Out In The Still Night-Be-Bopping With Decca Records

CD Review

By Zack James

Decca Rock, various artists, Lyceum Records, 1997  

Nowadays with huge media conglomerates running the gamut from old-fashioned fading into the digital night print newspapers to fast forward social media sites it hard to imagine that back in the day, back when what is now called classic rock and roll, the Elvis-Chuck Berry-Jerry Lee –driven day that most of the stuff of legends was produced by small “mom and pop” record companies that were looking for that one Elvis star to take off with. Were crazy to get their produce, their simple-minded 45RPMs to the DJs, the guys, and it was mostly guys on the rock stations, that after Alan Freedman make the profession respectable for a while were the lynchpin to getting that jump start.

Everybody knows, everybody at least who cared about the history of the music that made a generation jump, made the generation that came of age in the hard-bone 1950s, the ones now called baby-boomers, made everybody rock, and roll, in a different way from their forbears, the story of Sun Records, a good example of nothing but a little mom and pop operation except the guy who ran it, the legendary Sam Phillips had a big idea. That idea was to get a white guy who could sing about six different tight assed ways stuff that was coming out of rhythm and blues, gospel, hell, Saturday night juke joint no electricity but plenty of illegal whiskey and sharp knives country blues if it came right down to it, all black-based music that jumped like crazy. Then Elvis came through the door all snarly and swivel-hipped and the rest was easy street for everybody. That is what drove a label like Decca Records which was the primo rhythm and blues operation around and which had some jump cross-over success with white guys like Bill Haley when he went to heaven and blasted Gabriel with big black sound sexy saxs and fast paced rhythm.          

Sun and Decca’s success spread the lust for gold like a prairie fire. That was quick success had been Johnny Blade’s dream, Johnny Ballo, Johnny B., whose little scat operation, Ducca Records out of New Haven, was based on just that idea that drove Sam Phillips to distraction, except wanted Johnny B. wanted the guy to come through the door to be an Italian Stallion, a kindred, or at worst maybe some Connie Francis wannabe. See Johnny came into the record producing game kind of late, got some dough from sources better left unsaid, you know the guys who talk low and funny and have crooked noses so he needed a big hook, needed to have some fishnet to grab some talent and see what shook out. That is when he hit on the idea of running some talent searches around New England, maybe the whole Northeast if things came to that but at least New England. But tiny Ducca Records, which like a lot of operations was mostly about kids crazy to hear themselves on vinyl forking over a few bucks to have a platter produced or maybe if there was some talent maybe a local hit for a week or two until the fickle Italian girls moved on, wasn’t strong enough to draw flies on its own so in the various locations where Johnny Blade wanted to run his show he had to get the local rock station that kids listened to, got their ideas about what was what in rock and what was what in the stuff advertised on those stations as added hooks.

The whole idea was pretty sound if it could get off the ground. Go to a place like Boston, get WMEZ, the giant-sized rock station drawing all the ads from record stores to drive-in restaurants and so grabbing plenty of teen discretionary dollars, on board, have six or seven regional contests with the hook of a final shoot-out in Boston, maybe at the Garden and a record contract and dough, a thousand bucks, pretty good dough then if only walking around money today. Of course to get WMEZ on board, really get Be-Bop Benny the king of Boston DJs on board, Johnny had to grease some palms. Which he eventually did in an operation which to this day is better left unspoken of, and the idea was off.                

This is how it played out in a place like North Adamsville where one of the Boston Regional contests was held. The set-ups were the same in each locale mostly, maybe a little more polish in the bigger towns. Put up plenty of posters announcing the event, have the local small audience radio station announce the thing, have high school kids passing out leaflets at every junior high and high school. Get the Word out in that mysterious but impeccable way teenagers had, probably still do have now that they can go universal with the new technologies, of spreading the news through the grapevine which would be the envy of the CIA and the NSA combined. The event usually was held in a local well-known location school auditorium, or space like that. At North Adamsville about twenty five acts signed up to perform, too many since about twelve worked out better in keeping audience interest for a couple of hours and Johnny B. learned after the Portsmouth fiasco that a little screening of the goofs helped too. At Portsmouth some ass drag queen, some transvestite, tried to get in doing Connie Francis stuff. Christ that was all he needed (today such an act would have its own appeal but that was then and so “Connie” got the boot). There would be an afternoon audition to screen out the bum acts, the guys who couldn’t sing a note, and you would be surprised how many over time filled that category, goofs, guys who stuff on a dare, or maybe to impress some girls, the girls who could sing, sing like nightingales but who were ugly, sorry this is the way it was. Getting down to a dozen Johnny B. found out was pretty easy and those who didn’t made it got free tickets so that is probably what they wanted anyway. It was that last dozen, actually probably the last half dozen which caused the judging panel heartache.

That night the twelve acts, some solo, some various combinations of groups, would go through their paces, most would get a thumbs down and go sit in the audience probably wondering why they didn’t make the cut until the last two standing would duel it out against each other and the judges would crown somebody, give them a fifty dollar honorary prize to get them to Boston and of course that chance at a record contract. The North Adamsville winners were a doo-wop trio of three girls, two Italian girls and a Finnish girl who looked Italian so Johnny was pleased, who did a great cover of He’s So Fine which everybody even guys loved since it was about them, or so they thought when they girls with great stage presence looked in the direction of every guy in the house and pointed their fingers like that guy was the one they were singing about. They beat out a guy who did a pretty good Elvis imitation on Heartbreak Hotel, a little on the heavy side but with great sideburns but by then Elvis was a little yesterday, had died or something was out of the rock mix anyway, and Johnny Blade knew that he wasn’t going to make his pot of gold by sending up guys doing Elvis imitator stuff. Those girls, the Melody Sisters would wind up winning the Boston finals, would have a great hit with their record contract song Blame My Baby and then fade into oblivion, maybe as a lounge act or as housewives, who knows, as one of a group of a million “one-hit” wonders. Johnny Blade, well Johnny’s dream didn’t work out so well. See he got bopped for that pay-off that “payola” to Be-Bop Benny and his Ducca Record label went down in flames. The guys with the crooked noses were not happy. Such was life in the “mom and pop” record business. Decca, well, Decca had Billie Holiday, Bill Haley and the Comets and a stack of others you can hear on this CD compilation when the deal went down. Had their pot of gold, made plenty of dough.