From The Archives Of The Carter’ Variety Store 1950s Corner Boys-The “From Hunger” Boys Do, Well, Do The Best They Can-The Night Billy Bradley Got His Talented Ass Handed To Him On A Platter-A Cautionary Tale, Maybe   

By Sam Lowell

Make no mistake even desperately poor “the projects” corner boys have skills beyond those larcenous hearts that of necessity drive their existences in a world where “not enough” is the operative term. I have already noted that even among the young upstart corner boys around Carter’s Variety Store there were those like the Scribe who would go on to some success, however short term in his case, in the journalism field. And myself as a fairly successful film and music critic for a whole career. The classic case is that of later Tonio’s Pizza Parlor leader Frankie Riley who parlayed a law degree into a nice partnership with a big Boston law firm where he is now “of counsel” (meaning plenty of dough and no heavy lifting which is left to some luckless young younger lawyer)       

But getting back to the Carter corner boys I have already mentioned that Ronnie Mooney had he decided to stick with it a bit could have had a fair career maybe a lounge lizard Vegs-type career in rock and roll if he had not as a result of a “the fix is in” talent search show where he wowed the crowds but got crossed-up in internal record company/radio station politics and wound up with no record contract when he clearly deserved one. That was decisive in many ways not the least to give him a permanent “sneer” about the real world and drove him headlong into the arms of some older tougher guys who taught his some very different skills along the lines of the art of armed robbery which became his specialty, and would lead to his bloody downfall once night in a police shoot-out in Ohio from what Go-Go Larkin told me.

In my last piece in this series I went into the early musical career of Billy Bradley who actually got farther up the record company /radio station food chain that sustained early rock and roll. His minor classic Me and the Rock and Roll Baby-sitter could have, should have sent him on his way even though he had to self-promote the record from jump street before it caught on. But it did not and a lot of what happened to Billy later, what happened similarly to Ronnie Mooney colored his turn a away from rock and roll to those armed robberies which made him a very different kind of star.* Billy’s case, like Ronnie’s is why I have dubbed part of the headline to this piece a cautionary tale.

[*It is no accident that most of the corner boys, Carter’s, later at Doc’s Drugstore and at Tonio’s Pizza Parlor who carried too big of chips on their shoulders and succumbed to adversity turned to the surprising lucrative, then, crime of armed robberies. Seth Garth and others have written about the legendary Pretty James Preston, a loner wild west cowboy type who pulled bank robberies solo, and who do his work on a very fast English motorbike, the Black Lightening. Although Pretty James in his turn would fall down when some asshole bank guard thought the dough he was guarding was his and bang-banged Pretty James enough to slow him down for the real coppers to shoot him down into some mud all through my time as corner boy we revered Pretty James as a living god, as a hero. Even today we speak his name in hushed tones as a sign of respect, as brethren.]          

I have already mentioned but its bears repeating here that in the mid to late 1950s when there were a million mostly small record companies who were marginally connected to an array of local rock and roll stations there was a crazed search by those organizations to find the new Elvis, Chuck, Buddy, Jerry Lee, maybe Wanda Jackson, the Shirelles to set them on their ways. Moreover the teen nation demanded it, demanded that some new sounds come out of the now deadass transistor radios and records. Linked to that thought was a corollary-teen nation had a million kids who wanted to be the next Elvis, Chuck, Buddy, Jerry Lee, Wanda, or Shirelles. That is where Billy Bradley’s next logic step came in.         

    

In the winter of 1959 when the deep ass snow was on the ground and we were all freezing our butts off the hot rock and roll radio station WMEX along with Darius Records (yes, if you know your record company label history, the label which produced Lanky Devoe, The Chiffettes, Danny Mack and the Pack, soulful Lamar Le Bert and many others before being bought out by Columbia Records) was sponsoring yet another one of those ubiquitous talent search events. The local version to be held in the auditorium at Adamsville High on a Friday night in early February. The way this talent search gag worked was that there would be maybe a dozen local events where each winner would get to go to Boston, to the Park Plaza Hotel ballroom, to vie for a one record deal with Darius Records and see what happened from there. A pretty cheap way for WMEX and Darius to get down in the mud, get a hear of the talent down below. Of course Carter corner boys, our own Ronnie Mooney, had already been burned once when he entered the contest a year or so before and got nothing but air for his troubles. Nothing but air since the “fix was in” for Mona Levitt (yes the Mona Levitt of the now classic Blue Sunday Blue).

Billy Bradley knew the ropes on that one but two things had changed. Supposedly the judges were neutral and not affiliated with either outfit as before and Billy never one to not be full of himself though he had ten times more talent that the hapless Ronnie (he exaggerated as usual probably only five times as much talent as Ronnie). We tried to keep his feet on the ground, feet that when it came to the clip we or busting change machines at places like laundromats he was all business, or else. But he went wild grabbing a new white shirt from Filene’s (gratis, Billy, Carter corner boy gratis), ditto a sports jacket from Robert Hall (a shade too big but for free what the hell), uncuffed chino’s from Raymond’s and maybe a belt too. The tie and shoes were actually his).              

I will say Billy looked great in that 1950s music scene great where guys wore jackets and ties as par to of their acts. He would not tell us what he selected for his song wanting to surprise us when he went on stage. He was maybe eighth or ninth that night so you could see some jitters while he waited. There were several good acts before his, especially the Painter Sisters (yes, those sisters who had the hit Baby, Baby, Baby and are still bouncing away in venues like Vegas and the Newark Airport Lounge). Then Billy came on and did a Buddy Holly tune, a classic now, Peggy Sue. He gave it his all and left nothing on the stage.

Here is the problem, the Carter corner boy problem in a nutshell for those who could not scratch and claw their ways out of the mud settled down at the base of society. The Painter Sisters won that night and rightfully so (they would win the whole Boston region competition in Boston) as mightily as I wished Billy had won. You probably know the follow-up though. Billy never got over the idea that once again the “fix was in” based on no more than that he did not win. More to the point like with Ronnie something inside burned out that night or shortly thereafter and while he plugged away to some small successes he knew that music would not be his road to easy street.