Out In The Be-Bop Be-Bop 1960s Night- Save The Last Dance For Me-With The Drifters’ Song Of The Same Name In Mind.

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

Scene: Jack Callahan, the great running back for the North Adamsville High School football team who seemingly single-handedly led the Red Raiders team to the Division III state championship in 1962 and who, more importantly, scored the winning touchdown against larger Division I cross-town rival Adamsville High, is “dressed to the nines” this night, this night of the annual Spring Frolic sponsored by the senior class each year as a parting gift to the school’s population since everybody is invited to this event. Jack, about six feet, two inches, one hundred and ninety-five pounds, wavy black hair, blue eyes, classic Irish face, and the picture of every North Adamsville Irish mother’s dream for a son, or if in the market for such things, companion for her daughter seems a little uneasy as he is selecting a record, a 45 RPM record (for the unknowing a small vinyl disc with one song on each side to be placed, “spun” really, on a record player for what appears from the time on the clock above his head the last dance of this year’s dance. From a glimpse at the label one can see the name of the group, The Drifters, one of the great harmony groups of the late 1950s and early 1960s and with that clue anybody with any sense, any teenager then with any sense, and that cohort is all that counts in this tale, knows that Jack has selected their classic last chance, last dance song Save The Last Dance For Me to end the evening’s festivities. To the right of Jack, maybe twenty feet away, head half-turned toward Jack is one Chrissie McNamara, the reason that Jack is uneasy at that moment. Chrissie, not the most beautiful girl in the senior that would be Minnie Callahan, Jack’s twin sister, but fetching, not the brightest girl in the class that would be Merdy Mullin but very bright, college bound very bright, and not the friendliest girl in the class that would be Sandy Sims but very friendly but if you put all three traits together you have the whole package, the best package in the class, female division.

Ask any of about fifteen guys, seniors, and a few college joes too, if they had any luck chasing a slender, long-legged, light brown-haired, blue-eyed girl named Chrissie and they will just sigh. Just sigh because ever since the tenth-grade (really the sixth- grade but we will not get into that) when Chrissie “corralled” Jack while he was sitting with his corner boys at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor they have been an “item,” been the class sweethearts if you want to know the truth. Actually maybe that “corralled” is not the right word since Chrissie, tired of taking her meaningful peeks at Jack, and he of her, during seventh period study and getting nowhere decided one Friday night to take charge and just went into the pizza parlor and plopped herself on Jack’s lap practically daring him to throw her off. He, in respond, held on to her so tight once she sat down that it would have taken a whole football team to get her off that lap, maybe the junior varsity thrown in too. And so it began. But as this scene unfolds there appears this spring of senior year when future plans are in the air to be trouble in paradise, something that Jack might be uneasy about but thinks the Drifters will help him out on.                            

Here is why he needs a quick-fix. A quick-fix too help Jack out of a certain dilemma because ever since the North Adamsville Class of 1962-sponsored version of the traditional late September Falling Leaves Dance he had periodically toyed with the idea of getting together with Diana Nelson. Diana, the best girl vocalist by far in the class definitely, in the town probably and in the county maybe. Sure he loves Chrissie, fully expects that he will marry her someday and have kids, houses, and dogs together but the way the next years figured with him going on a football scholarship to State U and Chrissie going to NYU, also on a scholarship, academic, meant that they would be away from each other for significant periods of time over the next four or so years and that is where the random thoughts about Diana had come in through the winter and now in high spring. To complicate things further Diana too is going to State U on a music scholarship which has added some fuel to that fire.

Here’s how it started, started innocently enough. One of the perks of being the un-anointed but acknowledged “king” of that fall’s Falling Leaves dance if only by virtue of touchdowns scored had been getting to hear the vocals of Diana, backed up by local rock band favorite, The Rockin’ Ramrods, right up on the stage in the school gym. That night to add to the gaiety of the occasion the whole gym had been decorated nicely by the senior dance committee to give the appearance that the place, pretty barren in normal times, the look of a ballroom in some downtown Boston hotel. He had told Diana that after her first set, told her how good her voice was (when Chrissie had gone to powder her nose or something) Diana, not without her own charms twinkled at that compliment and gave Jack her most winning smile, a smile that had Jack tossing in his sleep that night, and others too. Thereafter whenever they saw each other in the hallways at school, passed each other on the street, or at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor (everybody went there after school to get some real food after throwing down Ma-made or school-made lunches and to play the latest tunes on the mega-jukebox Tonio, the owner, had to draw in the kids after school) they would take their peeks, nothing serious, no moves made on either side but they sighed their own sighs in private. (Chrissie, by the way, for those who are wondering despite her three virtues could not sing a note, Jack who was only slightly less crazy about music than girls and knocking guys down on the football filed  didn’t even like her to hum a melody although he held his own counsel by not telling her that.)

