***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle And Roll

 

…she was not exactly sure why she felt that way, felt warm in what all the girls in the before school “lav” called their “sweet spot” (some of the rougher girls called it other things which she did not find out until later, much later, guys called it) whenever she heard the local radio station or the kids at Doc Drugstore on the juke-box endlessly playing Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle, and Roll but she did. Someone, Betty, she thought, said it was just her coming into “her time,” although she did not know what to make of that idea since she had that same feeling before and after she came into her time. Betty had said she did not mean that, that thing every girl had, but the time when everything was confused and when a teenager did, or did not, know which way to jump. All she knew was that the old songs on the jukebox or radio, the ones that she loved to listen to last year, Frank, Bing, Patti, Rosemary, did not make her feel that way anymore. Didn’t make her feel that she wanted to jump out of her skin.

Tommy might have had a better handle on it, have had a better sense of what turbulence was going on inside her when he told the whole class in Current Events that there were some new songs coming out of the radio, some stuff from down south, some negro sound from down in Memphis somewhere, some white hillbilly sound from that same town, that he would listen to late at night on WJKA from Chicago when the air was just right. Sounds that made him want to jump right out of his skin. (She never dared to ask whether it made him feel warm in his “sweet spot” since she didn’t know much then about whether boys had sweet spots, or got warm). When he said that, said it was about the music, she knew that she was not alone, not alone in feeling that a fresh breeze was coming over the land, although she, confused as she would not have articulated it that way (that would come later). And so she asked Tommy about it after class and agreed to let him walk her home after school. One thing led to another as they found that they ahd so much in common, and they had their first date, first date to go to the Surf Ballroom down in Olde Saco and listen to some guys, a band,  play the new music. She wondered to herself (she could not speak of such things to Tommy) whether she would feel warm again in her sweet spot when they danced, she hoped so…          

*******
Shake , Rattle and Roll

Get out from that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans
Get out from that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans
Well, roll my breakfast 'cause I'm a hungry man
[Chorus:]
I said Shake, rattle and roll
I said Shake, rattle and roll
I said Shake, rattle and roll
I said Shake, rattle and roll
Well, you never do nothin' to save your doggone soul
Wearin' those dresses, your hair done up so nice
Wearin' those dresses, your hair done up so nice
You look so warm, but your heart is cold as ice
[Chorus]
I'm like a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a sea-food store
I'm like a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a sea-food store
I can look at you, tell you don't love me no more
I believe you're doin' me wrong and now I know
I believe you're doin' me wrong and now I know
The more I work, the faster my money goes
[Chorus]
Shake, Rattle And Roll