Present At The Creation-Who Put The
Rock In Rock And Roll Roll-Jerry Lee Lewis’ High
School Confidential (1958)
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Deep in the dark red scare Cold War
night, still brewing then even after Uncle Joe fell down in his Red Square drunken
stupor one night and never came back, so yeah still brewing after he kissed off
in his vast red earth, still brewing as a child remembered in dark back of
school dreams about Soviet nightmares under Uncle Joe wondering how the kids
got through it, and still brewing too when Miss Winot in her pristine glory
told each and every one of her fourth grade charges, us, that come that Russkie
madness, come the Apocalypse, come the big bad ass mega-bombs (of course being
pristine and proper she did not dig down to such terms as “big bad ass” but
let’s face it that is what she meant) that each and every one of her charges shall
come that thundering god-awful air raid siren call duck, quickly and quietly,
under his or her desk and then place his or his hands, also quickly and
quietly, one over the other on the top of his or her head, a small breeze was
coming to the land.
Maybe nobody saw it coming although the
more I think about the matter somebody, some bodies knew something, not those
supposedly in the know about such times, those who are supposed to catch the
breezes before they move beyond their power to curtain them. Take guys like my
older brother Franklin and his friends, Benny and Jimmy, who were playing some
be-bop stuff up in his room. (Ma refused to let him play his songs on the
family record player down center stage in the living room or flip the dial on
the kitchen radio away from her tunes of the roaring 1940s, her and my father’s
coming of age time, so up his room like some mad monk doing who knows what
because I was busy worrying about riding bicycles or something). Here’s the
real tip-off though he and his boys would go out Friday nights to Jack Slack’s
bowling alleys not to bowl, although that was the cover story to questioning
mothers, but to hang around Freddie O’Toole’s car complete with turned on amped
up radio (station unknown then but later found to be WMEX) and dance, dance
with girls, get it, to stuff like Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 (a great song tribute to a great automobile which nobody
in our neighborhood could come close to affording so reduced to cheapjack Fords
and Plymouths), and guys who even today I don’t know the names of despite YouTube
archival vaults giving everybody with every kind of musical inclination a blast
to the past ticket. Or, how about the times we, the family would go up to
Boston for some Catholic thing in the South End at Holy Cross Cathedral and
smack across from the church was the later famous Red Hat Club where guys were
blasting away at pianos, on guitars and on big ass sexy saxes and it was not
the big band sound my folks listened to or cool, cool be-bop jazz either but
music from jump street, etched in the back of my brain because remember I’m
still fussing over bikes and stuff like that. Or how about every time we went
down Massachusetts Avenue in Boston as the sun went down, the “Negro” part
before Huntington Avenue (an area that Malcolm X knew well a decade before) and
we stopped at the ten billion lights and all you would hear is this bouncing
beat coming from taverns, from the old time townhouse apartments and black guys
dressed “to the nines,” all flash dancing on the streets with dressed “to the
nines” good-looking black girls. Memory bank.
So some guys knew, gals too don’t
forget after all they had to dig the beat, dig the guys who dug the beat, the
beat of out of some Africa breeze mixed
with forbidden sweated Southern lusts if the thing was going to work out. And
it wasn’t all dead-ass “white negro” hipsters either eulogized by Norman Mailer
(or maybe mocked you never knew with him but he sensed something was in the
breeze even if he was tied more closely to an earlier sensibility) or break-out
“beats” tired of the cool cold jazz that was turning in on itself, getting too
technical and losing the search for the high white note or lumpens of all
descriptions who whiled away the nights searching their radio dials for
something that they while away the nights searching their radio dials for
something that they could swing to while reefer high or codeine low. If you,
via hail YouTube, look at the Jacks and Jills dancing they mostly look like
very proper well-dressed middle class kids who are trying to break out of the
cookie-cutter existence they found themselves but they still looked pretty well-fed and well-heeled so yeah,
some guys and gals and it wasn’t always who you might suspect that got hip, got
that back-beat and those piano riffs etched into their brains.
Maybe though the guys in the White
House were too busy worrying about what Uncle Joe’s progeny were doing out in
the missile silos of Minsk, maybe the professional television talkers on Meet The Press wanted to discuss the
latest turn in national and international politics for a candid world to hear
and missed what was happening out in the cookie-cutter neighborhoods, and maybe
the academic sociologists and professional criminologists were too wrapped up
in figuring out why Marlon Brando was sulking in his corner boy kingdom (and
wreaking havoc on a fearful small town world when he and the boys broke out),
why Johnny Spain had that “shiv” ready
to do murder and mayhem to the next midnight passer-by, and why well-groomed
and fed James Dean was brooding in the “golden age” land of plenty but the
breeze was coming.
(And you could add in the same brother
Franklin who as I was worrying about bikes, the two pedal two kind getting
“from hunger” to get a Brando bike, a varoom bike, so this girl, Wendy, from
school, would take his bait, a girl that my mother fretted was from the wrong
side of town, her way of saying a tramp but she was smart as hell once I found
out about her a few years later after she, they had left town on some big ass
Norton but that is after the creation so I will let it go for now.)
And then it came, came to us in our
turn, came like some Kansas whirlwind, came like the ocean churning up the big
waves crashing to a defenseless shoreline, came if the truth be known like the
“second coming” long predicted and the brethren, us, were waiting, waiting like we had been waiting
all our short spell lives. Came in a funny form, or rather ironically funny
forms, as it turned out.
Came one time, came big as 1954 turned
to 1955 and a guy, get this, dressed not in sackcloth or hair-shirt but in a
sport’s jacket, a Robert Hall sport’s jacket from the off the rack look of it
when he and the boys were “from hunger,” playing for coffee and crullers before
on the low life circuit, a little on the heavy side with a little boy’s regular
curl in his hair and blasted the whole blessed world to smithereens. Blasted
every living breathing teenager, boy or girl, out of his or her lethargy, got
the blood flowing. The guy Bill Haley, goddam an old lounge lizard band guy who
decided to move the beat forward from cool ass be-bop jazz and sweet romance
popular music and make everybody, every kid jump, yeah Big Bill Haley and his
Comets, the song Rock Around The Clock.
