The “Last Waltz”-
With The Five Satins In The Still Of The
Night In Mind
Sam Lowell
had several years before, maybe in about the middle of 2010, done an extensive
survey of a commercially-produced Oldies But Goodies series (this series had fifteen separate CDs, more about its mass in a
minute), in twenty to thirty song compilations and had torn his ear off from
the endless listening. He had begged for a little gangsta hip-hop to soothe his
ravaged soul although he was strictly a white-bread blues guy around that kind
of music, around black-burst out “roots is the toots” music) and he had
selected one song in each CD to highlight the music. He sought to highlight in
particular the music that he and his corner boys had grown up with, Frankie
Riley the acknowledged leader, Pete Markin (also known as the “Scribe” for his
endless “publicity” for the group, especially the fountain of wisdom put forth
by one Frankie Riley, who later when the drug craze hit full blossom in the
late 1960s went over the edge down in Mexico trying to rip off a couple of
bricks of cocaine from the hard boys and Pete got two slugs and a face down in
a dusty Sonora back alley for his efforts), Jimmy Jenkins, James “Rats” McGee,
Johnny Callahan, and other guys like Luke the Juke, Stubby Kincaid, and Hawk
Healey who walked in and out of the group at various high school points.
Better, had come of age with the music in Adamsville, that is in Massachusetts.
Sam had been born in Clintondale a few towns over before moving to Adamsville,
a similar town, in junior high school and there had been taken under Frankie
Riley’s corner boy wing but had decidedly not been a corner boy in that former town
for the simple reason that there were, unlike in Adamsville at Doc’s Drugstore
and later Benny’s bowling alleys, no stand-out corner to be a corner boy in,
for good or evil.
Yeah, the
music of the great jail-break rock and roll 1950s and early 1960s when Sam and
the guys came of age had driven his memory bank at that time, some of that
material had been placed in a blog, Rock
and Roll Will Never Die, dedicated to classic rock and roll music (the
classic period now being deemed to have been between about the mid-1950s to the
mid-1960s although Sam flinched every time he heard some young guy, some guy
who might be an aficionado but was nevertheless not splashed by that tide,
called his time the “classic age,” yeah, that rubbed him raw).
Sam had
received some comments on the blog at the time, mostly from his generational
brethren inquiring about this or that song, asking about where they could get a
copy of the song they were seeking and he would inform them of the monstrous
beauties of YouTube, especially Elvis and Jerry Lee stuff, if you could stand
the damn commercials that notoriously plague that site to get to your selection.
Asked about whether he knew where a 45
RPM vinyl copy could be had, had at any price, a tougher task and asked about
the fate that had befallen various one hit johnnies and janies whose single
song had been played unto death at the local hang-out jukebox or on the family
record player thus driving some besotted mother to the edge. Many though, with
almost the same “religious” intensity that Sam brought to his efforts, wanted
to vividly describe how this or that song had impacted their lives. Sam had
presumed then, presumed a passing fancy on their parts, but a few apparently
had been in a time warp and should have sought some medical attention (although
Sam was too much the gentleman to openly make that suggestion).
A lot of
times though it came down purely to letting
Sam know what song did they first dance to, a surprising number listing
Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock and Danny and the Juniors At The Hop as the choice, surprising
since that would have meant a very early introduction not only to rock and roll
but to the social etiquettes of dancing with the opposite sex, to speak nothing
of the sweaty palms, broken nerves and two left feet which blocked the way, a task
which Sam had not done until he was a freshman in high school. Or some would describe
what song in what situation had they gotten, or given, their first kiss and to
whom, not surprisingly in the golden age of the automobile generation that
frequently took place in the back seat of some borrowed car (a few
over-the-edgers had gone into more graphic detail than necessary for adults to
go into about what happened after that kiss in that backseat). Yeah, got in the
back seat of some Chevy to go down to the local lovers’ lane (some very unusual
places, the lovers’ lanes not the backseats which were one size fits all). Or what
song had been their first fight and make-up to one, stuff like that.
