The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Billie’ s Truth- With Bo Diddley’s Bo Diddley In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Billie’ s  Truth- With Bo Diddley’s Bo Diddley In Mind

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

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

---

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.]

---

 [CL1]

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Love’s Labors Lost -With The Tune Weavers’ Happy, Happy Birthday Baby In Mind

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

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night- Betty’s Tale -With The Teen Queens’ Eddie, My Love In Mind

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

The Fontane Sisters - 1956

The Chordettes - 1956

Dee Dee Sharp - 1962

Also recorded by:

Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.

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…

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Itch- With Elvis’ One Night Of Sin In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Itch- With Elvis’ One Night Of Sin In Mind  

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

"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

*********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…                 

Shady Lady In Three-Quarters Time-That Inkwood Dame- Marlene Dietrich’s “Stage Fright” (1950)-A Film Review

Shady Lady In Three-Quarters Time-That Inkwood Dame- Marlene Dietrich’s “Stage Fright” (1950)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By William Bradley

Stage Struck, starring Marlene Dietrich, Jane Wyman, Richard Todd, Michael Wilding, directed by Sir Alfred Hitchcock, 1950  

[Normally a great if sullied* director like Sir Alfred Hitchcock would be cited in the headline but since this review links tangentially two aspects of Marlene Dietrich’s career she gets top billing. 

* “Sullied” since earlier this year, 2017, during the height of the sexual harassment and sexual crimes by high level powerful Hollywood men and later others in high positions it was revealed by Tippi Hendron who most famously starred in the Hitchcock classic The Birds that he had incessantly sexually harassed her and moreover ruined her career after she had rebuffed him. Greg Green]

******

Sometimes I can’t figure out the how or why of our new site manager Greg Green’s madness in making assignments. Or in the case here linking two different pieces of work only tangentially related together. Here’s what I mean. A few months ago when I was first hired on by Greg to bring in younger writers and give them decent assignments I happened to be headed to Washington, D.C. on other business when he asked me to stop off at the National Gallery of Art on the National Mall and view and review the big Vermeer and friends exhibit (not the official museum title but that is what it is about) of 16^th and 17^th Dutch and Flemish art. (That “younger writers” deserves some additional comment since I am a little older at twenty-eight than the youngest writer Kenny Jacobs but almost two decades younger that what under the old regime, sorry I can’t mention his name under an agreement that we would not do so with Greg, were considered young writers against the old guard who have hovered around since the 1960s-and apparently never got over it-the 1960s that is.)

I did as asked so and did what I thought was a good review given that I didn’t know a damn thing about the subject. The subject of Dutch and Flemish painting which mostly seemed boring and repetitious around family portraits and infinite scenes of fruits, vegetables and game not art in general where my tastes run to the Abstract Expressionists who I don’t know much about either but appeal to my eye. Expressed my like/dislike views and left it at that. I did make a mistake in citing another writer here, an old-timer, Frank Jackman, and his quasi –Marxist views on art and we went back and forth about it as he earnestly tried to “teach” me about this ancient painters and their “milieu,” Frank’s word. You can read that exchange elsewhere under the archival title When Capitalist Was Young….  

That was all well and good. What I had also done on that trip as well was sneak after my business was over to the National Portrait Gallery since it stays open until seven to view some American art that I was interested in when I noticed that there was a photographic display on the career of well-known (and much “drag queen”- imitated) German turned American citizen actress Marlene Dietrich. I thereafter mentioned that exhibit in passing to Greg who must have put that fact in the back of his mind because when he had finished previewing the film under review Stage Fright a thriller by director Alfred Hitchcock starring Ms. Dietrich he cornered me by the water cooler and gave me the assignment. Again I knew nada about Ms. Dietrich other than what I had read at the exhibit not being either a fan of Mr. Hitchcock, hers, or of old time movies. So here it is as good as I can make it without much experience with this kind of film.                              

Marlene Dietrich had a certain style about her, a certain independent don’t give a damn attitude which permeated her role as Charlotte Inkwood, a chanteuse and actress who had both a lover, Johnny, played Richard Todd and a husband she did not much like, wanted to see dead. So, yes, didn’t like much is right if understated like her role here.     That is the drift of the storyline, with that not “much like” unseen husband lying on the living room floor. The first twist and turn of the film which drives it in a certain direction revolved around the very clear implication that Charlotte had done the deed. It sure looked like it as every emotive breath she took when she told lover-boy Johnny about it kept saying guilty as hell. Also in her apparent duplicity looked like she had used Johnny to cover her tracks and make him the fall guy.        

Enter Eve, played by Jane Wyman, a friend of Johnny’s who thought she was in love with him and did everything she could to hide him and who was bewitched by his story that Charlotte had done the deed. Including producing a telltale and fatal bloodstained dress she had allegedly worn to do the deed. By hook or by crook to save darling Johnny Eve directly confronted Charlotte via a ruse as her temporary dresser, an institution in the theater world. Enter Detective Smith, played by Michael Wilding, who turns Eve’s head away romantically from Johnny who made it very clear that he had gone over the edge for Charlotte.

Meanwhile this Smith and his fellow police officers are looking high and low for Johnny boy. Not getting anyway especially since Eve, and her family, not suspecting anything untoward of him were keeping him a step or two ahead of the law. With his help. As things moved toward a climax, toward the capture of on the run Johnny it was revealed via another ruse by the coppers that Johnny, under Charlotte’s cunning bidding had actually killed dear sweet Mr. Inkwood. This revelation occurred while both he and Eve are hiding under the stage of the theater that Charlotte played at. Oh no, Eve was a goner. Not so fast since the clever Ms. Eve was able to put herself out of danger and old Johnny got his just desserts. Of course Charlotte will get hers as well taking as Sandy Salmon says quoting Sam Lowell the big step-off. 

I don’t know if this is a big time Dietrich work although she certainly could emote when the deal went down, could act whatever she needed to act to stay out of the clutches of the law. Perhaps know it all Frank Jackman will give me the same working over he gave me on those freaking Dutch and Flemish painters who grabbed up the great art when they ruled the roost and “teach” me what is what about the legacy of Ms. Dietrich.        

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Time Of Her Time, Indeed-With Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle And Roll In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Time Of Her Time, Indeed-With Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle And Roll In Mind

Sketches From The Pen Of  Frank Jackman  

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…