The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Blues Ain’t Nothing But A Good Woman On Your Mind- With Howlin’ Wolf’s Little Red Rooster In Mind  

Little Red Rooster

I am the little red rooster
Too lazy to crow for day
I am the little red rooster
Too lazy to crow for day
Keep everything in the farm yard upset in every way
The dogs begin to bark and hounds begin to howl
Dogs begin to bark and hounds begin to howl
Watch out strange cat people
Little red rooster's on the prowl
If you see my little red rooster
Please drive him home
If you see my little red rooster
Please drive him home
Ain't had no peace in the farm yard
Since my little red rooster's been gone

Johnny Prescott daydreamed his way through the music that he was listening to just then on the little transistor that Ma Prescott, Martha to adults, had given him for Christmas after he has taken a fit when she quite reasonable suggested that a new set of ties to go with his white long-sleeved shirts might be a better gift, a better Christmas gift and a bit more practical too when he played with his band at outings, for a sixteen-year old boy. No, he had screamed he wanted a radio, a transistor radio, batteries included, of his own so that he could listen to whatever he liked up in his room, or wherever he was, and didn’t have, understand, didn’t have to listen to some Vaughn Monroe singing about some unknown place over there, or Harry James’ Sentimental Journey or Tommy Dorsey or his brother Jimmy doing the inevitable Tangerine 1940s war drum thing. Or worse, the Inkspots, Jesus, he was tired of that spoken verse they include in every freaking song doing I’ll Get By or If I Didn’t Care which he had had to listen to on the huge immobile radio compliments of RCA Victor downstairs in the Prescott living room in the place of honor.

Hearing shades of that stuff all day every day when Ma Prescott got dreamy while dusting the furniture, doing the daily laundry, or washing the floors had finally gotten to him. Even more disturbing than that, if such a thing was possible, was passing through the downstairs from his room on Saturday night after dinner, maybe out for some elusive infrequent date with somebody’s lame sister, or maybe one of the easily picked up girls from the weekly sock hop dances held at various locations but mainly in the North Adamsville gym (easily picked up and escorted home but hard, hard as hell to get to first base with, or even a kiss after all was said and done), or just hanging with the guys in front of Doc’s Drugstore looking at the girls passing by or stepping inside every now and again to hear what one of those passing girls who stepped into his door was playing on Doc’s super-jack jukebox, and seeing his mother and father gearing up for a full night, seven until eleven of that stuff presented by Bill Marlowe on his Stagedoor Johnny show on WJDA. Strictly squaresville, cubed.

[Hey, for a minute I forgot who my audience might be. Sure those of you from the generation of ’68, those who for a minute in the 1960s thought along with me that we might turn the world upside down, might change things for little guys and gals for the better, turn things around so that they might look like something we might just want to pass on to the next generation know what a transistor radio was. Lived and died by that neat invention invented by some guy who knew what the hell he was doing, knew we who came of age in the cold war red scare 1950s needed our own way of getting privacy and created a radio that was small enough to conceal, put in our pockets if need be, and let us at the flick of a wrist listen to whatever radio station was providing that be-bop music that we craved. Those of you not from that generation of ’68 should know that this gizmo was like a primitive iPod or MP3 player except, well, except you could not download whatever songs you were interested in. Yeah, I know primitive now but a breath of fresh age back then when we needed to break-out from our parents’ music just like you and every generation needs to do.] 

So Johnny glad that he had won one battle although he knew he was behind, seriously behind in the war, that inevitable generational war (although he did not, and probably his parents did not either if they had forgotten their own battles against intransigent parents, know enough then to call the tussle of wills a battle) was primed to go nightly to his room to hear all those songs that he first heard on that Doc’s jukebox, or maybe got featured by the DJ Rockin’ Rich at the weekly dances since he was in tune with all the latest. But here was Johnny’s dilemma, here is what he could not make heads or tails out of at first. One night as he listened to this new drippy record Shangra-la by The Four Coins that just finished up a few seconds before and as this Banana Boat song by The Tarriers was starting its dreary trip through his ears was not sure that those ties his mother had suggested wouldn’t have been a better deal, and more practical too.

Yeah, this so-called rock station, WAPX out of North Adamsville, the closest station that Johnny could receive at night without some static in the air had sold out to, well, sold out to somebody, because except for late at night, midnight late at night, one could not hear the likes of Jerry Lee, Carl, Little Richard, Fats, and the new, now that Elvis was gone, killer rocker, Chuck Berry who proclaimed loud and clear that Mr. Beethoven had better move along, and said Mr. Beethoven best tell one and all of his confederates, including Mr. Tchaikovsky that rock ‘n’ roll was the new sheriff in town. As he turned the volume down a little lower (that tells the tale right there, friends) as Rainbow (where the hell do they get these creepy songs from he thought, rainbows for chrissakes) by Russ Hamilton he was ready to throw in the towel though.

