Let’s Have A Party-The Year 1957-Revisted

Let’s Have A Party-The Year 1957-Revisted

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber
 

Sam Lowell though it was funny that he had not thought about the year 1957 in a long time, no reason too really although that year was the first year that he, newly-minted teen he “tuned in” the local radio scene around North Adamsville and was able to pick up WMEX out of Boston on his transistor radio and get bopped, be-bopped, double-bopped over the head by Danny and the Juniors’ At The Hop and he never looked back. Oh sure he had seen and heard Elvis before then all side-burned getting ready to drive every plain Jane mother in America mad and every barber too when those previously well-cut sides shagged a little longer each time at the shop, all swivel-hipped and Sam almost had to have surgery on his hips when he  faux imitated those dazzling moves just a bit too much, and with that patented snarl/sneer/snicker that had every girl in America and maybe not so girlish and young but not so sweet Lorraine  womanly as well having sweated dreams about personally, in the flesh, and alone in some swank hotel room or wherever Elvis resided when not shaking those hips, waiting for those side-burns to grow out or working a new variation on that snarl/sneer/ snicker taking with their girlish/womanly charms that snarl/sneer/snicker right off his face. Seen the Elvis Ed Sullivan television show too, okay so he was not some dumb hick tween before 1957.

 

Oh sure, yeah,  he had seen and heard one Bo Didderly do his Bo thing swaying some Mother Africa beckons her children home beat and making a very firm statement taking on all comings in answer to the question of who put the rock in rock and roll. And oh sure too he had been “present at the creation” when Bill Haley and his starry Comets blew the joint wide open, especially that raggedy-assed sexy sax player, had told one and all to shake (yeah, shake that thing), rattle and roll making his own storied bid to answer the question who put the roll in rock and roll. But see those were all a year or two before, a time when Sam just cropping up barely was able to feel something new was in the air, something that was not the sounds coming out of the mother slave away all day household radio. So he would plant his flag on the year 1957 and tell all who would listen that he had come of age.           

 

And so Sam did, and a few listened to his dogged old tale then but that is not how the deal went down slowly for why sixty years after Bill Haley’s blew so cool in the introduction lead up to The Blackboard Jungle playing as Sam would learn later, learn to call it the things the big head academic sociologists and wacky media commentators rattled around the tabloids of the day praying (or was it preying) that the kids’ music was just a fad like motorcycles, hot rods, and surf boards on the way to being proper organizational men (and women) to his and his generation’s angst and alienation (and maddened feelings of violence for not being in the loop for what was happening in the freaking world, that world being the four corners of his/their neighborhood except via that damn black and white television set and that merciful transistor radio glued to his ear) why he was once again found himself caught up in that moment.

 

As usual, or more usual these days, that moment came back from a remembrance of his old corner boy, the late Pete Markin (whom he did not know in 1957 having moved from Carver to North Adamsville only in 1959 but be patient). For all the moaning Sam and his old crowd, or those still standing, that hung around with Markin in the dark corner boy nights of the early 1960s did these days that sainted bastard had come to a wickedly bad end down in Sonora, down Sonora, Mexico way in the mid-1970s they were not sure when exactly just as they were not sure of details exactly of his early demise except that it involved a busted middle-level drug deal (kilos of cocaine) and his being found face down in a back road with two slugs in his head. And that he was buried in some unmarked grave in the town’s potter’s field after everybody, everybody who cared including Sam and Frankie Riley the old corner boy leader who were both now lawyers, was warned off further investigation and any travel to recover the body.     

 

But they still moaned, moaned to high heaven every time his name came up at their periodic meetings at Jack’s Grille in Cambridge where Sam lives these days. One day Sam, or maybe it was old corner boy leader Frankie Riley who owed Markin a lot, had also dubbed him “the Scribe” for his never-ending writings (not the least as essentially a “flak” for Frankie’s various doings which Frankie never discouraged) quoting about six million facts on lonely weekend nights when he would regale the crowd with his verbal antics suggested that they publish a small book of Markin’s published writings. Those would be from the time after he got back from Vietnam in late 1969 when he decided among other things to take up the pen for various alternative publications and journals until he faded away down in Sonora in that murky mid-1970s. Everybody agreed that was a good idea as long as there was enough material around in various attics and other such corner boy laden repositories to make it worthwhile. Well between them they were able to produce enough articles and sketches to have a small book printed up by Bart Webber’s son, Jeff, who had after Bart recently retired taken over the printing business he had started in the 1960s when silk-screened tee-shirts, silk-screened posters and silk-screened everything was all the rage and he survived on those orders alone then.

