***Out Of The Be-Bop Film Noir Night- The Crime Noir “Kansas City Confidential”

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime film noir, Kansas City Confidential.

DVD Review

Kansas City Confidential, John Payne, Preston Foster, Coleen Gray, Jack Elam, directed by Phillip Karlson, United Artists, 1952

I have said this many times. Sure I am an aficionado of film noir, especially those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammet’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background, and shadowy moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they have classic femme fatales to add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh ya, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good, some not so good. For plot line, and plot interest, the film under review, Kansas City Confidential, is in the former category.

And why shouldn’t it be. One fall guy Joe (fall guys seem always to be named Joe, regular Joes I guess), played here in a understated way by John Payne, a little the worst for wear in post-World War II America, having had a few legal problems of his own, gets caught up in the dragnet after a major heist (over a million dollars, a lot of money then but just pocket change today) of a bank, in of all places Kansas City. Now all of this, aside from the criminal intent and cash reward, has been set-up by a disgruntled, vengeful ex-cop (played by Preston Foster) who masterminds the whole thing. Of course such a major heist then (as now) requires several, um, “associates”, in this case masked associates (for their own and Foster's self-protection against the dreaded “stoolie’ syndrome. Said associates are not anyone you or I would want to hang around with, these guys are strictly losers, especially one grafter extraordinaire, Pete Harris, played to manic perfection by Jack Elam. (The others are perennial bad guys Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand).

Now Joe, as one might expect, takes umbrage, yes, umbrage at having taken a beating from the cops, and also for being set up as the fall guy. So, naturally, as any crime noir hero worth his salt would do, he is going to get to the bottom of this thing come hell or high water. And the rest of the plot line centers of following the clues, and following the sun to sunny Mexico (low film budget faux Mexico, to be sure) to undo the bad guys, and maybe catch a reward. Or at least a stray gringa or senorita. Naturally he does, the gringa part anyway, although she turns out to be mastermind ex-cop’s daughter (law student daughter, by the way, played by Coleen Gray). Other than the inevitable tacky ending ( I won’t spoil your fun by telling what it is) this one moves along nicely, is filled with some nice twists, and is, as usual with black and white noir films great on those shadowy takes which reveal evil in the making. Especially those loser, grifter, chain-smoking Jack Elam takes. Some noirs you watch for the magic camera work, some for the femme fatales that drive the story line, some for the tough guys and their gaff. This one you get for the plot line.

***Out Of The Be-Bop Film Noir Night- The Crime Noir “The Kiss of Death”-

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film noir classic, Kiss of Death.

DVD Review

Kiss of Death, Victor Mature, Coleen Gray, Richard Widmark, directed by Henry Hathaway, 20th Century Fox, 1947

Sure I am an aficionado of film noir, especially those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammet’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background and shadowy moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because, in addition to those attributes mentioned above, they have classic femme fatales to add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh ya, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s) produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good, some not so good. For plot line, and plot interest, the film under review, Kiss of Death, is under that latter category.

But hold on though. Although the plot line is thin, mainly about a middle level career con gone wrong once again who, to save his kids from a fatherless and motherless future (mother having committed suicide), decides to play ball with the law. Thus, chump Nick Bianco (played pretty well by Victor Mature, given what he had to work with) turned stoolie, rat, fink, turncoat and the other ten thousand names for such a wrong gee and the rest of the plot hangs on that idea. Say idea being that it is not good business (and for all I know, maybe, unethical, unethical in the criminal code of conduct, although my own very small youthful experience is that it is "every man for himself") to turn stoolie, especially if the price of “freedom” is to tangle, tango, or whatever with one Tommy Udo. No way, no how, not for anything.

And that is what saves this thing as a crime noir classic, the performance of Richard Widmark as psycho-killer for hire Tommy Udo. Everything about him from minute one says wrong gee, don’t mess. Although, needless to say, Nick will mess (Tommy has threatened his kids and his new honey after all). Yes, although I was only a babe then I will give a retroactive vote to Richard Widmark for that 1947 Oscar he won for best supporting actor. There have been a lot of scary psycho-killers that have come down the pike since then but I would not, and would not advise others, to tangle with this guy. And you would too. Kudos.

***Out In The Be-Bop Night- Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-The High White Note -2007

Markin comment:

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

Scene Eleven: Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- The High White Note-2007

The High White Note, The High White Western Night and The High White Wave Merged
I am a driven man. I am a driven man, imprisoned, six by twelve room driven, but more by a mental six by twelve internal, eternal, infernal almost paternal quest, and that is the only word that fits for the elusive high white note, or the high white something, that I have spent a lifetime searching for. Certainly longer that other search, that more physical search for the blue-pink great American West that disturbed my youth, and beyond, and pushed me through many a long, lonesome highway hitchhike mile. But you know that story already now that you have read the previous scenes.

This one is more wistful, although I have caught a whisper of it here and there along the way. Now it looks like I’m stuck with it to the end, the quest that is. Here I sit, in any case, quarantined, in desolate, high, hard wind-swept, sunless-sea-ed, busted sand-duned, green sea-grass-blown, icy white-capped waved, Atlantic–oceaned, ragged, rugged, jagged Maine-coasted shack of a room getting ready to search, and search hard this time, for that white puff of a thing that keeps disturbing my rest.

I will, for the duration, put up with an ill-lit stove, half broken from generations of use by others, passing strangers, maybe seeking their own high white notes, or high white something. Or, maybe, just passing sweaty, drunken nights in some fore-doomed attempt to avoid oblivion. I will, moreover, put up with that high-pitched, annoying, buzzing refrigerator in back of me that means, at least, a touch of civilization. And the bubbly, perking, hard-hearted coffee-making machine, chipped plates, moldy-cushioned sofa, and this stuffy-aired place in order to make sense of what drove me here once again to place my shoulder against the wind, the whistling wind that signals that it is time to take note, and to seriously take note, of the demands of the quest.

And I came here for a purpose, always a purpose, to leave home and sweet-loved, sweet love. And to get away, to clean a man’s mind from the humdrum, fairwayed, fresh-ponded, sun-walked, run-runned, walk-runned, city-maddened depths. Also while we are on the subject from the technological-driven, cell-phoned, personal computer-strapped like some third hand or second-brained, four-walled nightmare. Nightmare-evading Maine fits the bill just fine, although truth to tell Maine figures, Maine always figures in the white note fight, although it is hardly the only place.

