Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Out In The “Submarine Races” Saturday Night- The Music Of The Time Of Our Time 

 

 

 A YouTube film clip of The Capris performing There's A Moon Out Tonight

By Bart Webber

A few years back, maybe ten or twelve years ago now before I discovered YouTube or it had gathered enough material of interest,  I literarily, well maybe not literarily but close, under the prompting of old-time friend Zack James whom I hadn’t seen in years but through the beauties of the Internet specifically the North Adamsville Class of 1964 Facebook page had reconnected with, went over the edge trying find every obscure, and not so obscure, record that I could find from the golden oldies time, the classic age of rock and roll time, the 1950s and early 1960s. That Zack prompting requires a certain amount of explanation since it might not be obvious why I went into a frenzy to those who went through the rockin’ 1950s classic age but who have forgotten those tunes or who were too young or not even born and so only know of such treasures through commercial compilations or the marvels of YouTube where one may find by now virtually every one of them from all- time top ten to one hit wonders, hell, even stuff that was nothing but goof novelty songs. See Zack and I were part of a corner boy crowd that hung around successively Doc’s Drugstore in elementary school, Harry’s Variety in junior high school (now generally called middle school) and Tonio’s House of Pizza in high school. That latter location is important to the theme of this piece since most of the corner boy “action” night started from that spot one way or another and worked its way through the night sometimes winding back there for a midnight slice of pizza and Coke if one was unlucky, unlucky in the boy-girl thing, or, hopefully not if one got lucky and wound up with some frail (local corner boy expression forced on us by our acknowledged leader, Frankie Riley, who had spent far too much time at the second run Strand Theater watching 1930s and 1940s gangster and private detective films) sitting on the seawall at Adamsville Beach or better, much better, in the back seat of some “hot” automobile “watching submarine races” at that same beach.     

All of us corner boys, maybe a half dozen that hung around Toni’s all through high school and a couple of years later and maybe another half dozen who spent various amounts of time with us, were tight, had in today’s parlance “each other’s back” but Zack and me were very tight since we had hung on corners going back to the jumping jukebox that drove us to hang at Doc’s over on Newbury Street once we got the rock and roll beat etched in our brains (although maybe it was already in our genes)-and got a hankering for girl company once they went from nothing but public nuisances to, well, charming). Part of that tightness was that we lived near each other but also was a result of having to double-date in high school since my family in those days usually did not have a reliable car, if we had a car at all and Zack, whose family situation was considerably further up the food chain from my family’s, had his own automobile, a now classic to die for ‘57 Chevy that his father had passed on to him when he decided he needed to upgrade his own car needs. So it was in Zack’s ’57 Chevy that we had our first adventure on some dark cloud Saturday night down by the shore “searching” for those elusive U-boats, or whatever we called them then, maybe Nautilus.      

One night shortly after our reconnection reunion Zack and I were sitting in the Dublin Grille in North Adamsville where we wound up after having spent a grand afternoon sitting on the seawall at Adamsville Beach (not the original seawall but a newer reconstructed one build after the original one was washed away in some big tropical storm that passed through the area) reminiscing about various activities that happened down there. Here is what was funny about the “watching submarine races” recollections. As a matter of course nobody, except for low-rent guys and their tramp girlfriends, started out an evening at the beach. At least neither of us remembered any of our crowd starting out there except maybe Pretty James Preston but he was drifting away from us by then and would drop out of school and wind up with a gang of bank robbers and face down in a botched effort before his early death so he didn’t really count. What would usually be the case was that we would go to some lame school or church dance with, or without a date, and work our ways down from there (or like I said if things didn’t work out back at Tonio’s for that damn lonely slice of pepperoni pizza and frizzly Coke).

