***Johnny Prescott’s Itch-
With Kudos To Mister Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
You know, well you know if you were
present at the creation meaning that you were part of the Generation of ’68
first kissed by the effect, that the fresh brisk breeze of rock and roll that flooded
this sullen 1950s red scare cold war land knocked kids then over for a loop.
Those who had been brain-deadened by their parents’ 1940s Bing/Frank/Inkspots/Andrews
Sisters and their et.al on the family radio front and center in the living room
came to life. Those who had thought that doing John Philip Sousa martial music
was the cat’s meow flipped out. Sedate and proper Beethoven freaks were told by,
and obeyed, Mister Chuck Berry to tell their mentor to move over and turned in their
tubas for guitars. Even cool breeze be-bop jazz aficionados like Johnny Prescott
got twisted and turned around as the “devil’s music came abounding down the
teenage road. Here’s Johnny’s “conversion” which has all the elements of a
second coming great awakening revival burning over the land.
********
He had the itch. John Prescott had
the itch and he had it bad, especially since his eyes flamed up consumed with
hell-bend flames when he saw Elvis performing live on the Ed Sullivan Show
one Sunday night. He double-flipped when he heard an underground recording of
Elvis doing the original, the orginal man, One
Night Of Sin that had been transmogrified in One Night With You by the parent/headmaster/cop/record company cabal.
He had it so bad that he had missed, unbeknownst to his parents who would have
been crestfallen and, perhaps, enraged if they had known, his last few piano
lessons.
Sure, he had covered his butt by
having big sweet boy saxophonist Sid Stein, rat-tit-tat drummer Eddie Shore,
and sublime bass player Kenny Jackson from his improvisational school jazz
combo, The G-Clefs (yah, a well-thought out name for a musical group) come by
his house to pick him up. While standing at the Prescott door parents and
sidemen went through the “well aren’t things looking up for you boys,” and
“they seem to be” scene without missing a beat. But as soon as Kenny’s 1954
Nash Rambler turned the corner of Walnut Street Johnny was a long-gone daddy,
real long-gone. And where he was long-gone but not forlorn to was Sally Ann’s
Music Shop over on the far end of West Main Street. Now the beauty of Sally
Ann’s was that it was, well, Sally Ann’s, a small shop that was well off the
main drag, and therefore no a likely place where any snooping eyes, ears or
voices that would report to said staid Prescott parents when Johnny went in or
out of the place.
Everyone, moreover, knew Sally Ann’s was
nothing but a run-down, past its prime place stocking obscure Charley Patton, Skip
James and Son House blues stuff, gave Big Joe Turner, Ike Turner, and Elmore James
space and even stocked, you know, mountain music, the Carter Family and Jimmy
Rodgers whoever they were. If you really wanted all the best 45s, and musical
instrument stuff then every self-respecting teenager hit the tracks for Benny’s
Music Emporium right downtown and only about a quick five-minute walk from
North Clintondale High where Johnny and the combo served their high school
time, impatiently served their high school time.
Now while everybody respected old
Sally Ann’s musical instincts (she was the queen of the jitterbug night in the
1940s, had been on top of the be-bop jazz scene with Charley, Dizzy and the
guys early on, guys whom the G-Clefs covered, covered like crazy, and nixed,
nixed big time that whole Patti Page, Teresa Brewer weepy, sad song thing in
the early 1950s) she was passé, old hat when it came to the cool blues coming
out of Chicago, and the be-bop doo wop that kids, white kids, because there
were no known blacks, or spanish, chinese, armenians, or whatever, in dear old
Clintondale were crazy for ever since Frankie Lyman and his back-up guys tore
up the scene with Why Do Fools Fall In Love?
But her greatest sin, although up
until a few weeks ago Johnny would have been agnostic on that sin part, was
that she was behind, way behind the curve, on the rock ‘n’ rock good night wave
coming though and splashing over everybody, including deep jazz man, Johnny
Prescott. But Sally Ann had, aside from that secluded locale and a
tell-no-tales-attitude, something Johnny could use. She had a primo Les Paul
Fender-bender guitar in stock just like the one Gene Vincent used that she was
willing to let clandestine Johnny play when he came by. And she had something
else Johnny could use, or maybe better Sally Ann could use. She had an A-Number
One ear for guys who knew how to make music, any kind of music and had the bead
on Johnny, no question. See Sally Ann was looking for one more glory flame, one
more Clintondale shine moment, and who knows maybe she believed she could work
some Colonel Parker magic and so Johnny Prescott was king of the Sally Ann day.
King, that is, until James and
Martha Prescott spotted the other G-Clefs (Kenny, Sid, Eddie) coming out of the
Dean Music School minus Johnny, minus a “don’t know where he is, sir,” Johnny.
And Mr. Dean, Johnny’s piano instructor, was clueless as well, believing
Johnny’s telephone story about having to work for the past few weeks and so
lessons were to be held in abeyance. Something was definitely wrong if Mr.