Came a little more hep cat too, came
all duck walk and sex moves, feet moving faster than Robert Hall-clad Bill
could ever do, came out of Saint Loo, came out with a crazy beat. Came out in
suit and tie all swagger. Came out with a big baby girl guitar that twisted up
the chords something fierce and declared to the candid world, us, that
Maybelline was his woman. But get this, because what did we know of “color”
back then when we lived in an all-white Irish Catholic neighborhoods and since
we heard what we heard of rock and rock mostly on the radio we were shocked
when we found out the first time that he was a “Negro” to use the parlance of
the times, a black man making us go to “jump street.” And we bought into it,
bought into the beat, and joined him in saying Mister Beethoven you and your
brethren best move over.
Came sometimes in slo-mo, hey remember
this rock and roll was an ice-breaker with a beat you didn’t have to dance close to with your partner and
get all tied up in knots forgetting when to twirl, when to whirl, when to do a
split but kind of free form for the guys (or gals but mainly guys) with two
left feet like me could survive, maybe not survive the big one if the Russkies
decided to go over the top with the bomb, but that school dance and for your
free-form efforts maybe that she your eyeballs were getting sore over would
consent to the last chance last dance
that you waited around for in case she was so impressed she might want to go
with you some place later. But before that “some place later” you had to
negotiate and the only way to do was to bust up a slow one, a dreamy one to get
her in the mood and hence people have been singing songs from time immemorial
to get people in the mood, this time Earth
Angel would do the trick. Do the trick as long as you navigated those toes
of hers, left her with two feet and standing. Dance slow, very slow brother.
Came sometimes in very slo-mo if you
could believe my older brother Franklin and the stories that he would tell us
younger guys, not in 1955 remember we were worried about two-wheel bikes then
but later when we came of age and were salaciously curious about the girl
scene, what made them tick, about how he scored with this or that girl, put the
moves on this way or that on some other one and some girl’s panties came
tumbling down as if by magic. Although I should have been a little suspicion of
Franklin’s big sky talk because when my time came the problem of garter belts
and girdles would make that quick panties coming down a little suspect, no,
very suspect when I had a hard enough and cumbersome enough time unhooking some
silly training bra. Jesus.
But here is the big truth, the skinny. See
Franklin was not, most guys were not including me, very honest about sex and
about sexual conquests when guys got together on the corners at Jack Slack’s or
Doc’s Drugstore or in the guy’s gym locker room or in the school’s boys’ lav
Monday morning. No guy wanted to seem to be “light on his feet” one of the
kinder expressions we used for gay guys in the days when “fag-baiting” was
something of a rite of passage so guys would lie like hell about this or that
score. Later when you would find yourself doing the very same thing you would
find that about sixty to seventy percent, maybe more, of what guys said about
conquests was b.s.
In any case one time Franklin was hot
after this girl, Betsy Sanders, who even when I wasn’t that into girls (before
I came of age, not that “light on my feet” if that is what you are thinking)
was “hot,” definitely pretty and smart and just plain nice. She had a
reputation, according to Franklin, of being an “ice queen,” no go, but he said
that only made him want to go after her more. One high school dance night,
maybe the Spring Frolic of 1955, Franklin went stag, although stag with six or
seven other guys, as did a lot of guys because that kind of dance was set up by
the school to have everybody mix and mingle unlike the prom let’s say which was
strictly couples or stay home and wait by the midnight phone for some lost
Janey or Jack. Of course Betsy was there, with a few of whatever they call a
cohort of single girls, looking at hot as hell, all flouncy full length dress
and some smell to drive a man wild, jasmine Franklin thought.
These school dance things like I said
were held occasionally by the school to keep an eye on what was happening to
their charges with this rock and roll craze beginning to stir up concerns (the
churches also held them for the same reason). Basically a “containment” policy
of “if you can’t fight them, keep two eyes on each and every one of them” copied
I presume from the Cold War foreign policy wonks like George Kennan who ran the
anti-Soviet establishment in Washington. So the thing was chaperoned unto
death, had some frilly crèche paper decorations to spice up the woe begotten gym
which didn’t really work, some refreshments to cool out the tranced dancers
periodically, and a lame DJ, a young goof teacher recruited because he could
“relate” to the kids who “spun” the platters (records for the unknowing) on a
dinky turntable with an equally woeful sound system. None of that meant a thing
because all that mattered was that there were boys and girls there, maybe
somebody for you and music, music to dance to. Yeah.
Now as Franklin weaved his story it
seems that the usually reserved Betsy was in high form (according to Franklin
she looked like maybe she had had a couple of drinks before the dance not
unheard of but usually that was guys but we will let that pass), dancing to
every fast dance with lots of guys, not hanging with any one in particular,
getting more and more into the dancing as the night went on. Franklin
approached her after intermission to dance Bill Haley’s latest big one, Rock Around The Clock, the one that
everybody went to the Strand Theater up the Square to see that really lame
movie about J.D.s, Blackboard Jungle, just
to see him and the Comets blast away and she accepted. Danced very
provocatively from what Franklin said, gave moves only the “fast” girls, the
known school tramps threw into the mix and that was that until the end of the
night when last chance last dance time came.
This last chance last dance as I know
from personal experience is a very dicey thing, especially if you have been
eying a girl all night and she says “no”-end of evening. See this was a slow
one so you could maybe make a last minute pitch or negotiate what was what
after the dance. Franklin said he went up to Betsy and asked her for that dance
when Mister Miles, that lame DJ I told you about already, announced that the
Moonglows’ Sincerely a song he really
liked. Here’s her answer-“Yes.” And
so they danced and while dancing she allegedly wondered out loud why he had not
asked her to dance other dances that night, she expected him to do since she
had heard through the super-reliable “grapevine” that he was interested in her.
Bingo. The rest of the dance consisted of negotiations about her getting her
cloak, about giving the guys and gals they respectively came with the heave-ho and
heading toward old Adamsville Beach in Franklin’s Hudson, really our father’s car
borrowed for the evening. Down there while he did not go into all the juicy
details about what they did, or didn’t do, she let him have his way with her
(that “panties came tumbling down” business). Of course that kind of stuff
happened all the time with good boys and girls, and bad but when Franklin asked
Betsy what stirred her up she said the music and dancing got her going, made
her all loose and everything she couldn’t explain it all but she got all warm.
Enough, okay.