As the
shelf-life these days for all things Internet is short Sam thought no more
about that series, the article or the comments until recently when a young guy
(he had presumed a young guy since most devotees of old time classic rock fall
into that demographic, although his moniker of Doo-Wop Dee could have signaled
a young woman) who had Googled the words “rock and roll will never die” and had
come upon the blog and the article. He sent an e-mail in which he challenged
Sam to tell a candid world (Sam’s expression not Doo-Wop Dee’s who probably
would not have known the genesis of that word) why the age of the Stones,
Beatles, Animals, Yardbirds, etc., the 1960s age of the big bad guitars, heavy
metal, and big backbeat did not do more for classic rock than Elvis (Presley),
Chuck (Berry), Roy (Orbison), Bo (Diddley), Buddy (Holly), Jerry Lee (Lewis)
and the like did all put together.
Well Sam is a
mild-mannered guy usually, has mellowed out some since his rock and roll corner
boy slam bang jail-break days, his later “on the road” searching for the great
blue-pink great American West night hippie days and his even later fighting
against his demon addictions days (drugs, con artist larceny, cigarettes,
whiskey, hell, even sex, no forget that, drop that from the addiction list) and
he had decided, not without an inner murmur, to let the comment pass, to move
on to new things, to start work on an appreciation of electric blues, you know
Chicago, Detroit, Memphis urban blues, in his young life. Then one night late
one night he and his lady friend, Melinda (and the big reason to forget about
that sex addiction stuff above), were watching an old re-run on AMC (the
old-time movies channel, featuring mostly black and white films also a relic
from his youth and his high school time at the retro-Strand Theater that
existed solely to present two such beauties every Saturday afternoon, with or
without popcorn) and saw as the film started one ghost from the past Jerry Lee
Lewis sitting (hell maybe he had been standing, twirling whirling whatever
other energy thing he could do back then to add to the fury of his act) on the
back of a flat-bed truck, piano at the ready, doing the title song of the
movie, High School Confidential, and
then and there Sam had decided that he needed to put old Doo-Wop right. The
rest of the movie, by the way, a classic 1950s cautionary tale about the
pitfalls of dope, you know marijuana automatically leading to heroin, complete
with some poor hooked girl strung out by her fiendish dealer/lover, and of
leading an unchaste life, you know that sex addiction stuff that Sam had not
been addicted to along his life’s way, as a result was actually eminently
forgettable but thanks Jerry Lee for the two minute bailout blast. Here is what
Sam had to say to his errant young friend and a candid world:
“First off the term “last waltz” used
in the headline is used here as a simple expression of the truth. But that
expression will also give Doo Wop and anybody else who asks an idea of the huge
amount of material from the classic rock period, like I said in my blog sketch
from the mid-50s to the mid-60s, which was good enough, had rung our running
home after school to check out the latest dance moves and the cute guys and
girls American Bandstand hearts
enough, to make the cut. (And that really was true, out of over four hundred
songs at least one hundred, a very high percentage, could have had a shot at
the one hundred best popular songs of all times lists). When I had started that
Oldies But Goodies series a few years
ago in a fit of nostalgia related to reconnecting with guys like Frankie Riley,
Johnny Callahan and Frank Jackman from the old hometown I had assumed that I
had completed the series at Volume Ten. I then found out that this was a fifteen,
fifteen count ‘em, volume series. I flipped out.
Thereafter I whipped off those last
five CDs in one day, including individual reviews of each CD and a summing up
for another blog, and was done with it. Working frantically all the while under
this basic idea; how much can we rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories from a
relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those who lived and
died by the songs (or some of the songs) in those compilations. How many times
could one read about wallflowers, sighs, certain shes (or hes), the moonlight
of high school dances (if there was any) and hanging around to the bitter end
for that last dance of the night to prove... what. Bastante! Enough! Until
Doo-Wop decided that my coming of age era paled, paled if you can believe this,
in comparison to Johnny-come-lately rockers like Mick and Keith, John and Paul,
Jerry, Neil, Roger and the like.
