack Kerouac was always going on and on about). Yes, yeah, tired unto death craving some sound that moved him, some sound that he could sway his rigid locked-up boyish man hips to. A break-out for sure.

Maybe it had been because he was showing serious signs of growing pains, of just being a pain like his parents had taken to calling him more and more often lately, and just wanted to be by himself up in his room (as the oldest boy he got the single room once the family moved to the new three bedroom house from that cramped apartment over on Elmer Street where all three boys had to sleep in one room and there were more fights over that fact mercifully done now) and let the world pass by until his growing pains passed by. It started one day in 1956 as far as he could remember the first time that he asked his parents to turn off the radio, or turn off WJDA, or turn on this new station that one of the kids at school was talking about coming out of Boston, WMEX the call letters he thought. This kid, Richie, a good kid who knew a lot about music swore that one of the commercials on the show was about Max’s Drive-In over on the other side of North Adamsville and a place where his parents had taken him and his brothers for burgers and fries which if you could believe this was the new “hot” spot because Max had installed speakers in each stall so that every hip guy and swaying gal could listen to WMEX while munching on a burger or swallowing a French fry. Listen to stuff that was Frank-Benny-Duke-Bing-less. Something was in the wind.    

Something may have been in the wind but he was still filled with all kinds of teen angst and alienation (no, he did not use those terms to describe his condition and only learned the terms much later after much turmoil, a few beefs with the parents, and after reading a Time magazine article about kids today going to hell in hand basket what with hanging around corners in white tee-shirts and snarls, doing crazy stuff to pass the time of day and listening although he was foggy on the music they described but it sounded interesting which is why he picked up the article from his father’s chair in the first place). Mainly though what was on his mind had been about his growing so fast, fast and awkward, too fast and awkward to figure out what this new found interest in girls was all about. Last year, last year before his parents’ music grated on his ears, they were nothing but giggly girls and a bother but now he could see, well, he could see that they might be interesting to talk to if he could find something to say. Could maybe ease his way in with some music talk like that good guy Richie did. All he knew was that life was tough and made tougher by his parents always saying no, no in principle like there was no other possible answer.    

But here is the funny part his parents, like he found out later when he figured out how parents worked, parents always do and had worked it out as a science, switched up on kids. See one day to placate him (or, heaven forbid, to keep him out of sight and therefore out of mind) they, his usually clueless parents, had gone to the local Radio Shack store and bought him a transistor radio so that he would be able listen to music up in his room rather than lie around the living room all night after his parents had gone to bed changing the dials, their dial settings, looking for some other stations, looking for WMEX to see if Richie was right about Max’s Drive-In, on that damn old family RCA radio which had formed the center piece of the room before the television had displaced it. This transistor radio was a new gizmo, small and battery-powered, which allowed the average teenager to put the thing up to his or her ear and listen to whatever he or she wanted to listen to away from prying eyes. Hail, hail.

And that little technological feat saved his life, or at least help save it. The saving part was his finding out of the blue on one late Saturday night Buster Brim’s Blues Bonanza out of WRKO in Chicago. Apparently, although he was ignorant of the scientific aspects of the procedure, the late night air combined with the closing down of certain dawn to dusk radio stations left the airwaves clear at times to let him receive that long distance infusion. Buster was a mad man monk talking in a drawl like maybe he was from down south, talking jive, talking a line of patter with sing-song words, words that he would later recognize as from the be-bop vocabulary pushed into the orbit of this rock and roll thing some DJ invented (DJs the guys who spun the platters-played the records for the squares who don’t know) for the new sound that was putting a big crimp in vanilla popular music. He immediately sensed that the music emanating from that show had a totally different beat from his parents’ music, a beat he would later find came out of some old-time primordial place when we all were born, out of some Africa cradle of civilization. Then though all he knew was that the beat spoke to his angst, spoke to his alienation from about twelve different things, spoke to that growing pains thing. Made him, well, happy, when he snapped his fingers to some such beat. What he was unsure of, and what he also did not found out about until later, was whether this would last or was just a passing fancy like those Andrews Sisters his parents were always yakking about.

What he didn’t know really was that though that little gizmo he had been present at the birth of rock and roll. Was right at the place where that be-bopping sound was turning into a sway by white guys from the farms down in Tennessee, getting refined by some black guys from the Delta, being turned out by some urban hep-cats from New Jack City and anybody else who could get his hips moving to the new time beat. Geez, and all he thought he was doing was snapping his fingers until they were sore to Elmore James’ Look On Yonder Wall…                

[Sam Lowell, the “he” of the sketch to give him a name, although after looking the story over it really could have been an almost universal teen story in the 1950s from all accounts including that quota of angst and alienation and the vast number of transistor radios sold to clueless parents to placate their unruly tribe, later in life, the way I heard the story, actually became enthralled with the music of his parents’ generation for a while. Kind of saw that they needed that “no ripples” “sentimental journey” waiting by the mailbox, I’ll get by, if I didn’t care” music to get through their tough spots. Of course he also had had his early 1960s folk minute affair, his later 1970s outlaw country cowboy minute and his 1990s be-bop jazz revival so it is hard to tell how deep or how sincerely he imbibed that parents’ music moment. He told a friend of mine, a friend who told me the original story, that whatever else he was still a “child of rock and roll” when the deal went down. Oh, except now via iPods rather than transistor radios.]  

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8
Out In The Jukebox Saturday Night –Sweet Little Rock and Roller

Yeah, nine years old and sweet as she can be
All dressed up like a downtown Christmas tree
Dancin? And hummin? A rock抧抮oll melody
She抯 the daughter of a well-respected man
Who taught her to judge and understand
Since she became a rock抧抮oll music fan

Sweet little rock'n'roller
Sweet little rock'n'roller
Her daddy don抰 have to scold her
Her partner can抰 hardly hold her
Her partner can抰 hardly hold her
She never gets any older
Sweet little rock抧抮oller

Should have seen her eyes when the band began to play
And the famous singer sang and bowed away
When the star performed she screamed and yelled "Hooray!"

Ten thousand eyes were watchin? Him leave the floor
Five thousand tongues were screamin? 揗ore and More!? Br> And about fifteen hundred people waitin? Outside the door

Sweet little rock'n'roller
Sweet little rock'n'roller
Sweet little rock'n'roller
Sweet little rock'n'roller
Sweet little rock'n'roller
Sweet little rock'n'roller
Sweet little rock'n'roller


Recently Josh Breslin,  my old travelling companion from the great yellow bus down the nirvana highways days out West in the late 1960s (the West is the best, get here and we will do the rest was the Jim Morrison-etched mantra driving us out there) told me, that he had, seemingly endlessly, gone back to his early musical roots, his coming of age in the 1950s golden age of rock (and mine too), now conceded even by him (me, I am agnostic on the question) to correctly carry the designation classic rock. Although Josh had his huff and puff sneaking out of the house at midnight heading via subway to Harvard Square to see if could be washed by the new breeze coming through the land folk music minute in the early 1960s that I can attest to when he later tried to foist the records off on me (you know the Village/Old Town/North Beach faded minute when all those guys and gals like Dylan/Baez/Collins/Odetta/Rush/Clancy Brothers/Van Ronk/Ochs/Paxton, Christ even old guard Pete Seeger and so on who had previously sung their hearts out for the basket in the up and coming coffeehouses and to move, or better if you believe the stories  Dave Van Ronk tells, clear the beat poetry crowds to bring in a new crowd got their chance to front). Had his blues phase, you pick ‘em country or electric, after he saw Howlin’ Wolf practically eating his harmonica on How Many More Years. Had as well an outlaw country cowboy second with Waylon and Willie. And still later did a retro Duke/Count/Charlie/Dizzy retro jazz thing although he has always claimed that he was always a child of his times, a “child of rock ‘n’ roll.” I believe him if that helps.

To show his adherence to that truth Josh had spent some time reviewing various compilations of a commercially produced classic rock series that went under the general title Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die. That task was not as easy as it would seem since those commercial interests have tapped into their demographic pool and have caught our generation, the generation of ’68 in a nostalgic mood, or in a retro- buying mood. Ready to buy fifteen volume sets just to get maybe thirty gems (if they have not caught onto iTunes or YouTube, an iffy proposition for our generation just on the edge of needing to be computer literate). So there are many (although with a fair amount of overlap) compilations out there honing in on the “oldies but goodies” bug that has infiltrated the AARP-worthy set. He has noted that while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes, you know novelty stuff like Purple People-Eaters or goof things like Who Wears Short Shorts, it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for our generation who had just started to tune into music. (We have talked a great deal about the various failures, one hit johnnies and janies, and the “never should haves,” although I hope not endlessly.) 

I had to laugh when Josh explained his take on the scene back then.  We had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own “sub-group cultural expression.” I, Josh too maybe since we are working to mine the same memoires lately, have already talked about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered, of course Luckies preferred) hanging from the lips, Coke, big- sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor jukebox coin devouring, playing some “hot” song for the nth time that night, “hold the onions I might get lucky tonight,” dreamy girl might come in the door thing. Of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae, natch. And the same for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing.

Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working- class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them). Moreover, I clued you in, and keep this quiet, about sex, or rather I should say “doin’ the do” in case the kids are around, and about the local “custom” (for any anthropologists present) of ocean-waved Atlantic “watching the submarine races.”

That is maybe enough memory lane stuff for a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid messenger Josh felt the need to go back indoors again and take a little different look at that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The jukebox scene where we usually heard some sounds for the first time and we either worked out some deal to buy the record at Smitty’s Record Shop up in Adamsville Square or cadged nickels and dimes to endlessly play the tune until it got worn out (or we got worn out hearing it and therefore moved on). Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days. Bowling alleys, drugstores (drugstores with soda fountains- why else would healthy, young, sex-charged high school students go to such an old-timer-got-to-get medicine-for-the-arthritis place. Why indeed, although there are secrets in such places that I will tell you about some other time when I’m not jazzed up to talk about Josh  be-bop juke-boxing around the town), pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and so on. Basically any place where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.

Josh said a lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted your attention as they came in the door. I agree with the latter point although the real killing time didn’t come until we hit the Army, and later. Here is where Josh showed me he was not kidding about his devotion to classic rock when one night at a local bar in Cambridge he showed me the cover artwork on one compilation showed dreamy girls waiting around the jukebox for their platters (records, okay) to work their way up the mechanism that took them from the stack and laid them out on the player. That said to me “There is your chance, boys, grab it,” like in the old days. See these were girls just hanging around the machine. Some cashmere-sweatered, beehive-haired (or bobbed, kind of), well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days) chatting idly was worth at least a date if you moved fast or, more often, a telephone number to call. Not after nine at night though or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boyfriend. Lucky guy, maybe.

But after looking at that artwork (worthy of Edward Hooper, for the clear visual message it sent, believe me) I reminded Josh where the real skill came in. That was when you were just hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day waiting on a twist (slang for girl in our old working- class neighborhood) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking to her friends as she made those selections. Usually the first couple were easy, some now faded old boyfriend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next. Then you made your move-“Have you heard Only You?” NO! “Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you right up.” Or some such line.

Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and Roller, let’s say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking to … for just a minute, before the “I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc., etc.” line came at you. Oh, jukebox you baby. And guess what. On that self-same jukebox you were very, very likely to hear some of the songs on the compilation Josh showed me. Let me mention the stick outs (and a few that worked some of that “magic” mentioned above on tough nights). The other “has beens” you don’t have to waste your time on:

Oh Julie, The Crescendos (a great one if you knew, or thought you knew, or wanted to believe that girl at the jukebox’s name was Julie); Lavender Blue, Sammy Turner (good talk song especially on the word silly dilly billy word play); Sweet Little Rock and Roller, Chuck Berry (discussed above, and worthy of consideration if your tastes ran to those heart-breaking little rock and rollers. I will tell you about the ONE time it came in handy for me sometime); You Were Mine, The Fireflies; Susie Darlin’, Robin Luke (ditto the Julie thing above); Only You, The Platters (keep this one a secret, okay, unless you really are a sensitive guy). So, yeah, Josh is a “child of rock ‘n’ roll” in good standing. How about you? 

[You should know one thing about Josh, and it is as true of him today as it was in Big Sur or down in La Jolla when we were running the yellow brick road out West. Once he gets onto something he will see it through until the end. That is the case with his recent passion to remember his “child of rock ‘n’ roll” youth. I mentioned, I think, that he had just completed a review of the multi-volume Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die series that he had shown me one compilation from, the one with the girls hanging around the jukebox waiting, waiting for something.

Well there are many compilations out there (and as Frank will gladly tell you there is a fair amount of overlap between competing sets) but what Frank is looking at now is the series titled The Golden Age of Rock. When he mentioned that one night when we were sitting on a couple of barstools at Rich’s, the “oldies but goodies” place in downtown Boston, having a drink he also added that he thought that I should assist him in future efforts since I was a member in good standing of that generation as well. It took all my persuasive powers to disabuse him of the notion that I needed to hear about two hundred, maybe three hundred songs, many which I did not like, in order to get that maybe thirty gems that I, we, died for back then. So I turned him down but when I got home I thought if the artwork was as good at jogging the memory as that jukebox scene, well, maybe…]          

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9

The Time Of Her Time, Indeed-With Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle And Roll In Mind

Get out from that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans
Get out from that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans
Well, roll my breakfast 'cause I'm a hungry man

[Chorus:]
I said Shake, rattle and roll
I said Shake, rattle and roll
I said Shake, rattle and roll
I said Shake, rattle and roll
Well, you never do nothin' to save your doggone soul

Wearin' those dresses, your hair done up so nice
Wearin' those dresses, your hair done up so nice
You look so warm, but your heart is cold as ice

[Chorus]

I'm like a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a sea-food store
I'm like a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a sea-food store
I can look at you, tell you don't love me no more

I believe you're doin' me wrong and now I know
I believe you're doin' me wrong and now I know
The more I work, the faster my money goes

[Chorus]

Shake, Rattle And Roll

 …she had been through it all before, six or seven times now at least,  been through the part about what happened to her when she heard the new music, heard the music that was not some left-over parent music fit for mercifully sleeping through, maybe, on the radio, some called it rhythm and blues, music from the black ghettos of places like Chicago and Detroit from guys who had come up from the South in the great post-World War I migrations to shake one Mister James Crow off their backs, get the jobs in the bustling factories to make some damn money for once to buy Missy what she wanted, came up to get away from what she heard some say was Mister’s plantations sweat all day cotton boll work and his same Mister James Crow legal system (although she understood the sweat work part she didn’t understand that Jim Crow part at all, didn’t understand what it meant, didn’t understand that it affected every legal, social, economic, and political move they made) and turn that country blues of their fathers and other brothers, that down home Saturday night juke joint drinking Jimmy Jack’s homemade liquor on electric-less guitars, into sassy electrified blues for a more sophisticated urban audience ready to dust off their roots. Working off the efforts of old preacher-warriors Son House (had heard or read she was not sure that he had warred against the devil against sin and warred against God with the bottle), Charley Patton, Skip James and the guy who made a pact with devil she heard down in some Mississippi sweat-hole highway, Robert Johnson. And they did work, worked the streets for pocket money first and then the little sassy clubs, all smoke, booze and smelling of blood. Guys like sainted Muddy and hell-fire Howlin’ Wolf, Magic Slim, a bunch of James’ first or last name, John Lee, and some others too. Sometimes she would hear the sounds the threading-twanging sounds and get, well, get a little jumpy thinking what it would like to be stage front when old Muddy or Howlin’ Wolf got it on, but she kept that to herself since her parents would have flipped out if she ever took step one in that direction.       

Some called the new dispensation sound rockabilly with good-looking white farm and small town boys named Elvis, Carl, Jerry Lee, Warren,    in sexy suits with nothing on their minds except good times, music, and sex who were tired of that Grand Ole Opry hokey stuff and wanted to breakout and dust off their roots too. She thought about being stage front when those guys played too and thought that she too would maybe throw her sweaty underwear up on that heathen stage like she had seen and heard that lots of girls, good girls too caught in the throughs of the moment, but she kept that to herself since her parents would have flipped out if she took step one in that direction. In any case some, more recently, had begun to call it rock and roll after some DJ, Freed she thought the name was from New York City or some big beat city, called it that and it was starting to catch on as the way to describe the beat, the dancing, and the feeling of freedom just being around the scene.

Her parents, her know-nothing parents, just called it the “devil’s music,” called it an abomination against God’s will but they called everything from the “red menace” from Russia, Uncle Joe’s an dhis minions menace, to fluoride in the water some kind of abomination against God’s will so she discounted what they had to say, what did they know anyway, what could they know about what she felt, what she felt in the certain private places of her body when the beat got strong. How could they know never having been young, never having had those feelings. She was not exactly sure why she felt that way if anybody had asked her to explain those feelings (and nobody would, or almost nobody, since they were as clueless about why they felt that way when the music came on as she was), why she felt warm in what all the girls in the before school “lav” called their “sweet spot” with a tittle whenever she heard the local radio station or the kids at Doc’s Drugstore over on Atlantic Avenue on the juke-box endlessly playing Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle, and Roll or Warren Smith on Rock and Roll Ruby but she did. (Some of the rougher girls whom she avoided, the girls who smoked, drank and did “it,” so they said, called it other things which she did not find out until later, much later, guys called those things too but she then still preferred the more modest “sweet spot.”) All she knew was that when the beat began to pick up she would start swaying, maybe dancing by herself, maybe with a girlfriend, and get that feeling like she was not in has been dusty Olde Saco but maybe in New York City getting checked out by all the cute boys there whose leers when she swayed would have told her they were interested in having some of her.

Someone, Betty, she thought, a girl that she had grown up and gone to school with,  gone to Olde Saco High with, said it was just her coming into “her time,” although she did not know what to make of that idea since she had that same feeling before and after she came into her time. Got her “friend.”  Betty, or whoever it was who had said it said she did not mean that, that thing every girl had to deal with, but the time when everything was confused and when a teenager did, or did not, know which way to jump. Betty said somebody on the news programs called it alienation, teen alienation, like it was a disease, an epidemic sweeping the nation that needed to be eradicated if we were to beat the Russkies or something like that, but she was not sure what that meant. All she knew was that the old songs on the jukebox or radio, the ones that she loved to listen to the previous year, Frank getting kicks on champagne, Bing crooning about going his way, Patti get all dreamy about ocean-filled Cape Cod making her forget about ocean-filled Olde Saco with its endless textile mills to break the mood, Rosemary telling everybody to come to her house and singing about wanderlust, did not make her feel that way anymore. Didn’t make her feel that she wanted to jump out of her skin.

Tommy from school she thought, thought fondly if anybody was asking although he had not shown a spark of  interest until recently so she might not have told them she thought fondly of him if they had asked, might have had a better handle on it, have had a better sense of what turbulence was going on inside her when he told the whole Problems in Democracy class in Current Events that there were some new songs coming out of the radio, some stuff from down south, some negro sound from down in Memphis somewhere, some white hillbilly sound from around that same town, that he would listen to late at night on WJKA from Chicago when the air was just right. Sounds that made him want to jump right out of his skin. (She never dared to ask, ask even later when she got to know him better, whether it made him feel warm in his “sweet spot” since she didn’t know much then about whether boys had sweet spots, or got warm).

When Tommy had said that, said it was about the music, she knew that she was not alone, not alone in feeling that a fresh breeze was coming over the land, although she, confused as she was would not have articulated it that way (that would come later). And so she asked Tommy about it after class, asked him about what it felt like for him to jump out of his skin when he heard the beat beginning. He explained to her his feelings, feelings that she said she shared with him and he smiled. She agreed to let him walk her home after school and they had talked for a couple of hours on her front porch before he left. This went on most days for a while since neither one was assertive enough to ask for a date for a long time (Tommy as painfully shy as her except she was the first to notice that he looked over her way in class and gave a little smile, really a half smile before that day when they first talked after school).

Then both saw the big full page announcement in the newspaper, in the Friday edition Daily Gazette, for the next dance around town scheduled for a week from Saturday night and that night she called him to see if, ah, they might go to the event together. If she had waited about ten minutes Tommy later told her he would have called her (in her mind though she thought she was right to call since he was, except during Current Events, painfully shy and she was not going to miss a chance to grab him before some other girl did and then where would she be). And so they had their first date, first date to go to the Surf Ballroom down at Olde Saco Beach and listen to some guys, a band, play the new music that Tommy talked about some much. She wondered to herself (she could not speak of such things to Tommy) as she prepared for that night whether she would feel warm again in her sweet spot when they danced, she hoped so…         

But let’s catch up with Tommy for a moment and see what he is thinking about (oh, besides her, since we already know a lot especially about that telltale half smile he kept throwing her way).  

… things were different now, different from a few months ago when he was all balled up and thought he was the only kid, guy or female, aged fifteen, who was confused, uncomprehending, misbegotten about how he felt, about his place in the universe and about how he felt so very sorry himself because he didn’t understand what was happening to him, and what spoke to him now that he was no longer a kid. He, Tommy Murphy, could hardly wait until the weekend, wait to hear the new sounds coming out of the south, rhythm and blues stuff, rockabilly stuff, that he kept hearing on his transistor radio up in his room on clear nights out of WJKA in Chicago, stuff that people were starting to call rock and roll because some hip DJ in New York City or some such place a lot of people were taking credit for the term called it that, was starting to catch on. Funny he thought how he could get Chicago on good nights, weekend nights, but not New York City to hear that DJ call out to all the cats to swing to the beat of rock and roll. Mister Gibbs, his science teacher explained it to him and the class one time but the explanation sounded like someone talking to the heathens about heaven.

He couldn’t get WJKA clear every week, damn, but when it did come in Tommy would start snapping his fingers to the beat, the swinging beat that “spoke” to him somehow. He could not explain it but it made him feel good when he was down, was all confused about life, okay, okay, about girls, school, and that getting ahead in the world that his parents, his mother especially kept harping on. Made him think that maybe he would be a musician and play that stuff, play and make all the girls wet. Yeah, he knew all about that part about girls, about how this rock and roll music was making them get warm, warm in all the right places according to George his older brother who knew all about girls. Had them, girls, hanging off of him even though he wasn’t a musician but just a hep cat. Make that new girl of his, Susie, warm too. He hoped.

Funny how he had met Susie, how they had met, or not really met but started out, started out in school of all places, in class. Jesus. He had noticed her before but before she was just part of that all balled up stuff he was feeling, although he had taken a few peeks at her and he thought she might have peeked back once but he was not sure. Then during Current Events in Problems in Democracy class one week it was his turn to make a presentation and he chose to talk about that radio station out in Chicago and about the sounds he heard that made him want to jump out of his skin. He couldn’t exactly explain why and blushed a bright red when the teacher, a cool guy, Mr. Merritt asked him point about why he felt that way except to say that it made him feel good, made him less angry, less confused. A couple of people in the class nodded and he thought Susie had too (although she later said “no” she hadn’t nodded she just was thinking how brave he was to talk like that about his reactions to the music and while looking at him found out something she had not noticed before, he was cute). 

After class Susie had come up to him and practically begged him to tell her more about his feelings, about how the music made him feel,   because she said when she heard Big Joe Turner coming all snapping fingers on the radio on Shake, Rattle and Roll, she felt funny inside. Of course nobody, not even Tommy, who was keen on such knowledge knew that Big Joe was a Negro then, Christ his parents, good Roman Catholics who theoretically thought well of all mankind would have fits if they knew that he was listening to Negros under any conditions just like most RC parents in the neighborhood.  Tommy knew what kind of funny Susie was talking about, her “sweet spot” funny but he knew, knew because George had told him, not to say that to girls. Not modest girls like Susie and maybe not any girl if you wanted to get past first base with them. That conversation had started their thing and she asked him to walk home with her so they could talk which they did until they got to her house and just stood there talking for a couple of hours before he left.

He had walked her home a few times and he found that she was easy to talk to but they both seemed to back off on talking about a first date. He knew that he was a little shy in that department and he guessed Susie was too. Then both of them saw an announcement in the newspaper for the next big dance around town and one night she had called him to see if, ah, they might go together. (He somewhat flabbergasted said “yes,” said yes knowing that if he did not some other guy would grab her and then where would he be.) And so they had their first date, first date to go to the Surf Ballroom down at Olde Saco Beach and listen to some guys, a band, the Ready Rollers, play the new music. Tommy  didn’t know what would happen as he prepared that night to pick her up at her house but he hoped the music would calm him down and that he would get that funny feeling inside when they danced, and her too, he sure hoped so…     
***********
10

The Itch- With Elvis’ One Night Of Sin In Mind  

"One Night Of Sin" was written by Bartholomew, Dave / King, Pearl / Steiman, Anita.

One night of sin, yeah
Is what I'm now paying for
The things I did and I saw
Would make the earth stand still
Don't call my name
It makes me feel so ashamed
I lost my sweet helping hand
I got myself to blame
Always lived very quiet life
Ain't never did no wrong
Now I know that very quiet life
Has cost me nothing but harm
One night of sin, yeah
Is what I'm now paying for
The things I did and I saw
Would make the earth stand still
Always lived very quiet life
Ain't never did no wrong
But now I know that very quiet life
Has cost me nothing but harm
One night of sin
Is what I'm now paying for
The things I did and I saw
Would make the earth stand still
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Your song meaning will appear once it has been deemed awesome by A lot of boy-girl things didn’t make sense in the mad world of the iced down 1950s (we will keep ourselves to the boy-girl thing here recognizing except in exotic Hollywood/ North Beach/Village outposts that other now acceptable same-sex relationships were below the radar, below the radar in North Adamsville anyway, except in a titter of faggot/dyke-baiting in the boys’ gym locker room after school). Nobody, or almost nobody, talked about sex in any but very hushed tones except maybe the school tramps and whoremongers who were more than happy to explain the facts of life to innocent youth who got it wrong almost as much as any kid who was clueless except their mistakes wound up in girls going to see faraway “Aunt Ella” for a few months or some irate father ordered up a shot-gun wedding, worse some judge ordered up a hitch in the Army to some hellhole frozen tundra or sweated jungle for the errant guy.  But they, tramps and whoremongers both, were not listened to as a rule even in braggart lavatory between classes time, so that it was up to you to ask your older brother or sister in order to get some information they picked up from the streets. Information to fill in the yawning missing gaps in for you where parents, who after all “did it” and should have been forthcoming with some details but who turned out to be just like their parents leaving them to find out from the street as much misinformation as they could find, with their birds and bees silliness, the church (you name the denomination at your leisure, they were all even the U-Us and Quakers all locked-down on the subject) banned the words and talk of such words as if such acts were done by osmosis or tarot cards as one guy actually explained to one gal one night and she believed him although they backed off after a time worrying about that trip to Aunt Ella or that shot-gun wedding her father would have insisted on, Jesus, or school, locus parentis school and thus as clueless as parents about their charges, came up nada. Empty. 