Enough except what always bothered me
about what parents, the authorities, hell, even older guys on the street,
thought about rock and roll as the devil’s music came to mind. Some communist
plot to “brainwash” the youth of America and make them Kremlin stooges was hard
to figure when a girl like Betsy, an All-American girl if there ever was one,
who later in life ran for Congress, unsuccessfully, as a Republican, got all
warm when the drums started rolling the intro and the guitars built up that
back-beat. Hard to make sense of the idea that maybe the Moonglows should have
been brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee of the times or
something for singing a doo wop classic like Sincerely, a last chance last dance song. Yeah, that has always
bothered me.
Came in very, very slo-mo for some
guys, guys like me who even with big brothers to guide the way were after all
is said and done rather clumsy picking up the first few tips (well “half guide
the way” since a lot of what Franklin said about the ease of girl conquests was
so much hot air, same with other guys but worse, worse than the hot air was the
bad, plain wrong information about sex, sexual activity, which he, they had
learned like everybody else from the streets, certainly not out of up-tight
“asexual” parents who were not telling us anything, nor the churches and
definitely not at school although some teachers would allude to stuff but you
had to be pretty slick to pick it up. All this information, misinformation
really, was far more dangerous that just plain ignorance as Franklin, and I,
almost learned the hard way, very closely indeed).
Who knows when you get that first
inkling, you know the exact date, when those last year’s girls who were nothing
but sticks (that was our dividing line then, “sticks” and “shapes”) and
bothered you endlessly when you were just trying to ride your bike or something,
maybe reading a book in school turned into being well kind of interesting and
had something to say after all. It wasn’t necessarily coming of age time,
puberty, but close when all the confusion started, all the little social graces
began to count. So, yeah, in fifth grade, toward the end of the year, I was
smitten, smitten by Theresa Wallace, my first flamed out flame. So Theresa and
rock and roll kind of go hand in hand in my mind since around that time I also
started getting that rock beat in my head that Franklin kept telling me that
would come at some point.
Naturally with no social graces to
speak of the whole heart-throbbing thing with Theresa was a source of endless
confusion. Of course as probably is true of half the guys and gals in the world
I kept my feelings to myself, would moon, pine, twist, turn, and whatever else
a smitten person does without quite knowing what to do about the feelings.
Except to kind of be surly toward her in class, and, and, endlessly walk by her
house at all hours, all kid hours, in the hopes that I might see her and she
might wave, or something. Yeah, no social graces. Then one day the logjam
broke, she spoke to me, asked me if I wanted to go to her birthday party the
next week. Yes. Although the abruptness going from nowhere to being invited to her
house kind of startled me (later I had heard that Slim Jackson, a friend of
mine, whom I casually mentioned to that Theresa seemed nice told some girl that
fact and it eventually got through the super-speed teen grapevine that I
“liked” her).
And so the party was be held in the
family room down in the basement of her house (which in the specific case of
her house also served as the air raid shelter with signs, supplies, and defense
materials which made me realize that I would rather take my chances above
ground when I saw that included in the supplies were a record player and
records of Patti Page, Frank Sinatra, Harry James, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller
and the crowd, yeah, I would definitely take my chances above ground with that
scenario) and was to be unchaperoned meaning no adults would be in the room
(although present, very present upstairs). I don’t know about now, about the
customs of the young in these matters now, but then these pre-teen parties were
called “petting parties” where somehow the first fresh bout of serious kisses
were to be bestowed, or at least the first few innocent kisses. I was scared,
scared two ways first that I would not be able to do the “deed” and secondly
that if I was close to a girl how my grooming fit in, how I smelled and looked,
something like that before we all got wise to mouthwash, deodorant and hair
oil.
See it wasn’t only in sex matters that
my parents were deficient but grooming and health matters as well what with
five growing boys and nothing going my mother just didn’t give us the word. I
know one guy at school said I smelled funny one day. And I probably did
although I don’t know the why of it, maybe not washing under my underarms or
something. So one of the things that Franklin was straight on was hygiene which
he got from a friend of his when he was my age who had told him that he smelled
and hipped him to what guys had to do to keep from being rogues. He clued me in
on showering (really just an attached hose to the bathtub in our house), a
little deodorant (nobody told me I smelled after that), a little Listerine (although
the first time I used it I almost threw up since I used about half a bottle)
and Wild Root Crème Oil for my always cowlick-driven unruly hair. I was off, thanks
that one time Franklin (there would be other later times when I lent him money,
cars, and other stuff that I never got back when I would curse his name, still
do)
If you think that party of Theresa’s
was some big Mayfair swell debutante affair well you know right now you are
wrong but it was okay. About a dozen or fifteen kids, a couple more girls than
boys but that was alright then (maybe now too), all dressed up and clean
smelling presided over by Theresa who had a pretty dress on and who when she
greeted me (and everybody else so don’t make a big deal out of it) smelled like
I don’t know what, not perfume I don’t think but some exotic bath soap. Nice.
The party itself was the standard music, guys and girls dancing (sometimes two
girls dancing together but never guys remember that ‘light on your feet” jab),
a little nice food, party food, kid party food, finger food and of course the
cake, the birthday cake and Happy Birthday song. What was different, at least
for me were these two little remembrances as this. Every few records when
people were not dancing the lights would go out. That was the cue, although at
first I was clueless, for everybody to grab somebody of the opposite sex to
give a kiss to, an innocent kiss okay. Some girl, and I still am not sure who
but it was not Theresa of the exotic bath soap smells, gave me my first
official opposite sex boy-girl kiss. I bridled a little at first since I didn’t
realize that was what was going on but it was okay, yeah, okay. So that was one
thing. The other was toward the end of the party Theresa came up to me and a
little coquettishly (although I didn’t know such a word or what it meant then)
asked me to save the last dance for her. No problem. And the last dance, well
you know what it was if you have paid attention to the title of this piece The
Platters’ Only You. Only You and the
lights went out during the song and Theresa planted a long kiss on my chaste
lips, yeah, nice. We were an “item” for a while, maybe a month a long time as
such things went then and then a new guy came into town, some tow-headed kid
that all the girls went crazy over and I was reduced to sitting by the lonely
midnight phone waiting in vain for some call to come my way.
