From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-The Golden Age Of The Automobile, Circa 1954

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Big Joe Turner performing Shake, Rattle and Roll.

CD Review

The Rock and Roll Era: 1954-55, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988

Joey Parker was several years older than me, maybe ten, but that didn’t stop him from letting me hang around his “garage” and watch him turn some stumble-bum wreck of an automobile that had been scrapped off some back road after some midnight “chicken run” into a vehicle worthy of a king. Worthy that is if what you wanted was speed and chicken runs and were not worried like a lot of older guys about the thing being “girl ready,” especially girl back seat ready. Then you went over to Bill’s Esso and got the thing all dolled up, amped up and perfumed up, I guess. Then all I cared about was Joey turning his wreak into speed.

Now in case you don’t know, and maybe thought I was some juvenile delinquent-in waiting, ready at age ten to plot out robberies and other mayhems in order to get my own fixed up wreak when my time came the reason I was hanging Joey’s garage was that it was located down the end of our family’s street over in the Acre in Olde Saco up in Maine and when thing s got tough at home with Ma mainly then I headed to Joey’s to cool out. Sometimes we would run around town but mainly I just hung out there with a couple of other guys my age who also had the Ma problem.

We did that for a few years until we had to start worrying about girls rather some wreaked cars but the best years were the first couple when Joey would let us watch, maybe let us hand him some tool and also let us listen to the forbidden (Ma forbidden) local radio station, WMEX, that he had on constantly. The local rock and roll radio station (although at first we did not know that term but we sure as hell knew the bounce of the music). Now around the house Ma and Dad were strictly tuned into WJDA and the old fogey World War II stuff like Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Peggy Lee and Frank (yes, that Frank) that drove me up a wall even before I hit on Joey’s WMEX.

I remember the first, maybe the second time Joey let me hang around (it was done mainly, as it was with the other guys, by him not saying to get lost). For some reason he did not have the radio on that morning before he started working on some 1954 Pontiac that had gotten mashed going 110 MPH over on Gorham Road in Scarborough. Once he got going though the radio came on, and not just came on but be-bop max daddy came on. I listened, listened intently swaying to the big sax beat I was crazy for then. I said who was that.

Joey. He said some n----r (it was the ‘50s remember and all hell was breaking loose down South if not in the North then but the “n” word was common enough) named Big Joe Turner and the song was called Shake, Rattle and Roll. He said Elvis had just done a version of the song much better than that. Get this though Joey might have been the Zen master of the universe with some grease in his hands but when I listened to Elvis’ version later I thought no way. To each master his own sway.