I can almost read your thoughts about my thoughts right now. It goes something like this- here he goes again, you say, on some incensed holy grail trip of the mind, or maybe he is for real, real time, real places but still a trip that would embarrass and shame any self-respecting errant knight of yore, searching for that perfect fair damsel in distress to bring home, or more likely, to carry off, kicking and screaming, to some cozy, stone-faced, thatched-roofed, smoke-filled, forested cottage for two. Or of old mad, maddened, maddening Captain Ahab and his foolish fish, or whatever woe begotten thing that he was really looking for in the Melville deep. Or, maybe, some fiendish, freakish, madman pioneer monkishly doing his own shouldering against the storms, against the snowstorms, against the storms of life of the white-peaked Western trek nights. Ah, the vision of the blue-pink Western sky. I wish you well pioneer brother, wherever you landed.

No, it is not like that at all. This is not some half-baked, half-bright, half-thought out, interior dialogue that I usually get myself tangled up into. Tangled so bad I have to break it up for a while. No, none of that this time. No intellectual gymnastics, no mental tepidity, no squarey circles or circley squares. No this is purely, or almost purely, a memory trip and that seems about right, you know, if you really want to know it has been painful at times, but no way, no way at all, that it is one of those ill-digested whims that you are thinking of. No way.

And, beside that, from the great American West night hitchhike road I have already gone through many pairs of worn-out, worn-soled, worn-heeled, down at the heel shoe leather (now thick-soled, thick-heeled, logo-addled running sneakers); worn-thumbed, back-pack-ladened, some forgotten town destination sign-waving, hitch-hiked mile (that means bumming free rides on the road, the wide American highway, for those too young, or too proper to the know the long gone, way long gone, exotic word that sustained many a hobo, tramp or bum in his (or her) search for the Great American night) through every nowhere, no-name, no wanna know the name, bus-depot-ed, stranger-unfriendly town from here to Mendocino. Moreover, here I have marks, and here you can call it intellectual or spiritual or whatever, from every diesel-trailed, oil-slicked, mud-flatted, white-lined, white-broken-lined, two-laned, no passing , hard-bitten, steam-fooded truck stop from here to Frisco as well. So don’t tell me I haven’t paid my dues.

Or it could have been some smoke-filled, nicotine-plastered walls in some long defunct coffee house (when smoking was de rigueur), or some gin-sweated, smoke-fogged Cambridge bar (in the days when smoking was allowed), listening to some local group trying to make it out of town, one way or another. Or it could have been being chained-smoked cigarette (ditto above) writing like crazy, every soul thing, every non-soul thing, every anti-soul thing after passing on the last call train out to the sticks at that old reliable, just don’t have the eggs scrambled Hayes-Bickford, where we all believed that if you just spent enough nights, enough hot, heavy-aired July nights, or enough snow-bound, frost-bitten January nights (this before Super Bowl suspense filled in January) maybe something major would come out, and maybe fame, big fame too, fame etched by the gods.

Hey, did I tell you how I got here, got here to ocean-winded Maine, this time that is? Did I forget that in my frenzy to tell you what is? Ya, I guess I did forget reading back. Let me tell you of my dreams, or at least the story of my dreams to make it right, okay? One recent, sweat-drenched night I woke up, or was I woken up by one of the cats, in a start. I had a weird old dream, or maybe just a flash of a dream, where I saw, in living, livid color a big old beautiful high white note floating, free and easy, as you might guess on a very stormy high white wave. After than flash, if that is what it was, I could not get back to sleep and lay there, soaking a little and trying to soak off that soaking with an old bedraggled railroad man’s roaring red handkerchief. Or that is at least what I call them ever since I first saw a railroad guy walking down the line when I was a kid, carrying one in the left back pocket of his dirt-stained denims as he uncoupled one train from another, maybe sending it into the great western night.

But we have already been into that great Western night, or what I think is my idea of the great Western night so I don't know how it figures in the meaning of this dream. It is really bothering me, and it should because, lately, I have been thinking and thinking hard about that very subject. The relationship between the two. No, it did not just come out of the blue, come on now, you guys know better than that. Ain’t you read Freud, or his acolytes or renegades, these things all have secret meanings of their own. But no surprise if you think about it. I have been thinking about the high white note for a while, ever since I read poor old, black, gay, exiled against his will, writer James Baldwin and his infernal short story, Sonny’s Blues.

You know I really should make you read the whole thing and then you could come back and get an idea about my dream, or the thought of what my dream was all about. And then the great Western trek into the night, hell in the day time even, would make a great deal more sense. But I am going to let you off the hook this time and just tell you that old “Sonny” is a story about brothers, and I have been thinking about that too lately, although not in the friendly, gee I should get back in touch with my own brother sense, but about brothers who drifted back and forth in each others lives until one day the reality set in hard and hard was that Sonny, a high white note-seeking jazz pianist really got high on the white note. Busted, busted hard, busted back to clean but busted and his brother, would you know that it was his big brother, had to help him put back the pieces, even though the pieces were what made Sonny interesting and alive. That's me, living on old sweet, sweet dream of that white note, and, as well, Angelica-ish-driven memories of that old time blue-pink night before I go.

***Out In The Be-Bop Night- You've Got To Be A Football Hero....

Click on the headline to link to the "Boston.com" high school sports section. Hey, it's the only link that I could think to give some flavor to this post.

Markin comment:

Well, I guess I can trust Frankie after all. Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, my old middle school and high school pal who I have been telling one and all about in a few stories, stories that prove, prove beyond a doubt, that teen angst, teen alienation, teen love, teen whatever is not some recent invention. Hell, even we now celebrated (maybe) baby-boomers had those maladies. I would further argue that we developed them into rarefied art forms, but that is for another time.

What I have on my mind at this time is based on Frankie’s creditable story about his pre- friendship with me (with me, Peter Paul Markin) adventures in the great carnival skeets night. I got kind of nervous at first when he started right off the bat about my take on his attempt to be king of the teen dance club night scene but by the end of his tale I kind of automatically dismissed his early remark as just sour grapes and a rather unreasonable bitterness about a mere passing fancy. The carnival skeets story, well, it was good. Frankie good.

