In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-Once Again-Out In The Be-Bop Night-The School Dance- A CD Review

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-Once Again-Out In The Be-Bop Night-The School Dance- A CD Review

CD Review

The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The ‘50s: Last Dance, Time-Life, 1990

I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” in this space reviewing the teenage culture of the 1950s, especially the inevitable school dance and the also inevitable last dance. That event was the last chance for even shy boys like me to prove that we were not wallflowers, or worst. Below is a an excerpt from a commentary that I did in reviewing the film American Graffiti that captures, I think, what this compilation is also reaching for:

“Part of the charm of the American Graffiti segment on the local high school dance is, as I have noted previously, once you get indoors it could have been anyplace U.S.A. (and I am willing to bet anytime U.S.A., as well. For this baby-boomer, that particular high school dance, could have taken place at my high school when I was a student in the early 1960s). From the throwaway crepe paper decorations that festooned the place to the ever-present gym bleachers to the chaperones to the platform the local band (a band that if it did not hit it big would go on to greater glory at our future weddings, birthday parties, and other important occasion) covering the top hits of the day performed on it was a perfect replica.

Also perfect replica were the classic boys’ attire for a casual dance, plaid or white sports shirt, chinos, stolid shoes, and short-trimmed hair (no beards, beads, bell-bottoms, it's much too early in the decade for that) and for the girls blouses (or maybe sweaters, cashmere, if I recall being in fashion at the time, at least in the colder East), full swirling dresses, and, I think beehive hair-dos. Wow! Of course, perfect replica were the infinite variety of dances (frug, watusi, twist, stroll, etc) that blessed, no, twice blessed, rock and roll let us do in order to not to have to dance too waltz close. Mercy. And I cannot finish up this part without saying perfect replica hes looking at certain shes (if stag, of course, eyes straight forward if dated up, or else bloody hell) and also perfect replica wallflowers, as well.

Not filmed in American Graffiti, although a solo slow one highlighted the tensions between Steve and Laurie) Ron Howard and Cindy Williams) but ever present and certainly the subject of some comment in this space was that end of the night dance. I’ll just repeat what I have repeated elsewhere. This last dance was always one of those slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, as I have noted before, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your sexual preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?

And after the dance? Well, I am the soul of discretion, and you should be too. Let’s put it this way. Sometimes I got home earlier than the Ma agreed time, but sometimes, not enough now that I think about it, I saw huge red suns rising up over the blue waters. Either way, my friends, worth every blessed minute of anguish, right?”

That said, the sticks outs here include: the legendary Chuck Berry’s Back In The U.S.A. (fast); Tommy Edwards’ It’s All In The Game (slow, ouch); the late Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? (fast and sassy); and, The Flamingos I’ll Be Home (slow). How is that for dee-jaying even-handedness?