Dean, who was the man more than anyone else who recognized Johnny’s raw musical
talent in about the third grade had lost Johnny's confidence.
But the Prescotts got wise in a
hurry because flutist Mary Jane Galvin, coming out the school just then and
overhearing the commotion about Johnny’s whereabouts, decided to get even with
one John Prescott by, let’s call a thing by its right name, snitching on him
and disclosed that she had seen him earlier in the day when she walked into
Sally Ann’s looking for an old Benny Goodman record that featured Peggy Lee and
which Benny’s Emporium, crazed rock ‘n’ rock hub Benny’s would not dream of
carrying, or even have space for.
The details of the actual physical
confrontation with Johnny by his parents (with Mr. Dean in tow) are not very
relevant to our little story. What is necessary to detail is the shock and
chagrin that James and Martha exhibited on hearing of Johnny’s itch, his itch
to be the be-bop, long-gone daddy of the rock ‘n’ roll night. Christ, Mr. Dean
almost had a heart attack on the spot when he heard that Johnny had, and we
will quote here, “lowered himself to play such nonsense,” and gone over to the
enemy of music.
As mentioned earlier Mr. Dean,
before he opened his music school, had been the roving music teacher for the
Clintondale elementary school sand had spotted Johnny’s natural feel for music
early on. He also knew, knew somewhere is his sacred musical bones, that
Johnny’s talents, his care-free piano talents in particular, could not be
harnessed to classical programs, the Bachs, Beethoven, and Brahms stuff, so
that he encouraged Johnny to work his magic through be-bop jazz then in high
fashion, and with a long pedigree in American musical life. When he approached
the Prescotts about coordinating efforts to drive Johnny’s talents by lessons
his big pitch had been that his jazz ear would assure him of steady work when
he came of age, came of age in the mid-1950s.
This last point should not be
underestimated in winning the Prescotts over. James worked, when there was
work, as welder, over at the shipyards in Adamsville, and Martha previously
solely a housewife, in order to pay for those lessons (and be a good and caring
mother to boot) had taken on a job filling jelly donuts (and other donut stuff)
at one of the first of the Dandy Donuts shops that were spreading over the
greater Clintondale area.
Christ, filling donuts. No wonder
they were chagrined, or worst.
Previously both parents were proud,
proud as peacocks, when Johnny really did show that promise that Mr. Dean saw
early on. Especially when Johnny would inevitably be called to lead any musical
assemblage at school, and later when, at Mr. Dean’s urging, he formed the
G-Clef and began to make small amounts of money at parties and other functions.
Rock ‘n’ rock did not fit in, fit in at all in that Prescott world. Then damn
Elvis came into view and corrupted Johnny’s morals, or something like that.
Shouldn’t the authorities do something about it?
Johnny and his parents worked out a
truce, well kind of a truce, kind of a truce for a while. And that kind of a “truce
for a while” is where old Sally Ann entered the sketch again. See, Johnny had
so much raw rock talent that she persuaded him to have his boys (yes, Kenny,
Sid and Eddy in case you forgot) come by and accompany him on some rock stuff.
And because Johnny (not Sally Ann, old Aunt Sally by then) was loved, loved in
the musical sense if not in the human affection sense by the other boys they
followed along. Truth to tell they were getting the itch too, a little.
That little itch turned into a very
big itch indeed when at that very same dime-dropper, Mary Jane Galvin’s sweet
sixteen party concert (yes, Mary Jane was that kind of girl), the G-Clefs
finished one of their covers, Dizzy’s Salt Peanuts with some rock riffs.
The kids started to get up, started dancing in front of their seats to the
shock of the parents and Mary Jane (yes, Mary Jane was that kind of girl),
including the senior Prescotts, were crazy for the music. And Johnny’s fellow
G-Clefs noticed, noticed very quickly that all kinds of foxy frails (girls,
okay), girls who had previously spent much time ignoring their existences, came
up all dream-eyed and asked them, well, asked them stuff, boy-girl stuff.
Oh, the Sally Ann part, the real
Sally Ann part not just the idea of putting the rock band together. Well, she
talked her talk to the headmaster over at North Clintondale High (an old
classmate, Clintondale Class of 1925, and flame from what the boys later heard)
and got the boys a paying gig at the upcoming school Spring Frolics. And the
money was more than the G-Clefs, the avant guarde G-Clefs made in a month of
jazz club appearances, to speak nothing of girls attached. So now the senior
Prescotts are happy, well as happy as parents can be over rock ‘n’ roll. And
from what I heard Johnny and the Rocking Ramrods are going, courtesy of Aunt
Sally, naturally, to be playing at the Gloversville Fair this summer.
Be-bop-a-Lula indeed.
Hideki
Yoshikawa, environmental campaigner; leader of the Okinawa movement against
U.S. military bases; professor at Univ. of the Ryukyus and at Meio Univ.
Hyun
Lee, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development: Northeast Asia
Bruce
Gagnon, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space:
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