Jack while complimenting Diana on her voice had also asked her how she was able to get a gig with the Ramrods, the hottest of hot bands in that period just before the Beatles and Stones would invade and turn the whole music world around, including local scenes like in North Adamsville, just as Elvis had done when they were kids, when they were listening to their older brothers and sisters’ records when they came of musical age. She was about to tell him how when Chrissie, nose powdered, drew a beeline for Jack and Diana told Jack she would tell him the story later, another time. (See in those days everybody knew Jack and Chrissie were an “item” and that Chrissie was very, well, protective of her man and beside the rule, perhaps honored more in the breech than the observance if one believed all the boys’ and girls’ “lav” stories, was that “items” were to be left alone and Diana was as aware of that fact as any other member of the school so for public consumption backed off just then but the look in her eye said something else.) 

As it turned out Jack never found out from Diana about how she had gotten that gig with the Ramrods and it was left to one of Jack’s corner boys, Allan Johnston, who had been at the event how Diana’s selection had been the result of a singing competition held by the town fathers and that he would relate some of the details of that competition some night when they could discuss the thing in private since Chrissie was on Jack’s shoulder at that time. See, one, Allan had eyes and ears and could see that Jack had more than a passing interest in Diana and did not want to ruffle Chrissie’s feathers since he liked her. See, two, Allan had had a “crush” on Miss [Ms.] Nelson since he started staring, permanently staring, at her ass when she had sat a few seats in front of him in ninth grade. At the time of that Falling Leaves dance she was “going steady,” or something like that, with some college joe, and had not given Allan the time of day, flirting or encouraging him  since about tenth grade, although they always talked about stuff, music and political stuff, two of his passions, and hers too. So here’s the “skinny,” from an interested party, Allan, told to me years later, okay:

“No question that about 1960, maybe into 1961, girl vocalists were the cat’s meow. [Okay, young women, but we didn’t call them that then, no way. Also “no way” as well is what we called them, called them among we corner boys at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor in the harsh summer night, especially when we got “no action.” I don’t have to draw you a diagram on what that meant, right?]. You can, if you were around then, reel off the names just as well as I can, Connie Francis, Carla Thomas, Patsy Cline, and the sparkplug Brenda Lee. I won’t even mention wanna-bes like Connie Stevens and Sandra Dee, Christ. See, serious classic rock by guys like Elvis (who was either dead or might as well have been since he was doing foolish films like Blue Hawaii), Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry (and his Mister’s women habits) and Jerry Lee Lewis (and his kissing cousins habit) was, well, passé, in that musical counter-revolution night when guys like Fabian and Bobby Vee ruled the girl heart throb universe. 

But music, like lots of other things abhors a vacuum and while guys were still singing, I guess, the girl singers [read young women, okay, and we will leave it at that] “spoke” to us more. Especially to record- buying girls who wanted to hear about teen romance, teen alienation, lost love, unstoppable hurts, betrayal (usually by the girl’s best friend and her boyfriend, although not always), lonely Friday nights, and other stuff that teenagers, boys and girls equally, have been mulling over, well, since they invented teenagers a long time ago.  

So it was natural for the musically-talented girls around North Adamsville, and maybe around the country for all I know, to test themselves against the big name talents and see what they had. See if they could make teen heaven- a record contract with all that entailed. In North Adamsville that was actually made easier by the town fathers (and they were all men, mostly old men in those days so fathers is right), if you can believe that. Why? Because for a couple of years in the early 1960s, maybe longer, they had been sponsoring a singing contest, a female vocalist, singing- contest. I heard later, and maybe it was true, that what drove them was that, unlike those mid-1950s evil male rockers mentioned above, the women vocalist models had a “calming effect” on the hard-bitten be-bop teen night. And calm was what the town fathers cared about most of all. That, and making sure that everything was in preparedness for any Soviet missile strike, complete with periodic air raid drills with us foolishly and unfathomably ducking under school desks if you can believe that, Christ again.      