A lot of the successful nights at the dances would be based on actually picking up or taking a date to the dance and things working out. But as we remembered a surprising number of times we would get a chance by our mother’s wit. In either case though success or failure depended on whether the records played were hot enough, meaning whether we danced enough good stuff to get the frill (another Frankie expression) in the mood. This was somewhat arbitrary depending on the freaking DJs whims, about whether he, and it was always a he in those days was sucking up to somebody in the school administration or was “cool,” was playing stuff that some hot chick (common general usage then) he was after and so in tune with what our needs were. More than once it was based on success at the last chance last dance where whatever the lamo or cool DJ and whether a sultry song was played. We prayed for slow ones to hold some dame (my then expression not Frankie’s) close, suggestively close, rather than the “get un the mood” fast ones we craved earlier. Here’s the funny part though, the funny part of the recollections at the Dublin Grille that night neither of us could remember many of the slow songs that got us at least to the shoreline, couldn’t remember the fast ones either that set us up. Hence the frenzied search for those oldies but goodies which as we discovered uncorked plenty of ancient memories, some funny, some sentimental, some creating hot visions of blundering sexual experiences, especially the latter.                 

Believe me at the height of my frenzied I searched through flea market album bins like some ghoul out a Larry McMurtry Cadillac Jack novel. I went up into god forsaken, and maybe worst, dusty, musty, crusty attics (people really should throw out or recycle that stuff moldering away up there but that is a screed for another day) in the hopes that some errant 1950s teenager had left his or her markings and Mother was too sentimental to toss the damn things out (although at the time back in the day there was civil war in many households over permission to have such “devil’s music” in the house, including my own prim and proper poor as church mice Catholic home where my mother took as good coin Father Lally of Sacred Heart Church’s injunction against such sex thought-stirring and thus immoral music or within fifty yards of it, hell, fifty miles). Worst, I went around to old time drugstores (any that were left in the age of Osco and CVS, Doc’s of blessed memory long since gone since his son sold out after Doc’s death since he was not interested in continuing the operation), steamed food diners (Molly’s “up the square” when many an after high school night ended up, ended up after a drunken night’s swilling, bent pizza parlors (Tonio’s still there in name although now run by a couple of Armenian brothers and still at least from what I am told a hangout for the generation of corner boys now about three generation’s after ours), and local mom and pop store (Harry’s now also long gone replaced by a Seven-Eleven after he was busted for his book-making operation which everybody including the cops that wound up busting him used to place their bets on racing days and later any sports event day) hoping that in some back room they had some records left over from the 1950s jukebox days (or even better maybe still had the old jukebox). Yah, I had a jones, a big time rock and roll jones just then. I am better now, thank you. Well, thanks to YouTube and one million other Internet variations that would have saved me much shoe leather, some dough, my health and left my sunny view of previous pre-flea market- attic-pizza parlor human nature intact.

The idea like I said was to get back to our musical roots, the real roots in classic rock not that Father Lally-approved Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Andrews Sisters, Inkspots stuff that was force-fed wafting throughout the house when our parents wanted to listen to the stuff that got them through the Great Depression (always these days meaning the 1930s one, okay) and the big one, World War II. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes, like for example Gene Pitney’s Town Without Pity that I had played endlessly, it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-62, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. (In those earlier days all the sociologists and social commentators were in a lather, when channeling corner-boy society, called indiscrimately juvenile delinquents, about eradicating the scourge of post-war society of the lower depths at least now such talk is named identity- bonding and at least spoken of benignly.) I have already talked elsewhere in depth about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store street corner hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered) hanging from the lips, Coke, big-sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor juke box coin devouring, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. Of course, as well, the drug store soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, naturally, eternally naturally. And the same for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their music, the eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing. Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working-class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them, and if not then now what according to reliable sources, my male grandchildren, the female grandchildren I don’t know about any more than I knew what females did for preparations when I was a kid is basically the same stuff we went through).

Yeah, but see that was all basically innocent indoor stuff. Today I want to talk about the outdoors stuff, the, hell, we are all adults, the sex stuff. And just to show I am not being just another prurient interest dirty old man I would direct your attention to the very, very on point album cover art work from one of those  found classic rock compilations. Picture a guy, young, high school young, blonde, blue-eyed so white, well-fed but with a sharp in shape body and fairly well but casually dressed in short-sleeved shirt (white tee shirt underneath slightly showing a godsend for guys like me who perspired to avoid the funky sweat lines showing through the shirt), black chinos, the girl, a young high school girl, all blonde beehive hair, blue-eyed so white, buxom, wearing a tight cashmere sweater against the night’s possible chills, sitting so skirt of indeterminate tightness but probably tight as was the style then. Sitting, both sitting, in a “boss” (a term of general generational usage meaning the best, the coolest) ’57 Chevy (two-toned, red and white) with some beach as backdrop. Hell, the artist could have taken that scene from any summer late afternoon or early evening around my way. Of course all innocent for public consumption naturally but anybody knew, anybody who had any imagination and knew the reference, knew that that very proper scene would as the night wore on take a very different turn, turn to messed up hair on both sides, and who knows what else would happen to the guy’s pants and the girl’s sweater and skirt before the thing was done.                      