 

To make a long story short (an expression Markin used but which never stopped him from going on and on making that short story long) Sam had found several articles written in 1972 from the Evergreen Express which had published a series of sketches done by Markin about his old corner boy days (including naming names-naming his corner boys and their nefarious doings to get through that teen angst and teen alienation time) or music reviews of old-time rock and roll music that he was crazy to write about. (Sam though listening to and writing about that music of their youths might be some form of therapy after the horrors of Vietnam to go back to a more innocent time but that was just a Sam thought since sometimes Markin just liked to flat-out write about whatever came into his head.) It had been re-reading one of the latter, the Let’s Have A Party, The Year 1957 article, that got Sam thinking about 1957. 1957 the year that Sam had come of musical age.

 

Markin, as usual whenever he said or wrote anything, had to put a little historical spin on things even in something like a music review, in this case the review of a series of by-the-year record compilations that were the opening rounds of the beginning of what would become something of a cottage industry for World War II 1950s and 1960s coming of age baby-boomers, “oldies, but goodies” recordings. So he started off by telling one and all that 1957 was the, hey, wait a minute, it is my dime let me let Sam speak for himself, tell you what Markin was trying get at in the article and what got him thinking his own 1957 thoughts like he told me (and a couple of other old reprobate corner boys who liked to drink their high-shelf scotch neat as well) one rainy night at Jack’s Grille after he had found his dusty old packet of Markin articles up in his attic: 

“I was surprised to find that I still had my packet of Markin articles which I found up in an old rucksack that I hadn’t remembered about either except that I knew that  bag was from the last trip that I had taken cross-country (and the last one that I took with Markin so it must have been in late 1972 since the date on the Evergreen Express issue was March 5^th and I had other later issues of that journal series as well) since I had decided to come off the road and go back to “normalcy” once I sensed that all the great dreams that we had dreamed about creating a “newer world” were returning to ashes in our mouths and so I had applied to law school, been accepted and had taken that one last trip to “make sure” to my own satisfaction that breeze had run its course. It had of course since it had taken us almost two weeks to get from Boston to Monterrey on the hitchhike road something that would have taken about five days years even two years earlier. And we had made the two week trip only because we got one of the last of the friendly long haul truckers we met at the Pig ‘n’ Whistle truck stop outside of Denver drove out straight through to Salinas.

Frankly I thought I had left those articles out in California, out in La Honda,  with my first ex-wife, Lorna, when we split up or had left them with Josh Breslin when he lived in Oakland when I stayed with him and after the divorce and before Markin went missing. When I started reading the article I suddenly remembered that Markin had spilled much ink memory covering, extensively covering, many records compilations from a Rock ‘N’ Rock Era series [that would be, ouch, a classic age of rock and roll series Markin would be talking about now, damn-BW]. A highlight of that series, and the one thing that clearly peaked my interest beyond the songs, or some of the songs, the ones that were able to drefy age, and are lyric remembrance etched in my brain, had been the cover artwork that had evoked, and evoked strongly, the themes that dominated our lives, our hubristic teenage lives, in the golden age of rock, say from about the mid-1950s to about the mid-1960s as we watched it unfold (after that things went all over the place, the music and the times both), from be-bop cool rock and roll music, then a little counter-revolution engineered by our parents told the record producers in no uncertain terms to de-sex, although would never have used that forbidden term, de-liquor, de-fang, to musak all  rock and roll to save their sons, and especially their daughters, then an upswing with the British invasion after a short folk minute detour for the more studious types, some bop-bop Motown sounds and then finely crafted acid-etched rock, acid as in drug rock acid.

But back in the creation times, back when we finally got liberated from mother household drudge music (their music, our parents’ music, okay) the music connected with almost every aspect of our “social calendar.” Things like last dance school dances (and dreams of that she I had been getting sore eyes over all night taking me up on my request for that key dance to make the night worthwhile and dreads of not getting that she for that last one, but in any case god it had better be a slow one in order to make my pitch), lovers’ lanes (down by the seaside sifting sand, against the cold ocean night, against the Seal Rock night, in the back seat of Jimmy’s car, and, well let’s leave it at that, okay since Jimmy Jenkins  today might try to sue me for false advertising, although with a fat chance of winning given what I have on that guy and the low-rent girls he hungered now that he is married to Lorraine Parsons , she of the Sunday church novena book and rosary beads crowd, and their own kids are “starting a family” as the old saying goes),  drive-in movies (alternative spot for that “and let’s leave it at that” mentioned above), drive-in restaurants (a night cap of burgers and fries after that “and, let’s leave it at that ” hopefully) , summer beach life (watching, intensely watching,  those long-legged college girls home for the summer and restless, freshman year behind them restless, after having dusted the dust from the old town and gotten a little wild at those Frosh mixers everybody who was going to college had heard about and paid serious attention to as a “babe’ magnet trying to look sophisticated but we a few years younger and looking to catch a sly glance just watching high school odd-ball watching between the two yacht clubs where they were preening themselves) and on and on.  