Of course half, maybe more, of that street talk was wrong, dead-ass wrong coming from sources that barely knew more than those asking the questions. And so there was an epidemic of young women being plucked out of school for a time to visit some forlorn aunt in Topeka (sorry, Topeka).The whole wide world had never known such devotion of wayward young nieces for out-of-town aunts during those times. So when boys and girls started getting attracted to each other, when they touched, when they danced swaying with the big new beat, the rock and roll beat coming out of about twelve sources in the unkempt American Songbook, coming up to grab them out in that red scare cold war night sure they were confused, sure they wanted to know what those tingles were all about up in their night-less bedrooms–and do something about it just like the “he” and “she” of this sketch…     

…she was not exactly sure why she felt that way, felt warm in what all the girls in the before school “lav” called their “honey pot.”  Honey pot a term picked up from some older guys they dated who got it from around jazz clubs, hipster talk from the cool water be-bop boys who blew the high white notes, blew mary jane smoke, reefer, blew away their honey’s honey pot, or who talked fresh to them trying to pick them up around town, yelling stuff out of open air convertibles or two-toned hardback Chevys, and who had picked it up from who knows where, maybe sailors in Scollay Square in  Boston who got it in every port of call, or those older brothers trying to be hip. Some of the rougher girls, the girls who smoked in the “lav” against school rules, drank cheapjack liquor, mainly whiskey, on dates and “did the deed” as some modest girls called the sexual act and they called it “fucking” called that spot other things, pussy/ cunt kind of things which she did not find out until later, much later, and not much before she got married that guys called that spot those words too but she modest then stuck to the euphemism and even saying that term out loud made her blush crimson red.

That warm feeling had come over her lately, since turning sixteen  lately,  whenever she heard the local radio station, WJDA, the station teenagers were now tuned into since the station manager bowing to demographic shifts changed the format from pretty rarified cool water Charlie/Dizzy/ The Monk jazz to what the station called popular music. Or when the kids at Sal’s Pizza Parlor up in Adamsville Center were on the juke-box endlessly playing Elvis’ suggestive One Night With You (suggestive of what she would not find out until later, until Tommy one night tried to have his way with her and she kind of let him, kind of, kind of also did not let him, which she would not explain at the Monday morning before school “lav” talk about what went on over everybody’s weekend except to say they were finished, done as an “item,” no further explanation given).

Someone, Betty Arlen, she thought, one time said it was just her coming into “her time,” although she did not know what to make of that idea since she had that same feeling before and after she came into her time. She had thought Betty meant “got her friend” (translation: began to have her period, her cycle, which was late since at least most of the girls she knew had gotten their “friend” a year or two before her). Betty had giggled and said she did not mean that, that thing every girl had, her “friend” but the time when everything was confused and when a teenager did, or did not, know which way to jump. (Jesus, would no one but tramps and whoremongers use anything but prissy words when speaking of sex and its functions.) A time of teen angst and alienation which created sullen jack-rolling corner boys (guys in white tee-shirts and denims hanging their feet against storefront walls daring said walls to object, formally called juvenile delinquents, or slang JDs), made heroes of hot-rodding “chicken run” kings out on Thunder Road, and icons of “cool” actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean.

Betty said the stuff was news in all the newspapers and her father had mentioned it to her and asked her if she felt alienated. Betty said “no” quickly under the circumstances since “yes” would have probably kept her in the house until her father determined that the epidemic had run its course. All distraught all she knew was she like Betty had turned away from the old songs on the jukebox or radio, the ones that she loved to listen to last year (on that same WJDA that now was formatted for popular music meaning not her parents’ music) Frank, Bing, Patti, Rosemary, did not make her feel that way anymore. Didn’t make her feel that she wanted to jump out of her skin.

One night as she thought wistfully back to when her urges had all began, thought about her now seemingly girlish silliness since she had moved on in her big beat tastes, when Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle and Roll came on the radio and she swaying to the beat at Doc’s or up in her room dancing by herself would get warm in her “honey pot.” She also gave a thought about Tommy Murphy from school, from North Adamsville High, from her class, her Problems in Democracy class, whom she had thought might have had a better handle on it, have had a better sense of what turbulence was going on inside her when he told the whole class in Current Events that there were some new songs coming out of the radio, some stuff from down south, some negro guys sound from out of Mississippi plantations heading North, from down in Memphis somewhere, some white hillbilly guys sound from the farms and small towns from that same town, that he would listen to late at night on WJKA from Chicago when the air was just right. Sounds that made him want to jump right out of his skin. (She never dared to ask whether it made him feel warm in his “honey pot” since she didn’t know much then about whether boys had such pots, or got even warm there like she did when the beat jumped). When he said that, said it was about the music, she knew that she was not alone, not alone in feeling that a fresh breeze was coming over the land, although she, confused as she was would not have articulated it that way (that would come later).

As she continued to muse she remembered that she had asked Tommy about it after class and talking awhile both getting animated on the subject agreed to let him walk her home after school. One thing led to another as they found that they had so much in common, and then a few weeks later they had their first date, first date to go to the Surf Ballroom down at Adamsville Beach and listen to some guys, a band,  The Ready Rockers, play the new music. She had wondered to herself before he picked her up at her house whether she would feel warm again in her honey pot when they danced (she could not speak of such things to Tommy), she had hoped so.

Later, not that night but a few weeks later, when they skipped the dance part and just went to the far end of Adamsville Beach in his father’s car and they listened to the radio and the song that got her going, going strong as Tommy made his moves, was Elvis’ One Night With You which got her fantasizing about him all swaying hips, snapping be-bop fingers, snarl and slicked-back hair and between the beat and Tommy’s hands she let him have his way with her, kind of. The kind of part being that while she let him undress her, partially anyway, she was not sure what he did, not sure if they had done the deed. In any case she got angry at Tommy, got angry assuming that he had had his way with her and that he should have stopped. That night was the beginning of the end of their short romance especially after she had heard at the Monday morning before school “lav” talkfest some girls mention that they had successfully held off their boyfriends who wanted to “go all the way” and she was doubly furious. (Later, much later, she found out that one of those girls who had claimed to have fended off her boyfriend suddenly announced she had to go see an ailing aunt in Topeka or some place like that. More importantly Tommy, as inexperienced as her, had not really done anything, any penetration anyway. Poor Tommy).  

After giving Tommy his walking papers she still got those urges and still wanted to try to figure out what to do about them when Elvis or Jerry Lee came on the radio (and, truth, had secretly thrilled when she thought Tommy had done the deed, had made her a woman, although she believed he really should have stopped and thus the break-up). One night, one Friday night she went with Betty and another girl to the Surf Ballroom to hear the Ready Rockers play. And maybe find another guy, a guy who would respect her. Then she saw Lance, Lance all black hair and brown eyes, slim, dancing up a storm to Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love. Later she went over to see if she could talk to him, to see if the music hit him the same way as it did her and they talked.

Later, not that night, they had their first date and after he picked her up in his ’55 Chevy he suggested they skip the dance and go to the far end of Adamsville Beach. She said she really wanted to but told him he should stop before things got out of hand. Once they got there Lance turned on the radio and turned on his hands. She didn’t resist and while she was not sure which song got her going that night between Lance’s quick moving hands, the moon, the sound of the ocean roar and her own desire Lance had his way with her. And she knew this time from her aching hips and other stuff that he had “done the deed.” Come Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talkfest she was the first girl to tell the group how she had successfully fended Lance off that weekend. 

Let’s tune into Tommy Murphy’s take on the situation now that he is single and lonely.       

… he could hardly wait until the weekend, wait to hear the new sounds coming out of the south, rhythm and blues stuff, rockabilly stuff, that he could hear on his transistor radio up in his room coming on clear nights out of WJKA in Chicago, stuff called rock and roll. It didn’t come in clear every week but when it did he would start snapping his fingers to the beat, the swinging beat that “spoke” to him somehow. He could not explain it but it made him feel good when he was down, was confused about life, okay, okay, about girls, school, and that getting ahead in the world that his parents, his mother especially, kept harping on. Made him think that maybe he would be a musician and play that stuff, play and make all the girls wet. Yeah, as little as he knew, he knew all of that part about girls, about how this music was making them get warm, warm in all the right places, in their “honey pots,” according to George his older brother who knew all about girls and had explained what that term meant (and who really knew all he knew like everybody else from the streets). Make that new girl of his, Susie, warm too. He hoped.

Funny how they met, he and Susie met, or not really met but started out, started out in school of all places, in class. Jesus. In Current Events one week when it was his turn to make a presentation and he chose to talk about that radio station in Chicago and about the sounds he heard that made him want to jump out of his skin. He couldn’t exactly explain why when Mr. Merritt asked about why he felt that way except to say that it made him feel good, made him less angry, less confused. After class Susie had come up to him and practically begged him to tell her his feelings because she had said when she heard Big Joe Turner coming all snapping fingers on the radio on Shake, Rattle and Roll, she felt funny inside. (He knew what kind of funny but he knew, knew because George had told him, not to say that to girls.) That had started it since he walked her home a few times and he found that she was easy to talk to. So before he knew it he had asked her to go see the Ready Rockers at the Surf Ballroom down at Adamsville Beach who were playing the new sounds.

He didn’t know what would happen but he hoped that she would get that funny feeling inside when they danced, he sure hoped so. And she did, but nothing happened that night. A few weeks later, when he had his father’s car and suggested that they skip the dance and head straight down to the far end of Adamsville Beach, he had turned on the radio while they were “making out” (kissing and some fondling of her breasts with his hands moving nervously all over the place and she sighing at the touch) when Elvis came on with his One Night With You and she did not stop him when he took off her underpants and he got on top. He made a bunch of moves but she was not paying any particular attention. Fact was he did not know what to do so he just rubbed his “thing” against her “honey pot” but did not go inside. At least he thought he had not gone inside. After he was done she asked him whether he had “done the deed.” In a panic and not wanting to show his inexperience he said yes. She got furious, said he should have stopped and what if she got pregnant and had go visit an aunt. That, in any case, was the beginning of the end of their short romance. She gave him his walking papers that next Monday afternoon saying that he should have been like other girls said their boyfriends did and stopped before anything happened. Tommy had no comeback that would work and so he just walked away, forlorn…                

*************

11

Betty’s Tale -With The Teen Queens’ Eddie, My Love In Mind  

 

EDDIE MY LOVE

(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)The Teen Queens - 1956

Eddie, my love, I love you so

How I wanted for you, you'll never know
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
Eddie, please write me one line
Tell me your love is still only mine
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

(Transcribed from the Teen Queens

recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)

…come closer, will you, because I have got a story to tell. Come on over here, here nearer me and get away from that midnight phone waiting, that eternal waiting. Waiting now in vain because if he or she has not called by this hour, nine, on a school night they are not going to call and anyway you don’t need Ma to yell at you about wasting your time waiting for that call when you could be doing homework or something. Yeah, like you could do homework with your head filled with anxiety about that call. What do parents know anyway never having been young, never having been in love. Hey, while I am talking maybe you should put on The Teen Queens’ Eddie My Love like I have on right now or some other teen trauma tune, sad, sad tune to help drown your sorrows while I’m telling the story,

Yes, get away from that midnight telephone call wait by your bedside table and listen up a minute or two because I’ve got a story to tell, a 1950s teen story to tell, or let’s make it a 1950s teen story, and if it works out for 1960s, 1970s, or 2000s teens except for the newer techno-gadgets cellphone, iPhone, smart phone ways to wait, to wait that midnight call that are different, well, well this waiting by the phone hasn’t changed that much since the 1950s when this trend started or reached a certain plateau where waiting became one of the ways that you knew you were a forlorn teen-ager, knew that life was going to be filled with ups and downs and so there you have it.

And let’s make it a boy-girl story, although I know, and you know I know, that it could have been a boy-boy, girl-girl, whatever story and that’s okay by me, except that it wouldn’t be okay, okay as a public prints 1950s story since those kinds of relationships had not been deemed okay to tell except maybe in some North Beach, Greenwich Village, Hollywood hills small print, exotic, erotic small press back door scenario. Mainly those kinds of relationships would be gist for the mill in the snicker of boys’ sports after school gym locker room faggot-dyke baiting and well beyond the sad tale I have to tell.

And let’s make it a Saturday night, a hard by the phone, waiting Saturday night, maybe midnight, maybe not, maybe you cried or brooded yourself to sleep before that hour, that teen dread hour when all dreams came crashing to the floor, like a million guys and girls know about, and if you don’t then, maybe move on, but I think I know who I’m talking to.

And let’s make it a winter night to kind of fit your mood, kind of make you realize that you are totally alone against the elements, yes, a long hard winter night, wind maybe blowing up a little, maybe a little dusting of snow, and just that many more dark hours until the dawn and facing another day without…

And let’s make it, oh the hell with that, let’s make it get to the story and we’ll work out the scenic details as we go along…

I’ll tell you, Betty’s got it bad, yes, Betty from across the way, from the house across the way where right now I can see her in her midnight waiting bedroom window, staring off, staring off somewhere but I know, I know, what ‘s wrong with her. No, not that, no she is not in the “family way,” I don’t think, I hope not, hope not because then she will have to suddenly go out of town to visit some ailing aunt, or something like that. What is wrong with Betty is simpler. Her Eddie has flown the coop, and has not been heard from for a while.

Yes, Betty’s got it bad, and it’s too bad because she deserves better. Let me tell you the story behind the story, although I can already see that you might know what’s coming. I had noticed Betty’s change of behavior but was not sure what it meant. It first started when she did not return my wave when I waved across the street to her, then she would hang her head down walking like some zombie in the movies. So one day I asked her about what was up and she said she did not want to talk about it, made a serious point to me that she did not want to talk about it when I pressed the issue so I let it drop. Yes, so the way I know the story is because Betty’s best friend, Sue, gave me the details when I saw Betty continue moping around, moping around day after day like there was going to be no tomorrow, especially after leaving school with her head down, arriving home with her head moping down even more after the mailman came. I contacted Sue to see what she knew, knew from those little afternoon girl chatting calls or maybe from that mandatory Monday morning before school in the girls’ “lav” talkfest. 

Yes, I know, I know Sue, old best friend Sue, is nothing but a man-trap and has flirted with more guys in this town than you could shake a stick at, including Eddie a couple of times when Betty had to go out of town with her parents (keep that between us, please). Hell, now that I think about it, I’ll get this thing all balled up if I tell it my way what with what I know, or people have told me about Sue and I want you to get the straight dope.  Let Betty, old true to Eddie, Betty tell her story herself, or at least through Sue, and I’ll just write it down my way, and you be the judge:

“Last summer, oh sweet sixteen last summer, old innocent girlish sweet paper dream last summer, Eddie, Eddie Cooper, Eddie with the hot cherry red, dual exhaust, heavy silver chrome, radio- blasting, ’55 Chevy (my brother Timmy told me about cars and their doo-dads, I just like to look good in them and the ’55 is the “boss”), that I knew I would be just crazy to sit in, and give the “look”, the superior “I’m with a hot guy, and sitting in a hot car , bow down peasants look,” came rumbling and tumbling into town.

Summer beach time, soaking up the sun down between the yacht clubs beach time, summer not a care in the world time , Sue, my best friend Sue, my best friend Sue and all that stuff they say about her and the boys is just fantasy, male fantasy, and I were sitting just talking about this and that, oh well, about boys, and I was telling her the latest about Billy, Billy from the neighborhood, who I had been going out with for ages, more or less, Billy with the reading too many books and wanting to talk poetry or “beat” stuff, Billy, Billy with the no car, or sometimes with car, father’s old run-down jalopy which might or might not work like happened one night and it was a close thing that I was not grounded for coming in so late, but no “boss” car, never, when Eddie, Eddie, Edward John Cooper, parked his honey Chevy and came over to us, through all that sand and all,

Eddie gave Sue the “once over,” like guys will do automatically with any girl something about their genetic make-up drives them that way and Sue adds her part by always looking like she has either just finished a roll in the hay or would not mind being talked into it but that is just her come-hither “style” and like I said before don’t make too much of it. Yeah, she knows sex stuff, a lot from what she tells me but mostly it’s to aid that come-hither thing she has with guys.  Besides whatever Sue has, or thinks she has in the guy department I secretly thrill to know that that “once over” is just a game because even as he came over the sand I could see he had eyes, big blue eyes, for me, only me, We talked, idle talk, sex in the air flirty talk, don’t talk sex straight out but weave all around it talk, the mating ritual I guess they call it, still a lot of talk for a summer beach day, and I knew, I swear I knew he wanted to ask me out for later, or maybe right there to ride in his car but three’s company, and for once I couldn’t shake Sue, my best friend Sue, Sue with the million boyfriends so she says, who I could see was taken in by his big blued-eyed, black haired, tight tee-shirt, blue jean charm too.

Truce, Sue truce, as we walked home, Eddie-less, a few blocks away. I left Sue at her house. Truce still, except that I heard a big engine, a big “boss” car engine, coming up behind me as I hit the sidewalk in front of my house, and dream, dream wake me up, it was Eddie, Edward  John Cooper and that cherry ’55 Chevy. He said, and I will never forget this, “Hop in,” and opened the door. I was supposed to have a “date,” some dreary poetry reading date with Billy, ah, Billy who. We were off as soon as I closed that cherry red door.

And we were off, off for a sweet summer of love, ’55 Chevy love and okay, truth, because I know that Sue probably blabbed it around but I let Eddie take me to the back seat of that warm-bodied Chevy one night, and some nights after that. But let me just tell you this about Sue, my best friend Sue, honest, she’s the one who told me what to do with a boy, yah, she told me everything.

Late August came as summer beach love drew to an end and those damn school bells seemed ready to ring, Eddie, out of school Eddie my love, told me he had a job offer in another state and he needed to take the job to support his mother and his ’55 Chevy.

I started crying; crying like crazy, trying to make him stay, stay with his ever-lovin’ Betty but no he had to go. He didn’t know about a phone, or a phone call, but he said he would write and I haven’t heard from him since even though I wear out the mailman every day”…

Christ my heart bleeds for Betty every time I think about what Eddie had done, and see, I know Eddie, no I don’t know Eddie personally but I know Eddie stuff, stuff that has been going on since Adam and Eve, hell, probably before that. I know Eddie stuff from the days a few years ago when I used to hang around with junior Eddies, car-less Eddies who only dreamed of foxy Chevys then being underage, at Jack Slack’s bowling alleys over on Thornton Street heading toward the beach. Those were my corner boy days before I got into more serious stuff, my poetry readings that Betty sniffed her nose at for her Eddie. And those junior Eddies, and me too, once we got started on the subject of girls which we were clueless about but which began every lonely hearts Friday night holding up the wall conversation, were pretty raw about what we would, or would not, do with girls, mostly the unattainable ones at school, and then move on like the wind. And some of my corner boys like Frankie Riley and Jimmy Jenkins to name names actually proceeded to do just that once they got their wheels.  Yeah, so I know the Eddies of this teenage world and this is the hard truth I would tell Betty if she would listen for one second:

Betty, Betty, sweet Betty, I hate to break it to you but Eddie, Edward John Cooper ain’t coming back. And old Eddie ain’t writing and it ain’t because he doesn’t have the three cents for a stamp, or cannot write more than a few simple lines even in the best of times, or is not near some desolate mail box, or, well enough of that for Eddie excuses because that is all the gaff. No, Eddie, let's just say Eddie’s moved on to greener pastures like every other Eddie who did only what he was capable of doing- love ‘em and leave ‘em. Not because he intentionally started out that way with you but because that is his take on the world, the girl world. These guys, even ugly guys like “Whiskey” Pete who you probably have heard of and who lives a few streets over from us, who have “boss” cars operate in the world like that because they know that front passenger seat will not be vacate long when mating season comes ago.  

(I heard later after Sue filled me in and I was curious, but don’t tell Betty because she is weepy enough, when I asked around about it, asked some guys who had known Eddie when he worked at Smitty’s Garage last summer while he was with Betty that Eddie had left for Florida, had a new girl there, or maybe an old girlfriend who had some kind of spell over him but all of that, that last part about some forlorn Eddie love was just guys talking one night. Eddie guys are more in the first category, the new girl and move on claiming that some mother needed desperate support in some other state and they would write. But you never know with Eddie guys on that last part.) 

Betty, Betty hold onto your Eddie, My Love dream for a moment. But Betty, tomorrow, not tomorrow tomorrow but some tomorrow you‘ve got to move on. Betty then why don’t you call up your Billy. I’ll be here by the phone, the midnight phone…

********

12

Love’s Labors Lost -With The Tune Weavers’ Happy, Happy Birthday Baby In Mind  

 

THE TUNE WEAVERS

"Happy, Happy Birthday Baby"

Happy, happy birthday, baby
Although you're with somebody new
Thought I'd drop a line to say
That I wish this happy day
Would find me beside you
Happy, happy birthday, baby
No I can't call you my baby
Seems like years ago we met
On a day I can't forget
'Cause that's when we fell in love
Do you remember the names we had for each other
I was your pretty, you were my baby
How could we say goodbye
Hope I didn't spoil your birthday
I'm not acting like a lady
So I'll close this note to you
With good luck and wishes too
Happy, happy birthday, baby

…damn he never should have sent that note, that short, silly, puffed-up cry-baby note trying to worm his way back into Lucy’s arms with memory thoughts about this kiss, or that embrace, about that night down at the beach searching for those elusive “submarines” in the back seat of Jimmy Jenkin’s car or this funny moment at the Fall Frolics dance when they first started taking furtive glances at each other. Worse, going chapter and verse, getting all gooey bringing up old seawall sugar shack beach nights before the step up to back seats of ocean view cars holding hands against the splashed tides, against full moons (which actually impeded any serious fooling around since even some old blind lady could see what they were up to in that light), against tomorrow coming too soon on those submarine nights; double date drive-in movies, speakers on low, deep-breathing car fog-ups on cold October nights, embarrassed, way embarrassed, when they surfaced for intermission's stale popcorn or reheated hot dogs; and, that last dance school dance holding tight, tight as hell, to each other as the DJ, pretending to be radio jockey Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsberg, played Could This Be Magic? on that creaky record player used at North Adamsville High School dances since his mother’s time, maybe hers too since they had been classmates in their time, ancient Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday times.

Damn, a scratchy, scribbly note, a note written on serious stationary and with a real fountain pen to show his sincerity, and not the usual half- lined sheet, pulled out a three-ring subject notebook, and passed to Lucy during their common study class. Notes the passing of which sometimes got them severe looks from the study monitor, Miss Green, and giggles and taunts, usually some lewd or luscious remarks fraught with sexual innuendo about “doing the do” or what exactly was she doing with her head on his lap from their fellow students, boys and girls alike, about fogged-up cars and trash talk like that who also tried to intercept those precious notes without success. Yah, “the note heard round the world” that would expose him to all kinds of ridicule, endless be-bop jive patter, and snide questions about his manhood from guys, and probably girls too, around the school, hell, all around North Adamsville and maybe already had if Lucy decided to cut his heart out and tell one and all what a square he, Luke Jackson, was when all was said and done.

He could hear it now, and could hear the words ringing in his ears. What a soft guy Luke Jackson really was, a guy known to be a love ‘em and leave ‘em guy, what did he call it, oh yeah, “doing the Eddie,” moving on with no forwarding address and no regrets like his Eddie hero of the Teen Queens’ Eddie, My Love, before Lucy. A guy, a used to be sharp guy who shrugged off more things that you could shake a stick at, not just girls, but guys from other corners who he had, or they had, beefs about, some crazed teacher who thought he had promise yakking about him applying himself, some cop trying to meet his mother quota giving him a ration of crap about his speed, stuff like that, and came back swinging. But who now was getting all misty-eyed and cry-baby just because some dame, a good looking dame in all the right places, yes, a dame all the guys were ready to pursue once he was out of the picture, but still a dame, a young high school dame, when all was said and done, got under his skin, like they were married or something.

Hell, he thought, thought now too late, to himself, that he would have been better off, much better off, if he had just left it at calling Lucy on the telephone every few hours and either hanging up before she answered or when she did answer freezing up. She knew who it was after a while, or should have, but at least he would not have left a paper trail and be the upcoming subject of locker room and lavatory snickers. But that was costing money, serious add up money, since he had had to use a public pay telephone up the street from his house because the telephone service had been turned off for non-payment as his family could not afford to pay the bill the past few months.

Besides it had been getting kind of creepy going in and out of the house at all hours, midnight by the telephone waiting like some lonely, awkward girl, walking up the street like a zombie, half mope, half dope, then hesitating before deciding to make the call, making it, or not, and then scurrying like a rat from the public glare of the booth. Christ, one time the cops looked at him funny, real funny, when he was calling at about midnight. And he had to admit that he might have called the police station a few times too after he looked at himself in the mirror upon returning home.

That note, sent the day before and probably in Lucy’s plotting hands right now, was a minute, a quick minute, brain-storm that he had thought up when he was just plain miserable, just plain midnight telephone tired too, and anyone could make such a rash decision under love’s duress, teenage love’s duress. Right then though all he could think of was all the notes, the cutesy, lined-sheet paper school-boyish notes, that he had sent her when love was in full blossom, full blossom before Jamie Lee Johnson came on the scene, came on the scene with his big old ’59 Chevy Impala, his money in his pocket, and his line of patter and stole his “Sweet Pea” Lucy away from her “Sugar Plum” Luke. And that picture sent him back to thoughts of when he and Lucy first met, when their eyes first met.

“Let’s see,” Luke said to himself it was probably at Chrissie McNamara’s sweet sixteen birthday party that he first laid eyes on her. Hell, who was he kidding, he knew that it was exactly at 8:32 PM on the night of April 25, 1962 that he first laid eyes on her, big almost star-struck staring eyes. Or maybe it was a few seconds before because, to break the ice, he had gone up to her and asked her for the time, asked in his then bolder manner if she had time for him, asked her to dance, she said yes, and that was that. Oh, yah, there was more to it than that but both of them knew at that moment, knew somewhere deep down in their teenage hearts, they were going to be an “item,” for a while. And they were indeed sweet pea and sugar plum, for a while. Although Luke would get mad sometimes, fighting mad, fighting break-up mad, when Lucy teased, no, more than teased, him about his not having a car so that they could go “parking” by themselves and not always be on some clowny double-date down at the seashore on Saturday night (or any night in the summer). And Luke would reply that he was saving money for college, and besides sitting on the seawall (and sometimes in love’s heat down beneath its height), their usual habit, was okay, wasn’t it.

That simmer, that somehow unarticulated simmer, went on for a while, a long while. But Luke had noticed a few months back, or rather Lucy had made her Sugar Plum notice, that now that they were high school seniors sitting on the seawall was nothing but nowhere kids’ stuff and why did he want to go to college anyway, and wasn’t going to work down at the shipyard where he could earn some real dough and get a car a better idea. The real clincher though, the one that telegraphed to him that the heavens were frowning on him, was the night she, no bones, stated that she had no plans for college and was going right to work after graduation, and maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t be able to wait for him, wait for him to finish college and maybe he would find some slow-slung college girl who might “curl his toes” like she had been doing, Lucy chancing that she might get in the family way and have to go off to some faked Midwestern aunt and then where would she have been. Even if that had not happened then what about her needs, her need to get out from under her own “from hunger” family household complete with drunken slob father, her need to have a few things before it was too late to appreciate such things. So most recent date nights had been spent not in her “curling his toes” but in arguing the finer point of their collective future. And after a succession of such nights that’s where things started to really break down between them.

