When Girls Doo-Wopped In The Be-Bop 1960s Night

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Jack Callahan never knew what his old time from high school friend Bart Webber was going to be into at any particular moment. He had been like that back in the early 1960s when he was the class cut-up at Carver High where he started the trend among students there of trying to fit themselves, as many as possible, in respectively, telephones booths (that cultural attachment connected to thoughts from waiting by the midnight phone for somebody to call to getting up the nerve to call a girl asking for a simple date and getting the frost colder that the Cold War for an answer, now long gone in the days of ubiquitous cellphones and other high-tech devices as ways of communicating), Volkswagens (the bug model also a relic of the past not the min-van which would later be ubiquitous on the highways and by-ways of 1960s counter-cultural seeking the hitchhike road), and his own personal touch to show how off the wall he could be when left to his own devices, a stall in the boys’ lavatory.           

Later, after high school and a few years on the hitchhike road going out West, he settled back down in Carver with his high school sweetheart, Betsy Binstock, who had waited for him to finish up sowing his wild oats and run a printing shop when his old employer, Len Murphy, turned it over to him after he retired. But that same sense of what will he be into next followed Bart through the years and those years with Betsy, who had merely rolled her eyes when he did holy goof stuff in high school, had mellowed him out so that what might interest him at any moment tended to be more civilized pursuits. Civilized pursuits like doing an end around (he had after all been a decent football player, good enough to catch the eyes of head cheerleader Betsy) on the films, books and music that animated his, our youth.         

He had started several years ago, maybe 2011, 2012, as he prepared to retire himself and turn the day to day running of the print shop to his son Ned, to grab some old time compilations of music, in CD form these days, from our youth at the library and then later when he had run the rack at the library on Amazon, put out by demographically savvy record companies who saw that the generation of ’68, those of us who ran riot through the 1960s had as we calmed down as much sense of nostalgia as previous generations had for the music of their youth. One night around that time at the Beachcomber in Hull, where Jack and his wife lived in a condo now that that they were “empty nesters,” over a few whiskeys, Bart had started a conversation with Jack about a compilation that he had just purchased on Amazon which featured all girl doo-wop material.     

Both Jack and Bart had imbibed as much as anybody the various gradations of music, the music of their coming of age, as rock and roll came crashing through the gates and formed the ethos from which they did not stray too much from being present at the creation in the mid-1950s (although really too young to fully appreciate what the developing ethos around rock was to be), through the doldrums of the late 1950s and early 1960s epitomized by the likes of Bobby Vee and Sandra Dee, through the British invasion and then when they traveled west to the acid-etched rock of the Airplane, Dead, Doors, that would define their counter-cultural days. Bart confessed to Jack that although he was happy with the purchase of that all girl doo-wop compilation he figured that this subgenre was probably the area that he was least interested in, or better that, he understood.

To make his point he gave Jack several reasons why that was so. Jack, in turn, suggested that he write down his sentiments and post them as a review on Amazon which gladly solicits such reviews, good or bad, as part of their selling strategy. Bart balked at first since while he may have been many things in his life he did not consider himself a writer, thought, if you can believe this that such people were holy goofs (as expression Bart, Jack and all the other guys from their corner boy days grabbed from Jack Kerouac after reading after his classic On The Road featuring the greatest holy goof of them all, Dean Moriarty, nee Neal Cassady). Jack told him to try and he would help with the editing, although he had to confess that in his long career of selling cars for Toyota (and several times being top dog, being Mister Toyota of New England) his own writing skills had atrophied since he worked on the school newspaper, The Magnet. Here is a look at what they were able to produce, although at the last minute Bart again balked and said he did not want to post the damn thing (his term) on Amazon:  

When Girls Doo-Wopped The Night Away    

I have, of late, been running back over some rock material that formed my coming of age listening music (on that ubiquitous, and very personal, iPod, oops, an anachronism, a battery-driven transistor radio that kept those snooping parents out in the dark, clueless, and just fine, agreed), and that of my generation, the generation of ’68. I have explained that moniker put onus elsewhere to my friends so I will only say here that the ‘68 part represented a very big turning point, a kind of point of no return for the generation filled with political intrigues, assassinations, treachery and a couple of serious attempts, unsuccessful as it turned out as Frankie Jackman would say, to “turn the world upside down” to our benefit.

