***Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- Out In The Jukebox Saturday Night - A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Platters performing the juke-box Saturday night classic, Only You.

CD Review

The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The 50’s: Keep On Rockin’, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988

Recently I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a Time-Life classic rock series that goes under the general title The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered) hanging from the lips, Coke, big sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor jukebox coin devouring, playing some “hot” song for the nth time that night, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. Of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae, natch. And the same for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing.

Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “ inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them). Moreover, I clued you in, and keep this quiet, about sex, or rather I should say doin’ the do in case the kids are around, and about the local “custom” (for any anthropologists present) of ocean-waved Atlantic “watching the submarine races.”

Whee! That’s maybe enough memory lane stuff for a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid messenger feels the need to go back indoors again and take a little different look at that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days. Bowling alleys, drugstores (drugstores with soda fountains- why else would healthy, young, sex-charged high school students go to such an old-timer-got-to-get medicine-for-the-arthritis place. Why indeed, although there are secrets in such places that I will tell you about some other time when I’m not jazzed up to go be-bop juke-boxing around the town.), pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and so on. Basically any place where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.

A lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted your attention as they came in the door. The cover artwork on this compilation shows dreamy girls waiting for their platters (records, okay) to work their way up the mechanism that took them from the stack and laid them out on the player. There is your chance, boy, grab it. Just hanging around the machine with some cashmere-sweater-ed, beehive-haired (or bobbed, kind of), well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days) chatting idly was worth at least a date (or, more often, a telephone number to call). Not after nine at night though or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boy friend. Lucky guy, maybe.

But here is where the real skill came in. Just hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day waiting on a twist (slang for girl in our old working class neighborhood) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking to her friends as she made those selections. Usually the first couple were easy, some old boy friend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next. Then you made your move-“Have you heard Only You. NO! Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you right up. Or some such line. Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and Roller, let’s say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking to … for just a minute, I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc, etc. Oh, jukebox you baby. And guess what. On that self-same jukebox you were very, very likely to hear some of the songs on the compilation on this CD: Here are the stick outs (and a few that worked some of that “magic” mentioned above on tough nights):

Oh Julie, The Crescendos (a great one if you knew, or thought you knew, or wanted to believe that girl at the jukebox’s name was Julie); Lavender Blue, Sammy Turner (good talk song especially on the word play); Sweet Little Rock and Roller, Chuck Berry (discussed above, and worthy of consideration if your tastes ran to those heart-breaking little rock and rollers. I will tell you about the ONE time it came in handy sometime); You Were Mine, The Fireflies; Susie Darlin’, Robin Luke (ditto the Julie thing above); Only You, The Platters (keep this one a secret, okay, unless you really are a sensitive guy).

***Out In The Be-Bop Night-Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-The Ghost Dance-Late 1969

Markin comment:

The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.

Scene Nine: Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- The Ghost Dance-Late 1969

Damn, already I missed Angelica, road-worthy, road-travel easy, easy on the eyes and easy getting us a ride Angelica as I traveled down Interstate 80 onto the great prairie Mid-American hitchhike road after we parted at the Omaha bus station, she heading home East, at least Indiana east from Nebraska, and I to the savage search for the blue-pink great American West night. And I will tell you true that first ride and every ride after that, every miserable truck stopped or sedan ride, it didn’t matter, made me utter that same oath.

Right then though I was on my first connection ride out of Omaha and as luck would have it this big bruiser, full tattoo armed with snakes, roses and lost loves names, truck driver who was obviously benny-ed, benny-ed to perdition and was talking a blue streak was driving right through to Denver, my next destination. All I wanted was the ride but I knew enough of the road, enough of the truck driver come-on part of it anyway to know that this guy’s blue streak was a small price to pay for such a lucky break. See, some guys, some guys like Denver Slim, who left me off at that long ago (or it seemed like long ago) Steubenville truck stop and Angelica (hey, now I know who to blame, if I ever get my hands on that damn Denver Slim… Ya, ya, what are you going to do, big boy?), wanted to talk man to man. Back and forth like real people, especially as I reminded him of his errant (read: hippie –swaying) son. Other guys are happy for the company so they can, at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour with the engine revved high and where conversation is made almost painful and chock-filled with the “what did you says?”, spout forth on their homespun philosophy and take on this wicked old world. With these guys an occasional “Ya, that’s right,” or a timely “What did you mean by that?” will stand you in good stead and you can nod out into your own thoughts.

And that is exactly where I wanted be, as old Buck (where do they get these names) droned on and on about how the government was doing, or not doing this or that for, or to, the little guy who helped build up, not tear down, the country like him. What Aunt Betty, sweet Neola grandmotherly Aunt Betty, said as she left me off at the Interstate 80 entrance still rings in my ears. I was good for Angelica. Hell, I know I was. Hell, if I had any sense I would admit what I know inside. Angelica was good for me too. But see the times were funny is a way. No way in 1962, or ‘64, or ’66, let’s say, that I would have run into an Angelica. I was strung out, strung out hard on neurotic, long black-haired (although that was optional), kind of skinny (not thin, not slender, skinny, wistfully skinny, I say), bookish, Harvard Square, maybe a poet, kind of girls. If I said beatnik girls, and not free-form, ethereral, butterfly breeze “hippie” girls you’d know what I mean. As a kid I was cranked on pale, hell wan was more like it, dark-haired, hard Irish Catholic girls, and I mean hard Irish Catholic girls with twelve novena books in their hands, and lust in their hearts. So, I swear, when Angelica’s number turned up I was clueless how to take just a plain-spoken, says what she means, means what she says young woman who had dreams (unformed, mainly, but dreams nevertheless) that also were plain-spoken. Ah, I can’t explain it now, and I doubt I ever will. Just say I was stunted, stunned, and smitten, okay and let me listen to old Buck’s drone.
****
I have now put many a mile between me and Omaha and here I am well clear of that prairie fire dream now in sweet winter desert night Arizona not far from some old now run down, crumbling Native American dwellings that keep drawing my attention and I still want to utter that oath, that Angelica oath. Sitting by this night camp fire casting its weird ghost night-like shadows just makes it worst. And old now well-traveled soldiers turned “hippies”, Jack and Mattie, playing their new-found (at least to me) flute and penny whistle music mantra to set the tone.