Came in, well how should I put it, in
awkward ways, ways around the way the world whirled, the American world in that
cold, cold war night where lots of things were hidden from view. Things like
race, class gender that are upfront and talked about in a usually rational
manner today. Here’s what I mean as race, maybe class too, intersects with rock
and roll, with who put the rock in rock and roll. And that is not a rhetorical
question, or not only a rhetorical question because sixty years out it is still
relevant as least in an historical perspective. We found out the hard way, or
my best friend, Steve Malloy, in elementary school down in the Carver projects
where we grew up at least until we came of age found out the hard way. And I
learned my lesson from him.
See when that rock beat got into our
heads, got in like my older brother Franklin said in one of the few times he
was absolutely right about something, something important, it came in our heads
listening to the radio, car, family living room (although not much in my family
since Ma forbade it and I, we, would only play the radio, WMEX, of course when
she and Pa were out), later, have mercy on our private up-in-our-rooms
transistor radios so what we heard was what we knew about. The sounds all had a
classic beat, at least the serious rock beat one, whoever was singing played
to. I don’t know that we were all that curious about what the singers looked
like at that point, except maybe Elvis who we did know what he looked like from
seeing him on the Ed Sullivan Show (a
variety acts show popular on Sunday nights then). I don’t think so, it was
really the music that moved our souls.
In any case lots of guys, guys who
could sing, not me, guys like Steve Malloy were always crooning away, always
trying to sing like one, or more of the voices that we heard on the radio.
Steve was particularly interested in those imitations because he really did
have a great voice and if you closed your eyes you could almost heard the
similarities. He was also like the rest of us in the projects, from hunger. He,
once he got the Elvis rags-to-riches story down (and lots of girls too), was
driven by the idea that he would be the next big thing in rock, or if not the
next big thing then soon.
And that idea was not as fantastic as
it sounded because in those days a lot of record companies and radio stations
were sponsoring rock talent shows like they did back in the 1920s when they
were looking for new talent to fill the airwaves. So one night WJDA, the local
rock station (at least they played one show for four hours in the afternoon
with DJ Tommy Swirl spinning the platters), staged a talent show up in the
center of town looking for the next best thing that maybe they could latch
onto, or at least expand their listening audience to the young in order to sell
soda, soap, and sundries. So Steve was pumped, thought this would be the first
break-through minute for him. But what to sing, whose style to project. He,
even I knew this, that there would for guy singers be a ton of Elvis-imitators,
and since he didn’t particular like Elvis at that moment since he had lost a
girl to a guy who that girl said looked all dreamy like Elvis he decided on Bo
Diddley who was all the craze with his song Bo Diddley that had this great beat
to it.
So the night of the talent show Steve
and maybe twenty other guys and maybe fifteen girls of all ages, all young
ages, showed up to perform with a few obviously looking like Elvis imitators
what with the long sideburns and slick backed hair in his style. Steve told me as we walked in that he felt
pretty good about his chances and that he was glad he chose Bo to separate
himself out. Steve was about number eight on the list and so we fidgeted
through the first seven acts, a few pretty good but most awful. Then it was
Steve’s turn, Steve dressed in his best (and only) sport’s jacket looking like
any teenage kid from Carver in those days, and he started to sing Bo’s song.
About half way through though, Jack Kelly, an older guy from the projects, who
was known as nothing but a hoodlum yelled out “Hey the kid is trying to sing a
n----r jungle voodoo song.” That broke the whole mood, Steve barely
finished.
Needless to say Steve did not win (and
probably would not have as three sisters stole the show with some Connie
Francis cover) but after that he “got back in line” doing Elvis stuff since he
knew Elvis was white. But his heart was no longer in it, and a while later his
voice changed and he lost whatever rock energy he had. But he, we learned the
hard way about the vagaries of race, learned the very hard way how important
the black sound that even Elvis was stealing from was to what put the rock in
rock and roll.
Came in different flavors too, had
different root as we would call it now all messed together to give a different
beat. You had the rhythm and blues which drove a lot of the early stuff you
know the Ike Turner Rocket 88 stuff,
Big Joe Turner swinging and swaying that big ass of his to beat the band on
Shake, Rattle and Roll, had guys like Jimmy Preston way back in the late 1940s
putting in a bid to go into history as the “first rock and roll” song although
you can see stuff going all the way back, going back to certain riffs (not
whole songs I would say) in the 1920s with Furry Lewis, Lonnie Johnson guys
like that who latter guys, Elvis (think Tomorrow
Night, That’s When Your Heartache
Begins) especially would cover
with their own twists and step up the beat for the whole song.
Or take something like Rockabilly which
a whole lot of good old boys, white boys okay, from places like Tennessee and
Mississippi from hunger farm boys and small town kids would speed up some Les
Paul riffs throw a few Saturday night barroom brawl Sunday morning confess all
to Preacher Jack and get the girls to come around, come close if they looked
good and has some sassy ass licks in and some Rock and Roll Ruby was born. So
those big time sounds mixed and mended together to give a great new sound.
But get this, there were other sounds
that mixed and matched, Bo Diddley of slurred memory mentioned above down in my
growing up town with a definite Afro-Carib thing that bounced a little showing
some other possibilities. Cajun too. Down in sweat filled Lafayette and Lake
Charles where another of my high school friends, corner boys really, Rene
Dubois, was born, where he learned to say pretty things like Jolie Blon in
blasphemous crooked French and the girls down there, the cheris’ he called them
went wild over him. (Not so in old Carver where his father had been transferred
to as an oilrig guy when Nantucket Sound was being fished for oil exploration
and Rene was taken for a redneck, a good old boy from the sticks, this in a
town where half the population one way or the other was connected to the
cranberry bog for which it was known, boggers for crying out loud and rednecks there
were as thick as thieves). But Rene was not just into the Cajun stuff because
his father, since he had spent a great deal of time fishing for oil in the Gulf
of Mexico would take Rene with him when he went to New Orleans. Would take him
to the joints down in Frenchtown, down on the avenue.
One time and this is where the spread
of rock among the youth really started to take off, get people, young people of
course on jump street Rene’s father took him to Lenny’s down by Jackson Square.