Enter one Jamie Lee Johnson, a friend of Lucy’s older brother Kenny, already graduated from North Adamsville two years before and working, working steady with advancement possibilities according to the talk, as a junior welder down at the shipyard making good dough. Making drive-in movies and even drive-in restaurants good time dough, and driving that souped-up, retro-fitted, dual-carbed, ’59 Chevy, jet black and hung to the gills with chrome to make a girl breathless. And before Luke knew it Lucy’s mother was answering the phone calls for Lucy from Luke saying that she wasn’t in, wasn’t expected in, and that she, Lucy’s mother, would tell Lucy that he had called. The runaround, the classic runaround since boy meets girl time began, except not always done over the telephone. And while Lucy never said word one about breaking it off between them, not even a “so long, we had fun,” Luke, although not smart enough to not write that sappy note, knew she was gone, and gone for good. But see she had gotten under his skin, way under, and well, and that was that.

Just as Luke was thinking about that last thought, that heart-tearing thought, he decided, wait a minute, maybe she didn’t get the note, maybe he had forgotten to put a stamp on it and as a result of those maybes he fished around his pocket to see if he had some coins, some telephone coins, and started out of the house prison to make that late night pilgrimage creep, that midnight waiting by the telephone creep. Walking up the street, walking up the now familiar night street-lighted against the deathless shadows Hancock Street he noticed a jet black ’59 Impala coming his way, coming his way with Jamie Lee and Lucy sitting so close together that they could not be pried apart with a crowbar. Luke thought about that scene for a minute, steeled himself with new-found resolve against the love hurts like in the old love 'em and leave ‘em days, threw the coins on the ground without anger but rather with relief, turned back to his house wondering, seriously wondering like the fate of the world depended on it, what pet names they, Jimmy and Lucy, had for each other.

************

13

Billie’ s  Truth- With Bo Diddley’s Bo Diddley In Mind

Bo Diddley bought his babe a diamond ring
If that diamond ring don't shine
He gonna take it to a private eye
If that private eye can't see
He'd better not take the ring from me

Bo Diddley caught a nanny goat
To make his pretty baby a Sunday coat
Bo Diddley caught a bear cat
To make his pretty baby a Sunday hat

Mojo come to my house, ya black cat bone
Take my baby away from home
Ugly ole Mojo, where ya been?
Up your house and gone again
Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley have you heard?
My pretty baby said she was a bird
Add song meaningNot sure what to write?ite about what the highlighted lyrics

Songwriters
ELLAS MCDANIEL

Published by
Lyrics © BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC

“Well,” Jeff Sterling said to himself, “there is no need to pussy foot around on this one.” He felt no need to step back to avoid any hurt feelings or regrets about the past. Not to the audience that had followed him memory trips back to the youth of the early baby-boomers in many of the half-read nostalgia drift magazines that he, now comfortably retired, had by-line in and read by among others those who thought his impressions were worth taking note of. Not earth-shattering taking note, his subject being various cultural quirks that he had taken pains to object over a lifetime and put to pen but of interest and let’s leave it at that. Jeff believed just that cultural quirk inspiration moment that there was only one big question before the house. The question before the house simply put-Who put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll?

What had brought this matter up, brought it to mind just then was that Jeff had gone up into his attic a few weeks before with the purpose of trying to thin his load of back copies of magazines and alternative newspapers in which his by-line appeared.  Looking through the August 1997 issue of the East Bay Other he noticed a review that he did of a Chess Records’ double CD, where Bo Diddley unabashedly staked his claim featured in a song by the same name, except, except it started out with the answer already answered in the affirmative. Yes, Bo Diddley had put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll. That was the central theme of Jeff’s review, the neglected role that Bo played in the creation of the rock beat. That review inspired Jeff to check out a Netflix DVD which highlighted Bo’s performance as part of the 30th anniversary celebration to see if his earlier opinion had held up. Had Bo’s part been rightly appreciated as part of the tidal wave of rock that swept through the post-World War II teenage population in 1955. Had Bo to use today’s terminology some “street cred” for that proposition.

One night a few week later Jeff was at Simmy’s Grille having a couple of drinks with his old high school friend and rock aficionado Sam Lowell and he mentioned to Sam the article his reasoning for his position. Sam had taken some notes (notes between drinks so reader beware) and began to think through his own feelings about Jeff’s proposition since in the “who invented rock” ongoing saga Sam had put his money on Ike Turner in his various incantations in the early 1950s, especially the riffs on Rocket 88. Some time later he put the notes into written form for Jeff to read. The following is what Sam was thinking:      

“Certainly there is no question that “black music,” “race record music,” if you like, in the early 1950s at least, previously confined to mainly black audiences down on the southern farms and small segregated towns and in the northern urban ghettos along with a ragtag coterie of “hip” whites in places like the Village, North Beach out in Frisco town, hell, even in a couple of places in staid old Harvard Square is central to the mix that became classic 1950s rock ‘n’ roll. That is not to deny the other important thread commonly called rockabilly (although if you had scratched a rockabilly artist and asked him or her for a list of influences black gospel and rhythm and blues would be right at the top of their list, including Elvis’). But here let’s just go with the black influences. No question my old first choice Ike Turner’s Rocket 88, Joe Turner’s Shake , Rattle and Roll and, I would add, Elmore James’ Look Yonder Wall are nothing but examples of R&B starting to break to a faster, more nuanced rock beat.

“Enter one Bo Diddley. Not only does he have the old country blues songbook down, and the post- World War II urbanization and electrification of those blues down, but he reaches back to the oldest traditions of black music, back before the American slavery plantations days, back to the Carib influences and even further back to earth mother African shores. In short, that “jungle music,” that “devil’s music” that every white mother and father (and not a few black ones as well), north and south was worried, no, frantically worried, would carry away their kids. Feared to have in their households and not a few banned anything to the left of the Inkspots and their eternal talking the lines of one verse of their song whatever the song. Feared mogrulization, feared for the neighborhood and feared for their daughters’ hidden lusts and sons’ lustful dreams. Feared that transistor radio they were forced to buy worrying what hellish music that they could not hear was being played up in Timmy or Dotty bedroom.     Well, we were washed away by the beat and we have proven none the worst for it.

Here is a little story from back in the 1950s days though that places old Bo’s claim in perspective and addresses the impact (and parental horror) that Bo and rock had on teenage (and late pre-teenage) kids, even in all white “projects” kids like me and my boys, my corner boys (although this housing project was so isolated from the rest of the town that it had no stores, pizza parlors, drugstores, even variety stores, for righteous corner boys to place their feet up on the walls in front of those establishments and so we consoled ourselves with the corner of the elementary school that served the neighborhood). In years like 1955, ’56, ’57 every self-respecting teenage boy (or almost teenage boy), under the influence of television “magic,” tried, one way or another, to imitate Elvis. From dress, to sideburns, to swiveling hips, to sneer (okay I will not dispute that the expression might have been a snarl not a sneer like a girlfriend, a short-lived girlfriend of the time, although not short-lived over this issue, claimed. Worse claimed that his snarly expression made Elvis sexier. Made usually rational young women, and some not so young, throw their sweaty undies up on his stage. Sneer or snarl that part she had right, the sexy part-for girls). Hell, I even bought a doo-wop comb to wear my hair like his. I should qualify this whole statement about Elvis’ effect a little and say every self-respecting boy who was aware of girls. And, additionally, aware that if you wanted to get any place with them, any place at all, you had better be something like the second coming of Elvis.

Enter now, one eleven year old William James Bradley, “Billie,” my bosom buddy in old elementary school days. (By the way that Billie is not some misspelling or some homage to Billie Holiday whom he would have been clueless about then but to distinguish him from father Billy and more personally because he did not want a name whose spelling reminded him of a damn billy-goat.) Billie was wild for girls way before I acknowledged their existence, or at least their charms. He was always invited, invited early in the inviting time, to all kinds of boy-girl parties, okay “petting parties” since this was a while back and no parents are around even by girls who had gotten their shape. Me, well, I got a few invites, maybe backup invites when about sixteen other guys said no, to parties by sticks (girls who for some reason had not gotten their shapes yet). 

Billie decided, and rightly so I think, to try a different tack. Tried to be a pioneer by not following the crowd (a trait that would not stand him in good stead later, late teenage later, when he decided the deck was stacked against him and took up robberies and assorted other felonies but that was long after we had parted company, had parted neighborhoods and I had decided, although it was a close thing, that crime was not my forte). Instead of forming the end of the line in the Elvis imitation department he decided to imitate Bo Diddley. At this time we were all playing the song Bo Diddley and, I think, Who Do You Love? like crazy. Elvis bopped, no question. But Bo’s beat spoke to something more primordial, something connected, unconsciously to our way back ancestry. Something mysterious, something with raw physicality although this is mostly later rationalizations which neither Billie nor I would have been capable of articulating back then. Even an old clumsy white boy like me could sway to the beat, could fake enough moves to get by, get by where it counted on the dance floor.

Of course like I said that last bit was nothing but a now time explanation for what drove us to the music. Then we didn’t know the roots of rock, or probably didn’t care (although Billie’s small room was filled with a fair number of fan magazines and the like so he probably like in lots of things then could have given a pretty adult read on what was happening if he had been asked), except our parents didn’t like it, and were sometimes willing to put the stop to our listening. Praise be for transistor radios (younger readers look that up on Wikipedia) to get around their madness.

But see, Billie also, at that time, did not know what Bo looked like so he assumed that he was a sort of Buddy Holly look alike, complete with glasses and that single curled hair strand. Billie, naturally, like I say, was nothing but a top-dog dancer, and wired into girl-dom like crazy. And they were starting to like him too. One night he showed up at a local church catholic, chaste, virginal priest-chaperoned dance with this faux Buddy Holly look. Some older guy meaning maybe sixteen or seventeen, wise to the rock scene well beyond our experiences, asked Billy what he was trying to do. Billie said, innocently, that he was something like the seventh son of the seventh son of Bo Diddley. This older guy laughed, laughed a big laugh and drew everyone’s attention to himself and Billie. Then he yelled out, yelled out for all the girls to hear “Billie boy here wants to be Bo Diddley, he wants to be nothing but a jungle bunny music N----r boy”. All went quiet. Billie ran out, and I ran after, out the back door. I couldn’t find him that night.

See, Billie and I were clueless about Bo’s race. We just thought it was all rock (read: white music) then and didn’t know much about the black part of it, or the south part, or the segregated part either. We did know though what the n----r part meant in our all-white housing project and here was the kicker. Next day Billie strutted into school looking like the seventh son of the seventh son of Elvis. But as he got himself propped up against that endless train to the end of that line I could see, and can see very clearly even now, that the steam has gone out of him. So when somebody asks you who put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll know that old Bo’s claim was right on track, and he had to clear some very high racial and social hurdles to make that claim. Just ask Billie.”

After Jeff had read Sam’s sketch he said that Sam had done justice to Billie and Sam agreed that he had but Jeff felt a little queasy about Bo, about heroic Bo who seemed to play sideman to Billie there. In the interest of completion Jeff persuaded Sam to include an old time quick review of his of one of Bo’s compilations to make up for any omissions: 

“The last time I had occasion to mention the late Bo Diddley in this space [Jeff’s by-line for the East Bay Eye] was in connection with a series of interviews and performances along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard and others in Keith Richards' Chuck Berry tribute film "Hail, Hail Rock and Roll." The talk centered, rightly, on the dismal fate of many black recording artists who developed what would become Rock 'n' Roll when the white artists like Elvis took it over and reaped the benefits of a mass audience. Well, those interviews occurred a while ago, back in the 1980's, but Bo's sense of not having been properly recognized I believe remained until his death. Yet, when one thinks of the sounds created by the founders of Rock 'n' Roll can anyone deny that Bo's primal beat was not central to that explosion? I think not.

Here, in one album we have, if not all of Bo's creative work then a good part of it, at least a good place to start. Of course, the classic song Bo Diddley and its offshoots and variations are here. However, the one Diddley song that will probably outlive them all is Who Do You Love? Although not a theme song it nevertheless expresses the raw energy of rhythm and blues/ rock/ carib sound like no other. Hell, George Thoroughgood was able to make a whole career on the basis of having covered that song and other of Bo's work (and to be fair, covering the work of Elmore James and Hound Dog Taylor as well[CL1] ).

And that is a good point to finish on. The really great rockers, and Bo is in that company, unlike the one-shot johnnies get covered because their work expresses something that someone else later wishes to high heaven that they had created. (George has been quoted directly on that “wishing he had created” point.) Finally, I give the same warning here as others have given in their comments about the sameness of this Chess 50th Anniversary CD from 1997 and a current one entitled The Definitive Bo Diddley Collection issued in 2007. Get one or the other and save those pennies to get more of Bo's work. "I said- I'm just 22 and I don't mind dying. Who do you love?" Thanks for that line Bo. Kudos.]

***********

 14

Frankie’s Song -With Elvis' Jailhouse Rock In Mind    

 Jailhouse Rock

Translation in progress. Please wait...

The warden threw a party in the county jail
The prison band was there and they began to wail
The band was jumpin' and the joint began to swing
You should've heard them knocked-out jailbirds sing
Let's rock; everybody, let's rock
Everybody in the whole cell block
Was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock

Spider Murphy played the tenor saxophone
Little Joe was blowin' on the slide trombone
The drummer boy from Illinois went crash, boom, bang
The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang

Let's rock; everybody, let's rock
Everybody in the whole cell block
Was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock

Number forty-seven said to number three
"You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see
I sure would be delighted with your company
Come on and do the Jailhouse Rock with me"

Let's rock; everybody, let's rock
Everybody in the whole cell block
Was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock

Sad sack was sittin' on a block of stone
Way over in the corner weepin' all alone
The warden said, "Hey, buddy, don't you be no square
If you can't find a partner, use a wooden chair"

Let's rock; everybody, let's rock
Everybody in the whole cell block
Was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock

Shifty Henry said to Bugs, "For Heaven's sake
No one's lookin'; now's our chance to make a break"
Bugsy turned to Shifty and he said, "Nix, nix
I want to stick around a while and get my kicks"

Let's rock; everybody, let's rock
Everybody in the whole cell block
Was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock

Dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock
Dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock
Dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock
Dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock
Dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock

Songwriters: LEIBER, JERRY / STOLLER, MIKE

Jailhouse Rock lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

A while back when I was doing a series of scenes, scenes from the hitchhike road in search of the great American West night in the late 1960s, later than the time of Frankie’s, Frankie Riley’s early 1960s old working- class neighborhood kingly time as our corner boy leader in front of Jack Slack’s bowling alleys that I want to tell you about now, I noted that there had been about a thousand truck-stop diner stories left over from those old hitchhike road days. On reflection though, I realized that there really had been about three diner stories with many variations. Not so with Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, stories. I have got a thousand of them, or so it seems, all different. Hey, you already, if you have been attentive, know a few Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, stories (okay, I will stop, or try to, stop using that full designation and just call him plain, old, ordinary, vanilla Frankie just like everybody else).

Yeah you already know the Frankie story (see I told you I could do it) about how he lazily spent a hot late August 1960 summer before entering high school day working his way up the streets of the old neighborhood to get some potato salad (and other stuff too) for his family’s Labor Day picnic. And he got a cameo appearance in the tear-jerk, heart-rendering saga of my first day of high school in that same year where I, vicariously, attempted to overthrow his lordship with the nubiles (girls, for those not from the old neighborhood, although there were plenty of other terms of art to designate the fair sex then, most of them getting their start in local teenage social usage from Frankie’s mouth). That effort, that attempt at coping his “style,” like many things associated with one-of-a-kind Frankie, as it turned out, proved unsuccessful.

More recently I took you in a roundabout way to a Frankie story in a review of a 1985 Roy Orbison concert documentary, Black and White Nights. That story centered around my grinding my teeth whenever I heard Roy’s Running Scared because one of Frankie’s twists (see nubiles above) played the song endlessly to taint the love smitten but extremely jealous Frankie on the old jukebox at the pizza parlor, old Salducci's Pizza Shop, that we used to hang around once in a while during our high school days. It’s that story, that drugstore soda fountain story, that brought forth a bunch of memories about those pizza parlor days and how Frankie, for most of his high school career, was king of the hill at that locale. And king, king arbiter, of the social doings of those around him as well.

And who was Frankie? Frankie of a thousand stories, Frankie of a thousand treacheries, Frankie of a thousand kindnesses, and, oh yeah, Frankie, my bosom friend in high school. Well let me just steal some sentences from that old August summer walk story and that first day of school saga because really Frankie and I went back to perilous middle school days (a.k.a. junior high days for old-timers) when he saved my bacon more than one time, especially from making a fatal mistake with the frails (see nubiles and twists above). He was, maybe, just a prince then working his way up to kingship. But even he, as he endlessly told me that summer before high school, August humidity doldrums or not, was along with the sweat on his brow from the heat a little bit anxious about being “little fish in a big pond” freshmen come that 1960 September.

Especially, a pseudo-beatnik “little fish”. See, he had cultivated a certain, well, let’s call it "style" over there at the middle school. That “style” involved a total disdain for everything, everything except trying to impress girls with his long-panted, flannel-shirted, work boot-shod, thick book-carrying knowledge of every arcane fact known to humankind. Like that really was the way to impress teenage girls, then or now. Well, as it turned out, yes it was. Frankie right. In any case he was worried, worried sick at times, that in such a big school his “style” needed upgrading. Let’s not even get into that story, the Frankie part of it now, or maybe, ever. We survived high school, okay.

But see, that is why, the Frankie why, the why of my push for the throne, the kingship throne, when I entered high school and that old Frankie was grooming himself for like it was his by divine right. When the deal went down and I knew I was going to the “bigs” (high school) I spent that summer, reading, big time booked-devoured reading. Hey, I'll say I did, The Communist Manifesto, that one just because old Willie Westhaven over at the middle school (junior high, okay) called me a Bolshevik when I answered one of his foolish math questions in a surly manner. I told you before that was my pose, my Frankie-engineered pose. I just wanted to see what he, old Willie, was talking about when he used that word. How about Democracy in America (by a French guy), The Age of Jackson (by a Harvard professor who knew idol Jack Kennedy, personally, and was crazy for old-time guys like Jackson), and Catcher In The Rye (Holden was me, me to a tee). Okay, okay I won’t keep going on but that was just the reading on the hot days when I didn’t want to go out. There was more.

Here's what was behind the why. I intended, and I swear I intended to even on the first nothing doing day of that new school year in that new school in that new decade (1960) to beat old Frankie, old book-toting, mad monk, girl-chasing Frankie, who knew every arcane fact that mankind had produced and had told it to every girl who would listen for two minutes (maybe less) in that eternal struggle, the boy meets girl struggle, at his own game. Yes, Frankie, my buddy of buddies, prince among men (well, boys, anyhow) who kindly navigated me through the tough, murderous parts of junior high, mercifully concluded, finished and done with, praise be, and didn’t think twice about it. He, you see, despite, everything I said a minute ago he was “in.”; that arcane knowledge stuff worked with the “ins” who counted, worked, at least a little, and I got dragged in his wake. I always got dragged in his wake, including as lord chamberlain in his pizza parlor kingdom. What I didn’t know then, wet behind the ears about what was what in life's power struggles, was if you were going to overthrow the king you’d better do it all the way.  But, see if I had done that, if I had overthrown him, I wouldn’t have had any Frankie stories to tell you, or help with the frills in the treacherous world of high school social life (see nubiles, frails and twists above. Why don’t we just leave it like this. If you see the name Frankie and a slangy word when you think I am talking about girls that's girls. Okay?)

As I told you in that Roy Orbison review, when Roy was big, big in our beat down around the edges, some days it seemed beat six ways to Sunday working-class neighborhood in the early 1960s, we all used to hang around the town pizza parlor, or one of them anyway, that was also conveniently near our high school as well. Maybe this place was not the best one to sit down and have a family-sized pizza with salad and all the fixings in, complete with family, or if you were fussy about décor but the best tasting pizza, especially if you let it cool for a while and no eat it when it was piping hot right out of the oven.

Moreover, this was the one place where the teen-friendly owner, a big old balding Italian guy, Tonio Salducci, at least he said he was Italian and there were plenty of Italians in our town in those days so I believed him but he really looked Greek or Armenian to me, let us stay in the booths if it wasn’t busy, and we behaved like, well, like respectable teenagers. And this guy, this old Italian guy, blessed Leonardo-like master Tonio, could make us all laugh, even me, when he started to prepare a new pizza and he flour-powdered and rolled the dough out and flipped that sucker in the air about twelve times and about fifteen different ways to stretch it out. Sometimes people would just stand outside in front of the doubled-framed big picture window and watch his handiwork in utter fascination.

Jesus, Tonio could flip that thing. One time, and you know this is true because you probably have your own pizza dough on the ceiling stories, he flipped the sucker so high it stuck to the ceiling, right near the fan on the ceiling, and it might still be there for all I know (the place still is, although not him). But this is how he was cool; he just started up another without making a fuss. Let me tell you about him, Tonio, sometime but right now our business to get on with Frankie, alright.

So there was nothing unusual, and I don’t pretend there is, in just hanging out having a slice of pizza (no onions, please, in case I get might lucky tonight and that certain she comes in, the one that I have been eyeing in school all week until my eyes have become sore, that thin, long blondish-haired girl wearing those cashmere sweaters showing just the right shape,  please, please, James Brown, please come in that door), some soft drink (which we called tonic in New England in those days but which you call, uh, soda), usually a locally bottled root beer, and, incessantly dropping nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukebox.

 (And that "incessantly" allowed us to stay since we were paying customers with all the rights and dignities that status entailed, unless, of course, they needed our seats). But here is where it all comes together, Frankie and Tonio the pizza guy, from day one, got along like crazy. Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, map of Ireland, red-headed, fair-skinned, blue-eyed Frankie got along like crazy with Italian guy Tonio. That was remarkable in itself because, truth be told, there was more than one Irish/ Italian ethnic, let me be nice, “dispute” in those days. Usually over “turf”, like kids now, or some other foolish one minute thing or another.

Moreover, and Frankie didn’t tell me this for a while, Frankie, my bosom buddy Frankie, like he was sworn to some Omerta oath, didn’t tell me that Tonio was “connected.” For those who have been in outer space, or led quiet lives, or don’t hang with the hoi polloi that means with the syndicate, the hard guys, the Mafia. If you don’t get it now go down and get the Godfather trilogy and learn a couple of things, anyway. This "connected" stemmed, innocently enough, from the jukebox concession which the hard guys controlled and was a lifeblood of Tonio's teenage-draped business, and not so innocently, from his role as master numbers man (pre-state lottery days, okay) and "bookie" (nobody should have to be told what that is, but just in case, he took bets on horses, dogs, whatever, from the guys around town, including, big time, Frankie's father, who went over the edge betting like some guys fathers' took to drink).

And what this “connected” also meant, this Frankie Tonio-connected meant, was that no Italian guys, no young black engineer-booted, no white rolled-up tee-shirted, no blue denim- dungareed, no wide black-belted, no switchblade-wielding, no-hot-breathed, garlicky young Italian studs were going to mess with one Francis Xavier Riley, his babes (you know what that means, right?), or his associates (that’s mainly me). Or else.

Now, naturally, connected to "the connected" or not, not every young tough in any working class town, not having studied, and studied hard, the sociology of the town, is going to know that some young Irish punk, one kind of "beatnik' Irish punk with all that arcane knowledge in order to chase those skirts and a true vocation for the blarney is going to know that said pizza parlor owner and its “king”, king hell king, are tight. Especially at night, a weekend night, when the booze has flowed freely and that hard-bitten childhood abuse that turned those Italian guys (and Irish guys too) into toughs hits the fore. But they learn, and learn fast.

Okay, you don’t believe me. One night, one Saturday night, one Tonio-working Saturday night (he didn’t always work at night, not Saturday night anyway, because he had a honey, a very good-looking honey too, dark hair, dark laughing eyes, dark secrets she wouldn’t mind sharing as well it looked like to me but I might have been wrong on that) two young toughs came in, Italian toughs from the look of them. This town then , by the way, if you haven’t been made aware of it before is strictly white, mainly Irish and Italian, so any dark guys, are Italian period, not black, Hispanic, Indian, Asian or anything else. Hell, I don’t think those groups even passed through; at least I don’t remember seeing any, except an Arab, once.

So Frankie, your humble observer (although I prefer the more intimate umbrella term "associate" under these circumstances) and one of his squeezes (not his main squeeze, Joanne) were sitting at the king’s table (blue vinyl-seated, white Formica table-topped, paper place-setting, condiment-laden center booth of five, front of double glass window, best jukebox and sound position, no question) splitting a Saturday night whole pizza with all the fixings (it was getting late, about ten o’clock, and I have given up on that certain long blondish-haired she who said she might meet me so onions anchovies, garlic for all I know don’t matter right now) when these two ruffians come forth and petition (ya, right) for our table. Our filled with pizza, drinks, condiments, odds and ends papery, and the king, his consort (of the evening, I swear I forget which one) and his lord chamberlain.

Since there were at least two other prime front window seats available Frankie denied the petition out of hand. Now in a righteous world this should have been the end of it. But what these hard guys, these guys who looked like they might have had shivs (ya, knives, shape knives, for the squeamish out there) and only see two geeky "beatnik" guys and some unremarkable signora do was to start to get loud and menacing (nice word, huh?) toward the king and his court. Menacing enough that Tonio, old pizza dough-to-the-ceiling throwing Tonio, took umbrage (another nice word, right?) and came over to the table very calmly. He called the two gentlemen aside, and talking low and almost into their ears, said some things that we could not hear. All we knew was that about a minute later these two behemoths, these two future candidates for jailbird-dom, were walking, I want to say walking gingerly, but anyway quickly, out the door into the hard face of Saturday night.

We thereafter proceeded to finish our kingly meal, safe in the knowledge that Frankie was indeed king of the pizza parlor night. And also that we knew, now knew in our hearts because Frankie and I talked about it later, that behind every king there was an unseen power. Christ, and I wanted to overthrow Frankie. I must have been crazy like a loon.

15

Billie’s Break-Out Adventure-With Elvis’ Are You Lonesome Tonight In Mind   

Are you lonesome tonight,
Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day
When I kissed you and called you sweetheart?
Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?

I wonder if you're lonesome tonight
You know someone said that the world's a stage
And each must play a part.
Fate had me playing in love you as my sweet heart.
Act one was when we met, I loved you at first glance
You read your line so cleverly and never missed a cue
Then came act two, you seemed to change and you acted strange
And why I'll never know.
Honey, you lied when you said you loved me
And I had no cause to doubt you.
But I'd rather go on hearing your lies
Than go on living without you.
Now the stage is bare and I'm standing there
With emptiness all around
And if you won't come back to me
Then make them bring the curtain down.

Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?

