Rock ‘n’ roll snuck up on me, through a dark backdoor marked Rhythm & Blues, with “race music” inscribed on the doormat. I could only listen to authentic R&B on far-off AM-Radio frequencies, lighting up my darkened bedroom with dangerous, taboo sounds. It was a shadowy, double life I lived – illicit girlie-magazines under my mattress, the devil’s music on my bedside radio and the forbidden ritual of masturbation, followed by prayers of redemption. A mighty fortress was the bedroom bunker of a Fifties boy, a fallout shelter of self-abuse and jungle music.
The Crows’ oh-oh-oh-“Gee” was the first black R&B song I can remember being played on the radio to a white teenage audience. A close second was The Willows’ recording of “Church Bells May Ring” (with the catchy bass-line “hello, hello again” and with a young, unknown Neil Sedaka on “chimes”). Most mainstream disc jockeys were feeding us “cover records.” White boys, The Diamonds, covered “Church Bells May Ring” - thankfully, it’s The Willows’ record we all remember.
We were getting our first taste of musical soul-food in easily-digestible platters served up by pleasant white singers, copied from the black man’s family recipe. All the main ingredients were there, but it lacked the spice, the heat, those stick-to-the-bones secret ingredients – soul and inspiration. I actually saw The Clovers’ green station wagon drive through Hubbard, Ohio one afternoon, but they were just passing through, which is what most black artists did in mid-Fifties America.
Pat Boone and Elvis Presley were the most popular male singers of the Fifties, as opposite as white bucks and blue suede shoes, but each found success as cover artists, copying black singers. Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” was No.1 for eleven weeks, a Jerry Leiber-Mike Stoller song originally recorded four years earlier by “Big Mama” Thornton as a slow-grinding rhythm-and-blues lament. Elvis wisely turned his version into a frenetic, up-tempo ditty, diluted by the Jordanaires’ wop-doo-wop back vocals, a novelty tune masking as rock ‘n’ roll. Elvis adapted black music and gave it his own rockabilly spin. Pat Boone, on the other hand, was a much more blatant plagiarizer, cutting clean-cut versions of down-and-dirty-ditties by Little Richard, Fats Domino and Ivory Joe Hunter.
Georgia Gibbs practically made a career covering the note-for-note arrangements of LaVerne Baker, beating her onto the national charts; then Dorothy Collins would further whitewash the songs on "Your Hit Parade". The feisty Miss Baker felt so violated that she took a $125,000 accident insurance policy naming Miss Gibbs as the sole beneficiary. In a letter to Georgia Gibbs, LaVerne wrote “this policy is to provide for you in the event of my untimely death, of the opportunity of copying my songs and arrangements in the future.” LaVerne signed the letter, “Tra La La and Twiddle Dee Dee, LaVerne Baker.”
Crows
Willows
A brief excerpt from my forthcoming book, SH-BOOM!: At the age of fifteen, I began hosting a Saturday night pop music show, "Rumpus Room" on WKBN and WFMJ-TV in Youngstown Ohio. I began in 1953, playing contemporay artists like Patti Page, Eddie Fisher and the McGuire Sisters. But, out of left-field a new music exploded on the scene, and suddenly I was hosting a rock 'n' roll show, playing Fats Domino, Elvis, the Crew-Cuts and the Everley Brothers. The show was on-the-air each Saturday night 1953 -1957.
WFMJ.
(Above) The first meeting of an unknown Elvis (seated) and Pat Boone (pointing), TV show back-stage in Ohio, early 50s.
(Below) Georgia Gibbs and LaVerne Baker
1954: Rumpus Room cast
I was one of the lucky few in my high school; I actually knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. I had taken advantage of every opportunity that small-town Ohio had to offer. I had produced and hosted a unique and successful television show for four years and it was time to move on. I was itching to get out of Dodge. The itch was in my groin.