Like I said in the introduction to Frankie’s guest skeets story I have plenty of my own carnival and amusement park stories to tell, with and without Frankie, and will, but today I am, once again, giving my space over to Frankie, Frankie straight up, Frankie in his own voice, and his story about how he fared as a budding young football star. The time of this story is, as least the heart of it, also once again just before I linked up with him in middle school (I didn’t arrive at the school until about mid-school year of seventh grade). As I also mentioned in introducing the skeets story the other stories I have told you about were from later, later, when I was there as an eye witness so I can trust them a little. This one though also seems kind of, well, Frankie-like so let him take responsibility for telling it.

Note: I do not have, other than as sporting propositions (bets, okay), as a fervent youthful follower of the hometown North Adamsville High School football team, and a rooting interest in the results of the “mythical” college football national championships, have much insider information about the nature of the game on the field and so do not really know much about the inside stuff that Frankie will tell you, if he does so. You know things like how to crack block a guy across from you and not get caught by the refs, or what kind of jaw-breaking stuff to have in your hands for the close in-fighting, or talking trash about the mother of the guy across from you to throw him off his game. Kid’s stuff really. If it sounds kind of fishy to you don’t blame me, or if you, can let me know where something is off and set me straight so I can tell Frankie off.

Francis Xavier Riley comment:


Football is serious business, American-style football that is, manly football, not that namby-pamby old sod knee pants and polo shirt soccer stuff everybody else in the world calls football. At least it was serious, American serious, business in my 1950s growing-up cold-water flat in a North Adamsville tenement, Sagamore Street tenement, presided over by one Patrick James Riley, my father, but known far and wide (neighborhood, far and wide, especially Shamrock Grille far and wide) as “Boyo” Riley.

Who knows, I certainly don’t in any case, when I got my first inkling that football was indeed the serious business of the Riley quarters. Maybe a Cold War night pick-up sandlot grade school game where blessed, or half-blessed, maybe, Patrick “Boyo” Riley, cheered bloody murder from the sidelines when my oldest brother, four years older brother, Tommy (known as “Tommy Thunder” in his high school playing days for those who remember that legendary North Adamsville High name) pushed one over the goal-line.

Or, maybe, even back before memory, before football name memory, sitting in the old (now old), wind-swept, uncomfortable-seat Veterans Stadium watching, totally confused and only marginally interested, as North Adamsville duked it out with cross-town arch-rival Adamsville for bragging rights for the year on hallowed Thanksgiving Days. Or, maybe, and more probable than not, hearing the lord Boyo making another of those ill-timed, ill-advised “sneak” (sneak from my mother, blessed mother, not half-blessed, no way, Maude) bets over the hushed telephone on “Fighting Irish” Notre Dame in their ignoble 1950s black night period.

Although I cannot name that first time, for sure, I can name the time of the time of Francis Xavier Riley’s understanding of when he knew he had better make football serious business, or else. Yes, indeed it was that sandlot grade school game, that now inevitable Riley baptism game where that self-same blessed, or half-blessed, maybe, Patrick “Boyo” Riley, cheered bloody murder from the sidelines when my next older brother, two years older brother, Timmy (known as “Timmy the Tiger” in his high school playing days for those who remember that also legendary North Adamsville High name) pushed one over the goal-line. That’s where Boyo laid down the law that come next fall, that 1956 next fall, I would be getting my Riley turn to tear up that sandlot over the younger brothers of those on the field that day.

And I bought into it, bought into it heart and soul, then anyway. So, naturally, dutifully the next fall I was in passed down uniform as one Patrick “Boyo” Riley screamed bloody murder from the sidelines as I performed my Riley baptism in that sandlot grade school game, and pushed my own football over the goal-line. Pushed that football for all it was worth, moaning and groaning, twisting and turning, all one and ten pounds of me, maybe, over some guys like Fallon, McNally, and Hennigan, who would take their own places along side Tommy Thunder and Timmy the Tiger come their Class of 1964 North Adamsville time.

But I have to tell you about the why, seriously. The why of why I bought into the Riley curse. Sure I was just a grade school kid of ten and didn’t know what the hell I wanted, or didn’t want. And, yes, before you all go off and try to psycho-analyze my behavior to kingdom come, I wanted to please Boyo. Or else. That "or else" being a boxing, or six, behind the ears, if you didn’t know. And actually football was fun, for the minute it took anyway, to find “daylight” and run like crazy, unimpeded, on that field toward that goal-line. With Boyo, and his cronies screaming that bloody murder like crazy. (I didn’t know until later, about twenty years later, that the damned fool bet, “sneaky” bet, from my mother, as usual, heavily on these games with said cronies. Jesus.)

But that’s just the obvious stuff. Here’s the boy’s-eye stuff that kept me going for more than a while. Tommy (I won’t use the Thunder part, although Markin would probably beat that nickname to death if he told the story) was beginning to make a name for himself up at the high school, even if it was only the junior varsity at first, when I started to notice how I fit into the Riley scheme of things. See, because Tommy, tough, hard, chip off the old block (of Boyo, naturally), corner boy, hell, king corner boy who else would it be, bulging tee-shirt, swivel-hipped Tommy was getting attention for his football exploits. People, old people, and others would give me the “nod.” You know the nod, right. Nothing said, just a little tip of the neck to signify that you were somebody, or related to somebody that mattered in the North Adamsville universe. And, of course, I gave that same nod back to signify that I knew that they were paying proper respect to the brother of their knight-errant. Ask Markin about it, about the nod. I think, now that I have had a good amount of time to think on it, that half the reason that he hung around me was to bask in that nod glow. Ya, ask him, although on this so-called "pre-markinian” stuff he may be agnostic. The bastard. Whatever else I swear just the nod, and the expectation of the nod, kept me on track for a year, maybe more.

There’s more though, and maybe in today’s hyped-up and pampered football world when serious prospects start getting the royal treatment at about age six this is no big deal. Tommy started to get some serious attention from my father’s cronies (there is no other way to describe this Irish mafia lot, who inhabited that Shamrock Grille like it was a holy sanctuary, and, although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was) and “cadging” an occasion drink, a liquor drink, a fellowship liquor drink from them. Ya, everybody wanted to be around Tommy, just for the rub off. And you know, I still don’t know whether all that crazy attention was good or bad. See, the idea was that they thought that he was going to be picked up by some college team after high school (he really was that good) and they would have inside information on some real bets. Of course, they all secretly or openly, were praying, if they knew how to pray, or remembered, wanted that college to be black night 1950s Notre Dame but I don’t know for a fact that they were all that choosy about what school took him.