Lenny’s was great because it had an open air front so Rene could sit out in the
café chairs for hours. One late afternoon when it was starting to get dark so
it was winter time but there is, or was no such thing as winter in funky,
sweaty, steamy New Orleans a guy, a fat guy, maybe not fat but definitely heavy
set came to the small stage over by the bar and sat down at the piano. Started
playing some very fast boogie-woogie that got people dancing, played a lot of
left-hand variations very smoothly creating a rock-like beat, a beat he thought
had a Cajun flavor too. But get this, get this straight from me because I
checked it out after Rene had told different guys the story about six different
ways. When the fat man, the man named Jack Reed, who would go on on later to
take the stage name, Fats Domino, played a song, Ain’t That A Shame this foxy girl, smooth dark skin, mulatto, high
yellas they call them down there maybe seventeen, eighteen came over and asked
him to dance. Of course he did, and of course he told the story that they got
along, she invited him to her place up on Bourbon Street a few blocks away and
“took him to paradise.”
I don’t think the story held up from
what I was able to gather (for one Fats name was not Jack Reed and depending on
when he said he had been there Lenny’s would not have been open) by the time he changed it about sixteen
times. But if it did happen then thanks Fats, thanks for the big ass piano addition
to rock, our homeland rock and roll. And sorry about how Katrina took all your
archives down the river.
Came in funny ways too. You know, like
I said about my boyhood friend Steve Malloy and his wake-up call trying to
imitate Bo Diddley, guys, young guys like us, me, were always trying to imitate
whoever we saw or heard about, even though my voice then was too reedy and I
had no basic sense of rhythm (which hurt later when I discovered the blues,
straight blues and tried to play them on guitar to no avail, sounded like some
third rate white bread boy from nowhere).
Still as little invested as I was in
success as a way to get out of the projects, get out of cheap street, Steve
wasn’t the only one who tried to cover somebody’s song, tried for the brass
ring, or maybe more correctly get an in with the girls who seemed a lot more
interesting than before the rock storm blew in (maybe the wiggle and gyrations
evoked some primitive sexual tom-tom but that is too much speculation some
sixty years out. I tried too, a little, in the period before Steve’s fatal stab
at fame mentioned above. Like I said in those days some radio station, locally
WJDA no question, some record company, some independent company like Ducca or the
Chestnut labels, were sponsoring talent shows to see if they could latch onto
the need big thing coming down the rock pipeline.
In my case though it was the town
fathers who were sponsoring the talent show, for their own nefarious reasons as
I found out later when I got the political bug and such details interested me.
See those harried town fathers (and it was mostly male then) were as concerned
as the guys in the White House, as J. Edgar Hoover over in FBI, that rock and
roll was getting out of hand and that it softened up America against the
hard-boiled red menace, or worse, made their own kids, made their own daughters
susceptible to the “s-x” word and so they sponsored weekly dances, usually on
Saturday nights at the town hall auditorium to, like the schools and churches,
keep an eye or three on the doings of the young. One of the town fathers came
up with the idea of the talent show as a way to draw crowds to the dances and
keep the kids occupied during intermission. Furthermore, the draw to entry for
money hungry “from hunger” kids who probably never had seen so much dough at
one time was a prize of fifty dollars and, more importantly, especially to guys
like Steve but the idea filtered down to the rest of us, that you would get to
sing a few songs as the feature at the next dance, or an upcoming one. So a lot
of kids, me, signed up for the thing and put out our stuff for prizes and
glory.
For some reason that year I had been
waylaid when I heard Miss La Verne Baker doing her Tweddle Dee, a tune that was a big hit for her in 1955 but which I
had only hear later as I picked the rock bug properly. That song in her version
had been very jumped up and also was great to dance to. More to the point that
I had in my head constantly during that time. Plus, get this for teen insight,
I figured that since I was covering a female singer on a song that really
either sex could sing (later I heard both Big Walter Sidney and Manny Gold do
great versions of the song with a little slower tempo) I would get some points
for novelty.
The night of the dance/talent show I am
talking about I was ready after several hours of practice and some coaching by
Steve (who really did have a great native music sense and if thing had turned
out better, if he had played his musical hand out instead of getting into that
crime time scene he might have blossomed into something). I wanted to look good
too for my big first show and in those days that meant wearing a sports jacket
and shirt and tie. I was okay on the shirt and tie since that is what I wore to
Mass each Sunday morning but our family being poor as church mice, maybe
poorer, I didn’t have a sports jacket since we had with five boys a tradition
of brother hand-me-downs and I was not big enough then to fix into any older brother’s
jacket without looking like a hobo. I moaned and groaned to Ma, and after she
said “no” I even moaned and groaned to Pa and you didn’t moan and groan to him
unless it was a big deal.
He said, which was true, that we did
not have money for a sports coat for a one night gig, or maybe for any reason,
I forget, but he would spring for material at the cheap-jack Bargain Center,
the local Wal-Mart of its day, if my mother would make one. Now my mother was
no seamstress but she agreed to do so and that Saturday night I had a
presentable sports jacket on although I couldn’t say much for the beige color. I
had tried it on as she was working on the material and earlier that night and
the fit seemed okay.
I was number six on the list and so
like all performers I was sitting there fretting during the first set of DJ
record shuffling waiting impatiently for the intermission to arrive to strut my
stuff. I felt pretty good even though I knew that Steve, who was on at number
two, would do much better that me, which he did doing a nice version of a song
that I forget what it was, some ballad, maybe Love Me Tender. Then in my turn I got up, went to the make-shift
stage and started to sing and the crowd when they realized what the song was
started chapping along. Then the other shoe fell off. This is what I found out
later when I asked my mother about the jacket. She had gotten busy doing some
family things and so only quickly sewed the sleeves to the body of the jacket
figuring that would be good enough. Like I said before the jacket looked and
felt good enough to me so there was no reason to say anything or ask any
questions about it. That night though about half way through my act as I was
making some motions, some odd-ball gyrations, responding to the crowd’s
clapping one of the sleeves came off, then a few minutes later the other came
off. They flew right into the crowd, mostly to the girls in front. The place
went wild. They all figured that this stunt was part of the act. Well I
finished, barely, and was finished. A girl singing some Fontaine Sisters’ song,
maybe Sincerely I was so fluttered I
just kind of head my head down to avoid dealing with reality, won, Steve second
and my career was over. Over because of what happened that night which I had no
desire to repeat but over also because like Steve not too long after my voice
changed and it was not a good change for singing even if it did sound more
manly.
