***From Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Rock Night-Carl Perkin's "Boppin' The Blues"

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I remember back when I first placed this Carl Perkins be-bop tune in this space- I made the following comment: “Hell, I don't need to comment here. Carl Perkins says it all- bop, bop the blues-get it.” And at some level the statement is true, true for those who came of age in the post-World War II cold war red scare night and who were just waiting around for something to happen if not for later generations. Although we weren’t necessarily conscious of what we were waiting for but, damn, we were waiting for some jailbreak thing to come along, something more than periodic doomsday exercises at school hiding under desks like that was going to do a damn thing if some Russkie A-bomb, or some kind of bomb, was going to be directly aimed at Hullsville South Elementary School anytime between 1952 and 1958 in retribution for whatever sins we had committed (and maybe hadn’t confessed, confessed fully to the good priest, the good priest who went light on penances, over at Saint Mary’s Catholic Church on Main Street.

Yah, we, we the younger set, the baby-boomers as we are called now (although I prefer for political reasons –“generation of ’68” but it is the same thing, the same species waiting in that 1950s good night to hear the glad tidings) were pent up waiting for some movement to wash over us. But what we didn’t know, a lot of us didn’t know, especially if we didn’t have older brothers and sisters, say eight to ten years older, and a lot of us didn’t since we baby-boomers were created in quick batches from 1945 on by parents who, well, who had been separated by the war and were in a hurry to get a family started, was that those elders were hearing some rumblings and acting out on it. Guys like holy hell’s angels motorcycle angel wreaking havoc on the California highways and terrifying the squares (our parents, West Coast variety), every okie arkie-bred Southern California guy with a license (and maybe some without reflecting that okie/arkie distrust of the law back home) was building the max daddy hot rod to beat the band. And others maybe not so mechanically inclined were searching for the perfect wave down in places like Malibu and LaJolla. The more serious, brain serious, intellectual types were writing be-bop poems and novels and exploiting the Village and Frisco night to the beat of their own drummers. Yah, all that was going on but how were we in Podunk Hullsville to hear those tom-toms from under those old ink-stained wooden desks. We would just catch the tail end of those mad monk adventures, after they had faded from view and before we wrote our own messages on the stars.

Oh yah, I almost forgot, down in Memphis, some of the older guys, and it was mainly guys (although Wanda Jackson was a very bright exception), were raising a new form of hell and be-bopping away in shoddy one-horse recording studios blowing rockabilly riffs. And up in sweet home Chicago some black cats, mainly guys again, were blowing some blues riffs in the night, the high white note night. Somehow the mix came together and they called it rock and roll. And one Carl Perkins was right in the mix (and might have been bigger in the mix except for an accident that allowed Mister Elvis Presley to wiggle-waggle his way to stardom with Carl’s Blue Suede Shoes, one of the max daddy songs of the mid-1950s night).

But what did we down in Hullsville South Elementary School, ten, eleven and twelve years old know of those mixtures, of that primal history. All we knew was rock rocked, our parents didn’t like it (a surefire indicator that we were building our own “newer world,” or so we thought) and we could listen to it endlessly up in our rooms (mind shared with two brothers, one a year older, the other a year younger reflecting that post-war family hurry) on transistor radios away from prying parents. Oh yah and we could dance to the stuff, dance without having to touch each other, without having to display sweating hands and awkward movements, like with some foxtrot or something. Dance with flame Mary Ellen Riley at the Friday Night Saint Mary’s church hall dance. Thanks, Carl.

******

Boppin' The Blues Lyrics- Carl Perkins

Well, all my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

All my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

I love you, baby, but I must be rhythm bound

Well, the doctor told me, Carl you need no pills.

Yes, the doctor told me, boy, you don't need no pills.

Just a handful of nickels, the juke box will cure your ills.

Well, all my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

All them cats are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

I love you, baby, but I must be rhythm bound

Well, the old cat bug bit me, man, I don't feel no pain

Yeah, that jitterbug caught me, man, I don't feel no pain.

I still love you baby, but I'll never be the same.

I said, all my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

All my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

I love you, baby, but I must be rhythm bound

Well, all my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

All them cats are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

I love you, baby, but I must be rhythm bound

Well, grand-pa Don got rhythm and he threw his crutches down.

Oh the old boy Don got rhythm and blues and he threw that crutches down

Grand-ma, he ain't triflin', well the old boy's rhythm bound.

Well, all them cats are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

All my friends are boppin' the blues; it must be goin' round

I love you, baby, but I must be rhythm bound.

A rock bop, rhythm and blues.

A rock bop, rhythm and blues.

A rock rock, rhythm and blues.

A rock rock, rhythm and blues.

Rhythm and blues, it must be goin' round.