The Last Chance Dance- With The Kingsmen's Late Jack Ely And Louie, Louie In Mind

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Fritz Jasper when he heard the news that the Kingsmen’s lead singer and guiding spirit (okay, okay the guy who kept things together) Jack Ely had passed away not only thought about the mortality rate of those of his generation of ’68 starting to take its toll, for the famous, the infamous, and the great unwashed, but that the Kingsmen probably had the greatest one-hit wonder song of the whole rock and roll 1960s. Somehow that one song Louie, Louie which depended more on the beat and sense of romantic adventure connected with the song got more mileage per turntable turn than one could shake a stick. Certainly it was not the lyrics which were frankly mostly unintelligible and those who have tried to decipher such things are still scratching their heads over that hard fact. In one hundred years obscure devotees will still be seeking the Roseate Stone on those lyrics. Jack Ely went to his grave keeping his own counsel about the whole issue.

Hell, who was Fritz kidding, mortality rates and one hits wonders were not what drove his thoughts when he heard about Ely’s passing but rather thoughts of vivacious Minnie Callahan the girl who got away, or maybe better let get away, during his high school days at Carver High. The song would forever after bring back that memory. He, in the intervening years, especially in the time immediately after they had graduated, after he had gone away to school and after he had spent some “tribal” acid-etched time on the hitchhike road with his friend, the late Peter Paul Markin, in the high life turbulent 1960s gold rush before returning to his safe, sedentary “normal” when he sensed the whirlwind days were ebbing and he went to graduate school to eke out a career as a senior civil servant. Minnie, had stayed around town after high school, had expressed to him dreams of a house on Pouty Point, the upscale section of town created after the land was sold by some old-time Finnish family who had given up a Mom and Pop existence trying to make a living from harvesting the cranberry bogs which were the lifeblood of the town’s economy since around the time of the Pilgrims it seemed. He could not see that then, had had to “sow his wilds oats” and by the time that he figured out what she had meant to him she was gone, who knows where, swallowed up in her own version of the 1960s magical mystery tour. When he did make inquiries on his occasional visits back to town when he was still in contact with his own estranged family it was too later, the family had also left town and the one source who could have helped him, Freddie Callahan, her brother, his best friend since junior high and his primary source of intelligence about her during those school days was “resting” out in Carver Cemetery, one of those 58,000 plus names etched in black marble down on the National Mall  in Washington, D.C. as a result of the war of their generation, Vietnam. 

Funny, Fritz thought, as Ely’s passing sparked thoughts back to sunnier times, he had been after Minnie since he first arrived in Carver when his father had had to relocate for his job out on U.S. Route 95 a few miles from town and he had run into her, literally, at Myles Standish Junior High after he became best friends with Freddie, whom he would continue to be friends with all through school until they lost contact except a few passed letters once Freddie’s number got called in the damn military draft that plagued a whole generation of young men then, and would continue to haunt many of those who have survived even now.

Freddie had warned him even then that she would break his heart, was nothing but a heart-breaker even then, one of those as he found out later when he would continue to attracted to the type, those virginal Irish Catholic girls who had their rosaries in one part of their brains and theirs lusts in the other all while making sure they were observed every Sunday morning at eight o’clock Mass. Jesus. (Jesus too the number times he would walk that mile or so to Sacred Heart Church in order to sit a few rows in back of her at that eight o’clock Mass and watch her ass. The Jesus part being that she knew, as he knew from her best friend, Ellen, Markin’s sister who told him, that he was looking at her ass, and not just there but in the corridors at school whenever she walked by.) So, yes, he had been forewarned but when seemingly involuntary hormonal actions dictates every move Freddie’s “advise,” his truthful friend talking was so much wind. So it went all through junior high when he would go over to the Callahan household sometimes knowing Freddie was not in just on the off chance that she would be in and maybe take pity on him. Take pity because he was as an outsider in a town where the relationships were fixed early and where the social peeking order were determined maybe at birth he was extremely shy around girls in general, Minnie in particular. Having three brothers and no nearby girl cousins did not help either. So junior high school drifted away with him and his Minnie Callahan dreams all asunder.     