“I hate Elvis, I love Elvis,” Sam Lowell could still hear fifty years later the echo of his old from nowhere down and out low-rent public assistance  “the projects” corner boy, William James Bradley, also known as Billie. Not Billy like some billy-goat, like some damn animal, as he declaimed to all who would listen, mainly Sam toward the end before Sam had to move away from the neighborhood or get caught up in Billie’s then new found interest in small handle crime when the better angel of his nature fled in horror at his fresh-worn path after the umpteenth failure to get what he thought was his due legally. Billie from the hills, born out in some mad night, born out of some untamed passion in New Hampshire to newly-wed parents just before the shot-gun, some father’s shot-gun, called out in the wilds of Nashua up in live free country New Hampshire. Billie Bradley a mad demon of a kid and Sam’s best friend down in the Adamsville South Elementary school located smack in the middle of that from-nowhere-down-and-out-low-rent-the-projects of ill-fated memory. Sam and Billie grew apart after a while, after those Billie hurts grew too huge to be contained this side of the law, and we will learn why in a minute, but for a long time, a long kid time long, Billie, Billie of a hundred dreams, Billie of fifty (at least) screw-ups made Sam laugh and made his day when things were tough, like they almost always were at his beat down broke-down family house.

Sam thought and laughed thinking that, you know, fifty some years later Billie was right. We hated Elvis, we young boys, we what do they call them now, oh yes, those tween boys, those times before we know what was what in our new feelings, our funny feelings that no one, well, no parent would explain to us, knew what was what about those stick girls turning to shapes and adding fuel to the fire of  our funny feelings, oh what a time of lamenting, especially at that time when all the girls, the young girls got weak-kneed over Elvis  and he made the older girls (and women, some mothers even) sweat and left no room for ordinary mortal boys, “the projects boys” most of all, on their “dream” card. And most especially, hard as we tried, for brown-haired or tow-headed, blue-eyed ten, eleven and twelve year old boys who didn’t know how to dance. Dance like some Satan’s disciple as Elvis did in Jailhouse Rock every move calculated to make some furious female night sweats dreams.

Or when we had to give up in despair after failing to produce a facsimile of that Elvis sneer that sneer that only got them, the girls, more excited as they dreamed about taking that sneer off his face and making him, well, happy. We both, Billie and me, got pissed off at my brother, my older brother, Prescott, who already had half a stake in some desperate outlaw schemes and would later crumble under the weight of too many jail terms, because, he looked very much like Elvis and although he had no manners, and no time for girls, they were all following him around like he was the second coming. I don’t think he cared and he would certainly not listen to me about what I could do to get the girls. When Billie caught up with him later they were not worried about girls, or not principally about girls, but about small-bore armed robberies of penny-ante gas stations for six dollars and change. Christ there really is no justice in this wicked old world, either way.

And we loved Elvis too for giving us, us young impressionable boys at least as far as we knew then, our own music, our own "jump' and our own jail-break from the tired old stuff we heard on the radio and television that did not ‘”speak” to us. The stuff that our parents dreamed by if they dreamed, or had dreamed by when their worlds were fresh and young back before we were born, back in that endless Great Depression night and World War II slugfest that they were “protecting” us against such repetitions, and not succeeding. If they had had time for dreams what with trying to make ends meet and avoiding bill-collectors, dunners, and repo men by the score each and every day.  We loved Elvis for the songs that he left behind. Not the goofy Tin Pan Alley or something  like that inspired “happy” music that went along with his mostly maligned, and rightly so, films but the stuff from the Sun Records days, the stuff from when he was “from hunger”. That music, as we also “from hunger,” was like a siren call to break-out and then we caught his act on television, maybe the Ed Sullivan Show or something like that, and that was that. I probably walk “funny,” knees and hips out of whack, today from trying way back then to pour a third-rate imitation of his moves into my body to impress the girls.

But enough of Elvis’ place in the pre-teen and teen rock pantheon this is after all about Billie, and Elvis’ twisted spell on the poor boy. Now you know about Billie dreams, about his outlandish dreams to break-out of the projects by parlaying his good looks (and they were even then) and his musical abilities (good but the world was filled with Billies from hunger and on reflection he did not have that crooner’s voice that would make the girls weep and get wet) or you should, from another story, a story about Bo Diddley and how Billie wanted to, as a change of pace, break from the Elvis rut to create his own “style.” That was to emulate old Bo and his Afro-Carib beat. What Billie did not know, could not know since he had no television in the house (nor did my family so we always went to neighbors who did have one or watched in front of Raymond’s Department Store with their inviting televisions on in the display windows begging us to purchase them) and only knew rock and roll from his transistor radio was that the guy, that old Bo was black. Well, in hard, hard post-World War II Northern white Adamsville "the projects" filled to the brim with racial animosity poor unknowing Billie got blasted away one night at a talent show by one of the older, more knowing boys who taunted him mercilessly about why he wanted to emulate a n----r for his troubles.

That sent Billie, Billie from the hills, back to white bread Elvis pronto. See, Billie was desperate to impress the girls way before I was aware of them, or their charms. Half, on some days, three-quarters of our conversations (I won’t say monologues because I did get a word in edgewise every once in a while when Billie got on one of his rants) revolved around doing this or that, something legal, something not, to impress the girls. And that is where the “hate Elvis” part mentioned above comes in. Billie believed, and he may still believe it today wherever he is, that if only he could approximate Elvis’ looks, look, stance, and substance that all the girls would be flocking to him. And by flocking would create a buzz that would be heard around the world. Nice dream, Billie, nice my brother.  

Needless to say, such an endeavor required, requires money, dough, kale, cash, moola whatever you want to call it. And what twelve-year old project boys didn’t have, and didn’t have in abundance was any of that do-re-mi (that’s the age time of this story, about late 1957, early 1958) And no way to get it from missing parents, messed up parents, or just flat out poor parents. Billie’s and mine were the latter, poor as church mice. No, that‘s not right because church mice would not do (in the way that I am using it, and as we used it back then to signify the respectable poor who “touted” their Catholic pious poorness as a badge of honor in this weaseling wicked old world), would not think about, would not even breathe the same air of what we were about to embark on. A life of crime, kid stuff crime but I'll leave that to the reader’s judgment.

See, on one of Billie’s rants he got the idea in his head, and, maybe, it got planted there by something that he had read about Elvis (Christ, he read more about that guy that he did about anybody else once he became an acolyte), that if he had a bunch of rings on all his fingers the girls would give him a tumble. (A tumble in those days being a hard kiss on the lips for about twelve seconds or “copping” a little feel, and if I have to explain that last in more detail you had better just move on). But see, also Billie’s idea was that if he has all those rings, especially for a projects boy then it would make his story that he had set to tell easier. And the story was none other than that he had written to Elvis (possible) and spoke to him man to man about his situation (improbable) and Elvis, Elvis the king, Elvis from “nowhere Mississippi, some place like Tupelo, like we were from the nowhere Adamsville projects, Elvis bleeding heart, had sent him the rings to give him a start in life (outrageously impossible). Christ, I don’t believe old Billie came up with that story even now when I am a million years world-weary.

But first you needed the rings and as the late honorable bank robber, Willie Sutton, said about robbing banks-that’s where the money is-old Billie, blessed, beatified Billie, figured out, and figured out all by himself, that if you want to be a ring-stealer then you better go to the jewelry store because that is where the rings were. The reader, and rightly so, now might ask where was his best buddy during this time and why was that best buddy not offering wise counsel about the pitfalls of crime and the virtues of honesty and incorruptibility. Well, when Billie went off on his rant you just waited to see what played out but the real reason was, hell, maybe I could get a ring for my ring-less fingers and be on my way to impress the girls too. I think they call it in the law books, or some zealous prosecuting attorney could call it, aiding and abetting.

But enough of that superficial moralizing. Let’s get to the jewelry store, the best one in the downtown of working-class Adamsville in the time before the ubiquitous malls. We walked a couple of miles to get there on the one road out of the peninsula where the projects were located, plotting all the way. As we entered the downtown area, Bingo, the Acme Jewelry Store (or some name like that) jumped up at us. Billie was as nervous as a colt and I was not far behind, although on this caper I was just the “stooge”, if that. I’m the one who was to wait outside to see if John Law came by. Once at my post I said- “Okay, Billie, good luck.”

And strangely enough his luck was good that day, and many days after, although those days after were not ring days (small grocery store robberies later turned to armed robberies and jail terms the last I heard). That day though his haul was five rings. Five shaky rings, shaky hands Billie, as we walked, then started running, away from the downtown area. When we got close to home we stopped near the beach where we lived to see up close what the rings looked like. Billie yelled, “Damn.” And why did he yell that word. Well, apparently in his terror (his word to me) at getting caught he just grabbed what was at hand. And what was at hand were five women’s rings. At that moment he practically cried out about how was he going to impress girls, ten, eleven or twelve- year old girls, even if they were as  naïve as us, and maybe more so, that Elvis, the King, was your bosom buddy and you were practically his only life-line adviser with five women’s rings? Damn, damn is right.

**********

16

Billy’s, Billy From The Old Neighborhood, View-Jody Reynolds’ Endless Sleep

 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

This is another of my tongue-in-cheek commentaries, the back story if you like, in the occasional sketches going back to the primordial youth time of the 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billy, William James Bradley, the mad-hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood down in Adamsville not far outside of Boston. The “projects” for those not in the know, those of you who came of age in the leafy suburbs that we “projects” boys fiercely dreamed about once we saw what they looked like on television (and the girls, “projects” girls too dreamed our dreams too although there wasn’t so much mixing of the two until later, until we, meaning we corner boys figured out that those sticks that used to annoy us as they got some shape seemed a lot more interesting that we had previously recognized)were usually poorly constructed multi-unit complexes (ours were four-unit complexes, with many, many such complexes) originally built to house house-hungry returning World War II G.I.s who needed a place to stay while they were waiting on the golden age of the American dream to hit them.

But enough of that for this sketch is not about growing up poor in the land of plenty but growing up in the golden age of rock and roll that we hungry kids and kids from the leafy suburbs could both relate to. In those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days when he lost his moorings, went off to a hard scrabble life of crime, every kid, including one of his best friends, Markin, Peter Markin, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every song that we would recognize as our own. This song, Endless Sleep, came out at a time when my family had been at the beginning of the process of moving out of the projects, and, more importantly, I had begun to move away from Billy orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe. I was then in my 24/7 reading at the local public library branch phase unlike previously being Billy’s accomplice on various, well, let’s call them capers just in case the statute of limitations has not run out. Still Billy, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billy I’m still pulling for you. Got it.

****
Billy back again, William James Bradley, if you didn’t know. Markin’s pal, Peter Paul Markin’s pal, from over at Snug Harbor Elementary School and the pope of rock lyrics down here in “the projects.” The Adamsville projects, if you don’t know. Markin, who I hadn’t seen for a while since he told me his family was going to move out of the projects and who has developed this big thing for the local library and books lately, came by the other day to breathe in the fresh air of my rock universe-adorned bedroom when we got to talking about this latest record, Endless Sleep, by Jody Reynolds. You can usually depend on Markin to show up when there is some song he is not sure about blasts over the radio, or maybe when he wants to go mano y mano with me on those ill-advised times when he thinks he has an edge on me.

All the parents around here, at least the parents that care anyway, or those who have heard the lyrics screaming from their kid’s electricity plug-in blaring living room radio (that’s why they invented transistor radios-so parents wouldn’t, or couldn’t, catch on to what we are listening to- smarten up is what I say to those kids still listening on the family radio, for Christ’s sake) about the not so subtle suicide pact theme. [See lyrics above.] Yah, like that silly pact to jump in the ocean is what every kid is going to do when the going gets a little tough in the love department. Take a jump in the ocean, and call one and all to join them. Come on, will you. It's only a song. Besides what is really good about this one is that great back beat on the guitar and Jody Reynolds’ cool clothes and sideburns. I wish to high heaven I had both.

But see the pope of rock lyrics, me, can’t just leave this song like that. I have to decode it for the teeny-boppers around here or they will be clueless, including big-time book guy Markin. And that is really what is going to make the difference between us here. We had a battle royal over this one. See, Markin always wants to give big play to the “social” meaning of a song, whatever that is, you know where the thing sticks in society, where it speaks to some teen concern, at least in teeny-bopper society. Or maybe he has read some newspaper article where some highly-paid guy, a professor usually has spotted a trend and wants to warn every parent, cop and rat teacher of the consequences. Jesus. Yeah, and Markin is also the “sensitive” guy, usually. Like, for example, one time when he was pulling for the girl to get her guy back, or at least go back to her old boyfriend who was waiting by the midnight phone after Eddie split for parts unknown for some back-up love, in Eddie My Love. Or Markin had a kind thing to say about the dumb cluck of a bimbo who went back to the railroad track-stuck car to get some cheapjack class ring that the boyfriend probably grabbed from a cracker-jacks box in Teen Angel (although he agreed, agreed fully, that the dame was a dumb cluck on other grounds, on the grounds that she should have dumped a guy long before if his foolish junk-box of a car got stuck on a forlorn railroad track).

Here though I am the sensitive guy, if you can believe that. Here’s why. It seems that Markin has some kind of exception to the “social” rule when it comes to the ocean, to the sea, christ, probably to some scum pond for all I know as the scene for suicide attempts. Apparently he is in the throes of some King Neptune frenzy and took umbrage (his word, not mind, I don’t go to the library much) at the idea that someone would desecrate the sea that way, our homeland the sea the way he put it. Like old Neptune hasn’t brought seventy-three types of hell on us with his hurricane tidal waves, his overflowing the seawalls across the channel from us, his flooding everything within three miles of the coast, or when he just throws his flotsam and jetsam (my words, from school, I like them) on the “projects” beaches whenever he gets fed up. So I have to defend this frail’s action, and gladly.

You know it really is unbelievable once you start to think about it how many of these songs don’t have people in them with names, real names, nicknames, anything to tag on them. Here it’s the same old thing. Markin would just blithely go on and makes up names but I’ll just give you the “skinny” without the Markin literary touches, okay. Rather than calling the girl every name in the book for disturbing the fishes or the plankton like Markin I am trying to see what happened here to drive her to such a rash action. Obviously they, the unnamed boy and girl, had an argument, alright a big argument if that satisfies you. What could it have been about? Markin, wise guy Markin, wants to make it some little thing like a missed date, or the guy didn't call or something. Maybe it was, but I think the poor girl was heartbroken about something bigger. Maybe boyfriend didn’t want to “go steady” or maybe he wasn’t ready to be her ever lovin’ one and only. Or maybe he didn’t was to satisfy her hormonal problem if you can believe that. Some guys are like that although I don’t know any, any that would pass that kind of thing up. Let me put it this way it was big, not Markin’s b.s. stuff.

Okay she went over the edge, no question, running down to the sea and jumping in. On a rainy night to boot. Hey she had it bad, whatever it was. But see old Neptune, Markin’s friend, maybe father for all I know, was taunting said boyfriend, saying he was going to take boyfriend’s baby away. Well, frankly, and old wimpy Markin dismissed this out of hand, those are fighting words in the projects, and not just the projects either, when one guy tries to horn in on another guy’s baby when he is not done with her, maybe even after too. Like I say those are fighting words around here.

And the girl, given the cold and what that does to you when you have been in the ocean too long was forced to taunt her lover boy, trying to bring him down too so no other frail could be with him. Just like a girl. This is the part I like though, although Markin would probably take umbrage (again), the boyfriend was ready to reclaim his honey, come hell or high water. He wasn’t done with her and so old man Neptune took a beating that night. Yah, he’s taking his baby, and taking her no questions asked, back from that nasty relentless sea. A little justice in this wicked old world. Chalk one up for our side. Yes, Billy, William James Bradley, is happy, pleased, delighted and any other words you can find in the library that this story has a happy ending. Markin’s homeland sea mush be damned.
************

17

 

Beach Blanket Bongo- With The Falcons' You're So Fine –Take Two- In Mind  

The Falcons
Miscellaneous
You're So Fine
You're So Fine
The Falcons

You're so fine, you're so fine
You're mine, you're mine
I walk, and I talk, about you

I love you, I love you
I need you, I need you
I walk, and I talk, about you

There's nothing in the world as sweet as your kiss
so fine, so fine
Every time we meet, my heart skips a beat
You're my first cup of coffee
( my last cup of tea) Bass line
You're so fine, you're so fine
You're mine, you're mine
I walk, and I talk, about you

Sax solo
You're so fine, you're so fine
You're mine, you're mine
I walk, and I talk, about you

 

Sometimes it is funny how people will get into certain jags, will become aficionados, no, more than that will become single-minded fanatics if you don’t watch them very carefully and keep an appropriate distance say the distance you would keep from a cobra.  Some of us will go all out to be the best at golf or some such sport (or game, I guess you would call golf a game rather than sport because sport sounds too rough, sounds too in-your-face for such a gentile pastime, for the active mashing of some innocent white ball, yeah, let’s call it a game and move on) or will devout endless hours to the now thirty-seven, at least, flavors of yoga now passing through a rage period (no, I will not name all the variants, all the exotically-named mostly Hindu-sounding names,    except to say that such devotion at least makes health sense strangling some poor misbegotten caddie for not providing the right club for that perfect golf shot you had lines up) and others will climb straight-faced (theirs and the mountain’s) sheer rock precipices (no further comment needed except perhaps a sane citizen might just suggest that gentile pastime of golf to those sheer rocks). So be it.

Take me for example although I am not up for rigors of golf (or the premediated first-degree murder of some errant golf ball either), yoga (although thinking back the Kama Sutra came out of that same tradition so it might be worthy of some thought) or mountain-baiting (I like my rocks strictly in museums where they belong) recently I have been on a tear in reviewing individual[CL2]  CDs in an extensive generic commercial classic Rock ‘n’ Roll series (meaning now the 1950s and 1960s) entitled Rock and Roll Will Never Die. The impetus for reviewing that particular CD series at first had been in order to hear the song Your So Fine by the Falcons after I had been listening to The Dubs’ Could This Be Magic on YouTube. That combination was driven by a memory flashback to about 1959 when I used to pester (I am being kind here) every available girls in my seventh grade class by being timid boy flirty and calling her, well, “so fine.” Available girls by the way meaning not going “steady” with a boy, especially a guy who might be on the football team and who might take umbrage with another guy trying to cut his time. Although let’s say that if she was going with a golf guy I might cut his time since they live by some strange honor system, you know count exactly the number of strokes you took to complete the hole, including those three, not two, you clunked into the pond.  Available girl also meaning in seventh grade, unlike in sixth or fifth grade where the distinctions did not matter because they were all nuisances, girls who had gotten a shape and broken out of “stick-dom.” Those are the ones who were worthy of Jeff Sterling, that’s me, “so fine” designation. Such is the memory bank these days.  

While that particular review was driven by a song most of those reviews that I was crazy to listen to and speak about had been driven by the intriguing artwork which graced the covers of each CD, pinpoint artwork drawn in such a way to stir ancient memories of ancient loves, ancient loves, too many to count, anguishes, ditto, alienations, you give a number, angsts, infinite, and whatever else teen–age life could rain down on you just when you were starting to get a handle on the world, starting to do battle to find your place in the sun. Starting to feel too that this wicked old world might be a place worthy of the fight to preserve it but such thoughts were only flushed out later, much later after the dust of angst and alienation settled.  

Moreover these artwork covers reflected that precise moment in time, time being a very conscious and fungible concept then when we thought we would live forever and if we did not at least let us do our jailbreak rock and roll rock with the time we had, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may have been, to the themes of those artwork scenes. That fit in or didn’t fit in as the example of that flirty “your so fine” mantra that I would pin on any girl (remember any available girl not going steady and not with some big brute just in case that big brute is still holding a grudge).

Some artwork in the series like those that portrayed the terrors of Saturday night high school dance wallflower-dom, hanging around the you-name-it drugstore soda fountain waiting for some dreamy girl to drop her quarters in the juke-box and ask you, you of all people, what she should play to chase her blues away after some  guy left her for another girl and she needed a sound to shed a tear by and you there with that empty shoulder to ease the way, or how about a scene down at the seclude end of Adamsville Beach with a guy and his gal sitting watching the surf and listening to the be-bop radio before, well, let’s leave it at “before,” and picture this a few beauties sunning themselves at the beach waiting for Johnny Angel to make an appearance need almost no comment except good luck and we, we of that 1950s demographic, all recognize those signposts of growing up in the red scare cold war night. This cover that I am thinking of though  did not “speak” to me, a 1959 artwork cover from the time when the music died (meaning Elvis turned “square,” Chuck got caught with Mister’s girls and Jerry Lee failed to check the family tree).

On this cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time when we had least at the feel of our generational breakout, listening all afternoon to the transistor radio, trying to keep the sand from destroying your sandwich, getting all or red and pretty for Saturday night in white), two blondish surfer guys, surf boards in tow, were checking out the scene, the land scene for that minute they were not trying to ride the perfect wave, or thinking about that possibility. That checking out of course was to check out who was “hot” on the beach, who could qualify to be a “surfer girl” for those lonely nighttime hours when either the waves were flat or the guys had been in the water so long they had turned to prunes. That scene although not pictured (except a little background fluff to inform you that you are at the beach, the summer youth beach and no other, certainly not the tortuous family beach scene with its lotions, luggage, lawn chairs, and longings, longings to be elsewhere in early teen brains), can only mean checking out the babes, girls, chicks, or whatever you called them in that primitive time before we called them sisters, and women.

No question that this whole scene had been nothing but a California come hinter scene. No way that it has the look of my Eastern pale-face beaches, family or youth. This is nothing but early days California dreamin’ cool hot days and cooler hot nights with those dreamed bikini girls. But hold on, see as little as I know about West Coast 1950s growing up surfer culture I was suddenly struck by this hard fact. These pretty boys are, no question, “beach bums” no way that they are serious surfer guys, certainly not Tom Wolfe’s Pump House La Jolla gang where those surfers lived for the perfect wave, and nothing else better get in the way. For such activity one needed rubberized surf suits complete with all necessary gear. In short these guys are “faux” surfers. Whether that was enough to draw the attention of those shes they are checking out into the humid night I will leave to the reader’s imagination.

As I noted before and commented on in the review the music, the 1959 music, that backed up this scene told us we were clearly in a trough, the golden age of rock with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, and Chuck Berry was fading, fading fast into what I can only describe as “bubble gum” music. Sure I listened to it, listened to it hard on my old transistor radio up in my lonely shared room or out on those surly, tepid Eastern beaches mainly because that was all that was being presented to us. Somehow the parents, the cops, the school administrators and, if you can believe this, some of those very same bikini girls who you thought were cool had flipped out and wanted to hear Fabian, Bobby Vee and Bobby Darin, got to the record guys, got to Tin Pan Alley and ordered them to make the music like some vanilla shake. So all of a sudden those “you’re so fine” beach blanket blondes were sold on faux surfer guys, flip-floppers and well-combed guys and had dumped the beat, the off-beat and the plainly loopy without a thought. Leaving hard-boiled Harvard Square by night denizens like me homeless, and girl-less more than less.

It was to be a while, a few years, until the folk, folk rock, British invasion, and free expression rock engulfed us. My times, times when I did not have to rely on some kids’ stuff flirty “your so fine” line but could impress the young women of my acquaintance (admittedly not the beach blanket bingo blondes of my youth but long straight brunette-haired women with faraway eyes and hungry haunted expressions) with eight million Child ballad, Village, traditional music, mountain music facts I had accumulated during that red scare cold war trough before the break-out. 

As the bulk of that CD’s contents attested to though we were in 1959 in the great marking time. There were, however, some stick-outs there that have withstood the test of time. They include: La Bamba, Ritchie Valens; Dance With Me, The Drifters; You’re So Fine (great harmony),The Falcons; Tallahassee Lassie (a favorite then at the local school dances by a local boy who made good), Freddy Cannon; Mr. Blue (another great harmony song and the one, or one of the ones, anyway that you hoped, hoped to distraction that they would play for the last dance), The Fleetwoods; and, Lonely Teardrops, Jackie Wilson (a much underrated singer, then and now, including by this writer after not hearing that voice for a while).

Note: After a recent trip to the Southern California coast I can inform you that those two surfer guys, who actually did turn out to be landlubbers and were working the shoreline while serious surfers with no time for beach blanket bingo blondes sought that perfect wave stuff, are still out there and still checking out the scene. Although that scene for them now is solely the eternal search for the perfect wave complete with full rubberized suit and gear. No artist would now, or at least I hope no artist would, care to rush up and draw them. For now these brothers have lost a step, or seven, lost a fair amount of that beautiful bongo hair, and have added, added believe me, very definite paunches to bulge out those surfer suits all out of shape. Ah, such are the travails of the baby-boomer generation. Good luck though, brothers.

***********

18 

The Balducci’s Pizza Parlor Bet –With Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula In Mind

 

 

Well, be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

Well, she's the girl in the red blue jeans
She's the queen of all the teens
She's the one that I know
She's the one that loves me so

Say be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

Well, she's the one that gots that beat
She's the one with the flyin' feet
She's the one that walks around the store
She's the one that gets more more more

Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

You all know Frankie, right? Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, map of Ireland, fierce Frankie when necessary, and usually kind Frankie by rough inclination. Yah, Frankie from the old North Adamsville neighborhood. Frankie to the tenement, the cold-water flat tenement, born. Frankie, no moola, no two coins to rub together except by wit or chicanery, poor as a church mouse if there ever was such a thing, a poor church mouse that is. Yes, that Frankie. And, as well, this writer, his faithful scribe chronicling his tales, his regal tales. Said scribe to the public housing flats, hot-water flats, but still flats, born. And poorer even than any old Frankie church mouse. More importantly though, more importantly for this story that I am about to tell you than our respective social class positions, is that Frankie is king, the 1960s king hell king of Balducci’s Pizza Parlor “up the Downs,” if not then North Quincy’s finest pizza parlor still the place where we spent many a misbegotten hour, and truth to tell, just plain killed some time when we were down at our heels, or maybe down to our heels.

Sure you know about old Frankie’s royal heritage too. I clued you in before when I wrote about my lost in the struggle for power as I tried to overthrow the king when we entered North Quincy High in 1960. By wit, chicanery, guile, bribes, threats, physical and mental, and every other form of madness he clawed his way to power after I forgot the first rule of trying to overthrow a king- you have to make sure he is dead. But mainly it was his "style”, he mad-hatter “beat” style, wherefore he attempted to learn, and to impress the girls (and maybe a few guys too), with his arcane knowledge of every oddball fact that anyone would listen to for two minutes. After my defeat we went back and forth about it, he said, reflecting his peculiar twist on his Augustinian-formed Roman Catholicism, it was his god-given right to be king of this particular earthy kingdom but foolish me I tried to justify his reign based on that old power theory (and discredited as least since the 17th century) of the divine right of kings. But enough of theory. Here’s why, when the deal went down, Frankie was king, warts and all.

All this talk about Frankie royal lineage kind of had me remembering a story, a Frankie pizza parlor story. Remind me to tell you about it sometime, about how we used to bet on pizza dough flying. What the heck I have a few minutes I think I will tell you now because it will also be a prime example, maybe better than the one I was originally thinking about, of Frankie’s treacheries that I mentioned before. Now that I think about it again my own temperature is starting to rise. If I see that bastard again I’m going to... Well, let me just tell the story and maybe your sympathetic temperature will rise a bit too.