In 1962 this contest, as it was in previous years, was held in the spring in the town hall auditorium. And among the contestants, obviously, was that already "spoken for" Diana Nelson who was by even the casual music listener the odds-on favorite. She had prepped a few of us with her unique rendition of Brenda Lee’s I’m Sorry so I knew she was a shoo-in. And she was. What was interesting about the competition was not her victory as much as the assorted talents, so-called, that entered this thing. If I recall there were perhaps fifteen vocalists in all. The way the thing got resolved was a kind of sing-off. A process of elimination sing-off. 

Half a dozen, naturally, were some variation of off-key and dismissible out of hand. These girls fought the worst when they got the hook. Especially one girl, Elena G., if anyone remembers her who did one of the worst versions  of Connie Francis’ Who’s Sorry Now I had (and have) ever heard. The more talented girls took their lost with more grace, probably realizing as Diana got into high gear that they were doomed. But here is the funny part. One of the final four girls was not a girl at all. Jimmy C. from right down the end of my street dressed himself up as girl [and not badly either from what Allan told Jack although none of us knew much about “drag queen” culture then] and sang a great version of Mary Wells’ Two Lovers. [Allan like the rest of us knew from nothing about different sexual preferences and thought Jimmy C. just did it as a goof. I heard a few years later that he had finally settled in Provincetown and that fact alone “hipped” me, after I got hip to the ways of the world a little better, to what he was about, sexually.] 

One part of winning was a one thousand dollar scholarship to State U. That was important, but Diana, when she talked to me about it a couple of days later just before class, said she really wanted to win so she could be featured at the Falling Leaves Dance, the other perk of winning. As you know I had big crush on her, no question, so I was amazed that she also said that she wanted me to be sure to be at the dance that next late September. Well, if you have been paying attention at all then you know I was there. I went alone, because just then I didn’t have a girlfriend, a girlfriend strong enough for me to want to go to the dance with anyway. But I was having a pretty good time. I even danced with Chrissie McNamara, a genuine fox, who every guy had the “hots” for since she, just the night before, had busted up with Jack Callahan, the football player. You could feel the ice forming when Jack, as the reigning football hero in town sat very close to Diana on stage, and Chrissie was on the floor fake-flirting with a lot of guys, including me. And Diana sang great, especially on Brenda Lee’s I Want To Be Wanted. She reached somewhere deep for that one. You could see, or I could see, and I am sure that Chrissie could see as well that Jack was bowled over by her.   

Toward the end of the evening, while the Rockin’ Ramrods were doing some heavy rock covers, Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen I think, and she was taking a break, Diana came over to me and said, I swear she said it exactly like this- “save the last dance for me.” I asked her to repeat herself. She said Bobby (her college joe) was not here that evening for some reason I do not remember and that she wanted to dance the last dance with someone she liked. Well, what’s a guy to do when someone like Diana gives her imperial command? I checked my dance card and said “sure.” Now this last dance thing has been going on ever since they have had dances and ever since they have had teenagers at such events so no big deal, really. Oh, except this, as we were dancing that last dance to the Ramrod’s cover of The Dubs Could This Be Magic Diana, out of the blue, said this. “You know if you had done more than just stared at my ass in class (and in the corridors too, she added) in ninth grade maybe I wouldn’t have latched onto Bobby when he came around me in tenth grade.” No, a thousand times no, no, no, no…   

Sorry I got off track about my part of that fall evening but that was the way it was with me. In any case Jack never did anything about Diana at the time, and he and Chrissie patched whatever was eating at them which made them break-up before that dance.” 

And Jack never did anything about Diana at the spring dance either although Chrissie believed that he had, believed that something real was going on  and hence her sullen look at Jack as he prepared for that last dance with that Drifters’ song that he was planning to use to smooth things out with her. And it did, did smooth things out for Jack as he found out after the dance when they hit Adamsville Beach, the lovers’ lane hot spot in the old town.

[Jack and Diana did have a short affair during freshman year at State U but it never really went anywhere since Jack missed Chrissie and Diana was still hung up on Bobby. I don’t know what happen to that pair but Jack married Chrissie and is still married to her. Jack is known as Mr. Toyota around Hullsville, about twenty miles south of Adamsville since he runs the biggest dealership around and Chrissie, of course, is Mrs. Toyota.]