Hey, I just remembered, sitting here wrapped up in Angelica and ancient primal tribal memories out of the whistling black star-filled night that I haven’t filled you in on where I have been, who I have seen (like John and Mattie), and how I got here from that star-crossed Neola night, at least the past Denver part. Jesus, and here we are only a few hundred miles from the ocean. I can almost smell, smell that algae sea churned smell, almost see the foam-flecked waves turn against the jagged-edged La Jolla rocks and mad, aging surfer boys from another time looking for that perfect wave. Ya, another more innocent time before all hell broke loose on us in America and crushed our innocent youthful dreams in the rice paddies of Asia, our Angelica plain-spoken dreams, but not our capacity to dream. That only makes the Angelica hurt worst as I remember that she had never seen the ocean, the jagged edged, foam-flecked ocean that I went on and on about and I was to be her Neptune on that voyage west to the rim of the world. Well let me get to it, the filling you in part..

After grabbing that straight ride from blue streak talkin’ old Buck I did tell you about, and a short but scary two day delay by a serious snow squall hurricane-wind tumult just before the Rocky Mountain foothills leading into Denver I got there in good order. If I didn’t tell you before, and now that I think about it I didn’t, I was to hook up with my now traveling companions, Jack and Mattie, there for the final trip west to the ocean and serious blue-pink visions. If you don’t remember Jack and Mattie, they are two guys that I picked up on the Massachusetts highways heading south in the days when I had a car this year in the early spring. We had some adventures going south, that I will tell you about another time, before I left them off in Washington, D.C. so they could head west from there. We agreed then to meet up in Denver later in the year where they expected to stay for a while. My last contact with them in late summer had them still there but when I arrived at the communal farm on the outskirts of Denver where they had been staying I was informed that they had gotten nervous about being stuck in the snow-bound Rockies and wanted to head south as fast as they could. They had left a Phoenix address for me to meet them at. I stayed at the commune for a few days to rest up, doing a little of this and that, mostly that, and then headed out myself on what turned to be an uneventful and mercifully short hitchhike road trip to Phoenix to connect with them.

And so here we are making that last push to the coast but not before we investigate these Native American lands that, as it turns out, we all had been interested in ever since our kid days watching cowboys and Indians on the old black and white 1950s small screen television. You know Lone Ranger, Hop-along Cassidy, Roy Rogers and their sidekicks’ fake, distorted, prettified Old West stuff. Stuff where the rich Native American traditions got short shrift.

Earlier today we had been over to Red Rock for an Intertribal celebration, a gathering of what was left of the great, ancient warrior nations that roamed freely here not all that long ago but who are now mere “cigar store” Indian characters to the public eye. The sounds, the whispering shrill canyon sounds and all the others, the sights, the colors radiant as they pulled out all the stops to bring back the old days when they ruled this West, the spirit, ah, the spirit of our own warrior shaman trances are still in our heads. I am still in some shamanic-induced trance from the healing dances, from warrior tom-tom dances, and from the primal scream-like sounds as they drove away the evil spirits that gathered around them (not hard enough to drive the marauding “white devil” who broken their hearts, if not their spirits though). Not only that but we scored some peyote buttons (strictly for religious purposes, as you will see) and they have started to kick in along with the occasional hit from the old bong hash pipe (strictly for medicinal purposes).

So right now in this dark, abyss dark, darker than I ever saw the night sky in the East even though it is star-filled, million star-filled, in this spitting flame-roared campfire throwing shadow night along with tormented pipe-filled dreams of Angelica I am embedded with the ghosts of ten thousand past warrior- kings and their people. And if my ears don’t deceive me, and they don’t, beside Jack’s flute and Mattie’s penny whistle I hear, and hear plainly, the muted gathering war cries of ancient drums summoning paint-faced proud, bedecked warriors to avenge their not so ancient loses, and their sorrows as well.

And after more pipe-fillings that sound got louder, louder so that even Jack and Mattie seem transfixed and begin to play their own instruments louder and stronger to keep pace with the drums. Then, magically, magically it seemed anyway, I swear, I swear on anything holy or unholy, on some sodden forebear grave, on some unborn descendent that off the campfire- reflected red, red sandstone, grey, grey sandstone, beige (beige for lack of better color description), beige sandstone canyon echo walls I see the vague outlines of old proud, feather-bedecked, slash mark-painted Apache warriors beginning, slowly at first, to go into their ghost dance trance that I had heard got them revved up for a fight. Suddenly, we three, we three television-sotted Indian warriors got up and started, slowly at first so we are actually out of synch with the wall action to move to the rhythms of the ghosts. Ay ya, ay ya, ay ya, ay ya,…..until we speed up to catch the real pace. After what seems an eternity we are ready, ready as hell, to go seek revenge for those white injustices.

But just as quickly the now flickering camp fire flame goes out, or goes to ember, the shadow ghost dance warriors are gone and we crumble in exhaustion to the ground. So much for vengeance. We, after regaining some strength, all decide that we had better push on, push on hard, to the ocean. These ancient desert nights, sweet winter desert nights or not, will do us in otherwise. But just for a moment, just for a weak modern moment we, or at least I knew, what it was like for those ancient warriors to seek their own blue-pink great American West night.

