Taming Lion That Was Rockabilly

Outlaws On the Air and Screens --- Part Two

Nice to recall at least tail end of earlier R&R, and there are CD collections with virtual books included to detail history of marvelous movement (real) gone against the grain, “Rockin’ Bones” from Rhino good as gathers get, being four discs with one-hundred songs spread across same. I’ve seen rockabilly referred to as “gloriously primitive,” which beside generic “pop” of the period it easily is. Category, name, whatever whoever called it, melted down from country, rhythm/blues, folk, hillbilly boogie, every sort of styles one could steal, Peter robbed to imitate Paul. Visionaries were rare as genuine talent in any field, example onscreen battle of bands or singers John Ashley and Gene Vincent in AIP’s Hot Rod Gang (1958), Ashley proposed a next big thing making like Elvis, not so bad but neither was score of others. Vincent on the other hand was the real deal, glittering gold aside pyrite, him one of few rockabilly artists to score a major recording contract, with Capitol, his hit Be Bop A-Lula claimed by them to have sold two million copies, stunner number beside 500-1000 pressed for others, and which maybe-maybe not sold. Hot Rod Gang was rigid application of formula, recipe as follows: boys and girls called actors and got cheap, souped-up cars driven through L.A. minus city consent, rock and roll indifferent if not bad apart from blue moon someone like Gene Vincent on hand, presumably for pennies, dancing and a lot of it because that’s thrifty too for staging indoors with a stationary camera to eat up footage as needed to be et up, a fist fight or three also on enclosed space, all such and more against flattest lighting.

There are Guitar Collectors Who Regular Cross the Country in Hope to Find Treasure Like This

A thing like Hot Rod Gang can be bad without necessarily being dull, but that will depend on one’s threshold for fisticuffs, rock-roll, and souped-up cars. Hot Rod Gang earned $263,000 in domestic rentals, and I noted among producers Charles “Buddy” Rogers, among other things more a musician than anybody appearing in the film, could play whatever instrument man had so far devised, but belonged to times and trends forever passed. Imagine Mary’s reaction when he came home from work at something called Hot Rod Gang. Among things good about AIP was how they met their target audience on latter’s home ground, no preachment nor condescension, however calculated product was, but so was radio, magazines, television, all targeting teens. Radio was how most received music lots called outlaw, late night play making fruit the more forbidden, plus fact you’d often not locate 45’s even where intent upon it. No store stocked everything. If your choice was a “hit,” OK, otherwise wait and hope a D.J. would spin it. I dug the instrumental theme for Because They’re Young by Duane Eddy and the Rebels in 1960 and recall search at age six to acquire it. Now there is 24/7 access at You Tube. I call that progress. For the record, Eddy played a 1957 Chet Atkins Gretsch 6120 guitar, which admittedly matters to me less than for many whose passion revolve around such instruments. Among reasons to travel back if such was possible: learn the guitar, opportunity long since missed, and too late now. My mother tried taking piano lessons in her sixties and no soap, her realizing too much tide had gone out to master such complex new thing. If ever I thought of picking up a guitar, there’s but her effort to discourage me.

Certain ordinary men left giant footprints on guitar sound. James Burton backed Rick Nelson, Cliff Gallup was beside Gene Vincent. Then there was Link Wray who was from North Carolina. I said ordinary because these men never pretended to rock star glamor or image molding (possible exception: Link Wray, who adopted “outlaw” image to burnish “dirty” power chords). Guitarists were generally older men who’d adapt themselves to new style that was rockabilly and later rock and roll, their talent such as to make it look easy. Without these artists modestly doing their thing, voicers out front, no matter how teen idol-ish, could as well fold up and go home. Thing I glean from reading about such geniuses (and many of them really were that) is how music while fun and maybe profitable was a thing not to rely on where family took priority over touring grind and younger people’s idea of adventure that these comparative old-timers had seen plenty enough of. For most part, they were admirably focused and grown-up men, dedicated and always improving on their art, leaving spotlights to “front men” who'd sing and seize attention, this more occupation of youth and tendency to believe promoters who promised wealth and fame, latter which singers sometimes got, money mere vapor evaporated off transient applause. Instrumentalists, session players, worked on C.O.D. basis and trusted little apart from their own talent and how to get paid for it. Scotty Moore didn’t mind being stared at less that Elvis Presley whom he made look good, Burton of same mind where backing Nelson, such level heads less likely to end up wrapped around telephone poles. Many in fact traded road life for mundane pursuits that would reliably pay bills and maintain a solid roof. Joe (“Duck Tail”) Clay recorded over a single month in 1956, left ten “incendiary” tracks before disappearing. Searchers located him thirty years later driving a school bus.

