Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
This is another tongue-in-cheek commentary, the back story if you like, in the occasional entries under this headline going back to the primordial youth time of the 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Now many music and social critics have done yeomen’s service giving us the meaning of various folk songs, folk protest songs in particular, from around this period. You know they have essentially beaten us over the head with stuff like the meaning of Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind as a clarion call for now aging baby-boomers back then and a warning (not heeded) that a new world was a-bornin’, or trying to be. Or better, The Times They Are A-Changin’with plaintive plea for those in charge to get hip, or stand aside. (They did neither.) And we have been fighting about a forty year rearguard action to this very day trying to live down those experiences, and trying to get new generations to blow their own wind, change their own times, and sing their own plainsong in a similar way.
Like I said the critics have had a field day (and long and prosperous academic and journalistic careers as well) with that kind of stuff, fluff stuff really. The hard stuff, the really hard stuff that fell below their collective radars, was the non-folk, non-protest, non-deep meaning (so they thought) stuff, the daily fare of popular radio back in the day. A song like today’s selection, You’re So Fine. A song that had every red-blooded American (and who knows maybe world teen) wondering their own wondering about the fate of the song’s narrator. About what happened that night (and the next morning) that caused him to pose the comment in that particular way. Yes, that is the hard stuff of social commentary, the stuff of popular dreams, and the stuff that is being tackled head on in this series- Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night. Read on.
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She stood there, just stood there grinning to herself at the bathroom door going in to freshen up from the night ‘s pillow exertions, and, a little sore, good sore, to do other womanly after sex things. Grinning that womanly grin (although she was barely out of her teens, having turned twenty just the month before that grin moment) that connoted that she had caught herself a man, a good man from the looks of him this first morning, and a man whom she knew, knew deep in her womanly soul, that believed, and perhaps, would believe to infinity, or something like that, that he had bedded her with his line, his oh so fine line the night before at the Carousel Club, the one in Old Town for the college set and the young who were full of energy and looking, frankly, looking for sex, not the one over on Main Street that was reserved, strictly reserved for touritas mainly interested in the next drink, where he, so he thought, had picked her up.
What he did not know, and would not know to infinity or something like that, was at just that 1959 moment, just that turned twenty moment, she had dumped her no good, two-timing (she later found out five-timing so the no good stands two and one half more no good ) boyfriend from State U, the local hush-hush dope dealer on campus (selling to ancient tea heads, not so ancient beats, the curious, and an occasional girl, prodded on by some anxious boyfriend, who needed to loosen herself up before her first bout with the sex pillows), and all-around heel. So she had been on the rebound last night, had purposefully dolled herself up, all tight cashmere sweater to reveal her perky bosom, all skin- tight black shirt to show her curvaceous hips and slender and graceful legs, all ruby red lips stick to highlight her lips and a dab of come hinter, come hither perfume to highlight, to highlight her prowl needs.
Then he came into the club, known, vaguely known from around campus as something of a beat, something of a hipster (although she did not recall him around boyfriend tea times), something of an egghead, and something of a loner, all kind of vaguely known but known. And not known, intelligence gathered in the Ladies’ Room where she cornered Clara White who knew of such things, such campus things, not known to be hard on women, or at least his women. So when he came by her stool seat at the bar, her very friendly seat at the bar, and asked her in a very friendly but civilized manner whether the seat next to her was empty, she was ready, ready to be swept of her feet if that was where things were headed.
And then he started with that you’re so fine line, like from the big hit song, The Falcons’ song, everybody at school was playing and everybody knew the words to. And every guy had as his opening line that month. But it wasn’t what he said but the way he said it, like he was thankful that she, and she alone, was sitting alone at the bar just that minute. That he was thankful too that she let him sit next her. And that she had dolled herself up to look, well, to look so fine. So with that opening, after the troubles of the past few months, and his casual, his non-threatening offer to buy her a drink, she knew Clara’s intelligence was right, and she knew too that she was not going to sleep alone that night in her apartment. And as the evening progressed, without a lot of boring this and that to foul things up, he too knew where he was spending the night.
Just then he awoke, and she asked him, asked him like they would be together for a time whether he wanted some coffee, and what he wanted in it. And he answered like he didn’t want to put her to any bother and just like he too expected they would be together for a time.