That same situation, that same getting nowhere with Minnie, would have probably gone on high school as well, that same feeling that disturbed his sleep dreaming although maybe he would have gotten over it once he saw that Minnie had been matched up with the heroic senior halfback on the football team, Mickey Larkin once he spied her freshman year. It was not like he didn’t have other girls he was interested in, or were interested in him, although they tended to be the girls most influenced by the folk music craze that was being spear-headed by the emergence of Joan Baez as the “queen of the folk scene” and they all were ironing their hair to be as straight and long as hers and begging their dates to take them to coffeehouses in Cambridge some forty miles away to hear old British ballads and mountain music. Fritz though, having come of age in the prime of rock and roll hated folk music, hated it later too when Marston would drag him to those places when they were at Boston University. Nah, another guy with Minnie or girls interested in him would not have extinguished the flame, no way.   

And no way he would have gotten to first base with Minnie either except for one important event in his freshman year, the annual Fall Frolic which was sponsored as a fund-raiser by the Senior Class each year and which was the only event that the prideful senior class permitted underclassmen to attend, attend if they had the two dollar admission charge and by long enforced tradition if they kept out of the hair of any senior that they might run across. So usually until one became a senior and could take on the royal attributes most of the underclassmen, underclass guys were clinging to the walls for most of the evening. The girls though, if not with dates, not with senior dates were another matter and were fair game for senior boys. Needless to say Minnie was in attendance with one Mickey Larkin jealous fist and snarky remarks by half the girls in the school.  

Fritz had not figured to go to the event having no particular reason to go and having a serious disability in the dance world. He could not dance and he had two left feet. Freddie however had convinced him that he had go to “show the colors,” meaning to begin the long four year process becoming school royalty. If not then then perhaps never. So he went and held up his share of the wall for most of the evening hoping that he would survive, just survive.

The Fall Frolic really was a well-done affair with the senior dance committee going all out to make the drab gymnasium where the dance was held seem like a hotel ballroom what with all the flowers, bunting and disguising the bleachers by setting up tables along a couple of the walls (don’t worry those tables were exclusively for seniors and their dates, some rituals never change). The highlight though unlike most of the dances throughout the year was that the committee hired a live band, a live local band to provide the music, usually a band who could cover the latest hits, some classic rocks tunes, and of course, that last chance last dance song to end the evening. That year, somebody on the committee, Helen Kelly, Fritz thought as he thought back on the time, was friends with Rickey Rhodes, the lead singer of the “hot” local cover band around Boston, the Rockin’ Ramrods. So that night the Ramrods were scheduled to play.     

And play they did heating up the audience with lots of great covers of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee and Fritz could not remember who else but they were “hot” that night starting right from the first set. Fritz had been hanging onto the wall mainly although he did dance to Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen since it was fast one with Ellen Marston who told him that she thought Minnie was looking in his direction (Fritz would later find out that Minnie had put Ellen up to that comment.). He blushed but thought nothing of as the song ended and he went back to the wall.

As the Ramrod’s opened up the second set (there were three as was usual in a big dance night) Fritz immediately picked up on the beat of a new song that everybody who hung out at Jimmy’s Jack’s Diner where he had the best jukebox in town was going crazy over, an unknown band from California, or he had heard they were from California, called the Kingsmen who were singing this song, Louie, Louie that had all the guys making suggestive moves, and the girls just kind of giggling, or getting into it. As they music played on Fritz spotted Minnie, Minnie looking radiant and beautiful and for the moment without Mickey. Maybe it was the way she looked, maybe, it was Ellen’s comment, hell, maybe he was just reacting against that string of long, straight-haired folkie girls that he had run into of late but whatever it was he found himself walking as if in a trance over to Minnie and making some very suggestive moves her way, Not bad for a two left-feet guy either. After he was done, flushed, turning red he turned around and went back to the wall. So nothing happened that night, nothing happened for a couple of weeks, but one night he went over to the Callahan house to see Freddie about something but he was not there according to Minnie. As he turned to go Minnie asked him if he would like to stay and listen to her latest records, one of them being her own recording of Louie, Louie. Thus started one of the great romances of the Carver High School Class of 1967.

Yeah, Fritz thought just at that moment, whatever happened to Minnie Callahan. Then he chuckled to himself, hell, what am I complaining about, he had gotten more shy boy dances later down at the Surf Ballroom from girls on that one song than he could shake a stick at. Not everything worked out but, thanks guys. Thanks, Jack Ely wherever you are and whatever the words were. RIP