***In Honor Of Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday- Now He Belongs To The Ages- Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Abraham Lincoln- “Team Of Rivals: Abraham Lincoln's Political Genuis”- A Book Review

Book Review

Team Of Rivals: Abraham Lincoln's Poltical Genuis, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon &Schuster, New York, 2005

One would think as we celebrate, and rightly so, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday that everything that needs to be said about the man has been written, and written in profusion and to exhaustion. I believe that fact is essentially true, although that has not stopped all and sundry from taking a shot at reformulating, or “uncovering” the “real” Lincoln as the fairly recent attempts to win Lincoln for the “Homintern” (the English poet W.H. Auden’s term, not mine) on the question of his sexual preferences indicates. That said, after reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team Of Rivals it is apparent that there are reformulations and there are reformulations. Here Ms. Goodwin has gathered much material that I have seen in other sources and tells a very interesting and detailed politically-etched story about the way that Abraham Lincoln was able to use his sharply-honed skills to weld together a presidential cabinet that, with few defections and fewer resignations, ran the Unionist side in the American Civil War. For those already familiar with battles, military victories and personalities, and grand strategies this is a very good inside look at the mechanics of how the Union victory was won. If that fight was a close thing at times it was not Lincoln’s lack of ability to stay the course and to push the fight forward that was to blame.

As I mentioned above most of the material used here, including many of the humorous (1860s humorous) anecdotes and parables that Lincoln was famous for, have seen the light of day in other sources, especially in poet and fellow Illinoisan Carl Sandburg’s old time multi-volume study. Where Ms. Goodwin shines is on the information about the fight for the formation of the Republican Party in the 1850s and in chronicling Lincoln’s almost compulsive desire from early on to mark his name in the stars. The struggle to create that new party, and the sketches of the men that were drawn to it, including Lincoln, out of the divergent political tendencies that were coming apart in the tradition Whig and Northern Democratic parties as a result of the pressures of the slavery question represented some of the most interesting parts of the book. The mix and matches of personalities and divergent political backgrounds that came together and formed its core, men like William Seward, Montgomery Blair, and Simon Chase joined by Unionist Democrats and Whigs like Edwin Stanton and Edward Bates, were those that Lincoln had to work with in order to form a coalition, a popular front if you like, that held together under his authority to get the necessary job done.

There has been some recent controversy over the question of Lincoln’s racial views and whether he was, personally, a racist or not. While that question is more germane than the once concerning his sexual preferences I believe that Ms. Goodwin has put paid to that question by her narrative. Clearly Lincoln, as he entered the presidency, had the typical racial views of his times, his white man’s times, no question. In that sense Seward, and more so, Chase held more “advanced” views and were more comfortable with working with blacks. The beauty of Lincoln, as a kicking and screaming late covert to “high” abolitionist positions is that he was able to transcend his own personal views.

In that sense Ms. Goodwin, however, may have underestimated the influence that the “team” had on Lincoln’s racial views, as they meshed together to turn what started as a straight up, although still historically important, struggle for the Union to the more important struggle to break slavery as a reputable modern form of servitude. The ups and downs of that struggle to focus the fight on abolition form the core of this book. If you are not familiar, beyond the general high school or college history books, on the subject of the American Civil War and you are not desperate to know, in detail, every battle, skirmish, and mere looking mean at each other across every picket line, or every military commander, drunk or sober, or much about what was happening politically on the Confederate side once the war started this book is for you. And if you want to have a well written political narrative of the hows and whys of Lincoln’s growing political authority during the Civil War and understand why War Minister Stanton’s statement after his assassination “now he belongs to the ages” rings true you had better read this one.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1960's Night- The Salducci's Pizza Toss Bet

Markin comment:

You all know Frankie, right? Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, map of Ireland, fierce Frankie when necessary, and usually kind Frankie by rough inclination. Ya, Frankie from the old North Adamsville neighborhood. Frankie to the tenement, the cold-water flat tenement, born. Frankie, no moola, no two coins to rub together except by wit or chicanery, poor as a church mouse if there ever was such a thing, a poor church mouse that is. Yes, that Frankie. And, as well, this writer, his faithful scribe chronicling his tales, his regal tales. Said scribe to the public housing flats, hot-water flats, but still flats, born. And poorer even than any old Frankie church mouse. More importantly though, more importantly for this story that I am about to tell you than our respective social class positions, is that Frankie is king, the 1960s king hell king of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, if not then North Adamsville’s finest still the place where we spent many a misbegotten hour, and truth to tell, just plain killed some time when we were down at our heels, or maybe down to our heels.

Sure you know about old Frankie’s royal heritage too. I clued you in before when I wrote about my lost in the struggle for power as I tried to overthrow the king when we entered North Adamsville High in 1960. By wit, chicanery, guile, bribes, threats, physical and mental, and every other form of madness he clawed his way to power after I forgot the first rule of trying to overthrow a king- you have to make sure he is dead. But mainly it was his "style”, he mad-hatter “beat” style , wherefore he attempted to learn, and to impress the girls (and maybe a few guys too), with his arcane knowledge of every oddball fact that anyone would listen to for two minutes. After my defeat we went back and forth about it, he said, reflecting his peculiar twist on his Augustinian-formed Roman Catholicism, it was his god-given right to be king of this particular earthy kingdom but foolish me I tried to justify his reign based on that old power theory (and discredited as least since the 17th century) of the divine right of kings. But enough of theory. Here’s why, when the deal went down, Frankie was king, warts and all.

All this talk about Frankie royal lineage kind of had me remembering a story, a Frankie pizza parlor story. Remind me to tell you about it sometime, about how we used to bet on pizza dough flying. What the heck I have a few minutes I think I will tell you now because it will also be a prime example, maybe better than the one I was originally thinking about, of Frankie’s treacheries that I mentioned before. Now that I think about it again my own temperature is starting to rise. If I see that bastard again I’m going to... Well, let me just tell the story and maybe your sympathetic temperature will rise a bit too.