No, a thousand times no, as right this
minute I am watching a YouTube film clip of early Elvis performing Good Rockin’ Tonight at what looks like
some state fairgrounds down south and the girls are going crazy tearing their
hair out and crying like crazy because the new breeze they had been waiting for
in the death-dry red scare Cold War 1950s night just came through and not soon
enough. If Doo-Wop had paid attention to anything that someone like Mick Jagger
said about all that work being an overwhelming influence, the foundation for
their efforts it might have held his tongue, or been a bit more circumspect.
Guys like Mick, and they were mainly guys just like their 1950s forebears, knew
that much. Yeah, it was mainly guys since I admit the only serious female
rocker that I recall was Wanda Jackson whereas Doo-Wop’s time frame had Bonnie
Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, just to name a few. If he had
argued on the basis of female rockers I would have no argument that the 1960s
was a golden age for female rockers but his specified only the generic term ‘rockers.’
“
Like I said part of what got me going
on the re-tread trail had been that nostalgia thing with my old corner boys and
all our nights dropping dimes and quarters in Doc’s or Benny’s jukeboxes,
listening on our transistor radios until our ears turned to cauliflower, and
swaying at too many last change dance to mention but I also had been doing a
series of commentaries elsewhere at the time on another site on my coming of
political age in the early 1960s. You know the age of our own Jack Kennedy, the
age of the short-lived Camelot when our dreams seemingly were actually within
our grasp, and of the time we began realizing the need for serious struggles
against all kinds of wars, and all kinds of discriminations, including getting
a fair shake for the working people, those who labor, the people who populated
our old time neighborhoods, our parents for chrissakes, in this benighted
world. But here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking
of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing as the former.
No question that those of us who came
of age in the 1950s were truly children of rock and roll. We were there,
whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering,
musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes from Oklahoma, South Pacific and the like and rhymey Tin Pan Alley
pieces hit the transistor radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a transistor
radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please. Or look it up on
Wikipedia if you are too embarrassed to not know ancient history things. Join
the bus.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from
any and all staid arm in arm music that one’s parents might have approved of,
or maybe, even liked, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in
your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like,
well, like an atomic bomb.
Not all of the material put forth was
good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on
some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy,
lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or
now. Think Elvis almost any place where there were more than five girls, hell
more than one girl, or Jerry Lee and that silly film high school cautionary
film that got this whole comment started where he stole the show at the
beginning from that flatbed throne or Bill Haley just singing Rock Around The Clock in front of the
film Blackboard Jungle. Here is the
good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as
well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to
toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh,
hip to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that wallflower
fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, that left many
a sad sack teenage boy, girls can speak for themselves, waking up in the middle
of the night with cold sweats worrying about sweaty hands, underarms, coarse breathe,
stubble, those damn feet (and her dainty ones mauled), and bravery, bravery to
ask that she (or he for shes) for a dance, especially the last dance that you
waited all night to have that chance to ask her about, is a story for another
day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was
very heaven.
So what still sounded good to a current
AARPer, and perhaps some of his fellows who comprise the demographic that such
1950s compilation “speak” to (and some early 60s songs as well). Carl Perkins
original Blue Suede Shoes (covered by, made famous by, and made millions
for, Elvis). Or the Hank William’s outlaw country classic I’m So Lonesome I
Could Cry. Naturally, in a period of classic rock numbers, Buddy Holly’s Peggy
Sue (or, like Chuck Berry and Fat Domino from this period, virtually any
other of about twenty of his songs).
But what about the now seeming
mandatory to ask question the inevitable end of the night high school dance (or
maybe even middle school) song that seemed to be included in each of those CD
compilations? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to
prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to,
mumbly-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, ask a girl to dance (women can
relate their own experiences, probably similar). Here Elvis’ One Night With You fills the bill. Hey,
I did like this one, especially the soulful, snappy timing and voice
intonation. And, yes, I know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to
dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy
your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this
world if for no other reason than to “impress” that certain she (or he for
shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your preferences) mentioned above. I did,
didn’t you? Touche Doo-Wop!
*************
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