Betty’s Tale -With The Teen
Queens’ Eddie, My Love In Mind
EDDIE MY LOVE
(Aaron Collins /
Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)The Teen Queens -
1956
The Fontane Sisters - 1956
The Chordettes - 1956
Dee Dee Sharp - 1962
Also recorded by:
Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The
Sweethearts.
Eddie, my love, I love you so
How I wanted for you, you'll never know
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too
long
Eddie, please write me one line
Tell me your love is still only mine
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too
long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too
long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too
long
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too
long
(Transcribed from the Teen Queens
recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)
…come closer, will you, because I have got a story to tell.
Come on over here, here nearer me and get away from that midnight phone waiting,
that eternal waiting. Waiting now in vain because if he or she has not called
by this hour, nine, on a school night they are not going to call and anyway you
don’t need Ma to yell at you about wasting your time waiting for that call when
you could be doing homework or something. Yeah, like you could do homework with
your head filled with anxiety about that call. What do parents know anyway
never having been young, never having been in love. Hey, while I am talking maybe
you should put on The Teen Queens’ Eddie My Love like I have on right now
or some other teen trauma tune, sad, sad tune to help drown your sorrows while
I’m telling the story,
Yes, get away from that midnight telephone call wait by your
bedside table and listen up a minute or two because I’ve got a story to tell, a
1950s teen story to tell, or let’s make it a 1950s teen story, and if it works
out for 1960s, 1970s, or 2000s teens except for the newer techno-gadgets cellphone,
iPhone, smart phone ways to wait, to wait that midnight call that are
different, well, well this waiting by the phone hasn’t changed that much since
the 1950s when this trend started or reached a certain plateau where waiting
became one of the ways that you knew you were a forlorn teen-ager, knew that
life was going to be filled with ups and downs and so there you have it.
And let’s make it a boy-girl story, although I know, and you
know I know, that it could have been a boy-boy, girl-girl, whatever story and
that’s okay by me, except that it wouldn’t be okay, okay as a public prints
1950s story since those kinds of relationships had not been deemed okay to tell
except maybe in some North Beach, Greenwich Village, Hollywood hills small
print, exotic, erotic small press back door scenario. Mainly those kinds of
relationships would be gist for the mill in the snicker of boys’ sports after
school gym locker room faggot-dyke baiting and well beyond the sad tale I have
to tell.
And let’s make it a Saturday night, a hard by the phone,
waiting Saturday night, maybe midnight, maybe not, maybe you cried or brooded
yourself to sleep before that hour, that teen dread hour when all dreams came
crashing to the floor, like a million guys and girls know about, and if you
don’t then, maybe move on, but I think I know who I’m talking to.
And let’s make it a winter night to kind of fit your mood, kind
of make you realize that you are totally alone against the elements, yes, a
long hard winter night, wind maybe blowing up a little, maybe a little dusting
of snow, and just that many more dark hours until the dawn and facing another
day without…
And let’s make it, oh the hell with that, let’s make it get
to the story and we’ll work out the scenic details as we go along…
I’ll tell you, Betty’s got it bad, yes, Betty from across
the way, from the house across the way where right now I can see her in her
midnight waiting bedroom window, staring off, staring off somewhere but I know,
I know, what ‘s wrong with her. No, not that, no she is not in the “family
way,” I don’t think, I hope not, hope not because then she will have to suddenly
go out of town to visit some ailing aunt, or something like that. What is wrong
with Betty is simpler. Her Eddie has flown the coop, and has not been heard
from for a while.
Yes, Betty’s got it bad, and it’s too bad because she
deserves better. Let me tell you the story behind the story, although I can
already see that you might know what’s coming. I had noticed Betty’s change of
behavior but was not sure what it meant. It first started when she did not
return my wave when I waved across the street to her, then she would hang her
head down walking like some zombie in the movies. So one day I asked her about
what was up and she said she did not want to talk about it, made a serious
point to me that she did not want to talk about it when I pressed the issue so
I let it drop. Yes, so the way I know the story is because Betty’s best friend,
Sue, gave me the details when I saw Betty continue moping around, moping around
day after day like there was going to be no tomorrow, especially after leaving
school with her head down, arriving home with her head moping down even more
after the mailman came. I contacted Sue to see what she knew, knew from those
little afternoon girl chatting calls or maybe from that mandatory Monday
morning before school in the girls’ “lav” talkfest.
Yes, I know, I know Sue, old best friend Sue, is nothing but
a man-trap and has flirted with more guys in this town than you could shake a
stick at, including Eddie a couple of times when Betty had to go out of town
with her parents (keep that between us, please). Hell, now that I think about
it, I’ll get this thing all balled up if I tell it my way what with what I
know, or people have told me about Sue and I want you to get the straight dope.