One summer night, ya, it must have been a summer night because this was the time of year when we had plenty of time on our hands to get a little off-handedly off-hand. In any case it would have had to be between our junior and senior years at old North Adamsville High because we were talking a lot in those days about what we were going to do, or not do, after high school. And it would have had to have been on a Monday or Tuesday summer night at that and we were deflated from a hard weekend of this and that, mainly, Frankie trying to keep the lid on his relationship with his ever lovin’ sweetie, Joanne. Although come to think of it that was a full-time occupation and it could have been any of a hundred nights, summer nights or not. I was also trying to keep a lid on my new sweetie, Lucinda, a sweetie who seemed to be drifting away, or at least in and out on me, mostly out, and mostly because of my legendary no dough status (that and no car, no sweet ride down the boulevard, the beach boulevard so she could impress HER friends, ya it was that kind of relationship). Anyway it's a summer night when we had time on our hands, idle time, devil’s time according to mothers’ wit, if you want to know the truth, because his lordship (although I never actually called him that), Frankie I, out of the blue made me the following proposition. Bet: how high will Tonio flip his pizza dough on his next pass through.

Now this Tonio, as you know already if you have read the story about how Frankie became king of the pizza parlor, and if you don’t you will hear more about him later, is nothing but an ace, numero uno, primo pizza flinger. Here’s a little outline of the contours of his art, although minus the tenderness, the care, the genetic dispositions, and who knows, the secret song or incantation that Tonio brought to the process. I don’t know much about the backroom work, the work of putting all the ingredients together to make the dough, letting the dough sit and rise and then cutting it up into pizza-size portions. I only really know the front of the store part- the part where he takes that cut dough portion in front of him in the preparation area and does his magic. That part started with a gentle sprinkling of flour to take out some of the stickiness of the dough, then a rough and tumble kneading of the dough to take any kinks out, and while taking the kinks out the dough gets flattened, flattened enough to start taking average citizen-recognizable shape as a pizza pie. Sometimes, especially if Frankie put in an order, old Tonio would knead that dough to kingdom come. Now I am no culinary expert, and I wasn’t then, no way, but part of the magic of a good pizza is to knead that dough to kingdom come so if you see some geek doing a perfunctory couple of wimpy knead chops then move on, unless you are desperate or just ravenously hungry.

Beyond the extra knead though the key to the pizza is the thinness of the crust and hence the pizza tosses. And this is where Tonio was a Leonardo-like artist, no, that’s not right, this is where he went into some world, some place we would never know. I can still see, and if you happened to be from old North Adamsville, you probably can still see it too if you patronized the place or stood, waiting for that never-coming Eastern Mass. bus, in front of the big, double-plate glass pizza parlor windows watching in amazement while Tonio tossed that dough about a million times in the air. Artistry, pure and simple.

So you can see now, if you didn’t quite get it before that Frankie’s proposition is nothing but an old gag kind of bet, a bet on where Tonio will throw, high or low. Hey, it’s just a variation on a sports bet, like in football, make the first down or not, pass or rush, and so on, except its pizza tosses, okay. Of course, unlike sports, at least known sports, there are no standards in place so we have to set some rules, naturally. Since its Frankie’s proposition he gets to give the rules a go, and I can veto.

Frankie, though, and sometimes he could do things simple, although that was not his natural inclination; his natural inclination was to be arcane in all things, and not just with girls. Simply Frankie said in his Solomonic manner that passed for wisdom, above or below the sign in back of Tonio’s preparation area, the sign that told the types of pizza sold, their sizes, their cost and what else was offered for those who didn’t want pizza that night.

You know such signs, every pizza palace has them, and other fast eat places too, you have to go to “uptown” eateries for a tabled menu in front of your eyes, and only your eyes, but here’s Tonio’s public offerings. On one side of the sign plain, ordinary, vanilla, no frills pizza, cheap, maybe four or five dollars for a large, small something less, although don’t hold me to the prices fifty years later for christ sakes, no fixings. Just right for “family night”, our family night later, growing up later, earlier in hot-water flats, public housing hot-water flats time, we had just enough money for Spam, not Internet spam, spam meat although that may be an oxymoron and had no father hard-worked cold cash for exotic things like pizza, not a whole one anyway, in our household. And from what Frankie told me his too.

Later , when we had a little more money and could “splurge” for an occasional take-out, no home delivery in those days, when ma didn’t feel like cooking, or it’s too hot, or something and to avoid civil wars, the bloody brother against brother kind, plain, ordinary vanilla pizza is like manna from heaven for mama, although nobody really wants it and you just feel bloated after eating your share (and maybe the crust from someone who doesn’t like crust, or maybe you traded for it); or, plain, by the slice, out of the oven (or more likely oven-re-heated after open air sitting on some aluminum special pizza plate for who knows how long) the only way you could get it after school with a tonic (also known as soda for you old days non-New Englanders and progeny), usually a root beer, a Hires root beer to wash away the in-school blahs, especially the in-school cafeteria blahs.

Or how about plump Italian sausage, Tonio thickly-sliced, or spicy-side thinly-sliced pepperoni later when you had a couple of bucks handy to buy your own, and to share with your fellows (those fellows, hopefully, including girls, always hopefully, including girls) and finally got out from under family plain and, on those lucky occasions, and they were lucky like from heaven, when girl-dated you could show your stuff, your cool, manly stuff, and divide, divide, if you can believe that, the pizza half one, half the other fixing, glory be; onion or anchovies, oh no, the kiss of death, no way if you had the least hope for a decent night and worst, the nightmarish worst, when your date ordered her portion with either of these, although maybe, just maybe once or twice, it saved you from having to do more than a peck of a kiss when your date turned out not to be the dream vision you had hoped for; hams, green peppers, mushrooms, hamburg, and other oddball toppings I will not even discuss because such desecration of Tonio’s pizza, except, maybe extra cheese, such Americanized desecration , should have been declared illegal under some international law, no question; or, except, maybe again, if you had plenty of dough, had a had a few drinks, for your gourmet delight that one pig-pile hunger beyond hunger night when all the fixings went onto the thing. Whoa. Surely you would not find on Tonio’s blessed sign this modern thing, this Brussels sprouts, broccoli, alfalfa sprouts, wheat germ, whole wheat, soy, sea salt, himalaya salt, canola oil, whole food, pseudo-pizza not fit for manly (or womanly) consumption, no, not in those high cholesterol, high-blood pressure, eat today for tomorrow you may die days.