What could be more on point that a guy and his honey (or a gal and her honey if you want to look at it that way in these more female desire friendly days although let’s keep it as “straight” sex) sitting, star-light nighttime sitting, nighttime after that last dance high school opening shot young love sitting, in some early 1950s model convertible (maybe dad’s borrowed, maybe in new-found teen discretionary spending America his, probably the latter from the feel of the scene) in the local lovers’ lane. And one “bashful”, befuddled, “where do we go from here?” guy getting a seemingly innocent kiss from said honey. Nice, right

Sure all that stuff is nice for public consumption but like I said before, we are all adults, and that cutesy eyewash will just not do. So here is my expose. Every town, hamlet, hell, any place that has at least one teen-aged couple had its own local lovers’ lane where more fierce lovin’ went on that I would every have time to tell about, although Billy and Sue to give them names, seemingly appropriate names, will be glad to fill in their friends come Monday morning in the boys’ and girls’ room, the “lav” at school. Markin was the max daddy of all when it came to gathering such information on the infallible teenage night grapevine and because he was trusted by both guys and gals was the “go-to” guy to see if some guy or gal some guy or gal was interested in was “taken.” Also was the guy, and this was of critical importance, the “go-to” guy for what girl was up for “doing the do” since, if you can believe this, girls would tell him stuff like that, would if she was interested in any corner boy at least that was the urban legend among our corner boys.       

Our local lovers’ lane, that stretch of Adamsville Beach at the far end away from families or clam-diggers, as mentioned before happened to also double up during the daytime as a beach, a very public beach. Can you believe that? Wasting all that good natural teenage dreamy night scene on people going swimming, digging for clams or some silly sea animals, sunning themselves, or having some ill-thought out family picnic. Christ, what a scene.

No, a thousand times no, this place was meant for the sun to go down on, a big blazing sun turning fast into the blue-pink night, boy and girl in car (or poverty-bound, not privy to that discretionary spending mentioned above, walked there and are now sitting moony-eyed on the seawall). And all car-bound or wall-bound “watching the submarine races.”

What? Yes, intensely, forthrightly, intelligently watching the submarine races. Oh come on now, you all had your own local expressions for “doin’ the do.” Naturally, if you are from the greatplains night, or rockymountain high, or some Maine dark woods forest this was not possible but doin’ the do was. And what is doin’ the do? Oh well, yes we are all adults but I just remembered this cyberspace thing allows for small, peeking eyes, so I will leave you to figure it out. Or wait until Monday morning in the “lav” and ask grinning Billy and blushing Sue. Know this though that old car radio (or transistor radio, if seawall-bound) was blasting out tunes from some of those records I found in beaten bins, infested attics, and defunct drugstores. Here’s my selection after culling through the stuff for “getting in the mood” songs for last chance last dance purposes and for settling in that back seat in the face of the great white-waved, Atlantic Ocean submarine race night:

There’s A Moon Out Tonight, The Capris (hopefully this was a double-header, the last dance at school and kingdom come mood-setter in that old convertible); Blue Moon, The Marcels (not bad as a runner up to The Capris as everybody starts to get a little swoony); Dedicated To The One I Love; Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, The Shirelles (incredible harmonies, and let me tell you sometime when the kids are not around about my own story of young love when the sun comes up in the morning, yah, the morning, and how I got my very own personal  version of the “will you still love me” question); Runaround Sue, Dion (every boy, oops, young man’s dread a girl always ready to throw you over in a week for the next best thing that comes along, damn); Hats Off To Larry (and you know what were coming off for if what he went on and on about at Monday morning boys’ “lav” roll call was true, or better, half true) Del Shannon; Stand By Me ( a mood setter if there ever was one), Ben E. King (great lyrics); and Daddy’s Home, Shep and The Limelites (good for going home from that gentle beach night after a hard night at the races).

Ah, wasn’t that a time.