When The World Imitated Elvis, Circa 1956

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

Nobody in the whole wide 1956 Western world wanted to be the be-bop max daddy king hell king of rock and roll more than Billie Bradley (not Billy, not regular old ordinary vanilla Billy, or some goat Billy. Not if you didn’t want a fight about it after your first passed-by indiscretion , and believe me you didn’t, no unless you wanted about ten generations of fury and of unhealed hurts compacted in one twelve year old boy with a set of brass knuckles in your face). Well, nobody wanted it more except maybe the king himself, Elvis, a guy who had had his own share of stored furies and unhealed hurts of an indeterminate number of generations that needed to get out of the bottle and was as fame-hungry beneath the volcano surface as any person alive, but Billie was a close second. And maybe, forget about talent and opportunity for a minute, for pure hunger, for pure get out from under the rock hunger, a lot closer to first than second.

What Billie was first at, definitely, and maybe more first than Elvis, who after all had the swivel hips, had the trainable voice, had the genetically-encoded rock rhythm, had the smoldering snarl, had the deep alienation look, and had that that fugitive sex appeal that made the women wet and the guys let their sideburns grow long, was the desire to use whatever musical talents he had (and they were promising) to be the king hell king of the projects where he grew up, the Olde Saco projects (up in Maine, a place they locally called the Acre) to name it but it could have been any such place in the go-go golden age American 1950s. And so whenever Billie (don’t spell it the other way even now, even now when he is long gone from king hell king strivings. Remember what I said about the furies and that set of “nucks”) was not in school, was not humoring his corner boys (including me) with some song or skit down in hang-out back of the elementary school, or was not robbing (“clipping” we called it but robbing was what it was, petty larceny anyway) some uptown Olde Saco merchant of his earthy goods or planning to, he was before the mirror (vanity thy name is Billie or one of thy names is Billie) singing some song but more importantly developing that certain look that was meant to drive the girls wild.

And it worked for a while, a while around the Olde Saco projects for a while, with the local girls (junior division about age twelve or under) who wanted their Elvis moment even if it was once removed. Not that Billie’s look was anything like Elvis’ (in tense moments, Billie fury moments, moments when Elvis got another boost of stardust, maybe the Ed Sullivan Show, to add to his fame Billie would call Elvis’ style pure punk, nothing , nada. All we said was okay Billie, okay). Billie, kind of wiry tough, kind of with a long thin face, and more importantly, with blondish brown hair would had perhaps done better to work off a Bill Haley imitation but the one time I mentioned that to him he exploded (no nucks though) that Bill Haley was yesterday, a has been, a never was, nobody and, maybe with that big sax sound something our parents would listen to. [Billy Haley and his Comets were the jump street in 1955 with their Rock Around The Clock youth anthem.-JLB]

Every time Olde Saco South Elementary School put on a charity talent show, or Saint Sebastian’s ran a church dance with its included talent show between sets during the period from, say, 1956 to 1958 Billie was there. And for several shows running he was the be-bop king hands downs. Beating everybody with his faux renditions ofJailhouse Rock, Hound Dog, Heartbreak Hotel and the like. One time at Saint Sebastian’s when Billie performed, all in black suit (borrowed from a cousin), black shirt, black tie, and white shoes (yah, he did look good that night, looked like the next heavyweight contender that night) the place went wild when he did his rendition of One Night With You. The girls, and not just the twelve year old junior division girls either, hell, maybe not even the twelve years old girls, started storming the stage throwing themselves and whatever they had in their hands at Billie. It was all that he could do for Father Lally, the priest assigned to monitor the church dances, to get order restored and close the hall up for the night after that scene. That Sunday the Monsignor himself, a fierce old fire and brimstone orator from the old school, read from the pulpit that anyone who had been present at the melee had better show up at confession within the week, and be quick about it. At last count about two people showed, and they were not Billie or me. 

Needless to say all through this period the girls would flock around Billie, more so after the San Sebastian episode (the girls from over at the San Sebastian Elementary School and Saint Brigitte’s too started mysteriously showing up at our hang-out) and his “rejects” would wind up with his corner boys (including me). So for all the Olde Saco days and nights of that period, especially those summer nights when for a change of pace Billie would lead us in some doo wop harmony and the girls would, like lemmings to the sea, come gathering around as dusk turned to night we were his biggest promoters. All hail King Billie.

Then one night, one 1958 night, at a church benefit held in the basement of Sainte Brigitte’s Billie’s world came unglued. See he had become something of a “local kid makes good” celebrity by then after winning those local contests. More importantly he had established himself as a girl magnet, girls with dough to buy dreamy guy records, and therefore a prospect in a music world looking for next big thing after Elvis( who had just signed up to do some military service), or maybe by then Jerry Lee. Every record label had scouts out in every nook and cranny to find the next Tupelo honey magic. So Alabaster Records, the big label for new untried and unattached talent, had sent an agent to see Billie do his stuff.

Naturally Billie wanted to impress the agent so he tore into his best current cover, Carl Perkin’s Bopping The Blues. What nobody knew, at least nobody in the audience (except said corner boys), was that his suit, his sweet Billie blue suit, had been quickly made by his mother on the fly from material purchased at some bargain discount joint over on Second Avenue. On the fly in this case meaning that there had been a dispute in the Bradley family about buying Billie a new suit (he already had acquired that San Sebastian black suit as a hand-me-down from his cousin which his father said was good enough) when dough for the rent money was scarce just then A compromise was reached and Mrs. Bradley had purchased the material to make the suit herself. All of this just a couple of days before Billie’s showcase show time. About half way through the performance though first one arm of his suit jacket came flying off and then the other. Needless to say the Alabaster agent wrote Billie off without a murmur.

Here is the funny part. The girls in the audience, those giggling teeny-bopper girls, thought that the arm gag was part of Billie’s act. So for many, many months Billie was followed by an even larger bevy (nice, word, huh) of adoring girls from school and the neighborhood. And we, his loyal corner boys gladly took his “rejects.”

Here is the not funny part though. After than night, after that rejection (the agent had left without a word said to Billie, maybe the unkindest cut of all) something kind of snapped in Billie. I don’t know what it was exactly, call it loss of innocence, project style, although we were already wise to the not having enough dough when others had plenty part. And the breaks in the world breaking to those with some spoon-fed clout part too.

I was the closest of his corner boys to Billie then. The others, sensing some impending disaster or Billie fury busting out, started to move away from his orbit. We would talk for hours about stuff but there was an edge to his dream talk, an edge that hadn’t been there before when we talked about his great big break-through and how he was going to take care of all of us corner boys, and the girls too. Something about the world being fixed a certain way, a certain not Billie way, and it ate at him. He dropped away from his music, from the talent shows and school dances. From that point on the wanna-be gangster began to take over. I stayed with him through part it, through being his look-out man when he was on the “chip,” being his “hold” man when he started doing minor breaking and entering over in plush Ocean City, and, for a minute, when he moved on to more serious stuff. Then I too moved on. The last I heard, and this was a while back, he was doing ten to twenty for armed robbery up at Shawshank. But when William James Bradley, Billie, was in his Elvis moment, yes, when he was in his Elvis moment, he made this whole wide world move.