Okay enough with the early reasons. They were all right, and sufficient, but as Tommy’s fame grew a little wider (and Timmy started making moves in that same football star direction) all of a sudden (all of a sudden for then girl-shy, but girl-interested, girl mystery charms interested anyway, me) girls, good-looking girls, some from the high school, some from I don’t know where, started showing up at the Sagamore Street cold-water flat. With cars. And with letting Tommy drive those cars. And not some dumpy your father’s car either (if your father had a car, which Boyo, like Markin’s father, usually didn’t which is probably why we both friendship connected on the car issue).

Sure the cars were a draw early, sweet Chevvies, some convertibles, a little of this and that but as I got older just having those girls around when I started to know the what’s up about girls, although there still was plenty of mystery about them, was enough. See, the girls were practically camped out in front of the house. They obviously didn’t notice or care about the crooked, jammed front door that you had to lift just right to get in the front door of the tenement downstairs. Or that paint, that paint that was desperately needed about six years before as the shingles had that weather-beaten look, that weather-beaten look that spoke of careless renters and not owner-occupiers. All I know was that there were horns at all times of the day and night, especially in summer, pushed down by nervous girls of all sizes and shapes, all foxy sizes and shapes that is.

This you will not believe but one time three girls showed up together. I asked them where they were going to meet the other two guys on the date at just to pass the time of day (and, as Tommy’s brother, to see whether they met my secret worthiness test). And one, one honey blond, slender with black Capris on, and, and , well, let’s leave it at that, plus about a hundred pounds of purring sexuality (and who caused me more than one restless night, and a few hundred Hail Marys) said, “Oh no, we’re all going together with just Tommy.” What? And Tommy, Tommy said, well, you know what he said- “What can a man do?” Yes, indeed, what can a man do. So I will give you three guesses about what kept me motivated, football motivated, when the nod thing got old.

And so, as 1958 arrives and “serious” seventh grade organized middle school football was all the talk, you expect me to now go into my own Riley legendary status. Right? And I would, except there isn’t one. See, old rugged, chip off the old block, corner boy tough (and that was tough in those days if you wanted to keep your place in front of some mom and pa variety store) Tommy and old muscle-chiseled Timmy got whatever one Patrick “Boyo” Riley (and sainted Maude) had to give in the way of football genes to his progeny. Tommy weighed in at about 210, a mean football field 210 (heck, that was a corner store hangout, beach shoreline drinking bout complete with hanging girls, off-hand barroom brawl 210 as well) and chiseled Timmy (no drink) at 195. I never weighed more than 120 (or more than 140, wet or dry it seemed, all through high school) once I made my big move at that sandlot debut I told you about before. More than that though, I had the "slows" that need no further description, and was un-coordinated to boot. Finished. So in seventh grade, the autumn “pre-markinian” (watch Peter Paul go crazy over that one like he did when he read my skeets story) seventh grade part, I tried out for the team but didn’t make it. And, funny, the old man, the old man for once did not box ears, or moan and groan about some mystical Fighting Irish lost and continued black night because I was not going to, single-handedly, save their “bloody arses” (a Boyo quote on that last part).

But still, and blame this strictly on Tommy and Timmy not the old man, the half-blessed old man, maybe, and certainly not sainted Ma, Maude, I developed a very, a very healthy, interest in girls, and kept looking for one like that honey blond that I interviewed and told you about before. (Ya, the one that gave me the restless nights, that one.) But, see, that kind of thing takes a whole different skill set. You bet it does. So when I didn’t make the team I started going book nutty. Oh sure I liked books before, and liked to read, especially detective stories (that’s where I got half the names I made up to call twists, oops, girls), but now I started to read everything and anything.

Why? Well, maybe you don’t remember, or maybe you’re just too young to know, but when we were growing up and Markin will back me up on this, christ we talked about it enough, the “beat” thing, or as Markin put it in one of his foolish stories about me the “faux” beat thing, was in high gear. What I noticed, or two things I noticed, was that the “beat” girls I saw in Boston and Cambridge looked kind of foxy (and kind of easy to get to know) and that some of the nubiles (ya, girls, I learned that one from going to the Museum of Fine Arts over there on Huntington Avenue in Boston. They had some neat Egypt stuff there too.) at old North Adamsville Junior High (ya, ya, I know just like Markin that it’s now middle school) were dressing kind of “beat.” So I started dressing (much to Maude’s and Boyo’s displeasure, especially Maude’s) beat-flannel shirt, work boots (couldn’t afford engineer boots that I would have died for), black chino pants (no cuffs, Markin, get it) and my own personal touch, what I was known for from middle school to the end of high school- my midnight sunglasses.

So with my dressing the part and my new found wisdom I started to make my moves, my “faux” beat moves, quietly at first just a little off-hand remark here or there to some girl. Most moved off, offended by something, probably the midnight sunglasses in school. But here is where psychology comes in. If I started saying stuff in a sing-song way, a really be-bop way like you’d see or hear the beat poets do, and I kept at it rather than give up after a few words some of the girls, and here is the beautiful part, some of the best looking, cutest, and brightest girls, the girls that counted started to stay around me. That’s where Markin came in, came to our school, and cashed in on my psychological insights.

And guess who one of the girls was who liked my pitter-patter, although not the first, definitely not the first with her little Catholic rectitude thing (a serious copy of Ma Maude’s little Catholic rectitude thing), my everlovin’ sweetie, my main squeeze (although I wouldn’t dream of calling her that to her face, even in private), my middle school and high one and only, Joanne. Now Markin said this thing was about football so I will see if I can talk him into letting me tell you about the ins and outs of my “courtship” of Joanne another time. Probably not, see, they, Markin and Joanne, didn’t get along, although they were always civil to each other, at least that’s how I remember it. But, maybe, I can tell you something here that will cause him to relent. Markin was sweet, sweet as a girl-shy, off-beat, hell, timid, boy could be, in middle school, on Joanne. And she was sweet on him, at least that’s what I heard. Sweet on him before I worked my be-bop in the 1950s schoolboy beat night on her. After that, strictly no contest.