On the other side of the sign, although I will not rhapsodize about Tonio’s mastery of the submarine sandwich art (also known as heroes and about seventy-six other names depending on where you grew up, what neighborhood you grew up in, and who got there first, who, non-Puritan, got there first that is) are the descriptions of the various sandwich combinations (all come with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, the outlawed onions, various condiment spreads as desired along with a bag of potato chips so I won’t go into all that); cold cuts, basically bologna and cheese, maybe a little salami, no way, no way in hell am I putting dough up for what ma prepared and I had for lunch whenever I couldn’t put two nickels together to get the school lunch, and the school lunch I already described as causing me to run to Tonio’s for a sweet reason portion of pizza by the slice just to kill the taste, no way is right; tuna fish, no way again for a different reason though, a Roman Catholic Friday holy, holy tuna fish reason besides grandma, high Roman Catholic saint grandma, had that tuna fish salad with a splash of mayo on oatmeal bread thing down to a science, ya, grandma no way I would betray you like that; roast beef, what are you kidding; meatballs (in that grand pizza sauce); sausage, with or without green peppers, steak and cheese and so on. The sign, in all it beatified Tonio misspelled glory. 

“Okay,” I said, that sign part seemed reasonable under the circumstances (that’s how Frankie put it, I’m just repeating his rationalization), except that never having made such a bet before I asked to witness a few Tonio flips first. “Deal,” said Frankie. Now my idea here, and I hope you follow me on this because it is not every day that you get to know how my mind works, or how it works different from star king Frankie, but it is not every day that you hear about a proposition based on high or low pizza tosses and there may be something of an art to it that I, or you, were not aware of. See, I am thinking, as many times as I have watched old saintly Tonio, just like everybody else, flip that dough to the heavens I never really thought about where it was heading, except those rare occasions when one hit the ceiling and stuck there. So maybe there is some kind of regular pattern to the thing. Like I say, I had seen Tonio flip dough more than my fair share of teenage life pizzas but, you know, never really noticed anything about it, kind of like the weather. As it turned out there was apparently no rhyme or reason to Tonio’s tosses just the quantity (that was the secret to that good pizza crust, not the height of the throw), so after a few minutes I said "Bet." And bet is, high or low, my call, for a quarter a call (I have visions of filling that old jukebox with my “winnings” because a new Dylan song just came in that I am crazy to play about a zillion times, Mr. Tambourine Man). We are off.

I admit that I did pretty well for while that night and maybe was up a buck, and some change, at the end of the night. Frankie paid up, as Frankie always paid up, and such pay up without a squawk was a point of honor between us (and not just Frankie and me either, every righteous guy was the same way, or else), cash left on the table. I was feeling pretty good ‘cause I just beat the king of the hill at something, and that something was his own game. I rested comfortable on my laurels. Rested comfortably that is until a couple of nights later when we, as usual, were sitting in the Frankie-reserved seats (reserved that is unless there were real paying customers who wanted to eat their pizza in-house and then we, more or less, were given the bum’s rush) when Frankie said “Bet.” And the minute he said that I knew, I knew for certain, that we are once again betting on pizza tosses because when it came right down to it I knew, and I knew for certain, that Frankie’s defeat a few nights before did not sit well with him.

Now here is where things got tricky, though. Tonio, good old good luck charm Tonio, was nowhere in sight. He didn’t work every night and he was probably with his honey, and for an older dame she was a honey, dark hair, good shape, great, dark laughing eyes, and a melting smile. I could see, even then, where her charms beat out, even for ace pizza flinger Tonio, tossing foolish old pizza dough in the air for some kids with time on their hands, no dough, teenage boys, Irish teenage boys to boot. However, Sammy, North Adamsville High Class of ’62 (maybe, at least that is when he was suppose to graduate, according to Frankie, one of whose older brothers graduated that year), and Tonio’s pizza protégé is on duty. Since we already know the ropes on this thing I didn’t even bother to check and see if Sammy’s style was different from Tonio’s. Heck, it was all random, right?

This night we flipped for first call. Frankie won the coin toss. Not a good sign, maybe. I, however, like the previous time, started out quickly with a good run and began to believe that, like at Skeet ball (some call it Skee-ball but they are both the same–roll balls up a targeted area to win Kewpie dolls, feathery things, or a goof key chain for your sweetie) down at the amusement park, I had a knack for this. Anyway I was ahead about a buck or so. All of a sudden my “luck” went south. Without boring you with the epic pizza toss details I could not hit one right for the rest of the night. The long and short of it was that I was down about four dollars, cash on the table. Now Frankie’s cash on the table. No question. At that moment I was feeling about three feet tall and about eight feet under because nowadays cheap, no meaning four dollars, then was date money, Lucinda, fading Lucinda, date money. This was probably fatal, although strictly speaking that is another story and I will not get into the Lucinda details, because when I think about it now that was just a passing thing, and you know about passing things- what about it.

