***From Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Rock Night-Carl Perkin's "Boppin' The Blues"-Take Two

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I remember back when I decided to place this Carl Perkins be-bop tune, Boppin’The Blues, in this space a couple of years back. I made the following comment then: “Hell, I don't need to comment here. Carl Perkins says it all-bop, bop the blues-get it.” And at some level the statement was, and is, true, true for those of us who came of age in the post-World War II cold war red scare night and who were just waiting around for something, anything, and in some cases desperately so to happen if not so for later mist of times, good old days generations. We weren’t necessarily conscious of what we were waiting for, I know I wasn’t except for this unexplained, uncharted beat circulating in my head but, damn, we were waiting for some jailbreak thing to come along. Something more than we faced daily with periodic doomsday exercises at school hiding under desks like that was going to do a damn thing if some Russkie A-bomb, or some kind of bomb, was going to be directly aimed at Hullsville South Elementary School anytime between 1950 and 1956 in retribution for whatever sins we had committed (and which we, maybe, hadn’t confessed, confessed fully to the good priest, Father Murphy, the good priest who went light on penances and saved many a prayer knee, over at Saint Mary’s Catholic Church on Main Street).

Yah, I had the beat in my head, like I said, a beat, maybe a sinful beat for all I know although I never coped, uh, confessed to its sinfulness to good priest or bad. A beat not from some Rosemary Clooney Come On To My House heard incessantly on the parent front room radio but something swaying, something primal if I had known that word then. But mainly I went along, went along with the bomb blast program then, went along with the Russkies are coming thing, kept my head down and kept that beat frame of mind to myself. I remember though Albert Ruffin, yes, that Albert Ruffin who in the late 1960s would famously, or infamously depending on your point of view, put Hullsville on the map when he as “Red” Ruffin practically brought the government down, or tried to, leading those Vietnam anti-war marches over at Boston University and down in Washington, kept standing up during those air raid drills and saying that he would fight the Russkies mano y mano. (“Red”Ruffin who has now returned, long-returned, to Albert Ruffin-hood as a federal magistrate down in New Jersey). I remember yelling to him to keep down, keep way down or he would get us all killed. Yah, I kept my head down in those days, way down.

We, we the younger set, the baby-boomers as we are called now by the historians, the sociologists, the demographists, oh, just call them the professionals, (although I prefer for political reasons to call us –“generation of ’68”but we are talking of the same thing, the Red Ruffin same thing, the same species waiting in that 1950s good night to hear the glad tidings) were pent up waiting for some movement to wash over us. But what we didn’t know, a lot of us didn’t know including me then, especially if we didn’t have older brothers and sisters, say eight to ten years older, and a lot of us didn’t since we baby-boomers were created in quick batches from 1945 on by parents who, well, who had been separated by the war and were in a hurry to get a family started, was that those older brethren were hearing some rumblings and acting out on it. Guys like holy hell’s angels motorcycle angels revved up, filled with unrequited angst and alienation not alleviated by hard- shell Great Depression traumas or wartime great deeds that were wreaking havoc on the California highways, and not just California highways, and terrifying the squares (our parents, West Coast variety). Guys handy with tire irons and chain whips and who frankly laughed at cold war words like they were so much bad hubris. Also guys, every okie arkie-bred Southern California guy with a license (and maybe some without reflecting that okie/arkie distrust of the law back home), grabbing now flush parent dough made, the old dust bowl dust just a fading memory, and building the max daddy hot rods to beat the band. Also “chicken run” racing madly down those California streets, and not just California streets. But what would East Coast young boys dreaming ocean dream breakouts, Atlantic Ocean breakouts, know of such rumblings though, except in movies.

And too others maybe not so mechanically inclined, or so filled deadweight angst, were searching for the perfect wave down in places like Malibu and LaJolla. Growing corn-fed strong to challenge old King Neptune for bragging rights. The more serious, brain serious, intellectual types, the ones I heard just a smidgeon about from overheard conversations passing through Harvard Square, were writing be-bop poems and novels and exploiting the Village and Frisco night to the beat of their own drummers. Speaking of bombs, molochs, monsters, madnesses, negro streets, and hunkering down to find their own private freedom nights on both coast roads. Yah, all that was going on but how were we in Podunk Hullsville to hear those tom-toms, heads down, from under those old ink-stained wooden desks. We, some of us, would just catch the tail end of those mad monk adventures, ride Harleys, built fast highway yellow coupes, search for ocean waves worthy of our heroic poses, write primitive imitative be-bop poems after the “beats” had faded from view and before we wrote our own messages on the stars.