To-Be Mystery Man Cliff Gallup Performs with Gene Vincent

“Mystery men” were those of near supernatural abilities who left a public behind and played to suit themselves and occasional small venues. These were said to be unapproachable, avoiding most who admired them, though plenty were still listed in phone books and living normal among neighbors who’d not know or care of such genius in their midst. Cliff Gallup was a Houdini of electric strings who spoke with music rather than words, reticent it’s true but only because fervid fans made him self-conscious, and besides, what was all such fuss about? He played rock and roll guitar a few years with Gene Vincent then hung it up. Reminds me of literary counterparts like J.D. Salinger or H. L. Mencken who lived comfortably among locals who knew but did not worship them. Both so far as locals figured were plain folk, Mencken as member of clubs and lodges, Salinger helping boy scouts sell hot dogs at little league games. That which famed guitarists touched became holy relics, specifically their instruments which were objects of intense search by collectors who might themselves be transformed by mere coming into physical contact with said items of veneration. Deke Dickerson who himself is an outstanding rockabilly performer and historian wrote two books where he detailed years-long quest for guitars which had belonged to his idols, surprisingly many found in attics, pawn shops, anywhere but places of honor they deserved to occupy. To touch an instrument as was touched by genius might for all one knows transmit spark of genius into the now possessor. Could it happen … has it happened?

Saturdays at Noon on Charlotte's Channel 9 --- (Jimmy) Kilgo's Kanteen!

“Dirty” guitars provoked in-part hostile response to rockabilly and rock-roll to come, but deliberate distortion of amplified sound had been around longer than either musical movement and besides, everybody save societal watchdogs seemed to like it. There are You Tube histories of instruments turned evil and how we supposedly were corrupted by then. I never knew that a song, an instrumental yet (“Rumble” by Link Wray) was banned from radio play in several regions, this part-why a mainstream took charge of music so as to calm us all down. Sedative was supplied by Bobby Vee generation that was the early to mid-sixties, him plus the Four Seasons, Beach Boys, Gary Lewis and his Playboys, others as moderating. Wilder rockers were ahead as the original crop perished in large part of exhaustion or their own excesses. What finger of fate allowed Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard to live seeming forever as so many others went down in road, plane, and narcotic crashes? DJ’s that once pied piped for newest bold songs now were told by management what they could broadcast, management string pulled by senior management, and so on up the line. Wide open traveling hops, revues, all gone as had been big bands of the forties that thrilled towners large and often small, jukeboxes installed everywhere to encourage dance with milk shaking, clubbing of any sort, whatever went on indoors. Local TV outlets had dance shows and invited kids to participate on camera, ours on Charlotte Channel 9 and called “Kilgo’s Kanteen.” People thought different then about music, it being more social than solitary pursuit, idea of ear buds and download listening things of a far future. Some are saying however that live performance is coming back in big ways. True?

Primitive Potions of Song Plus Film

 

Here Came Fifties Trouble --- Part One

Why more joy of late from Hot Rod Gang than The Wild One, Dragstrip Riot over Rebel Without a Cause? Or High School Hellcats preferred to Blackboard Jungle? Answer may be that old devil didacticism, which trio of A’s reek of, each to teach us eager-or-not pupils. Give me straight exploitation or give me nothing. The Wild One, Rebel Without a Cause, and Blackboard Jungle were, and remain, “problem” pictures, each to convey concern over social issues and do so “responsibly.” They remind me of lots being made today. I suffered through The Wild One and in fact, pushed accelerator through a final act, understood again why recall for most begins and ends with stills of Marlon Brando perched on a motorcycle with leather like what New York clubs later celebrated, his gang as threats distinctly non-threatening. Where wingmen include Alvy Moore and Jerry Paris, why not Joe Besser to bring up the rear? Brando’s was a delicate star mechanism. Most post-Streetcar saw him distinctly miscast. When was he 50’s bullseye apart from On the Waterfront? Brando, well his double, fist-fights Lee Marvin and Marvin improbably loses. There’s your verisimilitude. Nothing cries process like motorcycles in front of process. Worse though is Stanley Kramer to instruct, fun or potential for it bled out in service to civic betterment. Titles tell us such an incident happened (small town overrun by cycle hoods) but must never be permitted to happen again. Jim and Sam missed the lecture or chose to do opposite, because look at biker cycle they threw up upon sixties patronage, talk about never permitting such to happen again. After seeing Born Losers and The Glory Stompers, I would gladly have signed petition to achieve that.