The year 1957 cover art as pictured above the Evergreen review, seemed to be less concerned with strong old time evocations by flashy artwork but rather used old time photos (Kodak, Polaroids and Nikons of ancient memory now that the digital Internet photo-shops are in  style, of course). Nevertheless sometimes just a simple photograph as appears on the 1957 cover evokes those memories in a more subtle way. Now 1957 was year fraught with perils (nice word, right), as Markin suggested in his review with that historical baloney that he always had to attach to every written item he ever wrote even I remember one time when he did a football game report for the old school newspaper, The North Star, and went on and on about how it was a good thing the death penalty had been abolished in Massachusetts (or maybe not abolished by not used since 1947) or the home team would be swinging from gallows after the murder and mayhem they put on the cross-town rivals, the Adamsville High Presidents. Fraught with all kinds of perils what with the Soviets in that hard-boiled, coiled, foiled red scare “turn in your mommy, if she is a commie (or just for kicks if she denied you something, anything for any reason in that “child-centered” time when old Doc Spock, the baby doctor not the Star Trek Vulcan guy said better to spoil the child than work up a sweat with the rod, something like that and parents, seemingly except mine and Markin’s, bought into that story line if for no other reason than to not to have to deal with some Jeb Lewis mad monk Hot Rod valley boy “chicken run” racer constantly in need of bail money, worse, a bad ass leather jacket motorcycle Marlon Brando boy with a gang that would not need bail money but the 101^st Airborne Division to ferret them out once they infected a town, worse still a sullen, no ambition lout like James Dean all surly and parent-hating with daggers in his eyes) Cold War night having blasted American ingenuity and know-how and sent the first satellite up into space and who knew what the hell else they were up to destroy our parents “golden age” dreams.

Worse than Sputnik, worse that James Dean, worse than Marlon Brando and far worse that timid Jeb Lewis (when you thought about the big scheme of things and his “chicken shit” box of a jalopy) was the true fear stalking the land with the publication of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road vagrant America hitchhike night, searching, searching for something, hot on the heels of Allen Ginsberg’s mad savior in the negro streets night poem, Howl, that finally gave names to all that angst, all that anxiety, all that cosmic, karmic energy being lost in search of golden age el dorado called out the word beat, beat down, beat back, beat six ways to Sunday if not true beat out in the fellahin word. All the good plain Jane and Jack parents would had their own shaky antennas up for any rumbling in the home land at the mention of the word “beat,” the color black, black hat, black shirt, black  chino pants, black dress, black beret, hell, black bra for all they knew (or me either). Worst of all listening to cool black-fronted be-bop jazz so cool that there might be no coming back. Little did they know that poor Jack and his crowd were listening to a different drummer, their drummers really since Jack, Allen, and the gang were all of their generation just be-bop not “square.” We would not catch up to those guys until we read some books, got the moving itch and went electric in that good night. By then they were old men with old dreams if the old could have dreams (which as we found out to our surprise as we got older they can except unfortunately more measured).    

Us, the real us, the us they never knew (Jack or our parents, hell, maybe not even Neal Cassady although he rode the merry prankster bus although again he and Kesey, among the main culprits on that acid-etched road, were of their generation), well, we were in thrall to our teen angst, our teen identity crisis, our teen what the hell is this sex business about hormone crazed time of our time and short of some world-wide nuclear explosion where such personal matters would have gone by the boards anyway we could have given a rat’s ass (an old term coined locally by Billie Bradley the king of “the projects” corner boys where I grew up) about that world, when all we knew, all we wanted to know, was whether Betty Bleu or Linda Lou or Peggy Sue was going to show up at some “petting party” and what were we going to do about it. (At the first one nothing since when Betty Bleu did show interest I ran like hell from the “family room” where the party was being held, although that was the last time for a long time I did that when a girl/woman expressed the least interest in me. And later dear Betty and I had plenty of hot kisses and “copped feels” so I did get the hang of it, yes, indeed) So that is the 1957 that I want to talk about, the 1957 of the album cover and of the prospects that Mother Earth would not go to hell in hand-basket before those earth-shattering questions got resolved.  