One summer night, yeah, it must have been a summer night because this was the time of year when we had plenty of time on our hands to get a little off-handedly off-hand. In any case it would have had to be between our junior and senior years at old North Quincy High because we were talking a lot in those days about what we were going to do, or not do, after high school. And it would have had to have been on a Monday or Tuesday summer night at that and we were deflated from a hard weekend of this and that, mainly, Frankie trying to keep the lid on his relationship with his ever lovin’ sweetie, Joanne. Although come to think of it that was a full-time occupation and it could have been any of a hundred nights, summer nights or not. I was also trying to keep a lid on my new sweetie, Lucinda, a sweetie who seemed to be drifting away, or at least in and out on me, mostly out, and mostly because of my legendary no dough status (that and no car, no sweet ride down the boulevard, the beach boulevard so she could impress HER friends, yah it was that kind of relationship). Anyway it's a summer night when we had time on our hands, idle time, devil’s time according to mothers’ wit, if you want to know the truth, because his lordship (although I never actually called him that), Frankie I, out of the blue made me the following proposition. Bet: how high will Tonio flip his pizza dough on his next pass through.

Now this Tonio, as you know already if you have read the story about how Frankie became king of the pizza parlor, and if you don’t you will hear more about him later, was nothing but an ace, numero uno, primo pizza flinger. Here’s a little outline of the contours of his art, although minus the tenderness, the care, the genetic dispositions, and who knows, the secret song or incantation that Tonio brought to the process. I don’t know much about the backroom work, the work of putting all the ingredients together to make the dough, letting the dough sit and rise and then cutting it up into pizza-size portions. I only really know the front of the store part- the part where he takes that cut dough portion in front of him in the preparation area and does his magic. That part started with a gentle sprinkling of flour to take out some of the stickiness of the dough, then a rough and tumble kneading of the dough to take any kinks out, and while taking the kinks out the dough gets flattened, flattened enough to start taking average citizen-recognizable shape as a pizza pie. Sometimes, especially if Frankie put in an order, old Tonio would knead that dough to kingdom come. Now I am no culinary expert, and I wasn’t then, no way, but part of the magic of a good pizza is to knead that dough to kingdom come so if you see some geek doing a perfunctory couple of wimpy knead chops then move on, unless you are desperate or just ravenously hungry.

Beyond the extra knead though the key to the pizza is the thinness of the crust and hence the pizza tosses. And this is where Tonio was a Leonardo-like artist, no, that’s not right, this is where he went into some world, some place we would never know. I can still see, and if you happened to be from old North Quincy, you probably can still see it too if you patronized the place or stood, waiting for that never-coming Eastern Mass. bus, in front of the big, double-plate glass pizza parlor windows watching in amazement while Tonio tossed that dough about a million times in the air. Artistry, pure and simple.

So you can see now, if you didn’t quite get it before that Frankie’s proposition was nothing but an old gag kind of bet, a bet on where Tonio would throw, high or low. Hey, it’s just a variation on a sports bet, like in football, make the first down or not, pass or rush, and so on, except its pizza tosses, okay. Of course, unlike sports, at least known sports, there are no standards in place so we have to set some rules, naturally. Since it was Frankie’s proposition he got to give the rules a go, and I could veto.

Frankie, though, and sometimes he could do things simply, although that was not his natural inclination; his natural inclination was to be arcane in all things, and not just with girls. Simply Frankie said in his Solomonic manner that passed for wisdom, above or below the sign in back of Tonio’s preparation area, the sign that told the types of pizza sold, their sizes, their cost and what else was offered for those who didn’t want pizza that night.

You know such signs, every pizza palace has them, and other fast eat places too. You have to go to “uptown” eateries for a tabled menu in front of your eyes, and only your eyes, but here’s Tonio’s public offerings. On one side of the sign plain, ordinary, vanilla, no frills pizza, cheap, maybe four or five dollars for a large, small something less, although don’t hold me to the prices fifty years later for chrissakes, no fixings. Just right for “family night,” our family night later, growing up later, earlier in hot-water flats, public housing hot-water flats time, we had just enough money for Spam, not Internet spam, spam meat although that may be an oxymoron and had no father hard-worked cold cash for exotic things like pizza, not a whole one anyway, in our household. And from what Frankie told me his too.

Later , when we had a little more money and could “splurge” for an occasional take-out, no home delivery in those days, when Ma didn’t feel like cooking, or it was too hot, or something and to avoid civil wars, the bloody brother against brother kind, plain, ordinary vanilla pizza was like manna from heaven for mama, although nobody really wanted it and you just felt bloated after eating your share (and maybe the crust from someone who doesn’t like crust, or maybe you traded for it); or, plain, by the slice, out of the oven (or more likely oven-re-heated after open air sitting on some aluminum special pizza plate for who knows how long) the only way you could get it after school with a tonic (also known as soda for you old days non-New Englanders and progeny), usually a root beer, a Hires root beer to wash away the in-school blahs, especially the in-school cafeteria blahs.

Or how about plump Italian sausage, Tonio thickly-sliced, or spicy-side thinly-sliced pepperoni later when you had a couple of bucks handy to buy your own, and to share with your fellows (those fellows, hopefully, including girls, always hopefully, including girls) and finally got out from under family plain and, on those lucky occasions, and they were lucky like from heaven, when girl-dated you could show your stuff, your cool, manly stuff, and divide, divide, if you can believe that, the pizza half one, half the other fixings, glory be; onion or anchovies, oh no, the kiss of death, no way if you had the least hope for a decent night and worst, the nightmarish worst, when your date ordered her portion with either of these, although maybe, just maybe once or twice, it saved you from having to do more than a peck of a kiss when your date turned out not to be the dream vision you had hoped for; hams, green peppers, mushrooms, hamburg, and other oddball toppings I will not even discuss because such desecration of Tonio’s pizza, except, maybe extra cheese, such Americanized desecration , should have been declared illegal under some international law, no question; or, except, maybe again, if you had plenty of dough, had a had a few drinks, for your gourmet delight that one pig-pile hunger beyond hunger night when all the fixings went onto the thing. Whoa. Surely you would not find on Tonio’s blessed sign this modern thing, this Brussels sprouts, broccoli, alfalfa sprouts, wheat germ, whole wheat, soy, sea salt, himalaya salt, canola oil, whole food, pseudo-pizza not fit for manly (or womanly) consumption, no, not in those high cholesterol, high-blood pressure, eat today for tomorrow you may die days.

On the other side of the sign, although I will not rhapsodize about Tonio’s mastery of the submarine sandwich art (also known as heroes and about seventy-six other names depending on where you grew up, what neighborhood you grew up in, and who got there first, who, non-Puritan, got there first that is) are the descriptions of the various sandwich combinations (all come with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, the outlawed onions, various condiment spreads as desired along with a bag of potato chips so I won’t go into all that); cold cuts, basically bologna and cheese, maybe a little salami, no way, no way in hell am I putting dough up for what Ma prepared and I had for lunch whenever I couldn’t put two nickels together to get the school lunch, and the school lunch I already described as causing me to run to Tonio’s for a sweet reason portion of pizza by the slice just to kill the taste, no way is right; tuna fish, no way again for a different reason though, a Roman Catholic Friday holy, holy tuna fish reason besides grandma, high Roman Catholic saint Grandma, had that tuna fish salad with a splash of mayo on oatmeal bread thing down to a science, yah, Grandma no way I would betray you like that; roast beef, what are you kidding; meatballs (in that grand pizza sauce); sausage, with or without green peppers, steak and cheese and so on. The sign, in all its beatified Tonio misspelled glory. 

“Okay,” I said, that sign part seemed reasonable under the circumstances (that’s how Frankie put it, I’m just repeating his rationalization), except that never having made such a bet before I asked to witness a few Tonio flips first. “Deal,” said Frankie. Now my idea here, and I hope you follow me on this because it is not every day that you get to know how my mind works, or how it worked differently from star king Frankie, but it is not every day that you hear about a proposition based on high or low pizza tosses and there may be something of an art to it that I, or you, were not aware of. See, I was thinking, as many times as I had watched old saintly Tonio, just like everybody else, flip that dough to the heavens I never really thought about where it was heading, except those rare occasions when one hit the ceiling and stuck there. So maybe there was some kind of regular pattern to the thing. Like I say, I had seen Tonio flip dough more than my fair share of teenage life pizzas but, you know, never really noticed anything about it, kind of like the weather. As it turned out there was apparently no rhyme or reason to Tonio’s tosses just the quantity (that was the real secret to that good pizza crust, not the height of the throw), so after a few minutes I said "Bet." And bet is, high or low, my call, for a quarter a call (I had visions of filling that old jukebox of Tonio’s with my “winnings” because a new Dylan song had just come in that I was crazy to play about a zillion times, Mr. Tambourine Man). We are off.

I admit that I did pretty well for while that night and maybe was up a buck, and some change, at the end of the night. Frankie paid up, as Frankie always paid up, and such pay up without a squawk was a point of honor between us (and not just Frankie and me either, every righteous guy was the same way, or else), cash left on the table. I was feeling pretty good ‘cause I had just beaten the king of the hill at something, and that something was his own game. I rested comfortable on my laurels. Rested comfortably that is until a couple of nights later when we, as usual, were sitting in the Frankie-reserved seats (reserved that is unless there were real paying customers who wanted to eat their pizza in-house and then we, more or less, were given the bum’s rush) when Frankie said “Bet.” And the minute he said that I knew, I knew for certain, that we are once again betting on pizza tosses because when it came right down to it I knew, and I knew for certain, that Frankie’s defeat a few nights before did not sit well with him.

Now here is where things got tricky, though. Tonio, good old good luck charm Tonio, was nowhere in sight. He didn’t work every night and he was probably with his honey, and for an older dame she was a honey, dark hair, good shape, great, dark laughing eyes, and a melting smile. I could see, even then, where her charms beat out, even for ace pizza-flinger Tonio, tossing foolish old pizza dough in the air for some kids with time on their hands, no dough, teenage boys, Irish teenage boys to boot. However, Sammy, North Quincy High Class of ’62 (maybe, at least that is when he was supposed to graduate, according to Frankie, one of whose older brothers graduated that year), and Tonio’s pizza protégé was on duty. Since we already knew the ropes on this proposition I didn’t even bother to check and see if Sammy’s style was different from Tonio’s. Heck, it was all random, right?

This night we flipped for first call. Frankie won the coin toss. Not a good sign, maybe. I, however, like the previous time, started out quickly with a good run and began to believe that, like at Skeet ball (some call it Skee-ball but they are both the same–roll balls up a targeted area to win Kewpie dolls, feathery things, or a goof key chain for your sweetie) down at the amusement park, I had a knack for this form of betting. Anyway I was ahead about a buck or so. All of a sudden my “luck” went south. Without boring you with the epic pizza toss details I could not hit one right for the rest of the night. The long and short of it was that I was down about four dollars, cash on the table. Now Frankie’s cash on the table. No question. At that moment I was feeling about three-feet tall and about eight-feet under because nowadays cheap, no meaning four dollars, then was date money, Lucinda, fading Lucinda, date money. This was probably fatal, although strictly speaking the fate of that relationship was another story and I will not get into the Lucinda details, because when I think about it now that was just a passing thing, and you know about passing things- what about it.

What is part of the story though, and the now fifty years later still temperature-rising part of the story, is how Frankie, Frankie, king of the pizza parlor night, Frankie of a bunch of kindnesses, and of a bunch of treacheries, here treachery, zonked me on this betting scandal. What I didn’t know then was that I was set up, set up hard and fast, with no remorse by one Francis Xavier Riley, to the tenements, the cold-water flat tenements, born and his cohort Sammy. It seemed that Sammy owed Frankie for something, something never fully disclosed by either party, and the pay-off by Sammy to make him well was to “fix” the pizza tosses that night I just told you about, the night of the golden fleecing. Every time I said "high" Sammy, taking his coded signal from Frankie, went low and so forth. Can you believe a “king”, even a king of a backwater pizza parlor, would stoop so low?

Here is the really heinous part though, and keep my previous reference to fading Lucinda in mind when you read this. Frankie, sore-loser Frankie, not only didn’t like to lose but was also low on dough (a constant problem for both of us, and which consumed far more than enough of our time and energy than was necessary in a just, Frankie-friendly world) for his big Saturday night drive-in movie-car borrowed from his older brother, big-man-around-town date with one of his side sweeties (Joanne, his regular sweetie was out of town with her parents on vacation). That part, that unfaithful to Joanne part I didn’t care about because, once again truth to tell, old ever lovin’ sweetie Joanne and I did not get along for more reasons than you have to know. The part that burned me, and still burns me, is that I was naturally the fall-guy for some frail (girl in pizza parlor parlance time) caper he was off on.

Now I have mentioned that when we totaled up the score the Frankie kindnesses were way ahead of the Frankie treacheries, no question, which was why we were friends. Still, right this minute, right this 2014 minute, I am ready to go up to his swanky downtown Boston law office (where the men’s bathroom is larger than his whole youth time old cold- water flat tenement) and demand that four dollars back, plus interest. You know I am right on this one.

**********

19

Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Teen Dance Club Night-Sonny James’ Young Love

They say for every boy and girl,
There's just one love in this old world,
And I, I kn-ow, I, I, I've found mine.
The heavenly touch of your embrace,
Tells me no one will take your place,
A, A, A, A, ever in my heart.

Chorus:
Young love, first love,
Filled with true devotion,
Young love, our love,
We share with deep emotion.

Just one kiss from your sweet lips,
Will tell me that your love is real,
And I, I, I can fe-el that it's true.
We will vow to one another,
There will never be another,
Lo-ve for you, or for me.

Chorus:
Young love, first love,
Filled with true devotion,
Young love, our love,
We share with deep emotion.

I have always been intrigued by the different little social gatherings that dominated our teen-age lives back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. To a certain extent every generation of teen-agers since they invented the category as enough kids in a family made it to that age and had enough free time on their hands to form a distinct segment of society has had some of the same institutions, you know school, sports, special day parties and periodic dances stuff like that. Although I am not as familiar with the inner workings of today’s millennial generation I do not believe that I have heard much about an institution that was mainstay while I was growing up, the teen dance club. The place where you were allowed to go and have fun and of which parents approved which should have made us suspect, and would have later but while we were dealing with trying to fit the fixture into our lives we looked forward to its weekly charms.    

The teen dance club memory just did not suddenly come up and hit me out of the blue but was a result of some work I have been doing of late that brought it to the fore. I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a classic rock series that goes under the general title Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes, tunes that our local jukeboxes devoured many a hard-earned father nickel and dime it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation. The generation of ’68, the generation that slogged through the red scare cold war night, survived and, for a minute, were ready to turn the world upside down in the mid to late 1960s before the wave ebbed and we wound up fighting something like a forty plus year rearguard action to maintain some semblance of dignity, and who had just started to tune into rock music as some sort of harbinger of things to come, that jailbreak previously mentioned.  

And we, we small-time punk (in the old-fashioned sense of that word, not the derogatory sense), we hardly wet-behind-the-ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who would now claim otherwise, claiming some form of amnesia about when that beat hit them square in the eyes, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, stuff parents did not have a handle on and stuff we saw as our way out of the box that was being fit around us. Kid’s stuff, sure, but still stuff like a friend of mine, my elementary school best friend “wild man” Billie who I will talk about more some other time, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he, all ten years old of him, was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night when Elvis (and us, us too) were young and hungry.

Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery- operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will and we owe a lot to whoever put that idea together especially for poor ass projects boys with too little space as it was) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll-never get-to-heaven-listening-to-that-devil's- music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Yeah right, Ma, Pa like Patti Page or Bob Crosby and The Bobcats (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway. I would come to know that song more closely, too closely later but that is another story) were supposed to satisfy our jail-break cravings.

And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered, of course) hanging from the lips, Coke, big-sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor jukebox coin devouring, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. And, of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing. Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “ inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working-class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them).

But the crème de la crème to beat all was the teen night club. Easy concept, and something that could only have been thought up by someone in cahoots with our parents (or maybe it was them alone, although could they have been that smart). Open a “ballroom” (in reality some old VFW, Knight of Columbus, Elks, etc. hall that was either going to waste or was ready for the demolition ball), bring in live music on Friday and Saturday night with some rocking band, ours the Ready Rockers who did good covers on all but Elvis since they lacked his implicit sexual energy  (but not too rocking, not Elvis swiveling at the hips to the gates of hell rocking, no way), serve the kids drinks…, oops, sodas (Coke Pepsi, Grape and Orange Nehi, Hires Root Beer, etc.), and have them out of there by midnight, no later, unscathed. All supervised, and make no mistake these things were supervised, by something like the equivalent of the elite troops of the 101st Airborne Rangers. Usually some maiden teachers dragged in to volunteer and keep an eye, a first name eye on things, or some refugees from the sporadic church-sponsored dances who some priest or minister dragooned into volunteering with heaven held out as a reward but eagle-eyed for any unauthorized hand-holding, dancing too close or off-hand kissing.    

And we bought it, and bought into it hard. And, if you had that set-up where you lived, you bought it too. And why? Come on now, have you been paying attention? Girls, tons of girls (or boys, as the case may be). See, even doubting Thomas-type parents gave their okay on this one because of that elite troops of the 101st Airborne factor. Those hardened surrogate parents with the beady eyes and tart tongues. So, some down at the heels, tee-shirted, engineer- booted Jimmy or Johnny Speedo from the wrong side of the tracks, all boozed up and ready to “hot rod” with that ‘boss”’57 Chevy that he just painted to spec, was no going to blow into the joint and carry Mary Lou or Peggy Sue away, never to be seen again. No way. That stuff happened, sure, but that was on the side. This is not what drove that scene for the few years while we were still getting wise to the ways of the world. The girls (and guys) were plentiful and friendly in that guarded, backed up by 101st Airborne way (damn it). And we had our …sodas (I won’t list the brands again, okay). But, and know this true, we blasted on the music. The music that was on the compilations I have reviewed, no question. And I will tell you some of the stick outs that made my pray for dance card:

Save The Last Dance For Me, The Drifters (oh, sweet baby, that I have had my eye on all night, please, please, James Brown, please save that last one for me, and on too few occasions she did, or her kindred did later when I had other roving eyes so I came out about even); Only The Lonely, Roy Orbison (for some reason the girls loved Ready Rockers’ covers of this one, especially one night, not a teen club night but a night the Rockers were playing a church hall teen dance Friday night when a certain she planted a big kiss on my face, well, on my lips after I sang, really more like lip-synched  that one along with the band. Unfortunately she soon had a boyfriend and I was strictly past history but the memory of that kiss lasted lots longer); Alley Oop, The Hollywood Argyles (a good goofy song to break up the sexual tension that always filled the air, early and late, at these things as the mating ritual worked its mysterious ways and despite prying prudent eyes hand-holding, dancing too close and off-hand kissing got done, got done much more than our parents would ever know); Handy Man, Jimmy Jones( a personal favorite which dove-tailed into my “style” then,  as I kept telling every girl, and maybe a few guys as well just to keep them away from the ones I was seriously eyeing, that I was that very handy man that those self-same gals had been waiting, waiting up on those lonely weekend nights for. Egad! Did I really use that line?); Stay, Maurice Williams and The Zodiacs (nice harmonics and good feeling, and excellent for dancing too close on); New Orleans, Joe Jones (great dance number as the twist and other exotic dances started to break into the early 1960s consciousness and great too because awkward self-conscious dancers like me could “fake it” with juke moves since we were basically dancing by ourselves on the fast ones); and, Let The Little Girl Dance, Billy Bland (yes, let her dance, hesitant, saying no at first mother, please, please, no I will not invoke James Brown on this one, please). Oh yeah, and Sonny James’ Young Love that got the girls all juiced and happy to dance close even with guys like me with sweaty hands and unsure feet.

So you can see where the combination of the dance club, the companionship, and that be-bop rock beat that we could not get enough of would carry us along for a while. Naturally the thing could not go on forever, our forever, once we got older, once we tasted cigarettes and liquor (okay, okay beer) and once parents took fright when too many down at the heels, tee-shirted, engineer- booted Jimmy or Johnny Speedos from the wrong side of the tracks, all boozed up and ready to “hot rod” with that ‘boss”’57 Chevy that they just painted to spec, started blowing into the joint to carry Mary Lou or Peggy Sue away, carry them away gladly never to be seen again.

*************
20  

Out In The Church Hall Dance Night- With Danny and the Juniors At The Hop In Mind

Bah-bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah-bah
Bah-bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah-bah, at the hop!

Well, you can rock it you can roll it
You can slop and you can stroll it at the hop
When the record starts spinnin'
You chalypso* when you chicken at the hop
Do the dance sensation that is sweepin' the nation at the hop

Ah, let's go to the hop
Let's go to the hop (oh baby)
Let's go to the hop (oh baby)
Let's go to the hop
Come on, let's go to the hop

Well, you can swing it you can groove it
You can really start to move it at the hop
Where the jockey is the smoothest
And the music is the coolest at the hop
All the cats and chicks can get their kicks at the hop
Let's go!

Ah, let's go to the hop
Let's go to the hop (oh baby)
Let's go to the hop (oh baby)
Let's go to the hop
Come on, let's go to the hop
Let's go!

[Instrumental Interlude]

Well, you can rock it you can roll it
You can slop and you can stroll it at the hop
When the record starts spinnin'
You chalypso* when you chicken at the hop
Do the dance sensation that is sweepin' the nation at the hop

Well, you can swing it you can groove it
You can really start to move it at the hop
Where the jockey is the smoothest
And the music is the coolest at the hop
All the cats and chicks can get their kicks at the hop
Let's go!

Ah, let's go to the hop
Let's go to the hop (oh baby)
Let's go to the hop (oh baby)
Let's go to the hop
Come on, let's go to the hop
Let's go!

Bah-bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah-bah
Bah-bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah-bah, at the hop!

Funny how memory draws you in, draws you in tight and hard once you focus in just a little. Take this combination. Recently I have been involved in writing some little sketches for my North Adamsville High School reunion Class of 1964 website. You know never before revealed stuff (and maybe should not be revealed now except I believe the statute of limitations has run out on most offenses) about what went on in the class rooms when some ill-advised teacher turned his or her on the class; the inevitable tales of triumph and heartbreak as told in the boys’ or girls’ Monday morning before school talkfest about what did, or did not, go on over the weekend with Susie or Billy; the heart-rending saga of being dateless for the senior prom; the heroics and devastating defeats of various sports teams especially the goliaths of the gridiron every leaf-turning autumn; the mysteries of learning about sex (I thought this might get your attention, innocent exploration or not) in the chaste day time down at the summer-side beach, or late at night after not watching the double feature at the outdoor drive-in movies (look it up on the Internet that there was such a way to watch them); date night devouring some hardened hamburgers complete with fries and Coke at the local all-know drive-in restaurant (ditto look up that too); older and car-addled taking the victory spoils after some after midnight “chicken run”; spending “quality time” watching breathlessly the “submarine races” (ask somebody from North Adamsville about that); and, just hanging out with your corner boys at Doc’s Drugstore throwing dimes and quarters in the jukebox to while the night away. Yeah, strictly 1960s memory stuff.   

Put those memory flashes together with my, seemingly, endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing a commercial classic rock and roll series that goes under the general title Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die. I noted in one review and it bears repeating here while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music. Those two memory-inducing events coming together got me thinking even further back than high school, back to elementary school down at Adamsville South where music and sex (innocent, chaste variety) came together at the record hop (alternatively called the sock hop if in your locale the young girls wore bobby sox rather than nylons to these things. Nylons being one of the sure signs that you were a young women and not merely some stick girl so the distinction was not unimportant).    

See we, we small-time punk in the old-fashioned sense of that word meaning not knowledgeable, not the malicious sense, we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off to the radio or when we scurried home right after school to watch American Bandstand when that program came on in late afternoon. And we hungry to be “hip” (although not knowing that word, not knowing that out in the adult world guys, guys mostly, guys in places like North Beach in Frisco town or the Village in New Jack City were creating the ethos of hipness which we would half-inherit later as latent late term “beats”) wanted to emulate those swaying, be-bopping television boys and girls if not on the beauties of that medium then with some Friday or Saturday night hop in the school gym or in some church basement complete with some cranky record player playing our songs, our generation-dividing songs (dividing us for the prison of our parents music heard endlessly, too endlessly if there is such a concept).

Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kid’s stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billy who I will talk about some other time, who claimed, with a straight face, to the girls that he was Elvis’ long lost son. My friend’s twelve to Elvis’s maybe twenty. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.

Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery- operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Yah right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob Crosby and The Bobcats were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway). And the local hop put paid to that notion, taking the private music of our bedroom dreams and placing us, for good or evil, out on the dance floor to be wall-flower or “hip” (remember we did not know that term then, okay.)   

But can you blame me, or us, for our jail-break visions and our clandestine subterranean life-transistor radio dreams of lots of girls (or boys as the case may be), lots of cars, and lots of money if we could just get out from under that parental noise. Now getting back to that rock and roll series I told you that I had been reviewing. The series had many yearly compilations but as if to prove my point beyond discussion the year 1956 has two, do you hear me, two CDs to deal with that proposition that I mentioned above. And neither one includes Elvis, Jerry Lee, Bo Diddley or some other stuff that I might have included so you know we are in the golden age when there is that much good non- Hall of Fame stuff around.

Needless to say Larry Larkin, my old corner boy from North Adamsville home town day Phil Larkin’s cousin, remained a step ahead of everybody around Ashmont Street in the Dorchester section of Boston during those days, those days when that seismic change occurred in our youthful listening habits. (And Larry would transfer whatever cultural knowledge he had picked up on those Dorchester mean streets, mostly useful except more often than not wrong on the do’s and don’ts of sex, to Phil, known as “Foul-Mouth” Phil among the corner boy brethren who would pass it on to us). Everybody, everything had to change, had to take notice of the break-out, if only to cut off the jailbreak at the pass. And that is where Larry Larkin’s step ahead of everybody else came into play, everybody else who counted then, and that was mainly the junior corner boys who hung around in front of Kelly’s Variety Store on Adams Street where generations, at least two by that time and more since, of elementary school boys learned the corner life, for good or evil, mostly evil as a roster of those who wound up in the various county and state prisons would testify to.

And not just any elementary school corner boys but parochial school boys. That is what was significant about my bringing attention to the environs of the Dorchester section of Boston, a section loaded down with every kind of ethnic Catholic, recent immigrant or life-time denizen of the triple decker night, and where it seemed there was a Catholic church on every corner (and there almost was, and to prove the point Dorchester boys, girls too lately, identified themselves after being from “Dot” identified themselves by what parish they belonged to, say Saint Brendan’s on Main Street, Saint Gregory on Dorchester Avenue, Saint Anne’s on Neponset Avenue and so on, a phenomenon you would not notice in say Revere or Chelsea).

