Present At The Creation-With Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock In Mind

Deep in the dark red scare Cold War night a small breeze was coming to the land. That dark red scare Cold War night was still brewing even after Uncle Joe fell down in his Red Square drunken stupor one night in 1953 and never came back, and still brewing too when Miss Winot in her pristine glory told each and every one of her fourth grade charges, us, that come that Russkie madness, come the Apocalypse, come the big bad ass mega-bombs, that each and every one of her charges should come that thundering god-awful air raid siren duck, quickly and quietly, under his or her desk and then place his or her hands, also quickly and quietly, one over the other on the top of his or her head. Yeah that was what the fresh breeze was up against. Some serious disquiet in the land

Maybe nobody saw the breeze coming although the more I think about the matter somebody, some bodies knew something, not those supposedly in the know about such fresh breeze times, those who are supposed to catch the breezes before they move beyond their power to curtail them. But guys like my friend Bart Webber’s older brother Franklin and his friends, Benny and Jimmy, who were  playing some strange beat rhythm and blues, rockabilly, stuff they called rock and roll up in his room, up his room like some sainted mad monks.

So some guys knew, gals too don’t forget after all they had to dig the beat, dig the guys who dug the beat, the beat of  out of some Africa breeze mixed with forbidden sweated Southern lusts if the thing was going to work out. And it wasn’t all dead-ass “white negro” hipsters either who dug the beat, the guys eulogized by Norman Mailer or all about the break-out “beats” tired of the cool cold jazz that was turning in on itself, getting too technical, and losing the search for the high white note. Wasn’t all about the fellahin of this good green earth, of all descriptions, who whiled away the nights searching their radio dials for something that that they could swing to while reefer high or codeine low. It was too about proper well-dressed middle class kids who were trying to break out of the cookie-cutter existence they found themselves in so it wasn’t always who you might suspect that got hip, got that back-beat and those piano riffs etched into their brains.

And then it came, came to us in our turn, came like some Kansas whirlwind, came like the ocean churning up the big waves crashing to a defenseless shoreline, came if the truth be known like the “second coming” long predicted and not just by mad man poet Yeats and his Easter, 1916 mind proclaiming a terrible beauty is born, and the brethren, us, were waiting, waiting like we had been waiting all our short spell lives.

Came one time, came big as 1954 turned to 1955 and a guy, get this, dressed not in sackcloth or hair-shirt but in a sport’s jacket, a Robert Hall sport’s jacket from the off the rack look of it picked up from when he and the boys were “from hunger,” playing for coffee and crullers on the low life circuit in back alley bars,  a guy a little on the heavy side with a little boy’s regular curl in his hair and blasted the whole blessed world to smithereens. Blasted every living breathing teenager, boy or girl, out of his or her lethargy, got the blood flowing. The guy Bill Haley, goddam an old lounge lizard band guy who decided to move the beat forward from cool ass be-bop jazz and sweet romance popular music and make everybody, every kid jump, yeah Big Bill Haley and his Comets, the song Rock Around The Clock.         

 Came in other forms, hey remember this rock and roll was an ice-breaker with a beat you didn’t  have to dance close to with your partner and get all tied up in knots forgetting when to twirl, when to whirl, when to do a split but kind of free form for the guys with two left feet who could survive, maybe not survive the big one if the Russkies decided to go over the top with the bomb, but that school dance and for your free-form efforts maybe that she your eyeballs were getting sore over would consent to the last chance  last dance that you waited around for in case she was so impressed she might want to go with you some place later. But before that “some place later” you had to negotiate and the only way to do that was to bust up a slow one, a dreamy one to get her in the mood and hence people have been singing songs from time immemorial to get people in the mood, this time the rage Earth Angel would do the trick. Do the trick as long as you navigated those toes of hers, left her with two feet and standing. Dance slow, very slow brother.   

Here is the funny thing, funny since we were present at the creation, present in spite of every command uttered by Miss Winot against it, declaring the music worse than that Russkie threat if you believed her. We were just too young to deeply imbibe the full measure of what we were hearing. See this music, music we started calling rock and roll once somebody gave it a name, super DJ impresario Alan Freed as we found out later after we had already become “children of rock and roll”, was meant, was blessedly meant to be danced to which meant in that boy-girl age we who didn’t even like the opposite sex as things stood then were just hanging by our thumbs.

Yeah, was meant to be danced to at “petting parties” in dank family room basements by barely teenage boys and girls. Was meant to be danced to at teenage dance clubs where everybody was getting caught up on learning the newest dance moves and the latest “cool” outfits to go along with that new freedom. Was meant to serve as a backdrop at Doc’s Drugstore’s soda fountain where Doc had installed a jukebox complete with all the latest tunes as boys and girls shared a Coke sipping slowly with two straws hanging out in one frosted glass. Was meant to be listened to by corner boys at Jack Slack’s bowling alley where Jack eventually had set up a small dance floor so kids could dance while waiting for lanes to open.  Was meant to be listened to as the sun went down in the west at the local drive-in while the hamburgers and fries were cooking and everybody was waiting for darkness to fall so the real night could begin, the night of dancing in dark corners and exploring the mysteries of the universe, or at least of some Miss Sarah Brown.  Was even meant to be listened to on fugitive transistor radios in the that secluded off-limits to adults and little kids where teens, boys and girls, mixed and matched in the drive-in movie night.             

Yeah, we were just a little too young for all that even if we can legitimately claim to have been present at the creation. But we would catch up, catch up with a vengeance.