***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 

…she hadn’t thought about the upcoming date all that much, hadn’t thought about how Art was going to squire her to the first dance of the school year, the decisive Fall Frolic. Decisive in that one’s date, one’s successful date, at that event usually foretold who one would be going to the senior prom with. It wasn’t that she was crazy for Art, not in the way best friend, Jenny, was crazy over Sal, Sal with the wavy black hair and athletic build, crazy to let him do what he wanted with her, but she did see him a one part of her “item” for the senior year if only he showed a little spark her way. Damn, she almost had to force the issue and invite him to the dance herself after they had spent some time together in school talking and then he walking her home after school, talking. So they had spent their time together before the dance in that way. And here it was the big night and she was now preening herself, fluffing her hair, tightening that damn girdle to make her more slender than she already was, applying yet another touch-up on the make-up, as expected of any girl going to the Frolics with a guy that might form part of an “item” for senior year.

She wasn’t sure when she heard the rumble of the engine coming up the street, maybe just before the car stopped in front of her house, but she definitely heard it before Art knocked on the door downstairs as her mother welcomed him in while she was finishing her last preparations. As she came down she noticed that he looked especially handsome in his suit and with his hair parted just so. Things already looked up for the evening. She did not know the half of it though until he opened the front door for her as they were leaving and she spied that big old Cadillac sitting in front of her sidewalk. Seems that old Art, once he got the message from the time around the dance invitation, started his own version of the courting ritual and convinced his friend, Spider Mack, to let him borrow his souped-up Caddy. And off they went, she proud to be seem in the company of a man who knew how to bring a girl to the dance in style.

 

But that was only the half of it since once they got to the school gym when the Frolics were held annually Art seemed a man transformed as the cover band hired for the evening by the Fall Frolic senior committee (it was always a senior-sponsored affair, a kind of last gift to their fellow schoolmate), the Ready Riders, kissed off the old classics, you know Patti Page, Frank, Dean, those guys, that had guided previous dances and kicked out the jams. She noticed that Art had become almost a whirling dervish as he rocked to some older rhythm and blues stuff and then laid out the program when the band tore into a big riffing dose of Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 that everybody at Doc’s Drugstore over on Main was dropping endless nickels and dimes in the juke-box to hear over and over. As the dance ended she, they ran into Jenny and Sal, and she, she who had secretly scorned the stuff Jenny told her that she and Sal did down at Adamsville Beach, suggested that the foursome go down to that very beach to, well, she said “cool off” after the dance. But you know what she meant. So, yes, if anybody was interested she and Art were an “item” that year …               

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Rocket 88         

You woman have heard of jalopies
You heard the noise they make
Let me introduce you to my Rocket '88
Yes, it's great, just won't wait
Everybody likes my Rocket '88
Baby, we'll will ride in style movin' all along

V-8 motor and this modern design
Black convertible top and the girls don't mind
Sportin' with me, ridin' all around town for joy
Blow your horn, rocket, blow your horn

Step in my rocket and don't be late
We're pullin' out about a half past eight
Goin' on the corner and havin' some fun
Takin' my rocket on a long, hot run
Ooh, goin' out, oozin' and cruisin' and havin' fun

Now that you've ridden in my Rocket '88
I'll be around every night about eight
You know it's great, don't be late
Everybody likes my Rocket '88
Girls will ride in style movin' all along

Read more at http://www.songlyrics.com/jackie-brenston/rocket-88-lyrics/#jxXskKb8Yxv3Z2RP.99

 In The Time Before The Rock ‘n’ Roll Jailbreak –They Shoot CD Players Don’t They

 

 

 

Some people ask, although I am not one of them, if there was music before 1950s classic rock ‘n’ roll. Of course there was and I have taken some pains to establish the roots of rock back to Mississippi country blues, electric blues as they traveled north to the heartland industrial cities, jazz as it got be-bopped and took to swing, certainly rhythm and blues, north and south and rockabilly as it came out of the white small town South. What it owes little to, or at least I hope that it owes little to is that Tin Pan Alley/ Broadway show tune axis part of the American songbook. That seems to me a different trend and one that is reflected in this CD under review, The 1950s: 16 Most Requested Songs, which is really about the 16 most requested song before the rock jailbreak of the mid-1950s. Let’s be clear about that.

I have along the way, in championing classic rock as the key musical form that drove the tastes of my generation, the generation of ’68, contrasted that guitar-driven, drum/bass line driven sound to that of my parents’ generation, the ones who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and fought World War II, and listened to swing, jitter-buggery things and swooned over big bands, swings bands, Frank Sinatra, the Andrews Sisters and The Mills Brothers, among others. In other words the music that, we of the generation of ’68, heard as background music around the house as we were growing up. Buddha Swings, Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree, Rum and Coca-Cola, Paper Dolls, Tangerine, and the like. Stuff that today sounds pretty good, if still not quite something that “speaks” to me. That is not the music that is reflected in this compilation and which, I think rightly, I was ready to shoot my CD player over once I heard it as I announced in the headline.

No, this is music that reflects, okay, let’s join the cultural critics’ chorus here, the attempted vanilla-zation (if such a word can exist) of the Cold War Eisenhower (“I Like Ike”) period when people were just trying to figure out whether the Earth would survive from one day to the next. Not a time to be rocking the boat, for sure. Once things stabilized a bit though then the mad geniuses of rock could hold sway, and while parents and authorities crabbed to high heaven about it, let that rock breakout occur and not have everything wind up going to hell in a hand basket. But this music, these 16 most requested songs were what we were stuck with before then. Sure, I listened like everyone else, everyone connected to a radio, but this stuff, little as I knew then, did not “speak” to me. And unlike some of that 1940s stuff still does not “speak” to me.

Oh, you want proof. Here is one example. On this compilation Harbor Lights is done by Sammy Kaye and his Orchestra. This was cause one for wanting to get a pistol out and start aiming. Not for the song but for the presentation. Why? Well, early in his career Elvis, while he was doing his thing for Sam Phillips’ Memphis Sun Records operation, covered this song. There are a myriad of Elvis recordings during the Sun period, including compilations with outtakes and alternative recordings of this song. The worst, the absolute worst of these covers by Elvis has more life, more jump, dare I say it, more sex than the Kaye recording could ever have. And it only gets worse from there with incipient things like Frankie Lane’s I Believe, Johnny Mathis’ It’s Not For Me To Say, and Marty Robbins’ (who did some better stuff later) on A White Sports Coat (And A Pink Carnation). And you wonder why I ask whether they shoot CD players. Enough said.

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Harbor Lights Lyrics
(words & music by H. Williams - J. Kennedy)

I saw the harbor lights

They only told me we were parting

Those same old harbor lights

That once brought you to me.

I watched the harbor lights

How could I help it?

Tears were starting.

Good-bye to golden nights

Beside the silvery seas.

I long to hold you dear,

And kiss you just once more.

But you were on the ship,

And I was on the shore.

Now I know lonely nights

For all the while my heart keeps praying

That someday harbor lights

Will bring you back to me.