As for the football. Did I regret not growing big enough to eat a house for lunch and have room to spare and also not having to work overtime to have the girls come ‘round the house like they did with Tommy and Timmy. Well, yes I did, but like Tommy always used to say- “What’s a man to do?’’ Do not get me wrong, I spend many an enjoyable granite-grey autumn Saturday afternoon watching and screaming my head off as the lads, some of those same lads that I ran roughshod over in sandlot grade school, did their business, especially that final victory over arch-rival Adamsville High in November, 1963. The thing is what they did the rest of the week? Those six periods of gym per day must have been exhausting. Those 'study' halls must have really taxed their abilities to the limit. Moreover, being fed the victor's grapes by nubile young women must have atrophied their mental capacities. Meanwhile this long gone daddy, this arcane knowledge-ladened long gone daddy, with Markin in tow, always in tow, be-bopped his way into the 1960s night.

***Out In The Be-Bop Night- The King Of The Skee Ball World

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for skee ball.

Markin comment:

I have plenty of my own carnival and amusement park stories to tell, and will, but today I am giving my space over to Frankie, Frankie straight up, Frankie in his own voice, and his story about how he became a skeet addict. The time of this story is just before I linked up with him in middle school, the old North Adamsville middle school (then called junior high school). Other stories, later stories, I was there as an eye witness
so I can trust them a little this one though seems kind of well Frankie-like so let him take responsibility for telling it.

Francis Xavier Riley comment:

Walking on tiptoes its seemed, it always seemed, I enter Playland not much of a name by today’s hyped-up standards for any fly-by-night operation but then an enchanted castle in my youthful skinny dreams, at least at night when one did not notice the daytime noticeable missing slats on one of the outside walls or the desperately needed painting, maybe two coats, or the angry smell of the refuge left behind by the who spent and lost, like the skimpy winnings were going to change somebody's whole life around.

Ya, I enter, a solemn entry, quietly as I eye (or spy) the doings and adjust my hearing to the ear-splitting sounds of twenty (or more) pinball machines getting plenty of play. Some guy, some older guy, meaning over sixteen and allowed to play the pinball machines that we younger ones could only watch (and wait for our sixteen turn), slender, sleek, slinky girl friend hanging from his side is on a roll at one of the machines, Madame LaRue’s from the look of it. That’s the one with the full-busted, vivacious women (maybe lusty is better, but all of this is mere refection on innocent, or almost innocent dreams) looking back from the point total/games remaining total area (or whatever it is called), urging the player on and on, like they were the prize and not the twenty extra games that you “win” by beating some score. This guy, this guy on a roll is working that old lady of a machine like crazy, this guy is a pro, because he knows just how to sway those hips of his to get his points, and I notice that his sweetie is alternating between looking at that old pinball hitting the banks as it rolls down the chute, and those swaying hips. All this, of course, had only subterranean meaning then, I would get hip to the thing when I had my own sixteen sweetie, and was hoping, hoping against hope that she was checking out my own wobblier swaying hips. Ya, Playland was nothing but sexual tension in the air from the “get-go”, if you knew the signal, that’s what drove rationale guys to place their honor and their manhood on the line for those extra games. But that is later, now it is all chaste, my chaste, and for all I knew we could have been in church.

Sure the place had sex, if you understood that in the widest sense but it also had strictly kids stuff, stuff virile eleven and twelve year old boys like me wouldn’t give the time of day, stuff like stick-a-dime-in-the-machine and “ride” the wild bronco, or donkey, or whatever. Or, get this, put your dimes in the machine to “win” a prize if you can successfully navigate this crane mechanism and hold it long enough to get to the chute that opens up and gives you the prize. Or step on some weight machine and get your fortune ticket, or at another get your name placed on a metal I.D. tag, or farther on get pictures of your favorite cowboy actors, or other favorites by inserting coin in machine. Or, and this is strictly for lamesters, crank out your dough on one of the bubblegum machines. See what I mean, strictly kid's stuff.

Then I mosey (ya, that’s what I did, I moseyed, I swear ) around the back and be-still my heart I am, in fact, in church there are the skeet ball lanes. Now I have been in any number of amusement parks, carnivals, county fairs, and the like, from back-county fair Frieburg, Maine to New York's Coney Island to the California Santa Monica pier, and sometimes it is called skee ball and in other places it is called skeet ball. Hey, they are both the same. At least every place that I have ever been, under either name they have had the same set-up. You don’t know skee ball. Seriously? No, sure you do. It’s kind of like bowling, poor man’s bowling, I guess. You put your dime (at the time) in and down a chute come ten small wooden (sometimes ceramic) balls. That’s the bowling-like part. The lane is tilted up with a bump barrier that leads into a bulls-eye type target area made up of different values (10, 20, 30, 50, obviously the higher the value the harder the shot) and you have to get your hand-held small ball into the hole to score points. The more points the bigger the prize (at some point), although you need very high point totals to win anything beyond gee-gads. What this is, and this is probably the first attraction reason why I fell, and fell hard for the game, was beyond a certain degree of eye-hand coordination you can be an un-coordinated, clumsy, hit your head on everything, stumble on everything kind of boy and still do pretty well.

Ya, sure, that sure-fire, low-level skill idea may have been the first reason, maybe, that I fell for skee ball, but think about it, I was an eleven year old boy and while sex, eleven year old ideas about it anyway, were not uppermost in my mind, and I didn’t then quite have it figured about girls, or rather their about charms overcoming their incessant giggles their scent was in the air. So, maybe, I would have played a few games here and there, and dropped it as too easy, too kid’s stuff, or too boring like me and every other kid did with lots of things, and moved on to, oh, archery, let’s say. But you know there has to be a woman, or really a girl, come into this story somewhere, else why tell the story in the first place. There is plenty about carnivals and amusement parks to describe without bringing women in, right? And certainly no one is going to hold their breathe for more than six seconds over the mysteries of skee ball, straight up. At least I hope that‘s the case.

Okay, to the story. Ya, it was a dame, a dame, well, maybe, a mini-dame let’s say that led me to a life of skees. And it wasn’t intentional, or at least I don’t think so, but reflecting back you never know. See, after a while, whenever we went to Playland, or rather to the beach where Playland was, I bowed out of going on rides, playing the odd-ball carny-type games like putting a quarter down on a number and have some barker spin a wheel for fame and fortune or trying to hit milk bottles to win a prize, or throwing darts at balloons, or, well, you get it, I was single-mindedly devoted to skees. After six or seven times I got good at it, or at least figured out the torque angle on the thing that got you to the bigger point circles in the target area. Ya, ya, I know this is not rocket science or even close but a small victory to an awkward-gaited kid.