What is part of the story though, and the now still temperature-rising part of the story, is how Frankie, Frankie, king of the pizza parlor night, Frankie of a bunch of kindnesses, and of a bunch of treacheries, here treachery, zonked me on this betting scandal. What I didn’t know then was that I was set up, set up hard and fast, with no remorse by one Francis Xavier Riley, to the tenements, the cold-water flat tenements, born and his cohort Sammy. It seems that Sammy owed Frankie for something, something never fully disclosed by either party, and the pay-off by Sammy to make him well was to “fix” the pizza tosses that night I just told you about, the night of the golden fleecing. Every time I said "high" Sammy, taking his coded signal from Frankie, went low and so forth. Can you believe a “king”, even a king of a backwater pizza parlor, would stoop so low?

Here is the really heinous part though, and keep my previous reference to fading Lucinda in mind when you read this. Frankie, sore-loser Frankie, not only didn’t like to lose but was also low on dough (a constant problem for both of us, and which consumed far more than enough of our time and energy than was necessary in a just, Frankie-friendly world) for his big Saturday night drive-in movie-car borrowed from his older brother, big-man-around- town date with one of his side sweeties (Joanne, his regular sweetie was out of town with her parents on vacation). That part, that unfaithful to Joanne part I didn’t care about because, once again truth to tell, old ever lovin’ sweetie Joanne and I did not get along for more reasons than you have to know. The part that burned me, and still burns me, is that I was naturally the fall-guy for some frail (girl in pizza parlor parlance time) caper he was off on. Now I have mentioned that when we totaled up the score the Frankie kindnesses were way ahead of the Frankie treacheries, no question, which was why we were friends. Still, right this minute, right this 2010 minute, I’m ready to go up to his swanky downtown law office (where the men’s bathroom is larger than his whole youth time old cold- water flat tenement) and demand that four dollars back, plus interest. You know I am right on this one.

***Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- The Teen Queens’ “Eddie My Love” (1956) - A 55th Anniversary, Of Sorts- Billie's 1956 View

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Teen Queens performing the classic Eddie My Love.

Markin comment:

This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard working, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived, and what we listened to back in the day.


EDDIE MY LOVE
(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)
The Teen Queens - 1956
The Fontane Sisters - 1956
The Chordettes - 1956
Dee Dee Sharp - 1962

Also recorded by:
Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.

Eddie, my love, I love you so
How I wanted for you, you'll never know
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait to long

Eddie, please write me one line
Tell me your love is still only mine
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

(Transcribed from the Teen Queens
recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)

**********
Billie here, William James Bradley, if you don’t know already. To “the projects” born but you don’t need, or at least you don’t absolutely need to know that is get the drift of what I have to say here. I am here to give my take on this latest song, Eddie My Love, that just came out and that the girls are going weepy over, and the guys are saying “that a boy, Eddie.” At least that’s what the wiser guys I hang around with say when they hear the record played on the radio. Except, of course, sappy Markin, Peter Paul Markin if you don’t know, my best friend at Adamsville Elementary School (or maybe best friend, he has never told me one way or the other what it was with us from his end, but sappy as he may be at times, he is my best friend from my end) who thinks Eddie should be righteous and return to his forlorn girl. What is he kidding? Eddie keep moving wherever you are, and keep moving fast. And please, please don’t go within a mile of a post office.

Why do I hold such an opinion and what gives me the “authority”, some authority like the pope of rock and roll, or something to speak this way? Well, first off, unlike Markin, I take my rock and roll, my rock and roll lyrics seriously, hell, I have written some myself. Also I have some talent in this field and have won vocal competitions (and dance ones too), although there have been a few more I should have won. Ya, should have won but the fix was in, the fix was in big time, against project kids getting a break, a chance to make something out of the jailbreak music we are hearing. I’ll tell you about those bad breaks some time but now I am hot to straighten everybody out, even Markin, on this one. Markin pays attention to, too much attention to, the “social” end of the question, looking for some kind of teenage justice in this wicked old world when there ain’t none. Get it, Peter Paul.

Look, I can read between the lines of this story just like anybody else, any pre-teenage or teenage anybody else. Parents, my parents, Markin’s parents, Ozzie and Harriet, whoever, couldn’t get it if you gave them that Rosetta Stone they discovered to help them with old time Egyptian writing and that we read about in Mr. Barry’s class. No way. But Billie, William James Bradley, who will not let any grass grow beneath his feet is wise, very wise to the scene. Hey, it’s not rocket stuff, it’s simply the age old summer fling thing. Eddie, handsome, money in his pocket, super-charged car under his feet, gas in the tank, and an attitude that he is king of the known world, the known teenage world, sees this cutie, makes his play, they have some fun, some teenage version of adult fun for any not wise kids, school days come and he is off to his next cutie. Ya, he said he would write and, personally, I think that was a mistake. A quick “I'll be in touch,” and kiss on the cheek would have been smarter.

See Eddie, love ‘em and leave ‘em Eddie, is really a hero. What did this teen queen think was going to happen when Eddie blew into town? Love, marriage and here comes the teen queen with a baby carriage. Please. Eddie, Eddie your love ain’t got no time for that. And that old threatening to do herself in or whatever she means by “my next day might be my last,” is the oldest trick in the book, the oldest snare a guy trick that is. Ya, maybe someday when things are better, and guys don’t have that itch, that itch to move on, and maybe can settle down in one place and have plenty of dough, plenty of ambition, and the old wicked world starts taking care of its own better. Whoa… wait a minute, I’m starting to sound like Markin. Jesus, no. Eddie just keep moving, okay. Billie’s pulling for you.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When Frankie Roamed The Teenage Dance Clubs

Markin comment:

In a recent series of entries that I did in the form of scenes, scenes from the hitchhike road in search of the great American West night in the late 1960s, a time later than the time of Frankie’s early 1960s old working class neighborhood kingly time, I noted that I had about a thousand truck stop diner stories left over from those hitchhike road days. On reflection though, I realized that I really had about three diner stories with many variations. Not so with Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, stories. I have got a thousand of them, or so it seems, all different. Hey, you already, if you have been attentive to this space, know a few Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, stories (okay, I will stop, or try to stop, using that full designation and just call him plain, old, ordinary, vanilla Frankie just like everybody else alright).