Get this though, at school the next
week, Monday the girls, including one of
the girls who caught one of the sleeves, were all around me, thinking my act
had been cool, and for a time I was basking in that glory. Ah, wasn’t that a
time.
Came in baffling ways too if you were
trying to figure out the love game, the odd way in which the game switched up
with frequent chances for seemingly unknown reasons when teenagers fell in and
out of love, or one party might, for reasons that were never explained, or
maybe couldn’t be explained but which left gaping holes in hearts nevertheless (other stuff baffled us too but really until
later events like dealing with the military draft and whether to go in or not,
a not unique question for the youth, the young guys, of my generation, whether
or not to marry that gal who stole your heart and later whether or not to
divorce when stealing hearts was not enough and other rough choices dealing
with the intricacies of the boy-girl thing seemed to take up an extraordinary
amount of time). Trying to figure out the lyrics anyway, how they could serve
as cautionary tales of sorts since we took the narrative as part of the action.
At least some songs did, songs like Leader of the Pack which even for kids
who knew nothing about motorcycles, couldn’t ride one if they tried, were
afraid of the bandit road, avoided the Hell’s Angels types with their big hogs
down at the beach come sunset Saturday night, bad boys and all instinctively
sided with the brother of the song (and her too, she would be left behind when
the Leader went over the edge) when everybody knew that the reason the pair
broke up was because the freaking parents were so class conscious about staying
above the riffraff that squeezed the life out of that relationship. I know I
always hoped she would run off with the next leader after her man took the
fall. How about He’s So Fine, where
the girl narrator is tripping all over herself to figure out how she is going
to take some guy into her life, a shy guy (or at least that is his public
persona, a good ruse which was not a bad girl-catcher from what guys, and gals,
have told me since it made the guy seem like the sensitive type and maybe would
not paw all over the girl the first night), a guy who other gals are looking at
so that the race is on. The most beautiful part though that she is not only not
going to give up on the guy but will do anything he asks, up to and including
abdicating her throne if he asked (and if she was a queen to be able to do such
an act). Yeah, young love.
Now that you have the idea take the
case of Eddie, My Love which always
intrigued, always made a guy like me who hung around more than one midnight
phone hoping against hope for a call to sooth my savage soul, done by a number
of different groups but the best seemed to me to be the Teen Queens to grab the
pathos of the situation.
Here’s the gist of the story line,
hardly the first time such action has happened in the love game. This Eddie of
the title, obviously a fly-by-night kind of guy, has flown the coop, had gone
off somewhere to take care of some business of unknown quality. Something about
getting a job, a good job in another state so he can support his dear widowed
mother in her hours of dotage need. At least that is what he told the narrator,
his unnamed love interest (we could call her Betty or Sue or Maryanne but no
need really since this one is an eternal question). Of course, young and
somewhat innocent, she believed each and every word he said about coming back
to her in a short time. But that short time has turned into a long time and she
still hasn’t wised up to the hard fact that Eddie is gone. Long gone and on to
the next conquest. And it wasn’t because he did not have dime to make a call on
a public telephone or didn’t have three cents for a stamp to mail a letter. He
took what he could from her, which was everything she, or any girl, had to give
and went off into the night. She though had it bad, had let her Eddie get under
her skin and so she was pining away and in the normal course of events, teen
drama events, has thoughts of suicide or just dying of a broken heart, take
your choice.
(Amazing the number of songs from that
time which put everything, every boy-girl thing on the razor’s edge like that,
my choice for the top on that one is Endless
Sleep where after some silly spat, although I know, I know all those
disagreements from where to go bowling Friday night to talk about “doing the
do” had instant urgency, the girl, in the old days I would have said bimbo and
would not have been far off the mark but in today’s more refined atmosphere
just girl, ran down to the sea and jumped into the swirling fierce waves
letting old King Neptune take her wherever he chances to go. Calling lover boy
to come join her. Jesus. And the guy, a bimbo of the male persuasion, goes into
after her to save her. Double Jesus.)
Now this selection of the Teen Queen song
was not random on my part because, and this may have been one of the reasons
that the song was popular, popular among those young teen-agers, mainly girls
who tended to buy these kinds of record (and most records), because while the
story line might be specific to that poor gal and her Eddie the saga hardly was
unique, a guy going off into the night after he has had his way is the stuff of
drama and novels since the love game began, since Adam and Eve, maybe before.
See my corner boy Frankie Riley had a sister, Emily, a nice girl from what I
could see when I saw her around or went over to Frankie’s house, pretty in a
little girl sort of way but quiet too quiet for me who turned out to like kind
of neurotic talkative girls and not the silent types) that had an Eddie story
and while she finally got over it from what Frankie said it was a close call
about whether she would go over the top or not, you know go down to the very
nearby sea at Adamsville Beach to be specific. Frankie, after he coaxed the
story out of her when she was mopping around for weeks and he noticed that no guys
had not been around the house for a while, looked high and low for the guy but
never found his whereabouts, and I’ll bet six, two, and even that today Frankie
would still give the guy a beating for what he had done if he ever surfaced
around Carver where Frankie still lives and practices law.
I don’t know all the details since
Frankie never got the whole story although he figured out the “take advantage”
part pretty quickly once he knew the score (having been just slightly more
honorable about things with girls than the Eddie guy). Seems Emily had a
boyfriend, a local guy, Kenny Jenkins, Jimmy Jenkin’s, who I knew from the
corners a little, a young second cousin or something who I knew from the
corners a little, she had met in school and had been going with for about a
year, most of junior and senior year. A
good guy according to Jimmy. I don’t know if marriage was in the picture or
anything like that, although in those days guys and gals going steady for that
long usually wound up married in the job-marriage-kids cycle from that town at
that time.
In any case Kenny was “from hunger”
just like the rest of us from that part of town and so had no car and they
would walk to the movies, the drive-in restaurant at the edge of town
(definitely not “cool” since you went to that spot not for the cardboard
hamburgers, flat soda and greasy French fries, awful food, really, but to be
seen, seen in some “boss” car if possible but not walking into the parking
area. That was for “losers.”