Oh yah, I almost forgot, down in Memphis, some of the older guys, and it was mainly guys (although Wanda Jackson was a very bright exception), were raising a new form of hell and be-bopping away in shoddy one-horse recording studios like Sun Records blowing rockabilly riffs. And up in sweet home Chicago some black cats, mainly guys again, were blowing some blues riffs in the night, the high white note night. Somehow the mix came together and they called it rock and roll. And one Carl Perkins was right in the mix (and might have been bigger in the mix except for an accident that allowed Mister Elvis Presley to wiggle-waggle his way to stardom with Carl’s Blue Suede Shoes, one of the max daddy songs of the mid-1950s night).

But what did we down in Hullsville South Elementary School, ten, eleven and twelve years old know of those mixtures, of that primal history. All we knew was rock rocked, our parents didn’t like it (a surefire indicator that we were building our own “newer world,”or so we thought) and we could listen to it endlessly up in our rooms (mind shared with two brothers, one a year older, the other a year younger reflecting that post-war family hurry) on transistor radios away from prying parents. And the sounds on the radio started, just started, to match that uncharted be-bop, be-bop beat in my head.

Oh yah and we could dance to the stuff, dance, boy- girl dance without having to touch each other, without having to wipe sweating hands on pants and display trance-like awkward movements with some parent-taught foxtrot, waltz or something. Dance with flame Mary Ellen Riley at the Friday Night Saint Mary’s Church dance. Dance facing smiling Mary Ellen, the queen of the novena and prayer book day who just so happened to smile in my direction one day at school and dreamily asked me if I had heard Elvis’ latest Jailhouse Rock and whether I was going to that Friday night day. Not asked in a boy-girl date way, not at all. But in a come hither try your luck, brother, try your luck way. Hell, I wasn’t even going to go to the dance since I had not, even with that beat in my head, mastered the sense of rock and roll dancing. I quickly and quietly enlisted Albert Ruffian’s older sister (two years older, not an adult), Lisa, to teach me the rudiments and to watch American Bandstand like it was some new religion. And I sweating, swearing (to myself for Lisa also wore the mark of the novena and prayer book day), just barely making a dent in my awkwardness as hard as she tried.

As so there I was, Friday night dancing, facing Mary Ellen, she smiling, me smiling. And get this Mary Ellen Riley saying at intermission that she thought I was a better dancer than she expected from a guy with the beat in his head and two left feet. Of course she didn’t say it that way, that was not her good-mannered style in this wicked old world. Get this too, later, after the dance walking down toward the Land’s End section of the local beach to cool off, Mary Ellen Riley, queen of the novena and prayer book day, planted a big red-lipped kiss right on my lips. And I didn’t wipe it off. Thanks, Carl.

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Boppin' The Blues Lyrics- Carl Perkins

Well, all my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

All my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

I love you, baby, but I must be rhythm bound

Well, the doctor told me, Carl you need no pills.

Yes, the doctor told me, boy, you don't need no pills.

Just a handful of nickels, the juke box will cure your ills.

Well, all my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

All them cats are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

I love you, baby, but I must be rhythm bound

Well, the old cat bug bit me, man, I don't feel no pain

Yeah, that jitterbug caught me, man, I don't feel no pain.

I still love you baby, but I'll never be the same.

I said, all my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

All my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

I love you, baby, but I must be rhythm bound

Well, all my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

All them cats are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

I love you, baby, but I must be rhythm bound

Well, grand-pa Don got rhythm and he threw his crutches down.

Oh the old boy Don got rhythm and blues and he threw that crutches down

Grand-ma, he ain't triflin', well the old boy's rhythm bound.

Well, all them cats are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

All my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

I love you, baby, but I must be rhythm bound.

A rock bop, rhythm and blues.

A rock bop, rhythm and blues.

A rock rock, rhythm and blues.

A rock rock, rhythm and blues.

Rhythm and blues, it must be goin' round.