Let Betty, old true to Eddie, Betty tell
her story herself, or at least through Sue, and I’ll just write it down my way,
and you be the judge:
“Last summer, oh sweet sixteen last summer, old innocent
girlish sweet paper dream last summer, Eddie, Eddie Cooper, Eddie with the hot
cherry red, dual exhaust, heavy silver chrome, radio- blasting, ’55 Chevy (my
brother Timmy told me about cars and their doo-dads, I just like to look good
in them and the ’55 is the “boss”), that I knew I would be just crazy to sit
in, and give the “look”, the superior “I’m with a hot guy, and sitting in a hot
car , bow down peasants look,” came rumbling and tumbling into town.
Summer beach time, soaking up the sun down between the yacht
clubs beach time, summer not a care in the world time , Sue, my best friend
Sue, my best friend Sue and all that stuff they say about her and the boys is
just fantasy, male fantasy, and I were sitting just talking about this and
that, oh well, about boys, and I was telling her the latest about Billy, Billy
from the neighborhood, who I had been going out with for ages, more or less,
Billy with the reading too many books and wanting to talk poetry or “beat”
stuff, Billy, Billy with the no car, or sometimes with car, father’s old
run-down jalopy which might or might not work like happened one night and it
was a close thing that I was not grounded for coming in so late, but no “boss”
car, never, when Eddie, Eddie, Edward John Cooper, parked his honey Chevy and
came over to us, through all that sand and all,
Eddie gave Sue the “once over,” like guys will do
automatically with any girl something about their genetic make-up drives them
that way and Sue adds her part by always looking like she has either just
finished a roll in the hay or would not mind being talked into it but that is
just her come-hither “style” and like I said before don’t make too much of it.
Yeah, she knows sex stuff, a lot from what she tells me but mostly it’s to aid
that come-hither thing she has with guys.
Besides whatever Sue has, or thinks she has in the guy department I
secretly thrill to know that that “once over” is just a game because even as he
came over the sand I could see he had eyes, big blue eyes, for me, only me, We
talked, idle talk, sex in the air flirty talk, don’t talk sex straight out but
weave all around it talk, the mating ritual I guess they call it, still a lot
of talk for a summer beach day, and I knew, I swear I knew he wanted to ask me
out for later, or maybe right there to ride in his car but three’s company, and
for once I couldn’t shake Sue, my best friend Sue, Sue with the million
boyfriends so she says, who I could see was taken in by his big blued-eyed,
black haired, tight tee-shirt, blue jean charm too.
Truce, Sue truce, as we walked home, Eddie-less, a few
blocks away. I left Sue at her house. Truce still, except that I heard a big
engine, a big “boss” car engine, coming up behind me as I hit the sidewalk in
front of my house, and dream, dream wake me up, it was Eddie, Edward John Cooper and that cherry ’55 Chevy. He
said, and I will never forget this, “Hop in,” and opened the door. I was
supposed to have a “date,” some dreary poetry reading date with Billy, ah,
Billy who. We were off as soon as I closed that cherry red door.
And we were off, off for a sweet summer of love, ’55 Chevy
love and okay, truth, because I know that Sue probably blabbed it around but I
let Eddie take me to the back seat of that warm-bodied Chevy one night, and
some nights after that. But let me just tell you this about Sue, my best friend
Sue, honest, she’s the one who told me what to do with a boy, yah, she told me
everything.
Late August came as summer beach love drew to an end and
those damn school bells seemed ready to ring, Eddie, out of school Eddie my
love, told me he had a job offer in another state and he needed to take the job
to support his mother and his ’55 Chevy.
I started crying; crying like crazy, trying to make him
stay, stay with his ever-lovin’ Betty but no he had to go. He didn’t know about
a phone, or a phone call, but he said he would write and I haven’t heard from
him since even though I wear out the mailman every day”…
Christ my heart bleeds for Betty every time I think about
what Eddie had done, and see, I know Eddie, no I don’t know Eddie personally
but I know Eddie stuff, stuff that has been going on since Adam and Eve, hell,
probably before that.
Betty, Betty, sweet Betty, I hate to break it to you but
Eddie, Edward John Cooper ain’t coming back. And old Eddie ain’t writing and it
ain’t because he doesn’t have the three cents for a stamp, no Eddie, well,
enough of that, let's just say Eddie’s moved on to greener pastures. (I heard
later when I asked about it, asked some guys who had known Eddie when he worked
at Smitty’s Garage last summer while he was with Betty that Eddie had left for
Florida, had a new girl there, or maybe an old girlfriend who had some kind of
spell over him but all of that was just guys talking one night. But you never
know with Eddie guys.)
Betty, Betty hold onto your Eddie My Love dream for a
moment. But Betty, tomorrow, not tomorrow tomorrow but some tomorrow you‘ve got
to move on. Betty then why don’t you call up your Billy. I’ll be here by the
phone, the midnight phone…
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