Johnny could not quite figure how that magic that first got him moving, first got him swaying his hips, first got him feeling funny thoughts about girls and how they had changed one year from being kind of just plain nuisances (and they had been, no question in Johnny’s mind about that whatever subsequent charms they possessed) to kind of nice to have around changed and why. Changed from every guy around town (young guys anyway, the guys who counted) wearing long sideburns, wearing a built-in slightly suggestive sexy swagger, and wearing a sneer that they hoped some foxy girl, maybe any girl would wipe off their faces (and the girls, those not totally and fantastically addicted to the “king” himself, and forever, were hoping that they could wipe off). Changed from running home, yes, running home, after school each and every week day afternoon to watch on television for the latest dances and tunes on American Bandstand  (and the latest foxy chicks too don’t forget that Johnny) ever since Bill Haley and the Comets rocked the joint, or beloved Eddie Cochran went summertime blues crazy. Changed from sexually-charged lyrics by Chuck Berry and what he would do, or not do, to his sweet little sixteen. Changed from the high energy explosion of Jerry Lee working off the back of some hokey flatbed truck, piano keys flailing away, hair bouncing with the beat, on High School Confidential  in the movie by the same name when he put his name forward as the new king of the rock hill (although the movie itself was kind of dippy). Yeah, changed to soft soap, nicely dressed, nicely mannered, not a hair out of place  and no sideburn  guys like Fabian, Bobby Vee, and Neil  Sedeka who you would not dream of hanging around with, would not allow on your corner boy corner but who all the girls, well, most all of the girls flipped out over. Worse, worse than anything else these guys and their music was stuff that parents actually went for, would get the Ma and Pa high recommendation of “wasn’t that a young man singing” just like Frank [Sinatra for those not in the bobby-soxer 1940s know] in the old days, saw too as innocent and nice. Jesus.      

Desperate Johnny fingered the dial looking for some other station when he heard this crazy piano riff starting to breeze through the night air, the heated night air, and all of a sudden Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 which he had not heard for a long time blasted the airwaves. But funny it didn’t sound like the whinny Ike’s voice so he listened for a little longer, and as he later found out from the DJ (Be-Bop Benny by name) it was actually a James Cotton Blues Band cover. After that performance was finished fish-tailing right after that one was a huge harmonica intro and what as it turned out had was none other than mad-hatter Junior Wells doing When My Baby Left Me splashed through (that “none other” part learned later when he got deeper into the electric blues night). No need to turn the dial further then because what Johnny Prescott had found in the crazy night air, radio beams bouncing every which way, was direct from Chicago, and maybe right off those hard-hearted Maxwell streets was Be-Bop Benny’s Chicago Blues Radio Hour. Be-Bop Benny who started Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino on their careers, or helped.

Now Johnny, like every young high-schooler, every "with it" high school-er in the USA, had heard of this show, because even though everybody was crazy for rock and roll, just now the airwaves sounded like, well, sounded like music your parents would dance to, no, sit down to at a dance, some kids still craved high rock. So this show was known mainly through the teenage grapevine but Johnny had never heard it before because, no way, no way in hell was his punk little Radio Shack transistor radio with two dinky batteries going to ever have the strength to pick Be-Bop Benny’s live show out in Chicago. So Johnny, and maybe rightly so, took this turn of events for a sign. When he heard that distinctive tinkle of the Otis Spann piano warming up to Spann’s Stomp and right after with his Someday added in he was hooked. And you know he started to see what Billie, Billie Bradley from over in Adamsville, meant when at a school dance where he had been performing with his band, Billie and the Jets, he mentioned that if you wanted to get rock and roll back you had better listen to blues, and if you wanted to listen to blues, blues that rocked then you had very definitely had better get in touch with the Chicago blues as they came north from Mississippi and places like that.

And Johnny thought, Johnny who have never been too much south of Gloversville, or west of Albany, and didn’t know too many people who had been much further either, couldn’t understand at first why that beat, that da, da, da, Chicago beat sounded like something out of the womb in his head, sometime out of Mother Africa (although again what did he know of old African instruments and that sound, that beat that seemed like eternity beating on his brain). How on some bars he could hear that rock ‘n’ roll ready to explode if only they could speed it up a shade, how the beat in his head was now making the transition, maybe not smooth but making it. That beat just then turning his own very personal teen-age blues (some sociologists were making big money or at least making a splash by frightening every red scare cold war parent with the idea of their Jimmy or Susie being in the grip of teen angst and alienation and ready to try anything to get to the bottom of it) to something else for the duration of the song anyway. But when he heard Big Walter Horton wailing on that harmonica on Rockin’ My Boogie he knew those be-bop beats had to be in his genes.