Now skee then, and now probably, is not exactly a game that world-beating pinball wizards then (or video game masters-of-the-universe today) would even give an off-hand tumble. Nor would girls who were crazy for pinball wizard guys, with their swaying hips and all. But, maybe, just maybe, kind of awkward, wayward eleven or twelve year old girls might, mightn’t they? Well, that idea, that possibility is what drives this story. I was
minding my own skees business when this twist (girl, although I didn’t call them twists then, just girls) came up to a skees lane a couple of lanes over (no waiting in skee-world), puts her money in and starts playing. I don’t know exactly which one it was but either on her second or third roll she went “crazy” and rolled the ball so hard that it bounced over into my lane. Naturally, skee master of the universe that I was got miffed, no more than miffed. She came over to apologize and I could see that she really was sorry-so what are you going to do, right?

Now in the universe of female beauty, even eleven or twelve year old female beauty, this girl, this Mary Beth when she told me her name later, was nothing but middling, and that may be giving her the best of it. But here is the thing and I picked up on it right when she came over to offer her apologies, she had this very winning, very winning smile. Well, like I say what are you going to do. Obviously this maiden in distress needed a little help in the skee department and before I could offer her some tips she boldly asked me if couldn’t, pretty please, pretty please, please help her with her game. Well, ya, what are you going to do, right.

So naturally we go back to her lane and, after showing her one of my moves on the target, I got behind her a little to show her the right way to do it. Whee! I probably had been closer to a girl before, dancing, or some quick-artist petting party kiss thing but this was the first time that I seriously noticed that girls had curves, curves that kind of fit nicely together. And she noticed that I noticed to because she did not back away, or anything like that. But, come on now, I am a serious skee man and so after showing her the ropes I excused myself, and head back to my own lane. A couple of minutes later after she had finished her game she came over to my lane and offered me her coupons (these coupons automatically came up after your game and gave you the appropriate amount based on your score. You later redeemed them for prizes, etc.) saying that she wouldn’t be using them. And get this she said, and I give an exact quote here, “Wasn’t it too bad that I couldn’t be good enough at skee like you to win a prize and go home happy.”

Ya, I know, I know, I know now the oldest trick in the book. But then, well I did try to help her with her game and maybe she could learn something by watching me, and she had those curves and all. So naturally, I was compelled to win a little trinket for her. And I am off. I will say having sweet Mary Beth at my side inspired me and I scored pretty, pretty well. Well, enough in skee world language to win her a lucky rabbit’s foot key chain. Pretty good, right. She thought so, and was so delighted by her prize that she said she would keep it forever and wouldn’t I like to go for walk down to the sea wall and talk. Well, she had my head spinning, for sure, but like I said before I was eleven and didn’t have the girl thing, the girl charm thing, quite figured out then. I said, I needed to keep playing to hone my skills but maybe some other time. She said yes, in a voice a little hurt now that I think about it, some other time. I went to those skee lanes plenty of times later when I wised up about girls and their charms, hoping, looking to see an awkward girl with curves and a rabbit’s foot key chain dangle named Mary Beth but I never saw her again. But maybe, just maybe, that is why I roll skees still.

***Out In The Be-Bop Night-Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- California Dreamin’, Maybe, January, 1970

Markin comment:

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

Scene Ten: Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-California Dreamin’, Maybe, January 1970

I waved good-bye to Angelica, once again, as she drove off from the ocean front campsite that we had been camping out on, the Leo Carrillo State Park near Point Magoo about fifty miles or so north of Los Angeles. She will now drive the road back in her green Ford Hertz unlimited mileage, mid-size rental (paid for, as she explained one night, by her parents whose golden age of the automobile-frenzied minds counted it as a strike against me, a very big strike, that when I had “kidnapped” their daughter on the 1969 blue-pink summer road west down in Steubenville, Ohio I didn’t even have a car). She planned (on my advise) to drive back mostly on the ocean-abutted, white-capped waves smashing against jagged ancient shore rocks, Pacific Coast Highway down through Malibu and Santa Monica to take one last look at the Pacific Ocean as the final point on her first look ocean trip, on the way to LAX to take a flight back to school days Muncie, Indiana.

She will also be driving back to the airport and getting on that miserable plane east knowing as I do since we talked about it incessantly during her stay, that some right things, or at least some maybe right things, like our being together last summer heading free west and for these two January weeks in front of the sea, our homeland the sea, before her classes started again, got caught up in the curious web of the human drama. For no understandable reason. Hey, you already knew this if you have ever had even that one teeny-weeny, tiny, minuscule love affair that just had no place to go, or no time to take root, or just got caught out there in the blue-pink night. Ya, you know that story. But let me take some minutes to tell you this one. If it seems very familiar and you “know” the plot line well then just move on.

To get you up to speed after Angelica and I had been on the heartland hitchhike road (and places like Moline, Neola, and Omaha are nothing but the heartland, good or bad), she, well, she just got tired of it, tired of the lacks, tired of the uncertainties of the road. Hell hell-on-wheels, I was getting tired of it myself except I was a man on a mission. The nature of that mission is contained in the words “search for the blue-pink great American West night” so the particulars of that mission need not detain us here. So in Neola, Iowa, Neola, Iowa of all places aided by “fairy grandmother” Aunt Betty, who ran the local diner where Angelica worked to help make us some dough to move on, and her own sense of dreams she called it quits back in September. Aunt Betty drove us to Omaha where Angelica took the bus back east, Indiana east from Nebraska, to hometown Muncie and I hit Interstate 80 West headed first to Denver before the snows, or so I hoped.

Honestly, although we exchanged addresses and telephone numbers where messages could be left, or where we could speak to each other (her parents’ house not being one of them), and made big plans to reunite in California in January during her school break, I didn’t really think that once we were off the road together that those plans would pan out.
Now I may not remember all my reasoning at the time this far removed, the now of my telling this story many years later, but I had had enough relationships with women to sense this one was good, very good, while it lasted but it could no survive the parting. Not one of those overused “absence makes the heart grow fonder” things you hear about. And, truth to tell, because I thought that was the way things would play out, I started getting focused back on Boston Joyel more than a little as I walked a lot, stood at the shoulder of the hitchhike road a lot, and fitfully got my rides on the road west.