If there seemed to be a church on every corner there was sure to be a bevy, if that is the way they are gathered, of parish priests ready to guide the youth in the ways of the church, including at Saint Brendan’s one Lawrence Joseph Larkin. And one of the things that had upset that 1950s era bevy of priests at that parish (and at other parishes and had caused concern in other religious groupings as well) was the effect that the new music, rock and roll, in corrupting the morals of the youth. Was making them zombies listening on those transistor radios that seemed to be attached to their ears to the exclusion of all else. Was making them do lewd, yes, lewd, moves while they were dancing (and not even dancing arm and arm with some girl but kind of free-form about three feet away from each other as if the space between was some sacred land to be worshiped but not defiled, blasphemy, pure blasphemy) at what they called record hops, or sock hops, or some such thing on Friday nights at the public school Eliot School over on Ashmont Street. Was making them a little snarly when dealing with adults a snarl they learned from the television or movies with guys named Elvis or James leading them on, begging them to follow them in the great break-out.  Worse, worse of all was the danger of dangers, sex, which bad as the fast dancing was when they did an occasion slow dance was very improper, the guys hands drifting down to the girl’s ass and she not even swatting it away. So yes there was something like a panic about to erupt.

And formerly pious altar boy Larry Larkin was leading the charge, was the first to wear those damn longer sideburns like he was some Civil War general. To constantly rake his hair with that always back pocket comb to look like Elvis’ pompadour style (strangely Larry was a dead-eye blue-eyed blonde kid, so go figure). He had introduced the new flaky dance moves like the Watushi learned from eternal afternoon rush home from school American Bandstand, from his older brothers   or from “Foul-Mouth” Phil’s latest intelligence from his older brothers , that had priests and parents alike on fire, had been the villain who had introduced the move of the boy putting his hand almost to a girl’s ass when slow dancing (the girls learned to not swat them away on their own so don’t blame Larry for that one), and a mass of other sins, mortal and venial. All learned, according to the priests, at that damn (although they did not use that word publicly) secular school over on Ashmont Street. The priests and a few like-minded parents were determined after a collective meeting of the minds among themselves to put a stop to this once and for all.      

Their strategy was simplicity itself, with few moving parts to complicate things-“if you can’t fight them, join them.” So come the first Friday night in November of the year of our Lord 1957 Saint Brendan’s Parish used its adjacent auditorium for its first sock hop. Worse, worse for Larry, hell, worse for everybody who learned anything at all from him, and liked it, boy or girl, the priests had ordered from their Sunday pulpits  that every parent with teenagers was to send their charges to the hop under penalty, of I don’t know what, but under penalty. And thus the long chagrin death march faces come that first hop night.                       

Obviously there were to be certain, ah, restrictions, enforced by the chaperones inevitable at such gatherings of the young, those chaperones being the younger priests of the parish who were allegedly closer to the kids, had a clue to what was going on, or else dour older boys and girls, probably headed to the seminaries and convents themselves, or those who were sucking up to the priests for sin brownie point. Banned: no lipstick or short dresses (short being anything above the ankle practically in those days) on girls and ties and jackets for boys and no slick stuff on their hair. Worse, worst of all no grabbing ass on the slow dances (not put that way but the reader will get the picture). Yes, boring made more so by the selection of records that were something out of their parents’ vault with nothing faster than some Patti Page number yakking about old Cape Cod or Marty Robbins crooning about white carnations cranking out on the old record player that had been donated by Smiling Jack’s Record Store over on the Boulevard. (Jack O’Malley, proprietor of the shop, a notorious drunk and skirt-chaser in his off hours obviously in desperate need of indulgences, no question).           

Enter Larry Larkin who had been dragged to the front door of the auditorium by his parents and who were duly recognized by Father Joyce, the young priest put in charge of the operation by Monsignor Lally (although Larry had not been too hard dragged since Maggie Kelly was to be there, yes, he had it bad for her). Now everybody knew that Phil had a “boss” record collection either bought from his earnings as a caddie over at the golf course on weekends and in the summer or “clipped” from Smiling Jack’s (and if the reader needs to know what “clipped” meant well we will just leave it at Larry did not pay for them). They also knew he has a pretty good record player with an amplifier that his parents had bought for him the Christmas before last. None of that stuff some of which had used by Loopy Lenny the DJ over at the Eliot School sock hops would be used this evening and some of the kids commented on the fact that Larry came record empty-handed. Yes all the signs where there for a boring evening.   

But here is where fate took a turn on a dime, or maybe not fate so much as the fact that the new breeze coming through the teenage land was gathering some fierce strength in aid of the jail-break many like Larry knew was coming, had to come. About half way through the first part of the dance when more kids were milling around than dancing, talking in boy-girl segregated corners, when even the wallflowers were getting restless and threatening to dance, and they never danced but just hung to their collective walls, definitely before the intermission, all of a sudden from “heaven” it seemed came blaring out Danny and the Juniors At The Hop and the formerly downbeat scene started jumping with kids dancing up a storm (including a few former wallflowers who too must have sensed a portent in the air). The priests bewildered by where the music was coming from tried to investigate while Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock came on with the kids dancing fast like crazy (including some off-hand grabbing ass usually reserved for slow dances). Irate and failing to find the source of the “devil’s music” Father Joyce, red-faced (whether because he knew that the closed dance doomed him among the kids or because he was going to on the carpet with the Monsignor and probably consigned to do the 6:00 AM weekday masses) declared the dance over. Done. And that was the last time Saint Brendan’s Parish sponsored a sock hop for their tender youth charges.         

Oh, yes, how does Larry Larkin last seen among the milling around crowd on the dance floor fit into this whole mix. Simple, he had hired Jimmy Jenkin, a non-Catholic ace tech guy older friend of his brother, Jack, and therefore not subject to the fire and brimstone of hell for his heathen actions, to jerry-rig Larry’s sound system in a room with an electric outlet near up near the rafters of the auditorium, a place that the good priests were probably totally unaware of. Money well spent and a kudo to Jimmy. And Larry, well, if you want to see Larry (and “Foul-Mouth” Phil, now a regular weekly visitor at his cousin’s, ready to bring the new dispensation across the river to Adamsville) then show up some Friday night at the Eliot School where he will be dancing to the latest tunes with Maggie Kelly in tow. Enough said.          

Hey, here are some stick-outs records from Larry’s collection used by Loopy Lenny at the Eliot School that every decent hopping, be-bopping record hop (or sock hop, okay) spun out of pure gold:

Blue Suede Shoes, Carl Perkins (Elvis covered it and made millions but old Carl had a better old rockabilly back beat on his version); In The Still Of The Night, The Five Satins (a doo wop classic that I am humming right this minute, sha dot do be doo, sha dot do be doo or something like that spelling, okay); Eddie, My Love, The Teen Queens (incredible harmony, doo wop back-up, and, and “oh Eddie, please don’t make me wait too long” as part of the lyrics, Whoa!); Roll Over Beethoven, Chuck Berry ( a deservedly early break-out rock anthem. Hell I thought it was a big deal just to trash my parents’ Patti Page old Chuck went after the big boys like Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.); Be-Bop-a-Lula, Gene Vincent (the guy was kind of a one hit wonder but Christ what a one hit, "yah, she’s my baby now"); Blueberry Hill, Fats Domino (that old smooth piano riffing away); Rip It Up, Little Richard (he/she wild man Richard rips it up); Young Love, Sonny James ( dreamy stuff that those giggling girls at school loved, and so you "loved" too); Why Do Fools Fall In Love?, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers (for a minute the king be-bop, doo wop teenage angel boy. Everybody wanted to be the doo wop king or queen, including my friend Billy); See You Later, Alligator, Bill Haley and The Comets (yah, these “old guys” could rock, especially that sax man. Think about the expression  people still use “see you later alligator”); and Since I Met You Baby, Ivory Joe Hunter (every dance pray, every last dance pray, oh my god, let them play Ivory Joe at the end so I can dance close with that certain she I have been eyeing all night).

Note: I have mentioned previously the excellent album cover art that accompanied each classic rock series compilation. Not only do they almost automatically evoke long ago memories of red hot youth, and those dreams, those steamy dance night dreams too, but has supplied this writer with more than one idea for a commentary. One of the 1956 compilation album covers is in that same vein. The cover shows what looks like a local cover band from the 1950s getting ready to perform at the local high school dance, not a record hop but if they are worth anything at all they will play the songs us po’ boys were listening to on the transistor radio or via that cranky record player lent by somebody for the occasion at the hop. Although the guys, especially the lead vocalist, look a little skittish they know they have to make a good showing because this is their small-time chance at the big time. Besides there are about six thousand other guys hanging around in their fathers’ garages ready and willing to step up if the Danny and the Bluenotes fall flat. If they don’t make that big splash hit like Danny and the Juniors did with At The Hop, the first song that got me jumping, jack they are done for.

This live band idea was actually something of a treat because, from what I personally recall, many times these school dance things survived on loud record playing dee-jay chatter, thus the term “record hop.” From the look of it the school auditorium is the locale (although ours were inevitably held in the school gym), complete with the obligatory crepe, other temporary school-spirit related ornaments and a mesmerized girl band groupie to give the joint a festive appearance.

More importantly, as I said before, at least for the band, as they are warming up for the night’s work, is that they have to make their mark here (and at other such venues) and start to get a following if they want to avoid another dreaded fate of rock life. Yes, the dreaded fate of most bands that don’t break out of the old neighborhood, the fate of having to some years down the road play at some of the students they are performing for that night children’s birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, weddings and the like. That thought should be enough to keep these guys working until late in the night, jamming the night away, disturbing some old fogy Frank Sinatra fans in the neighborhood, perfecting those covers of Roll Over Beethoven, Rip It Up, Rock Around The Clock and Jailhouse Rock. Go to it boys, buy the ticket and ride the furies.

************

21

Frankie Riley’s Theory- With Jody Reynolds' “Endless Sleep” In Mind –Take Two  

 

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

I want the iPhone number and e-mail address of the person who wrote this one, wrote these death-dealing lyrics above. Of course I would not touch a hair on the head of well-side-burned pretty boy Jody Reynolds since I may need to use his song sometime myself so I will reserve my fury for Delores Nance for leading Jody astray on this one. As far as getting her iPhone number and e-mail, well, okay since this song goes back a way I will give some choices just to show I am not a guy hung on being very, very up-to-date with the latest communications technology and don’t realize that not everybody has made their mark on the information superhighway. Hell I won’t be particular and will be old-fashioned enough to just request the landline number and street address of Ms. Nance. She, in any case 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. Yeah, the more I think about the matter before us that latter choice seems most fitting.

Why all the hubbub? Why am I insisting on deep Socratic measures for some poor Tin Pan Alley denizen? Well read the heart-breaking teen angst lyrics printed above for your perusal on Endless Sleep. Old Jesse 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 Johnny Angel, teen angel, earth angel, be-bopper, him, her, she, he, they, etc. like giving names to angry anguished teens in the red scare cold war night was akin to aiding and abetting the Russkies or was some grave matter of kinky national security concerns, and his honey have had a spat, of unnamed origin so we never get to figure out who had justice on his or her side. Okay, so maybe it was a bigger one than usual but in the whole wide-world historic meaning of things still just a spat. Laura, high-strung Laura, again name made up although not the angst to give some personality to this sketch since we revealed Lee’s name and nothing much has happened to him as a result. Judging from her reaction thought whatever irked her was a world-historic dispute, and she just flat-out flipped out. Nothing new to that phenomenon as teenagers have been flipping out since they invented teenagers about a century maybe more ago although they have not always called what said teenagers did “flipping out.” And, as teenagers often will do in a moment of overreaction to some slight, Laura had gone down to the seaside to end it all. Throw her young body, whether it was shapely or not we never find out either but figure with a name like Laura she is, well, “hot,” high school hot or Jesse Lee and his big ass ’57 Chevy would have no truck with her to begin with, into the sea. Lee in desperation, once he heard from some inevitably unnamed third party, I say apparently unnamed although maybe it was from some more reliable source like Susie Darling, Laura’s best friend since elementary school, what Laura had done, frantically tried to find her out in the deep, dark, wave-splashed night. All the while the churning “sea” is relentlessly, almost sexually cone hither calling out for him to join her. Jesus what a scene.

And that last part, the part where the sea, or Laura now acting as the ocean’s agent, 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 (although like I say not me, not me just in case that she I am eying right now might have a crush on Jody, or actually like such deathly lyrics). Yeah, I know old Jesse 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 from a friend of a friend who claims to have scoped out what really happened, 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 at old Jack Slack’s bowling alleys or whatever the name of the bowling alleys were in there town to roll a few strings Saturday or to the drive-in theater for the latest Elvis movie. (I have used Jack Slack’s bowling establishment here since that is where me and my corner boys hung out, hung out one night discussing the meaning of all of the acts in this very song so Jack Slack’s will do nicely to fill in a name for what ailed our beloved couple.) Jesse Lee, usually a mild-mannered kid despite his corner boy reputation and some things said about his style around town, reared up at that thought of going to another bogus Elvis film featuring him, the king. The king riding around in a big old car, some pink Caddy, dressed in some gaudy Hawaiian shirt and white beach pants attire, singing some lamo syrupy songs that in his Sun Records days when he was young and hungry and talking about one night of sin and jailbreak-out stuff he would have thrown out the studio door, 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, which sounds reasonable to me, I think old Jesse 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.

Okay, okay I know what everybody is going to say, or at least think now. What has this guy not at least given Laura her say, her day in court to explain he dramatic behavior. This information was harder to glean because I had to get it from a friend of Laura’s friend Susie Darling. Susie sworn on a stack of seven bibles or something that she would not reveal to anyone Laura’s motivation under penalty of death. Of course in the ethos of the times and age that swearing unto death business just meant telling only one other person, a girl person in this case, come Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talkfest. So according to this hearsay what Laura was miffed about was that Jesse Lee had not been paying enough attention to her of late, had been almost every night out with his corner boys doing wheelers with his car or whatever guys do when their honeys are not on board. So the drive-in movie idea was to get Jesse Lee to pay more serious attention to her was not about the movie, not about Elvis although Laura, like every other girl in America had her dreams about how she could tame Elvis in a flash if she could just get close to him, but about “doing the do.” See Laura a few weeks before had let Jesse Lee have his way with her but since then-no go. And she wanted to do it. But here is the kicker the place where Laura went into the sea is exactly the place where they had first made love. Jesus.               

But that brings something up, something that I am not kidding about. Now I love the sea more than a little having grown up so near it that I could roll down a hill and take a splash. Love the sea and its tranquility, of the effect that those waves, splashing waves too, have on my temperament. But I also know about the power of the sea, about old Uncle Neptune’s capacity to do some very bad things to anyone, anything, any object 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, should have known on that dark rainy night the power of the sea. 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.

The whole scenario once I thought about it reminded me, although I offer this observation 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, out there near Point Magoo in California never having seen the ocean before, leaped right in and was almost carried away by a sudden riptide. It took all I had, all I knew or remembered about how to ride out a riptide to pull her out. To save her from the briny deep. 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.

****************

22

Out In Jukebox Night-With Ben E. King's Spanish Harlem In Mind

Spanish Harlem

Song by The Drifters, Ben E. King

There is a rose in Spanish Harlem
A red rose up in Spanish Harlem
It is the special one, it's never seen the sun
It only comes out when the moon is on the run
And all the stars are gleaming
It's growing in the street
Right up through the concrete
But soft and sweet and dreaming

There is a rose in Spanish Harlem
A red rose up in Spanish Harlem
With eyes as black as coal
That looks down in my soul
And starts a fire there and then I lose control
I have to beg your pardon
I'm going to pick that rose
And watch her as she grows in my garden

I'm going to pick that rose
And watch her as she grows in my garden

La la la, la la la, la la la la
(There is a rose in Spanish Harlem)
La la la, la la la, la la la la
(There is a rose in Spanish Harlem)

Sometimes it is hard to figure out why a certain memory draws certain other memories out although today, musically, which is what I want to talk about, just flipping to YouTube and its cross-references makes that statement more explicable since one is almost automatically bombarded with about seven million songs with some memory meaning. Meaning maybe a memory of that first record hop at school, elementary school in the 1950s, just by the reference. Or that first time you noticed that girls were, well, kind of interesting or at least approachable at some basement family room “petting” party. (The first “private” time when adults may be hovering around unseen but when they are persona non grata with the confines of the party room and a time when lights low or out the first “feels” occurred however innocent or bewildering for either sex. That basement family room also serving as fall-out shelter, fully-stocked, if the Russkies decided to blow one by us.) Better just a little time later, although time seemed then to drag infinitely by and you tried to hurry it up then, when you started dreaming about that brunette on television (you can fill in your own color preference) swaying back and forth provocatively, provocatively in your mind anyway, just for you after rushing home after school to watch American Bandstand. Or later when the hormones really kicked in that first night time junior high school dance with her, the her with the faraway eyes whose bubble soap (or maybe some “stolen” scent from the top of mother’s dresser) drove you crazy. Yeah, I like the latter better since that scenario would mean that she was provocatively trying to drive you crazy with her amateur womanly wiles. Moving on to that first double-date night down by the seashore watching the “submarine races” and you copped a “feel” (for those who did not have a seashore to go down to in order to look for those locally famous submarines at midnight, sorry, but okay so maybe at a drive-in movie, or that spot out by the dam or up in the foreboding hills known strictly as a lovers’ lane). Then before you know it you had graduated high school and the memories got fonder but faded with time until you got to the 2000s night and you woke up in a sweat thinking about that girl with the faraway eyes and that damn bubble soap smell that filled your nostrils (and wondering, wondering did she really have the cunning to steal that mother’s scent right off the top of her dresser). 

Recently I have, seemingly endlessly, gone back to my early musical roots, my memory roots, in reviewing various commercial compilations of classic rock series that goes under the general title Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die. That classic rock designation signifying the “golden age of rock,” the time of some Les Paul guitar zip rocket 88 Ike Turner, zap finger-snapping the big man flapping shake, rattle and roll Big Joe Turner, from long side-burned, sexy-eyed (yeah guys can say that now about guys without blushing), sneering one night of sin hunger Elvis, from sweet little sixteen Mister’s girl hunger telling Beethoven his time had passed Chuck Berry, from the back of a flatbed truck  double girl hunger high school confidential Jerry Lee, the time of the original jail break-out and not the smoother later patched-up stuff-ouch!. While time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes (and lesser singers like blueberry hill Fats and he/she good golly Little Richard) it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-62, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

We had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about such notable phenomena as the pre-chain convenience store mom and pop corner variety store corner boy hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (naturally unfiltered, not some “faggy” (yeah, that’s what we said then and what did we know about such things, such same-sex things that were whispered then and are now laughingly out in the open, anyway) Kents, Winstons or Marboros but real coffin nails Luckies, Camels, or Pall Malls) hanging from the sullen lips, Coke, big sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. Complete with foxy tight cashmere-sweaterd girls hanging off every bump and grind of that twisted machine. And, of course, about the pizza parlor, you name it House of Pizza, Marios’s, Mama Mia’s,  juke-box coin-devouring, playing some “hot” song for the nth time that night, hold the onions on that order please as I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl coming in the door thing. Another of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae, please. Ditto for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing (and where Mister Ben E. King at some point was “walking with the king” to get us close on his la la la’s in Spanish Harlem.

Whee! That’s maybe enough memory lane stuff for a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid messenger feels the need to go back again and take a little different look at that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the early 1960s. Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days. Bowling alleys, drugstores, pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and as had been shown in the cover art on one of that rock and roll series CDs I reviewed also at the daytime beach. While boy or girl watching. Basically any place where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.

A lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted your attention as they came in the door. The cover artwork on that daytime beach scene, for example, showed a dreamy girl waiting for her platters (vinyl records, okay, check on it) to work their way up the mechanism that took them from the stack and laid them out on the player. And tee-shirted sullen guy (could have been you, right?) just hanging around the machine waiting for just such a well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days, and still do if anybody is asking), maybe chatting idly was worth at least a date or, more often, a telephone number to call. Not after nine at night though or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boyfriend. Jesus. But lucky guy, maybe.

But here is where the real skill came in, and where that white-tee-shirted guy on the cover seemed to be clueless. Just hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day waiting on a twist (one of about a dozen slang words for girl in our old working-class neighborhood usually made up by or learned from corner boy leader Frankie Riley who had a thing for old time detective novels and films where he would pick them up) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking, usually to girlfriends, as she made those selections. Usually the first couple were easy, some old boyfriend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next.

Then you made your move-“Have you heard Spanish Harlem. NO! Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you right up. Or some such line. Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and Roller, let’s say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking to... for just a minute, I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc., etc. Oh, jukebox you baby. And guess what. On that self-same jukebox you were very, very likely to hear some of the following songs. Here’s the list and there are some stick-outs (and a few that worked some of that “magic” just mentioned above on tough nights):

1)   My Boyfriend's Back-The Angels: it seemed that every good-looking girl had some hidden boyfriend stashed away for just that occasion when you got too close and she sprung the hurting news on you without grace, worse scorned you for thinking that you had a chance beyond “being friends” when everybody, everybody who counted, knew she had been going with Joe College from State U who had graduated from high school a couple of years before forever. Although if you thought about it for a minute the real problem had been the break-down in your “intelligence” network, you know, your Monday morning before school boys’ lav info session where you gathered the scoop on the weekend doing and discreetly asked around about that Laura something, the one who you had been eyeing in study for about a week before you made your big move and got your hopes up. Or at least had gotten “the word” from one of your corner boys, maybe Josh, maybe Frankie, who were sworn to not leave you in the lurch on such matters and make you the laughing stock of subsequent Monday morning boys’ lav talkfests about the weekend doings. No, you had to jump in with both feet, hell, both feet and both hands, on the basis of a furtive glance that she threw you way in the corridor one day. Hadn’t you learned by then that those subtle furtive glances were thrown at every guy with anything going for him by the Lauras of this wicken old teen world. Join the club brother, join the club.     

2)Nadine (Is It You?)-Chuck Berry: anything by Chuck by definition in the theme and tenor of his lyric, or by the various hot licks he laid down on his guitar spoke of sex, back seat of the car sex which was just fine then when you were young and agile. Young and agile and if the moment was right and you had some Chuck playing on the car radio permanently tuned to WMEX down by the seashore (or wherever that local lovers’ lane was far from prying adult eyes and far from children glares) and you needed every inch and ounce of young and agile in that damn crowded backseat that somebody, some S.O.B car manufacturer though was saving profits by making as small as possible you still managed to do what you, and she (or he for she or whatever combinations pass these days in the love circle) started out to do because otherwise why were you down by that seaside far from prying eyes.    

3)Spanish Harlem-Ben E. King: I have already pointed out the central importance of this song come late night school dance night when you want that she you were eyeing all evening to slow dance with you on that last chance to dance, and you were looking for that one moment when you could put your hands down her back toward her ass and she didn’t brush you off, didn’t seem to mind at all in that dark hall moment. Thanks, Brother King. 

4) Come & Get These Memories-Martha and the Vandellas: well, it is not dancing in the streets but Martha and the girls had that Motown sound down. That sound that got everybody up and dancing just to be dancing, dancing close or dancing apart but just dancing. A big relief for bad dancers and semi-wallflower guys like me. The real full-time wallflowers that hugged the gym walls like they were a life-saver thrown in the sea just kept to their walls as they always did but the rest of us decided to live a little dangerously, and we survived.  

5) Little Latin Lupe Lu- The Righteous Brothers: every guy, at least every guy I knew, wondered about that Latin girl thing from these guys like maybe we missed something, like maybe there was something to that Tia Taco thing, that high-blown Spanish blood lust thing. Problem, big problem around our way was that there was no way to verify or not verify that hot blood thing since there were zero, nada nunca nada, Latinos in our high school, hell, in the whole town. Needless to say no blacks either, none. The closest we came to dark-skinned ethnics was a girl from Lebanon who seemed very exotic. It would be a long time and a couple of thousand miles south in old Mexico before I got the message that those hermanos were laying down.         

6)It's Gonna Work Out Fine-Ike and Tina Turner: Yeah, we all know now, have had it knocked into our heads that Ike was not nature’s noble man but they rocked on this one with that drop dead guitar work of Ike’s and Tina’s on fire singing.

 7) When We Get Married- The Dreamlovers:  after a bunch of busted marriages, a few off-hand affairs that didn’t work out and a few things that did that kid’s rush to the blissfully wedded aisle with his ever-loving honey seems kind of wishful thinking now. And you know what in those days I had a lot of the same feelings although not directed to a specific person since the routine was finish high school, get a job or go on in school, get married, have two point three children, one white picket fence with whitewashed house attached, have a dog named Spot or Rover and bliss. Yeah, life turned out a little different, no, a lot different.

8)Dear Lady Twist –Gary U.S. Bonds: Brother Bonds saved more two-left feet guys in this universe than you could shake a stick with his twist mania where you could look pretty good all tangled up as long as everybody else was too. Except don’t watch this lad, me, too closely because his tangled up is off the beat even though his kindly partner was courteous enough to mention that, said he was a great dancer. Said it in such a way that they wound up sitting down by the seaside shifting sand before the night was over where she admitted that her tangling up was off too. Get this, and suggested we form a club, a two left- feet club, with two members. Well, okay.   

9) If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody –James Ray: the national anthem for guys who did not get to dance that last chance dance, damn, after eyeing her all evening until your eyeballs got sore. And you suddenly learned if you did not know already, and maybe you should have, maybe some boys’ locker room guy, come brethren corner boy, heck, your older brother, consulted wiser heads to find out that the good-looking women of the world, the Lauras mentioned above throw out those furtive glances just for kicks, just to see what sore eye-balled guys would do. And guess what 16 or 68 it does not get any better. Jesus.  

 10) I Count the Tears-The Drifters: a great backup song just in case Spanish Harlem had already been played and Loopy Lenny the DJ was not into taking requests or maybe the borrowed record was worn out from play or the guy running the record-player if not Loopy Lenny had absolutely no sense of what a high energy, high hormonal count teenage crowd wanted to hear late at night. Wanted to have a chance for that last dance.  

************

23

When Be-Bop Bopped In The Doo Wop Night-With The Classics Til Then In Mind

Til Then Lyrics

doo-doo-doom) (doo-doo-doom) (doo-doo-doom)
(rep-reddah-rep)
(doo-doo-doom) (doo-doo-doom) (doo-doo-doom)
(rep-reddah-rep)

[Intro continues behind each verse]

Till then, my darling, please wait for me
Till then, no matter when it may be
One day I know I'll be home again
Please wait (till) till then

Our dreams will live though we are apart
Our love will always stay in our hearts
Till then, when of the world will be free
Please wait for me

Although there are oceans we must cross and mountains that we must climb
I know every gain must have a loss, so pray that our loss is nothing but time

Till then, we'll dream of what there will be
Till then, we'll call on each memory
Till then, when I will hold you again
Please wait till then (ooh)

Sure I have plenty to say about early rock ‘n’ roll, now called the classic rock period in the musicology hall of fame. Yeah, I know I have already talked some ears off, maybe yours, about how hard-pressed Mississippi plantation workers (semi-slaves the way the pay-out came down at the  end of the year) gathered around on some sweaty Saturday night to hear Big Bill, Big Jack, Big Little, or Big somebody belt the blues out of some whiskey bottle in some broken down juke joint, and left enough of an impression that that dark boy in the corner, kind of shy but very inquisitive about that beat took it north-ward and put it in an electric outlet and you could see the audience, the woman audience part, swaying that sway that meant they got it, got that rif (and maybe said thanks that shy young brother in their own swaying way). I know too that I have left some ears kind of staggered after mouthing off about who Jesse Lee and Billy Bob, a couple of plain ordinary good old boys maybe heard a far off echo of that electrified music and started riff-ing on their own in places like Memphis and Mobile waiting to be discovered as the next be-bop daddy musical white negro (Norman Mailer’s term, hipster term, not mine but it fits) all young and hungry, ready to play for free, or nickels just to get out of the small town Saturday night and jump. 