Too much of mainstream presented youth from a parent’s point of view, as though hall monitors were producing entertainment for truant officers. Rebel Without a Cause might at least have recognized rock and roll as recent phenomenon, or forthcoming one, but did hidebound Hollywood know or care to acknowledge something still below ground? Rebel was heavily scored, effectively by Leonard Rosenman, this accompany to move Mom or Dad, classy crutch to dramatics heavy if not ponderously so (again, great music ... get the soundtrack CD with East of Eden). Of Blackboard Jungle, never mind. Anyone seeking reunion with bullies from school could get fill-up here, and lots evidently did, according to lush rentals. What was wanted, consciously so or not, was trash served same as Goobers from the snack counter or frankfurters at the drive-in, whips with which to antagonize parents who wondered what kids were coming to who'd enjoy these. Youth as worsening problem was fed too by discordant music they liked, rock and rolling a blight seeming to have landed all of a sudden. That wasn’t the case if one paid attention since wartime to styles merging toward a new but not really radical sound. Kids had been swing mad, dance mad, long before this, better behaved movies aimed toward them and their tribal habits. Universal in the early to mid-forties mass-produced teen musicals a world removed from what would come later from AIP and lowdown elsewhere. Gloria Jean, Donald O’ Connor, and Susanna Foster, let alone mass known as the Jivin’ Jacks and Jills, would seem alien had they dropped upon 1957 viewership, which by '57 they did, if only as oldies on television. I looked at, much enjoyed Mister Big (1943), and wondered how a culture embraced this, then devolved within a decade to something called Shake, Rattle, and Roll. Dance as art and spectacle had departed scenes, no more backflipping, lindy-hopping, jitterbugging … pleasure to share as grown-ups in fair enough shape could and often did manage such athletics too.

A lot of boys still boys came back from the war, aged in wood that was combat. They’d express a rebel spirit by dressing more casual than Dad, keeping on flight jackets or leather of whatever military issue to tinker with racer cars and two-wheel hogs. They also brooded and dealt with trauma left over from service, elders less quick to judge for what such seasoned men had been through. Good sampling via film was Guy Madison in Till the End of Time. Both he and Harold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives return to boyhood bedrooms where pennants still hang and football trophies adorn dresser tables. Neither boy-suddenly-man will be the same again, even though being barely twenty in many instances, few to call them delinquent, not where debt of America’s freedom was payable so clearly to them. More complicated of vets went noirish route, in movies at least, while real life was more at Guy Madison speed, and for many who adjusted OK, at least on surface, speed was essence and expressed on dirt tracks and in garages where aggression could find at least superficially safe outlet. John Ireland has wheels to convey a restless spirit in The Fast and the Furious. Mickey Rooney drove fast, won trophies, and was sucked into a bank job by a wrongest dame in Drive a Crooked Road, a car culture beaut that didn’t need rock or roll or protest mechanisms to show change already here by 1954 when that film was released. Grown men gone wrong over ten or so years after peace could be attributed to what war had wrought, so in many instances at least, sympathy might attach. Offspring entering adolescence however was seen more as spoiled lot untested by service to country, hard times before their time, life lessons to guard against what now seemed bad behavior minus explanation or excuse.

Rebel Without a Cause was titled to a T, seen by some as license to whine, teens a threat to hard-won prosperity their parents would gladly share if only snarly brats would shut up and enjoy postwar bounty. Delinquents where age accurate were the more disturbing, Sal Mineo as Rebel’s crybaby a mystery no parent could divine, while overage bad “boy” Lee Marvin in The Wild One was comedic more than menacing, Marvin himself having been shot up on atolls approaching Japan and better put to grown-up criminal activity in The Big Heat. Sometimes it seemed Hollywood didn’t fully understand what a teenager was, other than stair-step down from Mom and Dad as family entering a cinema as families, way of life and living about to dead end. Here was reality junk merchants understood and exploited. It wasn’t for Mom, Dad, Brood to enjoy movies or music together. Lose these in terms of group attendance, said vet biz observers, and trouble if not downfall of culture would ensue. “Mainstream” as desired state would be challenged on multi-fronts, this a threat to parents who couldn’t understand what had happened over seeming overnight, more so warning to an amusement industry termite infested, a broad and deep underground poised to scratch itchy kids with sound and furies no supplier with conscience would attach corporate name to, until it became a matter of doing just that to survive. What seemed nature’s noise by way of music came slow and innocently as music styles converged to make what would be called rock and roll, or by cruder name, “rockabilly,” which was what rock and roll eventually separated itself from in order to be mass consumed. That mass would be tapped only through offices of mainstream manufacture, distributors that could get songs played and records distributed, not just in single cities or states even, but everywhere and all at once. Rockabilly would never cross such moat because large concerns would not permit it, all of like conviction that music must be controlled from the top down to be received by broadest of a US marketplace.