Naturally, dealing with the musical end of those efforts (and I will not like I did one time with Josh Breslin, a guy met out in Frisco town form up in Olde Saco, Maine and who has remained a lifelong friend, although I don’t see him as much as I like, get into our midnight quarrels about music and the revolution since that one has been laid to rest long ago) one had to pay homage to the blues influences from the likes of Muddy Waters (and his big ass electric mannish-child guitar sound), Big Mama Thornton (bouncing along on Hound Dog to make Elvis blush), and Big Joe Turner (who at one time with his Shake, Rattle, and Roll had been in contention, at least by me, for the first serious rock tune until I heard Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 and became a convert). And, of course, the rockabilly influences from Elvis (who did fine work on Smiley Lewis’ Good Rocking Tonight and so can stop blushing), Carl Perkins (yeah, it was a funny twist of fate that he lost out on the big, big time when Elvis crashed out with his Blue Suede Shoes, Wanda Jackson (much underrated as a fast track female rocker before they could figure out where to put her), and Jerry Lee Lewis (is there any better song that spoke of our alienation from the old ways when he came busting into town on the back of a flatbed truck doing High School Confidential in a bust of a film of the same name.  Additionally, I have spent some time on the male side of the doo wop be-bop Saturday night led by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers on Why Do Fools Fall In Love (a good, a very good question, right). I note that I have not done much with the female side of the doo wop night, the great ‘girl’ groups that had their heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s before the British invasion, among other things, changed our tastes in popular music. I make some amends for that omission here.

One problem with the girl groups for a guy, me, a serious rock guy, me, as you can tell from my comments above is that the lyrics for many of the girl group songs, frankly, did not “speak to me.” After all how much empathy can a young ragamuffin of boy brought up on the wrong side of the tracks like this writer have for a girl who breaks up with her boyfriend on her parents’ demand because of his lower class upbringing, a motorcycle guy from the same wrong side of the tracks as me, a sensitive motorcycle guy who is misunderstood by a society that only sees that he is deeply alienated and could be a problem if he and his boys, the Devil’s Disciplines or whatever name they used, in their very exclusive club of hard-bitten lumpen youth decided to do what Marlon Brando’s Johnny in The Wild One did when they wound up in some Podunk California town and wasted the place, as the lyrics in the Shangri-Las’ Leader of the Pack attest to. Except that she, despite the goddam parents and those snickering girlfriends who just wanted to see what power the lad had behind that motorcycle if you know what I mean, wanted to be riding free in back of that bike, and you do, if you came up the way I did, should have stuck with her guy through thick and thin, and maybe, just maybe, he would not have skidded off that rainy road and gone to Harley heaven so young. (Yeah, heaven despite the long list of sins he never atoned for including off-hand armed robberies to keep his bike, his bike man, up to sniff). And, maybe, just maybe, like my Betsy and me, they could be in that little white house with the picket fence hosting the grandkids today.

Try this one too for no-go for Bart, the lyrics about some guy, some sensitive, shy, good-looking guy with the wavy hair who all the girls are going crazy over but who the singer is going make her very own in boy and girl love battle in the Cliftons’ He’s So Fine when this writer was nothing but a girl reject around that time, mainly. I was even on the outs with Betsy then since she was dating some guy who father worked for Honeywell in the up and coming computer industry and had no time for a son of a “bogger,” son of a guy who worked in the cranberry bogs which then made the town famous. Partially because, as Jack Callahan who is helping me write this thing has felt the need to tell the whole world, again, I was something of a goof then and partially because my acne had not cleared up but when it did I did do okay with the girls (although if my long time wife Betsy sees this I am only making it up, only using a little literary license as Jack would say, okay)

Or how about this one, the one where the love bugs are going to be married and really get that white house picket fence thing in the Dixie Cups’ Chapel Of Love for a guy who, again, more often than not didn’t even have steady girlfriend. I, kiss-less youth, won’t even get into the part of the anatomy that Betty Everett harps on in It’s In His Kiss. Or, finally, how could I possibly relate to the teen girl angst problem posed in the Shirelles Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Yeah, how would I know if it was the real thing, or just a moment’s pleasure, you know the sex thing she let her guy do, which she liked just fine, while she way letting him at her, but who afterward was having second thoughts, maybe had not resisted those teenage hormonal urges enough, and what that dreaded tomorrow they sing about will bring.

So you get the idea, this stuff could not “speak to me.” Now you understand, right? Yeah, but also get this while I have your ear you had better get your do-lang, do-lang, your shoop, shoop, and your best be-bop bopped into that good night voice out and listen to, and sing along with, the lyrics here. This, fellow baby-boomers, was about our teen angst, teen alienation, teen love youth traumas and now, a distant now, this stuff sounds great.