[VA - Nasty Rockabilly (2011) 10C
Laurice Whack
As the belated\u2011by\u2011definition release of an all too willful new Rolling Stones album and the absolutely positively we\u2011mean\u2011it\u2011man last lost Beatles song have arisen to remind us just in case it\u2019s slipped of our failing minds, the \u201860s\u2014a decade now not even dimly recalled by anyone under 60, mind you\u2014remain the historical locus of the music that fans of a certain age still refer to as rock and roll, \u201Crock\u201D for short. But those of us who were so knocked out by an unexpected flood of teen\u2011tailored hit singles that we started glueing ourselves to the radio circa 1956 or so\u2014a radio that labeled everything from doowop to rockabilly rock and roll. Figure today\u2019s cutoff age for onetime members of that brief but epochal musical generation as, oh, 79, hence 12 in 1956 (I\u2019m 81 myself.) This is clearly not a demographic that packs much punch in the what\u2019s\u2011hot department, so that beyond the late Elvis Presley himself its music has pretty much devolved from oldies\u2011but\u2011goodies, if you recognize that bygone cliche, into nostalgic esoterica.
For that reason it\u2019s certain that few under 50 will recognize all the names cited in this week\u2019s Big Lookback and some will be doing well to get down to Fats Domino, who I count as sixth\u2011ranked after Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee, Ray Charles, and barely rock\u2011eligible Johnny Cash (\u201CI Walk the Line\u201D peaked at 17 in 1956, when I sure bought one). This piece of near\u2011scholarship began its life as a presentation at the 2011 EMP Pop Conference, held at UCLA rather than Seattle\u2019s Experience Music Project as usual and bearing the title \u201CCash Rules Everything Around Me: Music and Money.\u201D My presentation was called \u201CBlue Monday: The Class Origins of \u201850s Rock and Roll\u201D and summed up one of the hardest research jobs I\u2019ve ever done, which was basically to find out what the parents of 31 luminaries of \u201850s rock and roll, which was regularly slotted casually as a \u201Cworking\u2011class\u201D music, did for a living. I spent many days at the New York Public Library\u2019s entertainment division near Lincoln Center scanning the then\u2011available history\u2011of\u2011rock textbooks as well as biographies of individual artists that I didn\u2019t have on my own bookshelves.
How I unearthed what history I unearthed I describe in the text. I\u2019m sure if I had a month or so I could update this research. But I don\u2019t\u2014not only is life short, it gets shorter as you pass 80, and as my conclusions stand I think they're accurate, thorough, and interesting, hard work I\u2019m proud to have made something of. Dare I say enjoy? Well, enjoy then.
Assuming it doesn\u2019t tempt anyone to equate musical worth with class origin, there\u2019s a lot to that thesis\u2014but not so much that it tempts Garofalo to downplay more predictable aspects of \u201Ccultural diversity.\u201D The conventional rock\u2011historical categories of race mixing and the teen market have a life of their own for good reason, which is that the many documentable black\u2011white crossovers and youth cultures that preceded the \u201850s were less widespread and momentous then those that have thrived since 1955. Still, questions of class are certainly worth pursuing. And so some research seemed in order.
In Lipsitz\u2019s best\u2011known analysis, first published in 1982 and revamped for Rainbow at Midnight in 1994, the key players are Louis Jordan and Hank Williams, who are pre\u2011rock and roll; the major evidence from the music proper traces back to Little Richard\u2019s 1968 Rolling Stone interview, in which he answers the question \u201CHow did you come to write \u2018Tutti Frutti?\u2019 as follows: \u201COh my God, my God, let me tell the good news! I was working at the Greyhound bus station in Macon, Georgia, oh my Lord, back in 1955 . . . I couldn\u2019t talk back to my boss man. He would bring all these pots for me to wash, and one day I said, \u2018Awap bob a loo bob a wop bam boom, take \u2018em out!\u2019 and that\u2019s what I meant at the time. And so I wrote \u2018Good Golly Miss Molly\u2019 in the kitchen, I wrote \u2018Long Tall Sally\u2019 in that kitchen. . . . So I sent a tape to Specialty and they waited one year before they wrote me back. So I forgot about it, I just kept washing dishes.\u201D
Now, this is a great story, and some of it may well be true\u2014probably the awap bob a loo bop part, possibly the \u201CGood Golly Miss Molly\u201D and \u201CLong Tall Sally\u201D parts. But Little Richard\u2019s 1984 Charles White autobio and David Kirby\u2019s 2009 \u201CTutti Frutti\u201D book establish two things. One, \u201CTutti Frutti\u201D\u2019s actual lyric both preceded 1955, as the gay underground\u2019s nasty ditty about ass\u2011fucking, and postdated it, as Dorothy LaBostrie\u2019s nonsensical ditty about ice cream. Two, Little Richard didn\u2019t just wash dishes while waiting five months, not a year, for Specialty Records to call. For most or all of that period, he was touring the chitlin circuit with his band. I don\u2019t know why Lipsitz ignored these easily ascertainable facts, but the likelihood that they\u2019d complicate a thesis I\u2019d call simplistic must have played a role.