One late spring night they were sitting
on the picnic benches that walkers were reduced to in order to eat their meals
a guy, a guy on a motorcycle, not a Harley but an Indian, a real fast bike, no
question, a guy named Lance Harding Frankie found out later, who was known to
be something of a lady-killer and a good looking guy even if he was nothing but
motorcycle bad news came up to Emily and Kenny and asked Emily if she wanted a
ride. And without saying a word to Kenny she just got on the back of Lance’s
bike and was off into the night. (There is some dispute about whether he
actually asked the question or just looked in Emily’s direction and gave a nod
but either way it should have told Kenny
something was wrong in their relationship, Emily was looking for the next best
thing to come along and she was just killing time with him.)
After that Emily was out all summer
with Lance doing whatever they were doing and Kenny was from nowhere, a loser.
Since you know the theme of Eddie, My
Love and the aftermath of Emily’s affair you know Lance blew town one day
and that was that. Well not quite that was that since not only was Emily pining
away all fall but she was also in the “family way” to use an expression from
that time and had to go see “Aunt Betty” out in Kansas, the expression used
when a girl left school to have her baby. Yeah, the love game was baffling back
then, now too come to think of it.
Came in like a fresh new breeze from
out of nowhere. Kind of crept up on us kids, those who were born at the end of
World War II as a result of fathers and mothers wanting to get on with their
lives, their version of the natural social progression lives marriage complete with
kids after the hardships and delays of war. Crept up on us like one time when I
was turning the dial on the family radio in the kitchen in the ratty “projects”
apartment we lived in, ratty because of the social stigma of projects-hood not
because of their condition because they were brand new created as “temporary”
housing, we stayed a decade plus, for returning G.I. up against it in a tight
housing market, Tony Bennet and Frank Sinatra stuff my mother listened to on
the Bill Martin Show on the local radio station then catering to our parents’
music which was on all afternoon. I kept turning the dial until I stopped at
this song about midstream that had a good beat, sounded different, and talked
about going to the hop, you know dances that all the kids were crazy for as a
way to meet the opposite sex if they were old enough to have developed that
interest. It turned out the station was WMEX out of Boston which would become
over the several years the key radio station that we listened to for the latest
rock songs. That was the first afternoon that I heard rock on the radio. Of
course the song was Danny and the Juniors now classic classic At The Hop that was for a couple of
years a staple at, well, the hops we would attend looking for those
aforementioned members of the opposite sex. But that was the beginning.
Crept up on us too wherever we went
like at the movies. I already mentioned that Bill Haley thing presenting his Rock Around The Clock as the lead-in to The Blackboard Jungle a nothing film
about a bunch of juvenile delinquents and a teacher’s inevitable attempt to
tame them which was a set piece in the post-war 1950s where parents were in a
frenzy to figure out why their kids were sullen and would not communicate. The
story line on that was that the teacher took his beating, took it hard and
bounced back with maybe a glimmer of hope that one of the kids would make the
turn. Sappy stuff, really, for a kid like me who grew up in the J.D. den of
iniquity, the projects, where they were hanging off the rafters there were so
many, knowing that most of those guys would wind up some very bad place, wind
up in county or state doing nickels and dimes for armed robberies or the like,
for starters. So sappy stuff.
Crept up to in another movie which
actually deepened my feel for rock and roll and me a lifetime Jerry Lee Lewis
last man standing devotion (and today he probably is of the male rockers of
that generation). The movie, High School
Confidential, was nothing but a sleeper. You know another one of those J.D.
cautionary tale things that the 1950s were known for but this time about the
dangers of drugs, of reefer madness, reefer madness which inevitably would lead
to harsher drugs like cousin cocaine, sister morphine and boy H, heroin. The
cops sent a young guy in, a young cop who looked about thirty but who seemed to
have no trouble being seen as a teenager into a troubled suburban high school
to crack down on the emerging menacing drug cartel who wants to get the kids
“hooked” early to form lifetime habits. Naturally the cop busts the “fixer man”
and the town and the movie go back to sleep.
What was not going back to sleep though
was the intro with Jerry Lee set up with his piano and back-up guys on the back
of a flatbed truck cruising down the road toward the local high school blaring
away doing his classic classic High
School Confidential with all his mad man moves, flaming hair going every
which way, making all kinds of gyrations with his hands, and rocking the joint.
Maybe he, contrary to the theme of the film had a “joint” going in he was so
manic. Yeah, those were the days when men (and women, think Wanda Jackson and
others) played rock and roll for keeps. And we kept those tunes in our heads
for the same reasons. If you don’t believe just Google the song on YouTube and
that version should come up number one.
Despite all these great hits that came
our way that first big rock and roll year when it kind of came out from the
underground here is the funny thing, funny since we were present at the
creation, present in spite of every command uttered by Miss Winot against it,
declaring the music worse than that Russkie threat if you believed her (a few
kids, girls mainly, did whether to suck up to her since she would take their
entreaties although boys were strictly “no go” and I know having spent many a
missed sunny afternoon doing some silly “punishment” for her). We were just too
young to deeply imbibe the full measure of what we were hearing. See this
music, music we started calling rock and roll once somebody gave it a name
(super DJ impresario Alan Freed as we found out later after we had already
become “children of rock and roll”) was meant, was blessedly meant to be danced
to which meant in that boy-girl age we who didn’t even like the opposite sex as
things stood then were just hanging by our thumbs.
Yeah, was meant to be danced to at
“petting parties” in dank family room basements by barely teenage boys and
girls. Was meant to be danced to at teenage dance clubs where everybody was
getting caught up on learning the newest dance moves and the latest “cool”
outfits to go along with that new freedom. Was meant to serve as a backdrop at
Doc’s Drugstore’s soda fountain where Doc had installed a jukebox complete with
all the latest tunes as boys and girls shared a Coke sipping slowly with two
straws hanging out in one frosted glass. Was meant to be listened to by corner
boys at Jack Slack’s bowling alley where Jack eventually had set up a small
dance floor so kids could dance while waiting for lanes to open (otherwise
everybody would be still dancing out in front of O’Toole’s “boss” car complete
with amped-up radio not to Jack’s profit). Was meant to be listened to as the
sun went down in the west at the local drive-in while the hamburgers and fries
were cooking and everybody was waiting for darkness to fall so the real night
could begin, the night of dancing in dark corner and exploring the mysteries of
the universe, or at least of Miss Sarah Brown. Was even meant to be listened to on fugitive
transistor radios in the that secluded off-limits to adults and little kids
(us) where teens, boys and girls, mixed and matched in the drive-in movie night
(and would stutter some nonsense to questioning parents who wanted to know the
plot of the movies, what movies, Ma).