So yeah I have talked some, some about the big broad trends coming out of the mid-century muck (mid-20^th century just so you know) and within that say I have spent a little time, not enough, considering its effect on us on the doo-wop branch of the genre. Part of the reason for the “not enough,” once I thought about it was that obviously back in those mid-1950s jail-breakout days I did not (and I do not believe that any other eleven and twelve-year olds did either), distinguish between let’s say rockabilly-back-beat-drive rock, black-based rock centered on a heavy rhythm and blues backdrop, and the almost instrument-less (or maybe a soft piano or guitar backdrop) group harmonics that drove doo-wop. Even now that stuff is better left to the aficionados and musical intelligentsia, the guys who make dough putting the stuff in some boxed-in historical perspective. 

All I knew, all any of us knew when our knees started to tremble, maybe wobble is better, to the new beat that came out of some Mother Africa from whence we came, was that it was not my parents’ mannered Tin Pan Alley by-the-numbers music, not close. Get this too as a selling point it did not hurt that they, those same parents, got nervous, very nervous, anytime it was played out loud in their presence. Forever “turn it down” (or father “turn the damn thing down”) raced along with each song. Fortunately, some sainted, sanctified, techno-guru developed the iPod of that primitive era; the battery-driven transistor radio. No big deal, technology-wise by today’s standards, but get this you could place it near your ear and have your own private out loud without parental scuffling in the background. Yes, sainted, sanctified techno-guru. No question.

What doo-wop did though down in our old-time working-class housing projects neighborhood, and again it was not so much by revelation as by trial and error, is allow us to be in tune with the music of our generation without having to spend a lot of money on instruments or a studio or anything like that. Strictly built for po’ boys like us. First of all where the hell would we have gotten the dough, when we were stretched grabbing nickels and dimes, stealing really okay, from Ma’s pocketbook just to keep the juke-box at Sandy’s Diner going, for such things when papas were out of work, or were one step away, and there was “max daddy” trouble just keeping the wolves from the door. Bills and repo men the bane of every family’s existence. (Worse, worse though when papas could not take it anymore and just split, long-gone daddy split with or without some barroom frill or got nasty drunk with the paycheck and left Ma with empty Friday night envelopes and nothing to stave off the collectors.)

Sure, some kids, some kids like my corner boy elementary school boyhood friend Billy, William James Bradley, were crazy to put together cover bands with electric guitars (rented occasionally), and dreams. Or maybe go wild with a school piano a la Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, or Fats Domino but those were maniac aficionados. I remember one time Billy was so hopped up on the fame game that in the height of the Elvis craze when all us other boys were busy growing side-burns and perfecting our sneers (sneers meant for some young thing, in our neighborhood and in that time meaning stick girls who had not gotten their forms yet, to wipe off into the sunset) he tried to hop on the Bo Diddley bandwagon. Hop on that bandwagon until one cruel school talent show night he learned the hard facts of the racial divide in a northern white housing project by one of the older boy rednecks and returned to Elvis-land with the rest of us. Billy, never say die Billy, also trying to break out with a Bill Haley and the Comets routine which worked okay around the neighborhood where all the girls went nuts but got him nowhere when a regional new talent show came through town and he was all geared up to win except the suit jacket his mother had jerry-rigged for the occasion fell apart about half way through his performance. Yeah, Billy had it bad.

Even Billy though, when the deal went down, especially after hearing Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers was mad to do the doo-wop and make his fame and fortune on the cheap. (No need for instruments, cheapjack jackets or racial taunts.) The cover art on a doo wop compilation I once reviewed in an old time rock and roll series made that poor boy and girl point beautifully. No not some Karl Marx brotherhood of man thing or Adams Smith all ships rising if one guy rises. Nothing that heavy, please. The cover showed a group of young black kids, black guys, young guys who looked “from hunger” too like us and who looked like they were doing their doo wop on some big city street corner (maybe Brooklyn, maybe the old days Bronx, maybe uptown Harlem Saturday night). And that made sense reflecting the New York City-derived birth of doo-wop and that the majority of doo-wop groups that we heard on the AM transistor sister radio were black. But the city, the poor sections of the city, white or black, was not the only place where moneyless guys and gals were harmonizing, hoping, hoping maybe beyond hope, to be discovered and make more than just a 1950s musical jail-breakout of their lives. Moreover, this cover art I speak of also showed, and showed vividly, what a lot of us guys were trying to do-impress girls, impress them on the cheap with some harmonies and moonlight and maybe a little side chatter too (and maybe visa-a-versa for girl doo-woppers but they can tell their own stories).

Yes, truth to tell, it was about impressing girls that drove many of us, Billy included, Christ maybe Billy most of all, to mix and match harmonies. And you know you did too (except remember girls just switch around what I just said). Yah, four or five guys just hanging around the back door of the old South Adamsville Elementary School on hot summer nights, nothing better to do, no dough to do things, maybe a little feisty because of that, and started up a few tunes. Junior corner boys with no corner because, well, because true corner-dom required a drugstore, a mom and pop variety store, or maybe if you were lucky a pizza parlor to be real corner boys and we did not have such institutions within five miles of our isolated peninsula projects. Billy, who actually did have some vocal musical talent (he did a very servable Bo Diddley although no way did he have that Afro-Carib beat down being as I later tried to figure out just a tad too white to have immersed his soul in that milieu and also did, if not a son of Bill Haley act if you don’t count the clothes flying off, then close very good job), usually sang lead, and the rest of us, well, doo-wopped. (Sha-sha-do-be-doo, okay just in case you thought I was kidding.) We knew nothing of keys and pauses, of time, notes, or reading music we just improvised. Worked on stuff kind of by osmosis or something and over the course of a summer we started to jell a little (And to keep in that jell mood I kept my changing to a teen-ager, slightly off-key voice on the low, on the very low.)

Whether we did it well or poorly, guess what, as the hot sun day turned into humid night, and the old sun went down just over the hills, first a couple of girls, then a couple more, and then a whole bevy (nice word, right?) of them came and got kind of swoony and moony. And swoony and moony was just fine. And we all innocent, innocent dream, innocent when we dreamed, make our virginal moves. But, mainly, we doo-wopped in the be-bop mid-1950s night. And a few of the songs previously mentioned in that reviewed CD compilation could be heard in that airless night. The stick outs: Deserie, The Charts; Baby Blue, The Echoes; Till Then, The Classics; Tonight (Could Be The Night), The Velvets. And of course Why Do Fools Fall In Love although Billy did not make any mistake this time since he had seen Frankie and his boys on American Bandstand  and so did no imitation.

As for the girls as summer turned to school times on certain humid hot late August nights you could hear a mix and match of young male and female voices like they too had imbibed Billy’s dream, had seen that fame and fortune coming their way and they wanted in on it, if for no other reason than to get out of the projects. Or maybe I dwell too much, after the fact project too much, and they just wanted to bathe in the jail-break night we all knew was coming with the new rock dispensation.

Yah, I know everybody wants to know what happened to Billy since the name does not instantly come to mind when one thinks of the legends of classic rock, or doo wop bop. Well, Billy was wired for that success that always eluded him and after a while, after a few too many failures, bad moves or poor judgment he lost interest in being the president of rock and roll and turned to a life of small-time crime (even there he could not breakthrough since that life was just as “rigged” as everything else if you were not connected), got caught a few times and then I lost contact where he was and what he was doing. Whatever it was he still made many a project kid, including this kid, feel good for a couple of summers crooning out the tunes and bringing the girls around. Thanks Billy, thanks a lot.     

Yah, bop the doo wop
**********
24

Out In The Be-Bop Drive-In Movie Night– With Doris Troy’s Just One Look In Mind

Just One Look Lyrics

Just  one look and I fell so hard
In love with you Oh Oh
I found out how good it feels
To have your love Oh Oh
Say you will, will be mine
Forever and always Oh Oh
Just one look and I knew
That you were my only one Oh Oh

I thought I was dreaming
But I was wrong Oh yeah yeah
Ah but I'm gonna keep on scheming
Till I make you, make you my own

So you see I really care
Without you I'm nothing Oh Oh
Just one look and I know
I'll get you someday Oh Oh

Just one look
That's all it took hah just one look
That's all it took woah just one look
That's all it woah baby you know I love you baby
I'll build my world around you come on baby

You know it’s funny how a kid, a guy kid I will let the gals speak for themselves, picked up the various signals, the various nods and looks relating to being cool back in the day, back in the late 1950s, early 1960s day. Cool with guys and cool with girls for they were two very different things. Probably each generation develops out of necessity, or self-defense, its own set of signals but while I was reviewing an “oldies but goodies” rock and roll compilation from the early 1960s I latched onto Doris Troy’s Just One Look to get me thinking about the ways we rather silently communicated what we were about.

The strange thing about the signals, let’s just call it that but I mean nods and looks, was early on when you were just a wet-behind-the-ears kid, say around elementary school no later, your signals tended to be straight up, you liked this or that, didn’t like this or that, thought he or she was a dope, etc. and that was the end of it. Or maybe not the end of it if in your honesty some bigger kid decided to take umbrage and box your ears to show his or her displeasure in a more visceral way. Then almost by osmosis, or maybe design, I am not sure which, you curbed your tongue a little and began with the silent signals.

The first one I clearly remember from down at the old Adamsville housing projects neighborhood was when my best friend in elementary school, Billy Bradley, stopped telling me I was his best friend but instead when we saw each other in the hallways during school he would just give me a slight nod of his head. At first I thought he was putting the freeze on me or something until I asked him about it after school one day. He said he had learned from his older brother, Prescott I think, that guys did not just keep going around saying they were friends when they got older but gave the nod to acknowledge that fact. And so the nod. Once I picked up on it that was that. All through school until graduation, maybe later, the nod became the way guys, guys who thought other guys were cool, addressed each other. Especially guys you did not know well, maybe just played pick-up ball with, maybe just hung around the soda fountain at the drugstore listening to the juke-box, maybe just saw walking down the street and maybe had nothing to say but giving the nod expressed your appreciation of other guy’s guy-ness.      

Of course guy-girl signals were in another universe. No way you gave a girl, I think any girl whether you liked her or not, whether you cared whether she lived or died or not, the nod. No way, first they would not be privy to what that nod meant probably thinking you had some neck problem but as usual with girls you needed a much more elaborate signal system whether you were trying to score or not. Here too there was a shift around late elementary school, right around the time girls went from being nuisance sticks to, well, interesting. Before that time you would just say something unkind and they would do the same in turn, or they would beat you up depending on their mood. But thereafter to show your interest you had to develop your best furtive glance. There were variations on this but the basic idea was that if you were trying to hone in on some lovely say hanging around that drugstore listening to the jukebox with everybody else you casually shot a slight glance her way, enough for her to see that you had glanced her way but not enough to think that you were so uncool as to stare at her with your tongue open. The trick though was to see if she was also going to take a peek your way. If so then the game was on, if not then if you were called on it, although this rarely happened, you could use that neck problem thing to bail you out. Such were the ways of young love. However the older you got the more signals you developed which one Doris Troy, blessed Doris Troy gave us the ABCs on. 

See here is how it worked out in the trenches. Out in the drive-in movie night once those furtive glances paid off, or promised to pay off. A whole galaxy of options opened up. I remember being struck by the appropriateness of the cover artwork on that CD that I reviewed one time that “spoke” exactly to this drive-in night. I had been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in an extensive commercial rock and roll series called Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die. The artwork which graced the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may be, to the themes of those artwork scenes. The one for the 1963 CD compilation was a case of the former, of the fitting in. On that cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time when we had at least the feel of our generational break-out) we are placed at the drive-in, the drive-in movies for those of the Internet/Netflicks/YouTube generations who have not gotten around to checking out this bit of Americana on Wikipedia, with the obligatory 1950s-early 1960s B-movie monster movie (outer space aliens, creatures from the black lagoon, blobs, DNA-damaged dinosaurs, foreign-bred behemoths a specialty) prominent on the screen.

Oh sure, everyone of a certain age, a certain baby-boomer age, a generation of ’68 age, has plenty of stories to tell of being bundled up as kids, maybe pre-set with a full set pajamas on to defend against the late sleepy-eyed night, the sleepy-drowsy late movie night, placed in the car backseats and taken by adventurous parents (or so it seemed) to the local open air drive-in for the double feature. That usually also happened on a friendly summer night when school did not interfere with staying up late (hopefully keeping awake through both films). And to top it all off you got to play in the inevitable jungle jim, see-saw, slide, swing set-laden playground during intermission between the films while waiting, waiting against all hope, for that skewered, shriveled hot dog, rusty, dusty hamburger, or stale, over-the-top buttered popcorn that was the real reason that you “consented” to stay out late with the parents. Yah, we all have variations on that basic theme to tell, although I challenge anyone, seriously challenge anyone, to name five films that you saw at the drive-in that you remembered from then-especially those droopy-eyed second films.

In any case, frankly, I don’t give a damn about that kid stuff family adventure drive-in experience. Come on, that was all, well, just kids' stuff. The “real” drive-in, as pictured on that cover art just mentioned is what I want to address. The time of our time in that awkward teen alienation, teen angst thing that only got abated by things like a teenage night at the drive-in. Yeah, that was not, or at least I hope it was not, you father’s drive-in. That might have been in the next planet over, for all I know. For starters our planet involved girls (girls, ah, women, just reverse the genders here to tell your side of the experience), looking for girls, or want to be looking for girls, preferably a stray car-full to compliment your guy car-full and let god sort it out at intermission.

Wait a minute. I am getting ahead of myself in this story. First you needed that car, because no walkers or bus riders need apply for the drive-in movies like this was some kind of lame, low-rent, downtown matinee last picture show adventure. For this writer that was a problem, a personal problem, as I had no car and my family had cars only sporadically. Fortunately we early baby-boomers lived in the golden age of the automobile and could depend on a friend to either have a car (praise be teenage disposable income/allowances) or could use the family car. Once the car issue was clarified then it was simply a matter of getting a car-full of guys (or sometimes guys and gals) in for the price of two (maybe three) admissions.

What? Okay, I think that I can safely tell the story now because the statute of limitations must have surely passed. See, what you did was put a couple (or three guys) in the trunk of that old car (or in a pinch one guy on the backseat floor) as you entered the drive-thru admissions booth. The driver paid for the two (or three tickets) and took off to your parking spot (complete with ramp speaker just in case you wanted to actually listen to the film shown on that big wide white screen). Neat trick, right?

Now, of course, the purpose of all of this, as mentioned above, was to get that convoy of guys, trunk guys, backseat guys, backseat floor guys, whatever, to mix and moon with that elusive car-full of girls who did the very same thing (except easier because they were smaller) at the intermission stand or maybe just hanging around the unofficially designated teen hang-out area. No family sedans with those pajama-clad kids need apply (nor would any sane, responsible parent get within fifty paces of said teens). And occasionally, very occasionally as it turned out, some “boss” car would show up complete with one guy (the driver) and one honey (girl, ah, woman) closely seated beside him for what one and all knew was going to be a very window-fogged night. And that was, secretly thought or not, the guy drive-in dream. As for the movies. Did they show movies there? Enough said. And enough too of furtive glances…for now. 

******

 

 

 

 

 

 

 25

 

 

In The Time Of The Hard Motorcycle Boys- With Marlon Brando’s The Wild One In Mind

 
 
 
 

 

 

THE CHEERS

"Black Denim Trousers"

He wore black denim trousers and motorcycle boots
And a black leather jacket with an eagle on the back
He had a hopped-up 'cycle that took off like a gun
That fool was the terror of Highway 101

Well, he never washed his face and he never combed his hair
He had axle grease embedded underneath his fingernails
On the muscle of his arm was a red tattoo
A picture of a heart saying "Mother, I love you"

He had a pretty girlfriend by the name of Mary Lou
But he treated her just like he treated all the rest
And everybody pitied her 'cause everybody knew
He loved that doggone motorcycle best

He wore black denim trousers and motorcycle boots
And a black leather jacket with an eagle on the back
He had a hopped-up 'cycle that took off like a gun
That fool was the terror of Highway 101

[Instrumental Interlude]

Mary Lou, poor girl, she pleaded and she begged him not to leave
She said "I've got a feeling if you ride tonight I'll grieve"
But her tears were shed in vain and her every word was lost
In the rumble of his engine and the smoke from his exhaust

Then he took off like the Devil and there was fire in his eyes
He said "I'll go a thousand miles before the sun can rise"
But he hit a screamin' diesel that was California-bound
And when they cleared the wreckage, all they found

Was his black denim trousers and motorcycle boots
And a black leather jacket with an eagle on the back
But they couldn't find the 'cycle that took off like a gun
And they never found the terror of Highway 101

Okay here is the book of genesis, the motorcycle book of genesis, or at least my motorcycle book of genesis. But, before I get to that let me make about seventy–six disclaimers. First, the whys and wherefores of the motorcycle culture, except on those occasions when they become subject to governmental investigation or impact some cultural phenomena, is outside the purview of the things I generally discuss. I am much more comfortable with the ins and outs of boy meets girl (or really boy longs to meet girl) in various 1950s growing up teenage settings like at the drugstore soda fountain either sipping sodas or absent-mindedly listening to some selections on Doc’s jukebox, doing the stuff in drive-in theaters or drive-in restaurants or down by the shore getting all moony and spoony watching the “submarine races.”  But for all of their bad press, for all that every mother feared for her daughter’s safety when they were within fifty miles of town, for all a mother’s feat that she would lose her Johnny to the gangs I have been fascinated by motorcycles since my early youth when these were definitely outlaw vehicles.

Frankly there is no political rule, no political line, as a rule, on such activity, for or against, nor should there be. Those exceptions include when motorcyclists, usually under the rubric of “bad actor” motorcycle clubs, like the famous (or infamous) Oakland, California-based Hell’s Angels are generally harassed by the cops and we have to defend their right to be left alone (you know, those "helmet laws", and the never-failing pull-over for "driving while biker") or, like when the Angels were used by the Rolling Stones at Altamont and that ill-advised decision represented a watershed in the 1960s counter-cultural movement. Or, more ominously, from another angle when such lumpen formations form the core hell-raisers of anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-black liberation fascistic demonstrations and we are compelled, and rightly so, to go toe to toe with them. Scary yes, necessary yes, bikes or no bikes.

With that out of the way. Second, in the interest of full disclosure I own no stock, or have any other interest, in Harley-Davidson, or any other motorcycle company. Third, I do not now, or have I ever belonged to a motorcycle club or owned a motorcycle, although I have driven them, or, more often, on back of them on occasion. Fourth, I do not now, knowingly or unknowingly, although I grew up in working-class neighborhoods where bikes and bikers were plentiful, hang with such types. Fifth, the damn things and their riders are too noisy, despite the glamour and “freedom” of the road associated with them. Sixth, and here is the “kicker”, I have been, endlessly, fascinated by bikes and bike culture as least since early high school, if not before, and had several friends who “rode”. Well that is not seventy-six but that is enough for disclaimers.

Okay, as to genesis, motorcycle genesis. Let’s connect the dots. A couple of years ago, and maybe more, as part of a trip down memory lane, the details of which do not need detain us here, I did a series of articles on various world-shaking, earth-shattering subjects like high school romances, high school hi-jinx, high school dances, high school Saturday nights, and most importantly of all, high school how to impress the girls( or boys, for girls, or whatever sexual combinations fit these days, but you can speak for yourselves, I am standing on this ground). In short, high school sub-culture, American-style, early 1960s branch, although the emphasis there, as it will be here, is on that social phenomena as filtered through the lenses of a working class town, a seen better days town at that, my growing up wild-like-the-weeds town.

One of the subjects worked over in that series was the search, the eternal search I might add, for the great working-class love song. Not the Teen Angel, Earth Angel, Johnny Angel generic mush that could play in Levittown, Shaker Heights or La Jolla as well as Youngstown or Moline. No, a song that, without blushing, one could call our own, our working class own, one that the middle and upper classes might like but would not put on their dance cards. As my offering to this high-brow debate I offered a song by written by Englishman Richard Thompson (who folkies, and folk rockers, might know from his Fairport Convention days, very good days, by the way), Vincent Black Lightning, 1952. (See lyrics below.) Without belaboring the point the gist of this song is the biker romance, British version, between outlaw biker James and black-leathered, red-headed Molly. Needless to say such a tenuous lumpen existence as James leads to keep himself “biked" cuts short any long term “little white house with picket fence” ending for the pair. And we do not need such a boring finish. For James, after losing the inevitable running battle with the police, on his death bed bequeaths his bike, his precious “Vincent Black Lightning,” to said Molly. His bike, man. His bike. Is there any greater love story, working class love story, around? No, this makes West Side Story lyrics and a whole bunch of other such songs seem like so much cornball nonsense. His bike, man. Wow! Kudos, Brother Thompson.

Needless to say that exploration was not the end, but rather the beginning of thinking through the great American night bike experience. And, of course, for this writer that means going to the books, the films and the memory bank to find every seemingly relevant “biker” experience. Thus, readers of this space were treated to reviews of such classic motorcycle sagas as “gonzo” journalist, Doctor Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels and other, later Rolling Stone magazine printed “biker” stories and Tom Wolfe’ Hell Angel’s-sketched Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (and other articles about California subset youth culture that drove Wolfe’s work in the old days). And to the hellish Rolling Stones (band) Hell’s Angels “policed” Altamont concert in 1969. And, as fate would have it, with the passing of actor/director Dennis Hooper, the 1960s classic biker/freedom/ seeking the great American night film, Easy Rider. And from Easy Rider to the “max daddy” of them all, tight-jeaned, thick leather-belted, tee-shirted, engineer-booted, leather-jacketed, taxi-driver-capped (hey, that’s what it reminds me of), side-burned, chain-linked wielding, hard-living, alienated, but in the end really just misunderstood, Johnny, aka, Marlon Brando, in The Wild One.

Okay, we will cut to the chase on the plot. Old Johnny and his fellow “outlaw” motorcycle club members are out for some weekend “kicks” after a hard week’s non-work (as far as we can figure out, work was marginal for many reasons, as Hunter Thompson in Hell’s Angels noted, to biker existence, the pursue of jack-rolling, armed robbery or grand theft auto careers probably running a little ahead) out in the sunny California small town hinterlands.(They are still heading out there today, the last time I noticed, in the Southern California high desert, places like Twenty-Nine Palms and Joshua Tree.)

And naturally, when the boys (and they are all boys here, except for couple of “mamas”, one spurned by Johnny, in a break-away club led by jack-in-the-box jokester, Lee Marvin as Chino) hit one small town they, naturally, after sizing up the local law, head for the local café (and bar). And once one mentions cafes in small towns in California (or Larry McMurtry’s West Texas, for that matter), then hard-working, trying to make it through the shift, got to get out of this small town and see the world, dreamy-eyed, naïve (yes, naive) sheriff-daughtered young waitress, Kathy, (yes, and hard-working, it’s tough dealing them off the arm in these kind of joints, or elsewhere) Johnny trap comes into play. Okay, now you know, even alienated, misunderstood, misanthropic, cop-hating (an additional obstacle given said waitress’s kinships) boy Johnny needs, needs cinematically at least, to meet a girl who understands him.

The development of that young hope, although hopeless, boy meets girl romance relationship, hither and yon, drives the plot.  Oh, and along the way the boys, after a few thousand beers, as boys, especially girl-starved biker boys, will, at the drop of a hat start to systematically tear down the town, off-handedly, for fun. Needless to say, staid local burghers (aka “squares”) seeing what amount to them is their worst 1950s “communist” invasion nightmare, complete with murder, mayhem and rapine, (although that “c” word was not used in the film, nor should it have been) are determined to “take back” their little town. A few fights, forages, casualties, fatalities, and forgivenesses later though, still smitten but unquenched and chaste Johnny (and his rowdy crowd) and said waitress part, wistfully. The lesson here, for the kids in the theater audience, is that biker love outside biker-dom is doomed. For the adults, the real audience, the lesson: nip the “terrorists” in the bud (call in the state cops, the national guard, the militia, the 82nd Airborne, The Strategic Air Command, NATO, hell, even the “weren't we buddies in the war” Red Army , but nip it, fast when they come roaming through Amityville, Archer City, or your small town).

After that summary you can see what we are up against. This is pure fantasy Hollywood cautionary tale on a very real 1950s phenomena, “outlaw” biker clubs, mainly in California, but elsewhere as well. Hunter Thompson did yeoman’s work in his Hell’s Angels to “discover” who these guys were and what drove them, beyond drugs, sex, rock and roll (and, yah, murder and mayhem, the California prison system was a “home away from home”). In a sense the “bikers” were the obverse of the boys (again, mainly) whom Tom Wolfe, in many of his early essays, was writing about and who were (a) forming the core of the surfers on the beaches from Malibu to La Jolla and, (b) driving the custom car/hot rod/drive-in restaurant-centered (later mall-centered) cool, teenage girl–impressing, car craze night in the immediate post-World War II great American Western sunny skies and pleasant dream drift (physically and culturally). Except those Wolfe guys were the “winners”. The “bikers” were Nelson Algren’s “losers”, the dead-enders who didn’t hit the gold rush, the Dove Linkhorns (aka the Arkies and Okies who in the 1930s populated John Steinbeck’s Joad saga, The Grapes Of Wrath). Not cool, iconic Marlin-Johnny but hell-bend then-Hell Angels leader, Sonny Barger.

And that is why in the end, as beautifully sullen and misunderstood the alienated Johnny was, and as wholesomely rowdy as his gang was before demon rum took over, this was not the real “biker: scene, West or East. Now I lived, as a teenager in a working-class, really marginally working poor, neighborhood that I have previously mentioned was the leavings of those who were moving up in post-war society. That neighborhood was no more than a mile from the central headquarters of Boston's local Hell’s Angels (although they were not called that, I think it was Deathheads, or something like that). I got to see these guys up close as they rallied at various spots on our local beach or “ran” through our neighborhood on their way to some crazed action. The leader had all of the charisma of Marlon Brando’s thick leather belt. His face, as did most of the faces, spoke of small-minded cruelties (and old prison pallors) not of misunderstood youth. And their collective prison records (as Hunter Thompson also noted about the Angels) spoke of “high” lumpenism. And that takes us back to the beginning about who, and what, forms one of the core cohorts for a fascist movement in this country, the sons of Sonny Barger. Then we will need to rely on our street politics, our fists, and other such weapons.

