Let’s talk about the soundtrack of our lives. There are, I am told, people for whom music is just part of the background. These, I believe are the ones who give me the crazy eye when I am bellowing out “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” at a stop light. They don’t seem to understand the importance of playing the drum solo from “Wipe Out” on my steering wheel.
My soul is saturated with words and music. My father was always singing around the house while listening to morning radio or to his hi-fi player. His musical tastes turned toward the music of his teens. He loved big band sounds and I heard the down home banter of Grady Cole on WBT every morning between songs like “In the Mood” and “Mr. Sandman”. Dad’s generation was also partial to songs about being lonely and far away. “I’ll Be Seeing You”, “As Time Goes By”, and “Someone to Watch Over Me” would all bring back memories of the years they had spent in faraway places dreaming of coming home to wives and friends.
I was in the seventh grade when I began listening to my music. It the late ‘50s and Rock-n-Roll and I would grow up together. While my friends and I were the product of post WWII conservative parents, our musical tastes broke away in two directions. Traditional country artists in sparkly cowboy suits gave way to performers like Jerry Lee Lewis whose Rock-a-Billy hit “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On” caught on with 1950’s teens and got the “Great Balls of Fire” rolling. Elvis and Roy Orbison were waiting in the wings.
The best stations playing the latest music for my generation were those who I could only listen to at night after all the “Day Time” stations signed off the air. During my early listening days, certain stations were only allowed to broadcast from sunup to sundown. When they signed off, the airways were clear for the major stations.
In my grandparents’ attic, I came across I an old wooden cabinet vacuum tube radio the size of a microwave. On the face of the box was a thin plastic circle with station numbers on it. By turning a dial, I could listen to the stations fade in and out as I passed their frequencies. There was only AM. FM was not yet in the picture. I would watch the needle on the front of the dial until I heard the unmistakable voice of Cousin Brucie from WABC in New York or Dick Biondi at WLS in Chicago. It was 1959 and they played music by Lloyd Price, the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly.
About Buddy Holly. A good friend, John, told me about waking up one cold February and listening to the song, “You’re Gonna’ Miss Me Early in the Morning”. When the song finished, the DJ delivered the sad news that Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper were killed when a single engine plane crashed in a snow-covered Iowa cornfield. Another friend, P. K., remembers that when the word got around Fort Mill High School, the principal had to announce that they would not cancel school that day.
While Jerry Le Lewis was breaking all the barriers of country music, a performer named Little Richard was raising eyebrows and hell with songs like “Tutti Fruity” and “Good Golly, Miss Molly!” and Chuck Berry was duck-walking across the stage with his own guitar style and songs like “Maybellene” and “Johnny B. Good.” Black artists like Lloyd Price “Lawdy Miss Claudy” and The Coasters “Yakety Yak” sneaked into the mainstream play lists first with humorous songs while groups like the Platters “The Great Pretender” and the Drifters “Save the Last Dance for Me” rose to stardom through great songs and great performances.
By the time I was a freshman at Fort Mill High, the transistor radio made music mobile. Battery powered and about the size of a pack of cigarettes, the transistor, with its telescoping antenna could pick up local stations and play popular hits through its tinny-sounding one-inch speaker. It was a delight. Some came with an earphone. This was still the era of monophonic sound and who could possibly need to listen out of both ears. After basketball practice many of us would wait at the top of the hill for our ride home. Lanny Jennings, a grade ahead of me, had a transistor and I remember the dusky afternoon when I first heard the driving beat and raspy voice of Del Shannon’s “Runaway.” It was then and still is, the song that most reaches whoever I am. Like most of my favorite songs it deals with lost love. I was sort of the crash dummy for break-ups.
During high school, the best venue for what we called Soul (really R&B) was the Grady Cole Center. Named for the early DJ, the center brought in national groups like the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, The Tams and the Drifters. The venue had an open seating area on the floor with a mezzanine circling it. Officially, black concert goers had the floor seating while white fans were to stay in the mezzanine area. It didn’t work that way. Both areas were blended in a very non-eventful way. Sit or stand where you want was the way it was.
When the Beatles invaded America, I was good with it. Their songs were as lightweight as my adolescent brain and as they said on American Bandstand, “You can dance to it.” Never one to miss a chance to impress the girls, I let my hair grow to the style my parents called “Mop Top.” My Marine Corps father could never adjust to long hair and once almost fought a guy who threw out the insult “What can I do for you, young lady?” when I was trying to buy a shirt. He was not quite so protective at home. Every meal might begin by being blessed but it could never pass without the phrase, “Why don’t you cut your hair?”
During my college days, both at the school which let me go and the one which awarded me a diploma, the musical groups invited to perform on campus were usually those who played Beach Music. Since we’re talking about the Carolina beach music, the kind one shags to instead of surfs to, most of the artists were black. I still believe that the sexiest song ever was Barbara Lewis’s “Make Me Your Baby” and I got to hear her at Presbyterian College during my brief but astoundingly unsuccessful year of attendance. That might have been part of the problem…attendance. Well, that and grades.
During my more more successful tenure at St. Andrews College (Now University) I had a roommate who was a pretty fair basketball player and we would occasionally go to the gym and shoot hoops. On one fine Friday, we were invited to join in a pick-up game with the visiting performers, Little Anthony and the Imperials. Anthony has one of the great pop voices of all time but I am proud to say that we were equally matched in the slam dunk competition.
I learned to deal with Chubby Checker whose “Twist” had partners half a floor away dancing with maybe me and maybe not. The Frug and the Swim and the Pony left room for slow dancing and the shag was still an option but when those cheeky Brits, the Beatles, traded their adolescent “She Loves You” kind of music for the directed chaos of Sergeant Pepper, I was confused. The world seemed suddenly awash in psychedelic colors, whale sounds, bell-bottom pants and marijuana while I was still in a khaki colored, bass guitar driven, Jack Daniels purgatory.
I managed to sort of flow between the two systems. OK, I wore flared-leg pants and sometimes a paisley shirt. I learned to like Zeppelin and Hendriks and to embrace (as often as possible) a world of peace and love. I could never quite fit into the world of Woodstock and hippiedom. I couldn’t rock a poncho or love beads and sandals were right out.
As we grow older and the world changes around us, I think we settle back into the styles and music that set our early course. As I type this, Bruce Chanel’s “Hey Baby” is playing on Pandora, I have on Khaki pants and a button-down collar and my hair is a style we will call “Silver Semi-Beatle.”
I think I am done now. Dinner is between 5:00 and 5:30 and so “Bourbon Thirty” is now 4:30. Here’s to you and to a better world. In the meantime, may the songs that you hear bring you memories of the people and places that made you who you are today.
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