Ya, you already know the Frankie (see I told you I could do it) story about how he lazily spent a hot late August 1960 summer before entering high school day working his way up the streets of the old neighborhood to get some potato salad (and other stuff too) for his family’s Labor Day picnic. And he got a cameo appearance in the tear jerk heart-rendering saga of my first day of high school in that same year where I, vicariously, attempted to overthrow his lordship with the nubiles (girls, for those not from the old neighborhood, although there were plenty of other terms of art to designate the fair sex then, most of them getting their start in local teenage social usage from Frankie’s mouth). That effort, that attempt at copping his “style” like many things associated with one-of-a-kind Frankie proved unsuccessful as it turned out.

But as this story will demonstrate old Frankie, Frankie from (oops, I forgot I ‘m not doing that anymore) was not only the king of the old neighborhood but roamed, or tried to roam far afield, especially if the word "girls" was involved. So this will be another Frankie and the girls story, at least part way. The milieu though will be somewhat different for those who only know Frankie in his usual haunts; the pizza parlor, the drugstore, or hanging around the corner of one of several mom and pop variety stores. This time, in a way, Frankie goes “uptown.”

One of the other places where Frankie tried to extend his kingdom was the local teen night club (although we did not call it that then but that was the idea). You know a place where kids, late teenage kids, could dance to live music from some cover band and drink…sodas. Ya, the idea was to keep kids off the streets, out of the cars, and under a watchful eye on Friday and Saturday night so they didn’t drink booze and get all crazy and messed up. Of course, anyone with half a wit, if they wanted to get booze, had no real problem as long as there was some desperate wino to make your purchase for you. But, at least, the idea was no booze on the premises and that was pretty much the case.

Now this club, this teen dance club, that Frankie has his eye on, was the primo such place around. Sure, there were other smaller venues, but that was kids stuff, young teen stuff, no account, no matter stuff. If you had dreams of kingship then the Sea ‘n’ Surf Club was the place to place your throne. But, see, this club was several miles away from the old neighborhood, and that meant several miles of other guys who were kings of their neighborhoods, but also several miles of all kinds of different girls that Frankie (and I, as well) had no clue about. And the beauty of this, the real beauty for Frankie was that it was doable. Why? Old ball and chain girlfriend forever, girlfriend, main squeeze, Joanne was not allowed by her parents to go to teen dance clubs, period. And period meant period, to old Frankie’s smiles.

This club had the added advantage, as its name gives away, of being by the sea, by the ocean so that if the dancing got too hot, or it was too crowded, or if you got lucky then there you were handy to a ready-made romantic venue. Now American Great Plains prairie guys and dolls may not appreciate this convenience (although I am sure you had your own local lovers’ lane "hot spots") but to have the sea as a companion in the great boy meets girl struggle was pure magic. See, and everybody knew this or found out about it fast enough, if a girl wanted to catch some "fresh air" and agreed to go with you then you were “in like flint” for the night. That also meant though that, when intermission ended, or when the steamed-up couple came up for air that nobody else was suppose to cut in on their scene. This may all sound complicated but, come on now, you were all teens once, and you figured it out easily enough, right? This in any case is what Frankie wanted to be king of. The scene that is.

This club, by the way, this hallowed memory club, could not stand the light of day, although at night it was like the enchanted castle. By day it looked just like another faux Coney Island low-rent carnival, bad trip place ready for the demolition ball ballroom. But the night, oh, the night was all we cared about. And for weeks before Frankie was ready to make his big move the conquest of this place thing, the imagining of it, took on something like the quest for a holy grail.

Finally, Friday finally, summertime Friday night finally, came (he had a date with his ever lovin’ big flame Joanne for Saturday that week) and he was ready to make his move. Let me outline the plan as he told it to me. The idea, if Tommy 40 Winks (I did not make that name up; I don’t have that kind of imagination. That was his nickname, hell, mine, was, for a while, Boyo, go figure), showed up was to make the scene with whatever girl he was dancing with, at least that was the idea. 40 Winks, for lack of a better term was the “king” of the club, although by default because no one had messed with him, or his crowd before. And also he was the “boss” dancer of the universe and the girls were all kind of swoony, or at least, semi-swoony over his moves, especially when he got his Elvis thing going. Ya, now that I think about it he did seem to make the girls sweat. Sure, 40 Winks was going to be there. See Frankie was going to upset that fresh air “rule” and since nobody, not even me, ever accused Frankie of not being in love with himself, his “projects”, or his “style” he figured it was a cinch. Now, forty or fifty years later I can see where there was a certain flaw in the plan.

Why? Well, let me cut to the chase here, a little anyway. When we showed up at the club everything was fine. Everybody kind of conceded that this was “neutral” ground, at least inside, and the management of the place had employed more college football player-types than one could shake a stick at to enforce the peace. So any “turf” wars will have to be fought out on the dance floor, or elsewhere. Tonight the music, live music from a local cover band that is trying to move up in the pecking order is “hot”. They get the joint, 40 Winks, and old Frankie fired up right away with a big sound version of Good Rockin’ Tonight. Now 40 Winks eyes this one sneeze (girl, blame Frankie) from our school, although none of us, including Frankie, had even come with fifty paces of her, here or in school. Her name was Anna, but let’s just call her a Grace Kelley-wannabe, or could-be or something, and be done with it. In any case when she had finished dancing that Good Rockin’ Tonight with some goof (meaning non-Frankie friend or associate) the temperature in the place went up a collective bunch of degrees. Even I was thinking of getting closer than 50 paces from her. Okay this is going to be the prize, boys

40 Winks and Frankie both approach Ms. Wonderful for the next dance (and, hopefully, for the full dance card), a slow one it seems from the way the band is tuning up. Ya, it is, The Platters, Stand By Me. 40 Winks gets the nod. Oh, boy. First round 40 Winks. They start dancing and other couples are giving them some room because they are putting on something of a show now. I don’t tell Frankie this but he, his plans, and his crown are doomed. His look kind of says the same thing. But here is where you can never tell about Frankie. After that dance he goes back for another ask. Again, no go. And no go all the way to intermission.