Yeah, we were just a little too young
even if we can legitimately claim to have been present at the creation. But we
will catch up, catch up with a vengeance.
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I will get to a CD review of Elmore
James’ work in a second. Now I want to tell, no retell, the tale that had me
and a few of my corner boys who hung out in front of, or in if we had dough for
food or more likely for the jukebox, Jimmy Jack’s Diner in Carver where I
came of age in the early 1960s going for a while. On one lonesome Friday night,
lonesome meaning, no dough, no wheels, no girls, or any combination of the
three, with time of our hands Billy Bradley, Jack Dawson and I went round and
round about what song by what artist each of us thought was the decisive song
that launched rock and roll. Yeah, I know, I know now, that the world then,
like now, was going to hell in a hand-basket, what with the Russkies breathing
hard on us in the deep freeze Cold War red scare night, with crazy wars going
on for no apparent reason, and the struggle for black civil rights down in the
police state South (that “police state" picked up later after I got wise
to what was happening there) but what else were three corner boys washed clean
by the great jail break-out that what is now termed classic rock and roll
represented to guys who were from nowhere, had no dough, didn’t have many
prospects or expectations in general to do to while away the time.(Since this
is a time sanitized version of what we Jimmy Jack’s corner boys did to while
away idle nights I will leave it at that although know too that in many a
midnight hour when Frankie Riley, the acknowledged leader of the corner boys,
was on to something we were entirely capable of doing some drifting, grifting
and sifting to make ends meet. Done.)
Here is the break-down though from
one conversation night, or maybe a bunch mixed together since this was a more
than one time theme and this is what I have distilled from far remembrances. We
knew, knew without anybody telling us that while Elvis gave rock and roll a big
lift in his time before he went on to silly movies that debased his talent he
was not the “max daddy,” not the guy who rolled the dice for rock and roll but
was the front man easily identified. For one thing and this was Billy’s
position he only covered Big Joe Turner’s classic R&B classic Shake,
Rattle, and Roll and when we heard Joe’s finger-snapping version we flipped
out. So Billy had his choice made, no question. Jack had heard on some late
Sunday night radio station out in Chicago on his transistor radio a thing
called Be-Bop Benny’s Blues Hour where he first heard this guy wailing
on the piano a be-bop tune. It turned out to be Ike Turner (without Tina then)
blasting Rocket 88. So Jack had his position firm, and a good choice.
Me, well I caught this obscure folk music station (obscure then not a few years
later though) which played not just folk but what would be later called “roots
music.” And the blues is nothing but roots music in America. One night I heard
Elmore James slide guitar his way through Look On Yonder Wall. That is
the song I defended that night. Did any of us change each other’s mind that
night. Be serious. I later, several years later, saw the wisdom of Jack’s
choice of Rocket 88 that no question had the heady black-etched part of the
rock beat down pat and I switched but old Elmore still was a close second.
Enough said.
CD REVIEW
The History of Elmore James: The Sky Is Crying, Elmore James, Rhino Records, 1993
The History of Elmore James: The Sky Is Crying, Elmore James, Rhino Records, 1993
When one thinks of the classic blues
tune “Dust My Broom” one tends to think of the legendary Robert Johnson who
along with his “Sweet Home, Chicago” created two of the signature blues songs
of the pre-World War II period. However, my first hearing of “Dust My Broom”
was on a hot LP vinyl record (the old days, right) version covered and made his
own by the artist under review, Elmore James. I have heard many cover versions
since then, including from the likes of George Thoroughgood and Chris Smither,
and they all reflect on the influence of Elmore’s amazing slide guitar
virtuosity to provide the "heat" necessary to do the song justice.
Moreover, this is only the tip of the iceberg as such blues masters and
aficionados as B.B. King and The Rolling Stones have covered other parts of
James’ catalog.
Perhaps because Elmore died
relativity young at a time when blues were just being revived in the early
1960’s as part of the general trend toward “discovering” roots music by the
likes of this reviewer he has been a less well-known member of the blues
pantheon. However, for those who know the value of a good slide guitar to add
sexiness and sauciness to a blues number James’ is a hero. Hell, Thoroughgood
built a whole career out of Elmore covers (and also, to be sure, of the late
legendary Bo Didderly). I never get tired of hearing these great songs.
Moreover, it did not hurt to have the famous Broom-dusters backing him up
throughout the years. As one would expect of material done in the pre-digital
age the sound quality is very dependent on the quality of the studio. But that,
to my mind just makes it more authentic.
Well, what did you NEED to listen to
here? Obviously,” Dust My Broom". On this CD though you MUST listen to
Elmore on "Standing At The Crossroads". Wow, it jumps right out at
you. "Look On Yonder Wall" (a song that I used to believe was a key
to early rock 'n' rock before I gravitated to Ike Turner's "Rocket
88" as my candidate for that role), "It Hurts Me Too" and the
classic "The Sky is Crying" round out the minimum program here.
Listen on.
Lyrics To "Dust My Broom"
I'm gonna get up in the mornin',
I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)
Girlfriend, the black man you been
lovin',
girlfriend, can get my room
I'm gon' write a letter,
Telephone every town I know (2x)
If I can't find her in West Helena,
She must be in East Monroe, I know
I don't want no woman,
Wants every downtown man she meet
(2x)
She's a no good doney,
They shouldn't 'low her on the
street
I believe, I believe I'll go back
home (2x)
You can mistreat me here, babe,
But you can't when I go home
And I'm gettin' up in the morning,
I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)
Girlfriend, the black man that you
been lovin',
Girlfriend, can get my room
I'm gon' call up Chiney,
She is my good girl over there (2x)
If I can't find her on Philippine's
Island,
She must be in Ethiopia somewhere
Robert Johnson
She
is my good girl over there (2x)
If I can't find her on Philippine's
Island,
She must be in Ethiopia somewhere
Robert Johnson