But see this is where you think you have something figured out just so and then it goes awry. Angelica called, left messages, sent letters, even a telegram, to Denver (to the commune where, Jack and Mattie, my traveling companions on the final leg west whom I had met earlier in the spring on a different trip down to D.C., were staying). She sent more communications in early December saying that she was still coming to Los Angeles as well where we three stayed with a few artistic friends of Jack and Mattie’s. Cinema-crazed artistic friends, including one budding film director who, moreover, had great dope connections right into the heart of Mexico. This is where they would stay while I planned to push the hitchhike road north heading to San Francisco.

I once, in running through one of the scenes in this hitchhike road show, oh ya, it was the Neola scene, mentioned that in Angelica what you saw was what you got, what she said was what she meant, and both those were good things indeed. And so if I had thought about it a minute of course she was coming to California in January and staying with me for her two week break, and maybe longer. So when January came she contacted me though John and Mattie, who like I said were now staying with this very interesting experimental film-maker, David, in the Hollywood hills and canyons. I started back south to L.A. in order to meet her at the airport. From there I had it planned that we would go to Point Magoo and camp out like in the “old days” at an ocean front state park.

Needless to say when I greeted her at LAX we both were all smiles, I was in more than all smiles mode, because I had been “stag” for a while and she was, well, fetching as always, or almost always. Here though is where I noticed that the road really is not for everyone. In Neola, and later getting on the bus back home in Omaha, poor Angelica looked pretty haggard but at the airport, well like I said, she was fetching.

And, guess what, she brought her sleeping bag that we got for her in a Lexington, Kentucky Army-Navy Store when we first seriously started on the road west. And the first thing she said about it was, referring to a little in-joke between us, “it fits two, in a pinch.” Be still my heart. So we gathered up her stuff, did the airport exit stuff (easier in those days) and picked up the outside shuttle to the Hertz car rental terminal. We were jabbering away like crazy, but best of all, we were like, a little, those first days last summer back in that old-time Steubenville truck stop diner and cabin when I first met her.

Of course, part of the trip for her, part of what she went as far as she could with me on the hitchhike road for, was to get to California and see what it was all about, and what the ocean was all about since she was a heartland girl who had never seen the ocean before. When we got to Point Magoo she flipped out, she flipped out mostly at the idea that we would stay, could stay right on the beach in front of the ocean. And just like a kid, just like I did when I was kid and saw the ocean, when she saw the Pacific, she jumped right in. Hell, she was so excited she almost got caught in a small riptide. I had to go drag her out. I won’t say we had fun every minute of those weeks acting out our ocean nomad existence, but most minutes, and I could see that she felt the same way.

Naturally, as time drifted away toward her return flight date we talked more and more about what the future, if any, held in store for us. She was adamant about not going back on the road, she was adamant as well that she wanted to finish school and make something of herself. I had no serious defense against that practical wisdom. And, truthfully, I wasn’t, toward the end of her stay, pushing the issue, partially because even I could see that it made sense but also, we had had a “flare-up” over the Boston Joyel question (I am being polite here).

But it was more than that; the flat out, hungry truth was that I really didn’t know how to deal with a Midwestern what you see is what you get woman like Angelica. I was more used to virtuous Irish Catholic girls who drove me crazy as a kid getting me all twisted up about religion, about nice girls, and about duplicity when I found out what the real score was with this type of young girl/ woman later. I was also, and Joyel was the epitome of this type, totally in sync (well, as much as a man can be) with the Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look-at-everything-from-twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of human relationships 24/7 kind of woman. And fatally attracted to them (and still am). This Angelica look at things only a couple of ways, let’s work things out easy-like, heavens, let’s not analyze everything to the nth degree flipped me out. Angelica was a breath of fresh air and, maybe, maybe, about ten years later, and two divorces later to boot, I would have had that enough sense god gave geese to hold onto her with both hands, tightly, very tightly. But I was in my blue-pink search phase and not to be detoured.

Of course all this hard work of trying to understand where we stood put a little crack in our reason for being together in the first place. The search for, search for something. Maybe, for her, it was just that life minute at the ocean and then on to regular life minutes out in the thickets of the white picket fences. She never said it then in so many words but that seemed to be the aim. And to be truthful, although I was only just barely thinking about it at the time, as the social turmoil of the times got weird, diffuse, and began to evaporate things started to lose steam. As we were, seemingly, endlessly taking our one-sided beatings as those in charge started a counter-offensive ( a counter-offensive still going on) people, good people, but people made of human clay nevertheless got tired of the this and that existence, even Joyel. Joyel of Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look-at-everything-from-twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of relationships 24/7 was also weary and wary of what was next and where she fit into “square” society. Christ, enough of that, we know, or knew, that song too well.

A couple of days before Angelica was to leave, and on a day when the sun seemed especially bright, especially bright for then smog-filled Los Angeles January, and warm, not resident warm but Boston and Muncie warm, sat like two seals sunning ourselves in the glow of mother ocean she nudged me and asked me if I had a joint. Now Angelica liked a little vino now and then but I can’t recall her ever doing a joint (grass, marijuana, herb, ganja, whatever you call it in your woods). So this is new. The problem, although not a big one in ocean-side state park 1970 Southern California, was that I was not “holding.” No problem though, a few spots down the beach was an old well-traveled, kind of beat-up Volkswagen van that I knew, knew just as sure as I was standing on that white sand beach, was “holding.” I went over, asked around, and “bingo” two nice big joints came traveling with me back to our campsite. Oh, daddy, daddy out in the be-bop blue-pink night thank you brother van man. For just a minute, just that 1970 California minute, the righteous did inherit the earth.

Back at our camp site Angelica awaited the outcome of my quest, although she also wanted to wait until later, until the day’s sun started going down a bit more to go into that smoked-filled good night. When that later came Angelica was scared/ thrilled, as she tried to smoke the one I lit up for her and started coughing like crazy, but that was nothing then. Everybody, at least everybody I knew, went through that same baptism. But Jesus, did we get mellow, that stuff, as was most stuff then, was primo, not your ragweed bull stuff that ran the rounds later. And why should it have not been so as we were so close to the then sane Mexican border of those days to get the good stuff.