 
 
 

Vincent Black Lightning 1952

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike
A girl could feel special on any such like
Said James to Red Molly, my hat's off to you
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952
And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favourite colour scheme
And he pulled her on behind
And down to Boxhill they did ride

Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand
But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man
I've fought with the law since I was seventeen
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine
Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22
And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you
And if fate should break my stride
Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae
For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery
Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside
Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside
When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do
They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52
He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
He said I've got no further use for these
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride

26

Sweet Dreams, Baby- With Thanks To And With Mister Roy Orbison In Mind

Dream Baby

recorded by Roy Orbison
written by Cindy Walker

G7
Sweet dream baby
 
Sweet dream baby
C
Sweet dream baby
G7                C
How long must I dream
 
G7
Dream baby got me dreaming
 
Sweet dreams the whole day through
 
Dream baby got me dreaming
 
Sweet dreams night time too
 
C
I love you and I'm dreaming of you
 
But that won't do
G7
Dream baby make me stop my dreaming you
                        C
Can make my dreams come true
 
Repeat #1 twice

 

Sixteen and sex. No, I warn you, don’t settle back and think about your own sixteen and sex dreams it is not about that. About that first time you did the “do the do” as we called the act in the old Clintondale neighborhood in the early 1960s after Peter Markin heard Howlin’ Wolf on Be-Bop Benny’s Blues Bonanza on WKPX in Chicago call the sex act that in a song that he heard one Sunday night when the wind was blowing right and he picked the station up on his transistor radio and wowed everybody in Monday morning before school world with that bit of knowledge. (By the way the “do the do” was not  necessarily done at that age but the parties we will be discussing happened to congeal their fates at sixteen and so “sixteen and sex.” Nor is this about your fundamental lack of knowledge of the do’s and don’ts beforehand due to the vagaries of learning about sex not from your parents who were the natural candidates to put you wise, or your house of worship which could have been a useful backup, or even better your school which could have eased the way by covering everything up in austere scientific terms so the faint-hearted or the blushers who did not opt out could catch on but rather learned on the streets. Learned on the streets from those just one step ahead of you and who were wrong more times than right. Jesus, and brother you can say that again.   

Well, maybe this little sketch is not all about that, about those  desperate moves you made trying to figure out about the opposite sex, trying  to figure what the hell the hormonal urges running rampant meant, running every which way not leaving you alone even when you were alone. Not about the what to do about how far to go, how far to let the other party go, or not go, or just wait until everything blows over. (And that “how far to go” was not relegated to the female sex since some mad daddy’s shotgun and worse made the issue more far-fling than that.) Worries too, about reputation, about what Johnny or Jane will, or will not, say, come mandatory Monday morning before school boys’ or girls’ “lav” talkfest or about being Susie being “fast,” Jason a dweeb or some frill being nothing but a man-handler or any of six varieties of goof in a goofy universe.

And here you thought you were so serious, had made such an impression, had got almost everybody in the before mentioned Monday morning talkfest believing you were the stud of the month or the “hottie” of the universe. But  you know you stayed in your room all weekend by the telephone waiting for that call to come in, the “what you doing tonight” call that will not come because the longed for party does not even have your phone number, and does not want to have the damn thing. Probably tossed it on some floor or in some rubbish bin the minute your back was turned. Tough luck, brothers and sisters my kindred heart goes out to you.  

So, no, no too, we will not be focusing on some backseat coupe, all Jimmy retro-ready, maybe fresh from a “chicken run” kill or  down by the seashore, up some hilled lovers’ lane, or in some midnight minute motel kind, at least not yet. No we will step back and take a breather, forget about Monday morning, about reputation, about knowledge, heck, even for a minute the “do the do” itself as hard as that is to believe. No, we are going to ease into this new relationship. Do the ABC work. Just get to know her, easy know her, and let things take their course from there. Our guy Johnny, but it could have been any of fifty thousand guy names in eight hundred languages, was going to set a new course, was going to take the few accumulated lessons that he had learned and change course in his life. No more of this frenzied, heated, beating some other guy’s time (or trying to) like he had just got finished doing with Lucy. No more Lucys, and as an amendment, make it a constitutional amendment if you want, no more dog-eat-dog fighting over girls, women, you know, frails. (Frail meaning girl, meaning today young woman, the young guys in the neighborhood, the Clintondale working-class neighborhood had a million “terms of art” for young woman-frill, chick, babe, twist and on and on most of them introduced by the king hell king of the corner boy night, Johnny’s corner boy night, Frankie Riley, but this sketch is not about Frankie and his mad capacity to make up names for girls strongly influenced by 1930s black and white Hollywood gangster movies and Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler’s hard-boil detective talk which he was addicted to so we will move on.)

That is exactly what Johnny Prescott had on his mind, that no more fighting over girls, no more, no mas, whatever way you wanted to express the new dispensation, as he noticed this cool looking frill across the field heading his way. The field that Johnny saw the cool girl crossing being, for those not from Clintondale, Johnny’s hometown, unofficially known as “the meadows,” a family outing place that no longer was well-used since a couple of years previously they had the big Gloversville Amusement Park going full blast but just the place to go and think through, well think through, sixteen and sex, boy sixteen and sex.

When he was younger, and before the amusement park took the air out of the place, Johnny and his family in their sunnier days (that too a story for another day, not a Frankie Riley king hell king of the corner boy night day but some such day) loved to ramble over the stone fences and scattered granite pieces that dotted the landscape and provided ground for the innocent to play in before the barbecue fires got hot and the family dug into the feast of hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad and cupcakes that formed the culinary delights that drove them to the park and family fun for that little breathe of fresh air time before the family civil wars started anew. But today was different, today he was here to think, to mope a little if he had to.   

Johnny knew, knew as sure as he knew he own think through habits that this frill (girl, okay) was also here to do some thinking. He had run into others, guys mostly, including a few older guys, like maybe college guys, who gave him that same impression, that trying to figure the girl world out stuff. Hell, he had sheepishly asked one guy, a college guy from the lettering on his jacket, who had been sitting on a bench whether he was thinking deep thoughts and what about. Answer: hell, you know the answer, “the torch,” the guy carrying the torch and nothing but. Being at the meadows making that burden a little lighter. So Johnny figured that she was here maybe doing a getting over a boy thing like he was getting over Lucy. She sure looked like somebody whom he could talk to if it came to that all light- brown hair, cashmere sweater showing a nice shape, a short skirt showing well-turned legs and later as she got very close some very pale blue eyes. Or maybe she was just here thinking that the way the boy meets girl rules were set up were just flat-out screwy. He hoped so. That would be his wedge, his edge on the conversation if what he thought was true about her moping about something. 

And as she, this girl okay, approached him, maybe five yards away just then Johnny recognized her from school, from Clintondale High. At least he thought so because although the high school was fairly big gathering in every high school student in town he thought it was small enough so that he should have recognized her, even if only from the “caf.” Maybe some assembly or some Friday night dance before Lucy took his time away. As she came very close in view he noticed that it was none other than Timmy Riley’s younger sister, Betty Ann, a sophomore a year behind him. At first he was going to pass because now that he thought about it, although it was clear that she was pretty in a second look way, and maybe a third look way too, she was known as one of those bookish-types that, well, you know were too bookish to think about sixteen year old boys and sex, or maybe boys of any age. And, well Timmy, Timmy Riley, was the star fullback on the Red Raiders football team, and who knew how he felt about his bookish sister and sexed-up sixteen year old boys.

But Johnny felt lucky, or maybe just desperate, and started to speak. But before he could get word one out Betty Ann said, “It’s a nice day for walking the meadows with nobody around. I come here when I want to think about stuff, about my future and what I want to do in the world. How about you?” Bingo, thought Johnny. Not boy troubles but some kind of troubles.  He was determined that he was going to talk to Betty Ann, and he thought as he pondered that idea, “I’ll take my chances with Timmy- the hell with him (unless he hears about his sister and me then it’s strictly only in my head, okay Timmy).” And they talked and talked until almost dark. Talked about the future, about how they world was rigged up before they could make a dent in it, had not been asked question one about what to do about it, and then Johnny kind of introduced the thing about Lucy, and about how he had seen the light on women (girls, okay).

Betty Ann said she had never had a serious boyfriend although she had been out on a few dates. She preferred to read and study if it came to that, although lately she had been feeling a little restless. Johnny became crestfallen after that burst figuring that Betty Ann was in that category of a “unapproachable” that guys were always rating certain girls as when they discussed stuff on the grapevine. Then Betty Ann told Johnny this little story that changed things in a big way. See Johnny had seen her before, seen her at the Fall Frolics and had danced with her out of some courtesy or other because one of his corner boys was interested in her and wanted Johnny to check her out. Nothing happened (with that corner boy either). But Betty Ann had developed something of a crush on Johnny, nothing big but she would watch for him around school. Of course she knew from that infinitely reliable teenage grapevine that was better than anything any governmental intelligence agency could come up with that Johnny was with Lucy Barnes and so off-limits. But when Lucy busted up with Johnny she saw her chance, and she knew through that same teenage grapevine that Johnny was spending some time in the meadows moping. And that was that.   

Talk-weary but still no wanting to move more than three yards from each other Johnny pulled out his transistor radio and they listened to WMEX, the be-bop, non-stop rock ‘n’ roll station that was mandatory listening for those under eighteen, those who counted. And just then Mister Roy Orbison, “Roy the Boy,” came on to trill his latest, Sweet Dreams, Baby. That became their song. Oh yeah, and Johnny and Betty Ann began what became one of the great Clintonville High romances of 1962.

27

 

Johnny Prescott’s Itch- With Kudos To Mister Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula

GENE VINCENT

Well, be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

Well, she's the girl in the red blue jeans
She's the queen of all the teens
She's the one that I know
She's the one that loves me so

Say be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

Well, she's the one that gots that beat
She's the one with the flyin' feet
She's the one that walks around the store
She's the one that gets more more more

Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

He had the itch. John Prescott had the itch and he had it bad, especially since his eyes flamed up consumed with hell-bend flames when he saw Elvis performing live on the Ed Sullivan Show one Sunday night. And he had it so bad that he had missed, unbeknownst to his parents who would have been crestfallen and, perhaps, enraged, his last few piano lessons. Sure, he covered his butt by having saxophonist Sid Stein, drummer Eddie Shore, and bass player Kenny Jackson from his improvisational school jazz combo, The G-Clefs (yah, yah, I know  a well-thought out name for a musical group) come by his house to pick him up. While standing at the Prescott door parents the sidemen went through the “well aren’t things looking up for you boys,” and “they seem to be” scene without missing a beat. But as soon as Kenny’s 1954 Nash Rambler turned the corner of Walnut Street Johnny was a long-gone daddy, real long-gone. And where he was long-gone but not forlorn to was to Sally Ann’s Music Shop over on the far end of West Main Street. Now the beauty of Sally Ann’s was that it was, well, Sally Ann’s, a small shop that was well off the main drag, and therefore not a likely place where any snooping eyes, ears or voices that would report to said staid Prescott parents when Johnny went in or out of the place. Everyone, moreover, knew Sally Ann’s was nothing but a run-down past its prime place and if you really wanted all the best 45s, and musical instrument stuff then every self-respecting teenager in town hit the tracks for Benny’s Music Emporium right downtown and only about a quick five-minute walk from North Clintondale High where Johnny and the combo served their high school time, impatiently served their high school time.

Now while everybody respected old Sally Ann’s musical instincts she was passé. She had been the queen of the jitterbug night, appearing weekly in the USO shows and dances  in waterfront Boston in the 1940s while the war was on, had been on top of the be-bop jazz scene, had been at Birdland the night Charley had hit the high white note, with Charley, Dizzy, Thelonius and the guys early on right after the war, guys whom the G-Clefs covered, covered like crazy. More importantly she had nixed, nixed big time that whole Patti Page, Teresa Brewer weepy, sad song thing in the early 1950s when some energy ran out on the music scene. Still around town, among the young who counted, counted big time with their newly minted parent-derived discretionary income she was passé, old hat when it came to the cool blues coming out of Chicago, and the be-bop doo wop that kids, white kids, because there were no known blacks, or spanish, chinese, armenians, or whatever, in dear old Clintondale were crazy for ever since Frankie Lyman and his back-up guys tore up the scene with Why Do Fools Fall In Love?

But her greatest sin, although up until a few weeks ago Johnny would have been agnostic on that sin part, was that she was behind, way behind the curve, on the rock ‘n’ rock good night wave coming though and splashing over everybody, including deep jazz man, Johnny Prescott. But Sally Ann had, aside from that secluded locale and a tell-no-tales-attitude, something Johnny could use. She had a primo Les Paul Fender-bender guitar in stock just like the one Gene Vincent used that she was willing to let clandestine Johnny play when he came by. And she had something else Johnny could use, or maybe better Sally Ann could use. She had an A-Number One ear for guys who knew how to make music, any kind of music and had the bead on Johnny, no question. See Sally Ann was looking for one more glory flame, one more Clintondale shine moment, and who knows maybe she believed she could work some Colonel Parker magic and so Johnny Prescott was king of the Sally Ann day.

King, that is, until James and Martha Prescott spotted the other G-Clefs (Kenny, Sid, Eddie) coming out of the Dean Music School minus Johnny, minus a “don’t know where he is, sir,” Johnny. And Mr. Dean, Johnny’s piano instructor, was clueless as well, believing Johnny’s telephone story about having to work for the past few weeks and so lessons were to be held in abeyance. Something was definitely wrong if Mr. Dean, the man who more than anyone else recognized Johnny’s raw musical talent in about the third grade had lost Johnny's confidence. But the Prescotts got wise in a hurry because flutist Mary Jane Galvin, also coming out the school just then, and overhearing the commotion about Johnny’s whereabouts decided to get even with one John Prescott by, let’s call a thing by its right name, “snitching” on him and disclosed that she had seen him earlier in the day when she walked into Sally Ann’s looking for an old Benny Goodman record that featured Peggy Lee and which Benny’s Emporium, crazed rock ‘n’ rock hub Benny’s would not dream of carrying, or even have space for.

The details of the actual physical confrontation with Johnny by his parents (with Mr. Dean in tow) are not very relevant to our little story. What is necessary to detail is the shock and chagrin that James and Martha exhibited on hearing of Johnny’s itch, his itch to be the be-bop, long-gone daddy of the rock ‘n’ roll night. Christ, Mr. Dean almost had a heart attack on the spot when he heard that Johnny had, and we will quote here, “lowered himself to play such nonsense,” and gone over to the enemy of music. As mentioned earlier Mr. Dean, before he opened his music school, had been the roving music teacher for the Clintondale elementary schools and had spotted Johnny’s natural feel for music early on. He also knew, knew somewhere is his sacred musical bones, that Johnny’s talents, his care-free piano talents in particular, could not be harnessed to classical programs, the Bachs, Beethoven, and Brahms stuff, so that he encouraged Johnny to work his magic through be-bop jazz then in high fashion, and with a long pedigree in American musical life. When he approached the Prescotts about coordinating efforts to drive Johnny’s talents by lessons his big pitch had been that his jazz ear would assure him of steady work when he came of age, came of age in the mid-1950s.

This last point should not be underestimated in winning the Prescotts over. James worked, when there was work, as a welder, over at the shipyards in Adamsville, and Martha previously solely a housewife, in order to pay for those lessons (and be a good and caring mother to boot) had taken on a job filling jelly donuts (and other donut stuff) at one of the first of the Dandy Donuts shops that were spreading over the greater Clintondale area.

Christ, filling donuts. No wonder they were chagrined, or worst.

Previously both parents were proud, proud as peacocks, when Johnny really did show that promise that Mr. Dean saw early on. Especially when Johnny would inevitably be called to lead any musical assemblage at school, and later when, at Mr. Dean’s urging, he formed the G-Clef and began to make small amounts of money at parties and other functions. Rock ‘n’ rock did not fit in, fit in at all in that Prescott world. Then damn Elvis came into view and corrupted Johnny’s morals, or something like that. Shouldn’t the authorities do something about it?

Johnny and his parents worked out a truce, well kind of a truce, kind of a truce for a while. And that kind of a truce for a while is where old Sally Ann entered in again. See, Johnny had so much raw rock talent that she persuaded him to have his boys (yes, Kenny, Sid and Eddy in case you forgot) come by and accompany him on some rock stuff. And because Johnny was loved by Aunt Sally (not Sally Ann, just old Aunt Sally by then) was loved, loved in the musical sense if not in the human affection sense by the other boys they followed along. Truth to tell they were getting the itch too, a little.

And that little itch turned into a very big itch indeed when at that very same dime-dropper, Mary Jane Galvin’s sweet sixteen party concert (yes, Mary Jane was that kind of girl to have such a party that was going out of fashion among the hip younger girls who had dreams of seashore conquests and no time for dopey parties), the G-Clefs finished one of their covers, Dizzy’s Salt Peanuts with some rock riffs. The kids started to get up, started dancing in front of their seats to the shock of the parents and Mary Jane (yes, Mary Jane was that kind of girl), including the senior Prescotts, were crazy for the music. And Johnny’s fellow G-Clefs noticed, noticed very quickly that all kinds of foxy frails (girls, okay), girls who had previously spent much time ignoring their existences, came up all dreamy-eyed and asked them, well, asked them stuff, boy-girl stuff.

Oh, the Sally Ann part, the real Sally Ann part not just the idea of putting the rock band together. Well, she talked her talk to the headmaster over at North Clintondale High (an old classmate, Clintondale Class of 1925, and flame from what the boys later heard) and got the boys a paying gig at the upcoming school Spring Frolics. And the money was more than the G-Clefs, the avant guarde G-Clefs made in a month of jazz club appearances, to speak nothing of girls attached. So now the senior Prescotts are happy, well as happy as parents can be over rock ‘n’ roll. And from what I hear Johnny and the Rocking Ramrods are going, courtesy of Aunt Sally, naturally, to be playing at the Gloversville Fair this coming summer. Be-bop-a-lula indeed.
***********
28

 

The Blues Ain’t Nothing But A Good Woman On Your Mind- With Howlin’ Wolf’s Little Red Rooster In Mind  

Little Red Rooster
I am the little red rooster
Too lazy to crow for day
I am the little red rooster
Too lazy to crow for day
Keep everything in the farm yard upset in every way
The dogs begin to bark and hounds begin to howl
Dogs begin to bark and hounds begin to howl
Watch out strange cat people
Little red rooster's on the prowl
If you see my little red rooster
Please drive him home
If you see my little red rooster
Please drive him home
Ain't had no peace in the farm yard
Since my little red rooster's been gone

Johnny Prescott daydreamed his way through the music that he was listening to just then on the little transistor that Ma Prescott, Martha to adults, had given him for Christmas after he has taken a fit when she quite reasonable suggested that a new set of ties to go with his white long-sleeved shirts might be a better gift, a better Christmas gift and a bit more practical too when he played with his band at outings, for a sixteen-year old boy. No, he had screamed he wanted a radio, a transistor radio, batteries included, of his own so that he could listen to whatever he liked up in his room, or wherever he was, and didn’t have, understand, didn’t have to listen to some Vaughn Monroe singing about some unknown place over there, or Harry James’ Sentimental Journey or Tommy Dorsey or his brother Jimmy doing the inevitable Tangerine 1940s war drum thing. Or worse, the Inkspots, Jesus, he was tired of that spoken verse they include in every freaking song doing I’ll Get By or If I Didn’t Care which he had had to listen to on the huge immobile radio compliments of RCA Victor downstairs in the Prescott living room in the place of honor.

Hearing shades of that stuff all day every day when Ma Prescott got dreamy while dusting the furniture, doing the daily laundry, or washing the floors had finally gotten to him. Even more disturbing than that, if such a thing was possible, was passing through the downstairs from his room on Saturday night after dinner, maybe out for some elusive infrequent date with somebody’s lame sister, or maybe one of the easily picked up girls from the weekly sock hop dances held at various locations but mainly in the North Adamsville gym (easily picked up and escorted home but hard, hard as hell to get to first base with, or even a kiss after all was said and done), or just hanging with the guys in front of Doc’s Drugstore looking at the girls passing by or stepping inside every now and again to hear what one of those passing girls who stepped into his door was playing on Doc’s super-jack jukebox, and seeing his mother and father gearing up for a full night, seven until eleven of that stuff presented by Bill Marlowe on his Stagedoor Johnny show on WJDA. Strictly squaresville, cubed.

[Hey, for a minute I forgot who my audience might be. Sure those of you from the generation of ’68, those who for a minute in the 1960s thought along with me that we might turn the world upside down, might change things for little guys and gals for the better, turn things around so that they might look like something we might just want to pass on to the next generation know what a transistor radio was. Lived and died by that neat invention invented by some guy who knew what the hell he was doing, knew we who came of age in the cold war red scare 1950s needed our own way of getting privacy and created a radio that was small enough to conceal, put in our pockets if need be, and let us at the flick of a wrist listen to whatever radio station was providing that be-bop music that we craved. Those of you not from that generation of ’68 should know that this gizmo was like a primitive iPod or MP3 player except, well, except you could not download whatever songs you were interested in. Yeah, I know primitive now but a breath of fresh age back then when we needed to break-out from our parents’ music just like you and every generation needs to do.] 

So Johnny glad that he had won one battle although he knew he was behind, seriously behind in the war, that inevitable generational war (although he did not, and probably his parents did not either if they had forgotten their own battles against intransigent parents, know enough then to call the tussle of wills a battle) was primed to go nightly to his room to hear all those songs that he first heard on that Doc’s jukebox, or maybe got featured by the DJ Rockin’ Rich at the weekly dances since he was in tune with all the latest. But here was Johnny’s dilemma, here is what he could not make heads or tails out of at first. One night as he listened to this new drippy record Shangra-la by The Four Coins that just finished up a few seconds before and as this Banana Boat song by The Tarriers was starting its dreary trip through his ears was not sure that those ties his mother had suggested wouldn’t have been a better deal, and more practical too.

Yeah, this so-called rock station, WAPX out of North Adamsville, the closest station that Johnny could receive at night without some static in the air had sold out to, well, sold out to somebody, because except for late at night, midnight late at night, one could not hear the likes of Jerry Lee, Carl, Little Richard, Fats, and the new, now that Elvis was gone, killer rocker, Chuck Berry who proclaimed loud and clear that Mr. Beethoven had better move along, and said Mr. Beethoven best tell one and all of his confederates, including Mr. Tchaikovsky that rock ‘n’ roll was the new sheriff in town. As he turned the volume down a little lower (that tells the tale right there, friends) as Rainbow (where the hell do they get these creepy songs from he thought, rainbows for chrissakes) by Russ Hamilton he was ready to throw in the towel though.

Johnny could not quite figure how that magic that first got him moving, first got him swaying his hips, first got him feeling funny thoughts about girls and how they had changed one year from being kind of just plain nuisances (and they had been, no question in Johnny’s mind about that whatever subsequent charms they possessed) to kind of nice to have around changed and why. Changed from every guy around town (young guys anyway, the guys who counted) wearing long sideburns, wearing a built-in slightly suggestive sexy swagger, and wearing a sneer that they hoped some foxy girl, maybe any girl would wipe off their faces (and the girls, those not totally and fantastically addicted to the “king” himself, and forever, were hoping that they could wipe off). Changed from running home, yes, running home, after school each and every week day afternoon to watch on television for the latest dances and tunes on American Bandstand  (and the latest foxy chicks too don’t forget that Johnny) ever since Bill Haley and the Comets rocked the joint, or beloved Eddie Cochran went summertime blues crazy. Changed from sexually-charged lyrics by Chuck Berry and what he would do, or not do, to his sweet little sixteen. Changed from the high energy explosion of Jerry Lee working off the back of some hokey flatbed truck, piano keys flailing away, hair bouncing with the beat, on High School Confidential  in the movie by the same name when he put his name forward as the new king of the rock hill (although the movie itself was kind of dippy). Yeah, changed to soft soap, nicely dressed, nicely mannered, not a hair out of place  and no sideburn  guys like Fabian, Bobby Vee, and Neil  Sedeka who you would not dream of hanging around with, would not allow on your corner boy corner but who all the girls, well, most all of the girls flipped out over. Worse, worse than anything else these guys and their music was stuff that parents actually went for, would get the Ma and Pa high recommendation of “wasn’t that a young man singing” just like Frank [Sinatra for those not in the bobby-soxer 1940s know] in the old days, saw too as innocent and nice. Jesus.      

Desperate Johnny fingered the dial looking for some other station when he heard this crazy piano riff starting to breeze through the night air, the heated night air, and all of a sudden Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 which he had not heard for a long time blasted the airwaves. But funny it didn’t sound like the whinny Ike’s voice so he listened for a little longer, and as he later found out from the DJ (Be-Bop Benny by name) it was actually a James Cotton Blues Band cover. After that performance was finished fish-tailing right after that one was a huge harmonica intro and what as it turned out had was none other than mad-hatter Junior Wells doing When My Baby Left Me splashed through (that “none other” part learned later when he got deeper into the electric blues night). No need to turn the dial further then because what Johnny Prescott had found in the crazy night air, radio beams bouncing every which way, was direct from Chicago, and maybe right off those hard-hearted Maxwell streets was Be-Bop Benny’s Chicago Blues Radio Hour. Be-Bop Benny who started Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino on their careers, or helped.

Now Johnny, like every young high-schooler, every "with it" high school-er in the USA, had heard of this show, because even though everybody was crazy for rock and roll, just now the airwaves sounded like, well, sounded like music your parents would dance to, no, sit down to at a dance, some kids still craved high rock. So this show was known mainly through the teenage grapevine but Johnny had never heard it before because, no way, no way in hell was his punk little Radio Shack transistor radio with two dinky batteries going to ever have the strength to pick Be-Bop Benny’s live show out in Chicago. So Johnny, and maybe rightly so, took this turn of events for a sign. When he heard that distinctive tinkle of the Otis Spann piano warming up to Spann’s Stomp and right after with his Someday added in he was hooked. And you know he started to see what Billie, Billie Bradley from over in Adamsville, meant when at a school dance where he had been performing with his band, Billie and the Jets, he mentioned that if you wanted to get rock and roll back you had better listen to blues, and if you wanted to listen to blues, blues that rocked then you had very definitely had better get in touch with the Chicago blues as they came north from Mississippi and places like that.

And Johnny thought, Johnny who have never been too much south of Gloversville, or west of Albany, and didn’t know too many people who had been much further either, couldn’t understand at first why that beat, that da, da, da, Chicago beat sounded like something out of the womb in his head, sometime out of Mother Africa (although again what did he know of old African instruments and that sound, that beat that seemed like eternity beating on his brain). How on some bars he could hear that rock ‘n’ roll ready to explode if only they could speed it up a shade, how the beat in his head was now making the transition, maybe not smooth but making it. That beat just then turning his own very personal teen-age blues (some sociologists were making big money or at least making a splash by frightening every red scare cold war parent with the idea of their Jimmy or Susie being in the grip of teen angst and alienation and ready to try anything to get to the bottom of it) to something else for the duration of the song anyway. But when he heard Big Walter Horton wailing on that harmonica on Rockin’ My Boogie he knew those be-bop beats had to be in his genes.