Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Benny Goodman his band performing, well, performing swing music, what else.
“Did you hear it, did you hear? Benny Goodman and his band, the king of swing himself, is coming to the Olde Saco Ballroom next month for two nights only,” shouted Delores LeBlanc to Betty LaCroix over the hum of the machine that she was tending at the MacAdams Textile Mill over on Main Street (really U.S. Route One but everybody called it Main Street and called it that even to strangers looking for directions to Kennebunkport or going north up Portland way). Betty, too proud, too female acting like a female quiet proud, to yell back over the drone of her own tended machine, just gave a gleeful nod. “Let’s get tickets right away for both shows because after his concert last year down in New York at that Carnegie Hall the place will be packed and we don’t want to miss the event of 1939 and maybe the whole century here in old musty fussy Olde Saco. Once again Betty nodded, although not gleefully this time. Not gleefully at all.
The cause of that non-glee was, well, boy trouble, really man trouble. Seems that Betty had had her fifteenth, no sixteenth, fight and never make-up with Delores’ brother Jean. And whether the year is 1039, 1539, or like now 1939 the issue, to put it delicately, was sex. Or rather why she wanted to wait until marriage, and not before, to give in to one Jean LeBlanc. Needless to say All-American boy, really all All-American French-Canadian boy and former star of the Olde Saco High football team, the one that beat Auburn for the state title a couple of years back, Jean, was all for doing the do right now as a test run for marriage, or so that is how he presented it to Betty last Saturday (and many a previous Saturday night) down in the dunes of Olde Saco Beach as they watch old Neptune do his ocean magic. And Jean almost made the sale, except by the time Betty decided yes, she wasn’t in the mood any longer. Jesus.
And what does all this have to do with Benny Goodman, king of swingness, and the possibilities of seeing said king in person. Well where have you been? How do you thing our boy Jean, champion football mover but a little bashful in the sex department when he came right down to it tried to get one Betty LaCroix in the mood. Take one guess. No I will give a hint-think clarinet, a heavenly deep beat-pacing clarinet that sets those drums a rolling, those trumpets blowing to Gabriel’s heaven, and sets those sexy saxes on fire to blow the wall of Jericho down. A Little Body And Soul or Swing Time In The Mountains. Maybe Blue Skies. Get it.
But back to Betty and Jean. Back right away because here he comes down the aisle to Betty’s machine. He nods to Delores, the appropriate publicly polite brotherly greeting, although at home in the LeBlanc household over on Fourteenth Street in the “Little Quebec “ section of town there is a war going n, and has been since, well, since Delores found out that she, with just a few hours work in the family’s sole bathroom could set the guys stirring. And did so, did spend those hours of work to Jean’s intense displeasure when he needed to attend to his own toilet. There he lays this great scheme on one Betty LaCroix. He will spring for the tickets to both of Benny Goodman’s shows if she will just make up with him. She hesitates, thinking back to that last Saturday and how Benny and the gang got her almost in the mood to “do the do.” She looked over at Delores and gave her that kind of sorry I can’t go with you look that Delores had learned to expect when Jean came anywhere with five feet of here. Delores also though Betty was not going to be able to withstand two nights of Benny swing and Jean ardor. But, damn, that’s her problem. I wonder if Jean Jacques LaCroix (yes, Betty’s brother) is going?
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