Christ, Francis Xavier Riley, purebred Irish man is red, red as a Dublin rose. He is done for, especially as this national treasure of a girl takes the air, the fresh air with 40 Winks. And makes a big deal out of it in front of half the couples attending, and more importantly, in front of Frankie. Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood but not of the wide teen kingdom. For one of the few times in our middle school and high school careers together I saw Frankie throw in the towel. It wasn’t pretty. He didn’t show up at that club for a long time afterward, and I don’t blame him.

But here is where life, teenage life is funny sometimes. My brother, my home’s, my be-bop buddy Frankie was set up, and set up bad. How? Well, Anna, old sweet Grace Kelley wannabe Anna (and now that I think about could be), actually was smitten, or whatever you want to call it, by Frankie from seeing him around school. Yes, Frankie. But, and this is the way Frankie told me the story some time later after the event, Anna and firebrand Joanne, sweet Frankie girlfriend Joanne, had classes together and, moreover, were related to each other distantly like a lot of kids were related to each other in the old neighborhood. Anna knew that Frankie was Joanne’s honey so they talked it out and Anna passed on old Frankie. But, see, Joanne got wind of Frankie’s no Joanne teen dance club scheme and she and Anna patched this deal up to keep Frankie out of harm’s way. Women!

***Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Cold War Night- Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer Is On The Case- “Kiss Me Deadly”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Kiss Me Deadly.

DVD Review

Kiss Me Deadly, Ralph Meeker, Cloris Leachman, directed by Robert Aldrich, 1955

Sure I‘m a film noir buff. And sure I like my film detectives that way as well, Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, Phillip Marlowe and so on. Normally Mickey Spillane and his 1950s-style detective, Mike Hammer, would no hit my radar though. Believe me I did, however, spent many a misbegotten hour reading Spillane’s detective stories, maybe as much for cover art work that ran to provocative bosomy, half-clothed femme fatale dames in distress as for the insipid story line that ran heavily to Mike’s anti-communist warrior pose ready to smash heads at the drop of a hat, and grab an off-hand kiss from every dame he ran into along the way. Aside for the question of that scurrilous (now scurrilous, maybe) cover art that is better left for another day my tastes in detectives were more to the “highbrow” Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet and their more knight-errant-worthy story lines, and a little more reserve in the fist department, although for a damsel in distress they were ready to duke it out with anyone, and gladly.

That said, now along comes this classic 1950s film noir Mike Hammer story line and I was hooked, well, maybe not hooked so much as intrigued by it. Moreover, director Richard Aldrich seems to have had a flair for the noir film, from those black and white filmed shots of streets scenes in the seamy Los Angeles be-bop night (and day too, come to think of it), to an incredible be-bop jazz bar scene, complete with “torch” singer where after the lost of a friend Mike gets plastered (drunk), to the endless line-up of high end “golden age of the automobile” cars on display. Of course there is the normal bevy (maybe two bevies, I didn’t count) of alluring, mysterious women just waiting to fall into Mike’s arms when he comes within fifty paces of them, and he is, as usual, ready to put on his white knight uniform when he senses that something in evil in the world, and he most definitely is willing to thumb his nose as the governmental authorities who are always just a step, or seven, behind the flow of the action. But most of that is all in a day’s work for a noir detective. What makes this one stick out is the doom’s day plot.

Of course, the 1950s was not only about the rise of the “beats” and of teen alienation and angst-driven rock and roll but the heart of the international Cold War, a scary time no question, where if things had taken a half-twist a different way. Well, who knows, but it was not going to be pretty. And part of that Cold War, a central part, was the presence of the “bomb”, and for those who are too young to remember that was nothing but the atomic and hydrogen bombs that could, at any non-be-bop minute, blow the planet away.

And it is that threat that underlines old Mickey Spillane’s tale. See, with that kind of threat, but also the power potential , private parties, evil private parties could think of all kinds of nasty ways to wreak havoc on the world. If only they could get just a little of that bomb power. And that lust, that seemingly eternal lust, for power by certain of our fellows is where we are heading. See, someone privy to the atomic secrets had a little pot of the stuff ready for the highest bidder. And the highest bidder, so to speak, also happens to be a guy with plenty of dough to buy a ton of modern art (and a fondness for classic quotes). I knew there was something funny about those modern art collecting guys. Didn’t you?

And all it takes to spoil that nefarious plan is one Mike Hammer. Now, and here is the beauty of the Spillane method, this is not for governmental agents to handle, as one would think in trusting 1950s America, although they are hot on the trail but one threadworn detective. Threadworn? Yes, threadworm. See Mike is nothing but a low-rent, dirt-peddling divorce work detective (in the days when such dirt was necessary to get that desperate divorce), working this racket with his girl Friday (and lure), Velda. But see maybe Mike just fell on hard times and needed some dough (although his car, office set-up, digs… and fetching Velda belie that). But once Mike gets on the case, and only when he knows in his gut that something is wrong and he has that feeling here, then they are no limits. He faces off the mob (naturally, if there is something evil to broker they are in on it), half-mad women (one that he picked up on the hitchhike road, kind of, and her roommate) and that relentless modern art collector before he is through. I could go on but, really, this is one you have to see. And add to your list of film noir be-bop nights.