And what did that album cover photograph picture (is that the right way to say it, well you get what I mean-what does it show). Well, Johnny (we’ll just call him that for our purposes here, okay, although it could have been Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Butch, Billy, Ronny, Peter or six thousand other conventional names, although not Malik, Abdul, or Jose, that when the “new age” did come in the 1960s we were more than happy to shed and begin again with monikers like Prince of Love, Josh Breslin’s moniker, the Be-Bop Kid, mine, Far-Out Phil, Captains America, Midnight and Crunch and other lesser mock military rankings as almost a joke on the serious action going on in red-infested Vietnam), hair slicked back as was the Elvis-want-to-be style (although no sign of the sneer, that patented Elvis sneer that had many a girl, and not just girls as the wet panties thrown on his stages attested to, thinking midnight dreams about personally taking off his face), no facial hair, jesus, no facial hair, we are not dealing with those low-life reefer mad beat down hipsters, beat beasts bopping around sneering at the squares and I don’t care if big daddy leader Jack Kerouac really meant “beatitude,” meant spiritual beauty when he coined the big beat phrases which drove the edges of youth society in  those years they were persona non grata in the  Amityville night, so no way, that is music for the future, square suited up in sports coat, white shirt, and tie (pants not observed although they had to be black chinos, uncool cuffed or cool uncuffed, and shoes, well, loafers for sure, no silly pennies inserted that was strictly for nerds, thank you, serious nerds). So any one of six zillion guys you would see around town, around school, around America oozing square if for no other reason that that was that, and thinking otherwise didn’t get you anywhere in that good night.  

And then there was Susie (ditto Johnny and on the name thing, and no Tanyas, Samias,or Juanitas, on the female side, although her monikers in the 1960s would reflect royalty rather than military prowess with names like Snow White, Princess Alice, the Czarina, Queen Jane, Countess Clara or frilliness like Mad Alice, Mustang Sally, Olive Oyl, and the like), pulled back pony-tail, blonde, real blonde before that became an issue in boys’ locker rooms sullen talk about who was real, where and how, to keep that long hair out of her eyes while fast-dancing with Eddy, Billy and Teddy before lemming on to our boy Johnny, dressed up in her best frilly party dress, long, and not black, not black as night anything for the same reason, the same non-beat in Amityville reason Johnny has not facial hair, (no bobby socks or nylons showing so I cannot discuss that issue here nor will I venture into the girl shoe night any more than I would today into the woman’s shoe night).

 And they, well, the glue that held them together is that they were comparing notes on the latest 45s. Nice wholesome kids, white kids just so you know who the record companies were appealing too although most of the best music was black, black and beautiful as the darkest night [like the songs from YouTube that accompanies this sketch-BW]. No mad dog hopheads, or dipsos and no nerds either. Let them go use the library or something.

For those not long in the tooth who may have wandered into this screed and are not sure why that 45RPM was the size record we played on our old time record players (no, not stereos and, no, not wind-up Victrolas, wise guys) when we wanted to drown out ma, pa, and sibling noises about homework, chores, or just the stuff of everyday life. Each record had a one song A side (the hit) and a one song B side (maybe a hit but usually something to fill the B side grooves), each side a little over two minutes long (Jim Morrison on The End or Bob Dylan on Desolation Row would have gone apoplectic if they had to face those limits although they too grew up on 45s). That idea didn’t last too long before responding to the crush of the market the record companies started making LPs, records with several songs on each side. I have given enough time to the subject of record size in any case.

And in the year 1957 what musical chooses might the pair be comparing on this night, this house party night from a look at the décor, maybe some Jenny’s birthday party (or Chrissie’s, Chrissie who gave me my first kiss, not real, not real as far as I know, since it was more like a peck on the lips and she shortly thereafter became our corner boy king Frankie Riley’s girl), or maybe if on other nights, school dance nights. As usual another round in the “battle of the sexes” will be played out just like from teen time immemorial, or whenever that guy who invented teen-hood invented it a while back. At least records and record player time immemorial. While Buddy Holly, Patsy Kline, Rickey Nelson, and the Everly Brothers have some spin in the early going the real fight, the real important fight, school dance or house party, is what song will be played for the last dance. Yes, the key last dance to see whether the evening continues when they hold each other tight after a night of apart self-expression fast rock and roll dancing. So the battle really boils down to Could This Be Magic? by The Dubs or Happy Happy Birthday Baby by the Tune Weavers and if Johnny does not want to be lonely tonight he better make the right choice. Good luck, Brother Johnny, good luck. [Listen below and see who wins the “battle”-BW]