Some of the findings I\u2019m about to sum up are no less porous than that Little Richard quote. Most come from biographies of varying quality, but in a few cases they\u2019re based on unsigned encyclopedia entries and/or unsupported first\u2011person interviews. Nevertheless, I got a bead on a few basic facts about 31 prominent \u201850s rock and rollers: what their parents did for a living, what they themselves worked at besides music, how far they got in school, and whether there were musicians, preachers, or schoolteachers in their families. I investigated no one who didn\u2019t go top 40 pop in the \u201850s, which cost me the Five Royales and late\u2011breaking James Brown; I rejected Fabian\u2011style teen idols as arrivistes, thus losing Neil Sedaka\u2019s strange story, just as my decision to ignore most cover artists cost me Georgia Gibbs\u2019s. Alphabetically, those who made the cut with fairly full info were: Chuck Berry, Pat Boone, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Eddie Cochran, Sam Cooke, Bobby Darin, Bo Diddley, Dion, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Harvey Fuqua of the Moonglows, Carl Gardner of the Coasters, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Little Willie John, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Frankie Lymon, Clyde McPhatter, Ricky Nelson, Johnny Otis, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Dave Somerville of the Diamonds, Ritchie Valens, Gene Vincent, and Jackie Wilson. Included with decent partial info were LaVern Baker, Ben E. King, and Arlene Smith of the Chantels. The holes I most regret are the Platters, the Del\u2011Vikings, and Duane Eddy. I probably should have done Connie Francis.
The nut of my findings is simple: these people grew up poor. Poor. Except for showbiz scion Ricky Nelson and the far more modest Pat Boone, all struggled, some more terribly than others\u2014including showbiz scions the Everly Brothers. There was plenty of poverty in an ad hoc control group of 25 pre\u2011rock performers whose biographies I had on my shelves. But it was less extreme and universal. Rudy Vallee was a Yalie. Crosby and Sinatra came from lower\u2011middle class backgrounds about as comfortable as Boone\u2019s, as did Doris Day. Woody Guthrie created his proletarian image from a downwardly mobile life that was solidly middle\u2011class till he was 10 or so. And though most of the African\u2011Americans were even harder up than their later counterparts, Louis Jordan was the son of a successful traveling entertainer, Bert Williams attended Stanford, and Miles Davis was a dentist\u2019s son. Working\u2011class can be a slippery term. But emphasizing that rock and roll was working\u2011class makes sense.
Two factors raise the music\u2019s poverty quotient. First, the Depression: nine of my sample were born 1930 or before, another 11 by 1935. Second, 12 grew up in the South and six more were born there, 18 compared to just nine total of my pre\u2011rock sample, and those nine pretty much the very poorest\u2014although not Jordan, the only child of a minstrel\u2011show musician. And then recall that working\u2011class can be a slippery term. Only eight of the rock and roll parents ever had industrial jobs, including whatever Harvey Fuqua\u2019s mom did at the paper mill, and half of these were short\u2011term; the only union members on record (though I bet there are others) are preacher\u2011steelworker Charles Cook, a shop steward, and UAW man Mertis John. Other parents\u2019 lines of work included coal miner, log pond worker, railroad worker, soldier, sailor, naval base worker, mason, carpenter, mechanic, hatmaker, baker, cook, maintenance contractor, luncheonette proprietor, retail proprietor,retail clerk, nurse\u2019s aide, truck driver, construction worker, bellboy, domestic, laundress, produce vendor, loader, laborer, groundsman, janitor, cotton picker, shit shoveler. All four preachers did other work. There were five farmers and two bootleggers. At least two did jail time. Pat Boone\u2019s father was a trained architect who settled for contractor. Ike and Margaret Everly were professional musicians with a lot less to show for it than Ozzie Nelson: they never had a radio job that paid 100 bucks a week, and after live radio dried up worked as a barber and a beautician. Dion\u2019s father was a puppeteer of limited renown who never paid his taxes and brought his son to Alexander\u2019s to help cover his shoplifting. Only the consciously leftwing Johnny Otis acknowledges any family history of public assistance. But the Presleys lived in subsidized housing, Johnny Cash grew up on a New Deal co\u2011op, Ray Charles studied music at a state home for the blind, and let\u2019s hope Chicagoans LaVern Baker and Bo Diddley scored some welfare, raised as they were by a single mother and a single first cousin once\u2011removed.
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