But all of this build-up over this dope scene is so much filler, filler in those days when if you didn’t at least take a pipe full (inhale or not, like it or not) you were a square “squared.” What the stuff did for Angelica, and through Angelica to me, got her to open up a little. No, not about family, or old boyfriends, or her this and that problems. No, but kind of deep, kind of deep somewhere that she maybe didn’t know existed. Deep as I had ever heard her before. She talked about her fate, the fate of the fates, about what was going on in the world, no, not politics; she was organically incapable of that. Mystics stuff, getting in touch with the sea homeland stuff, earth mother stuff too in a way. Dope-edged stuff sure but when she compared the splashing foam-flecked waves to some cosmic force that I forget how she put it (remember I was dope-addled as well) then for just that moment, just that moment when the old red-balled sun started to dip to the horizon on one of those fairly rare days when it met the ocean I swear that Angelica knew, knew in her heart, knew in her soul even, what the blue-pink American West dream stuff I had bombarded her with was all about. That was our moment, and we both knew it.

So when leaving came a couple of days later and we both knew, I think, as we packed up her things, including that well-used sleeping bag, we had come to a parting of the roads. As I put her stuff in the rental car she sweetly blurted out something I was also thinking, “I’ll always remember that night we made the earth under the cabin in Steubenville shake.” And I thought I bet she will, although she forgot the part about the making the roof of the cabin move too. And so there I was, waving as she drove off to her Angelica dreams. And I never saw her again.

Postscript: That last statement about never seeing her again is not exactly true. I have, at least up until a few years ago, and you have probably too, seen her in films and magazines. I don’t know all the later details, because I eventually lost contact with John and Mattie after they went to Mexico and got caught up, got badly caught up in, the small-time end of the international drug trade of the time, but Angelica eventually moved out to California with her boyfriend, and connected with David, the film-maker I mentioned before. And it seems I am a prophet for the still and moving cameras caught that look, that look I sensed when I first met Angelica because she went on to have a successful small-part movie and commercial-making career. She was not the in-your-face-beautiful leading lady in the films but the who-was-that-other-good-looking-ah-fetching actress who you started thinking about later and really set your soul ablaze. The one that would, if you knew her, set your silly, twisted philosophical head straight after about two minutes with her. Or, if in a commercial, her look told you that, yes, maybe I had better buy about a dozen of those widgets she is selling although what on earth I will do with them is beyond me. Ya that look, that Muncie fresh, guileless look. I hope, hope to high heaven, that she got her version of the blue-pink night as well.

***When Be-Bop Bopped In The Doo Wop Night- “Street Corner Serenade”- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film (From American Bandstand) of The Classics performing the old time classic ( I think originally from The Mills Brothers) , Till Then.

CD Review

The Rock ‘n’ Roll, Era: Street Corner Serenade, Time-Life Music, 1992

Sure I have plenty to say about early rock ‘n’ roll, now called the classic rock period in the musicology hall of fame. And within that say I have spent a little time, not enough, considering its effect on us on the doo-wop branch of the genre. Part of the reason, obviously, is that back in those mid-1950s jail-breakout days I did not (and I do not believe that any other eleven and twelve year olds did either), distinguish between let’s say rockabilly-back-beat drive rock, black-based rock centered on a heavy rhythm and blues backdrop, and the almost instrument-less (or maybe a soft piano or guitar backdrop) group harmonics that drove doo-wop. All I knew was that it was not my parents’ music, not close, and that they got nervous, very nervous, anytime it was played out loud in their presence. Fortunately, some sainted, sanctified, techno-guru developed the iPod of that primitive era, the battery-driven transistor radio. No big deal, technology-wise by today’s standard’s, but get this you could place it near your ear and have your own private out loud without parental scuffling in the background. Yes, sainted, sanctified techno-guru. No question.

What doo-wop did though down in our old-time working class housing projects neighborhood, and again it was not so much by revelation as by trial and error, is allow us to be in tune with the music of our generation without having to spend a lot of money on instruments or a studio or any such. Where the hell would we have gotten the dough for such things when papas were out of work, or were one step away, and there was trouble just keeping the wolves from the door. Sure, some kids, some kids like my home boy elementary school boyhood friend Billie, William James Bradley, were crazy to put together cover bands with electric guitars (rented occasionally), and dreams. Or maybe go wild with a school piano a la Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, or Fats Domino but those were maniac aficionados. Even Billie though, when the deal went down, especially after hearing Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers was mad to do the doo-wop and make his fame and fortune.

The cover art on this compilation shows a group of young black kids, black guys, who look like they are doing their doo wop on some big city street corner. And that makes sense reflecting the New York City-derived birth of doo-wop and that the majority of doo-wop groups that we heard on the AM radio were black. But the city, the poor sections of the city, white or black, was not the only place where moneyless guys and gals were harmonizing, hoping, hoping maybe beyond hope, to be discovered and make more than just a 1950s musical jail-breakout of their lives. Moreover, this cover art also shows, and shows vividly, what a lot of us guys were trying to do-impress girls (and maybe viz-a-versa for girl doo-woppers but they can tell their own stories).

Yes, truth to tell, it was about impressing girls that drove many of us, Billie included, christ maybe Billie most of all, to mix and match harmonies. And you know you did too (except remember girls just switch around what I just said). Ya, four or five guys just hanging around the back door of the elementary school on hot summer nights, nothing better to do, no dough to do things, maybe a little feisty because of that, and start up a few tunes. Billie, who actually did have some vocal musical talent, usually sang lead, and the rest of us, well, doo-wopped. We knew nothing of keys and pauses, of time, notes, or reading music we just improvised. (And I kept my changing to teen-ager, slightly off-key voice on the low, on the very low.) Whether we did it well or poorly, guess what, as the hot sun day turned into humid night, and the old sun went down just over the hills, first a couple of girls, then a couple more, and then a whole bevy (nice word, right?) of them came and got kind of swoony and moony. And swoony and moony was just fine. And we all innocent, innocent dream, innocent when we dreamed, make our virginal moves. But, mainly, we doo-wopped in the be-bop mid-1950s night. And a few of the songs in this doo-wop compilation could be heard in that airless night. The stick outs here: Deserie, The Charts; Baby Blue, The Echoes; Till Then, The Classics; Tonight (Could Be The Night), The Velvets.