Rockabilly was just too scattered and strange to be acceptable. Most of what issued was from independent labels not likely to exist by same time a following year. They’d have less longevity than pterodactyls, but fresh wind blew through their sails, no corporate dictates to slow them or societal constructs to obey. Record producing was also font of opportunity, for near anyone could swing at it. A Lion’s Club member in your hometown that ran a furniture store might also be a music mogul … well at least a marginal mogul. Risk lay in recording and pressing platters, 500 to a thousand depending on plank you chose to walk and hope you’d not fall off. Faith in product came of instinct, yours and nobody else’s. Small businessmen produced from way back, jazz tunes captured in the twenties thanks to individuals who saw the coming trend and so rolled dice. A kid could walk off a street and get himself recorded and on local radio within a matter of weeks, days if he/she was lucky. Elvis got a break like this, others by hundreds following suit. Music makers could pursue their dream and independent impulse to at least regional success, the country still sectioned so that what did nothing in Detroit might rock solid in Milwaukee, difference often D. J’s pushing the platter or teens in one berg bopping contrary to counterparts in another. Rockabilly as synthesis of many styles meant no adhere to formula, however you’d define that in such wide-open time and circumstance. So much was so original that you knew it couldn’t last, not after big sharks sniffed gold in what they called kid stuff, but hold, kids now had money to fold. Rockabilly got its big lick through a second half of fifties busy with music vogues of every sort, adherents of each calling this or those years their “Golden Age.” Most have it easier just calling time they grew up a worthiest of all times (don't we all?), never mind what’s older and nix the new. Greenbriar gravitating to old could wish to have been there for initial burst of rockabilly and scratchy discs, scratchier voices, coming over radios, transistor or otherwise.

Heralds for rock and teen movie shows in Parts One and Two were creative product of West Jefferson, NC exhibitor extraordinaire Dale Baldwin and assorted showman manpower in my state. Imagine being on hand for such marathons as these.

Thanks ever so much to Scott MacGillivray for making it possible for me to see Mister Big.

Parkland Picks with Popcorn #5

 

PPP: Houdini, Mirage, Frankenstein's Daughter, and The Greene Murder Case

HOUDINI (1953) --- Paramount does a Tony/Janet, borrowed from U-I and Metro, respectively, if not respectfully, as Curtis was known mostly as bubble-gum merchant for kids still buying fan magazines in otherwise decline, Hollywood being still Hollywood (as in old Hollywood). Who then figured TC for fine and earnest performance he gave for producing George Pal, who had but little to make Houdini appear big? Negative cost was $1.3 million, and two million was collected in domestic rentals. I’ll assume that was mostly youngsters showing up, plus olders who'd remember the real Houdini, himself having made movies in silent times. Houdini was a favorite when NBC took custody for 1965 broadcasts, as in much begging to stay up late and watch, at least on my part. Houdini tells a complicated life and suggests supernatural gift the title character had for sleight-of-hand and body. Curtis was a convert, him doing tricks for remain of a lifetime thanks to what he learned here. Houdini longed to commune with the dead, made conscientious effort to do so, but wound up mostly exposing fakes, a highlight of Pal and Para’s brisk ride through times not so long past in 1953. Curtis nicely conveys near-suicidal impulse that took real-life Houdini eventually down. Do magic experts respect this show? For viewership that is me and hopeful others, it’s always been a click, producer Pal ideal to indicate a man truly uncanny, but not enough so to scare off or otherwise alienate Tony’s then-mob. Was the Houdini wife alive enough in 1953 to vet or try blocking this? Pal assures fantasy overlay most welcome, us invited to conclude Houdini made escapes by means beyond mere magic. Has anyone since mastered his techniques, figured out how he did his so-called tricks? I begin to wonder if some of secrets were never meant for man to know, at least would like to think Houdini had an in with spiritual voids, and may yet show up to school us re next world mysteries.

MIRAGE (1965) --- What hath Charade wrought, at least so far as Universal during the mid-sixties when imitators seized stars, mostly veterans, who needed glam vehicles both fresh and time-honored like Charade which was Hitchcock-ish with humor increased and sprightly scores oft-work of Mancini, though in Mirage case Quincy Jones. Latter helped the pictures lure, plus sold albums, which led to Hitchcock losing Bernard Herrmann, Uni wanting something other than Marnie’s funerial accompany and Torn Curtain threatening to do the same. Proof of Uni intent as serious came with Herrmann playback of so-far score to an indignant Hitchcock. Would this composer not simply do as ordered? ---answer No plain to anyone who knew Bernard Herrmann. Mirage was first of two for Gregory Peck off Charade model, Mirage serious, Arabesque more frolicky. Mirage was shot largely on Manhattan streets that in high-contrast B/W look post-apoco-tripping, a '65 Gotham I would have been uneasy visiting, reason alone to watch and like Mirage, for nothing of the era gets over quite a same, never mind story struggle. In fact, I prefer Mirage to Charade, if not to Hitchcock himself at low gear, and aver it should be counted better, especially now that we have Blu-Ray widescreen to point up visual value, standard DVD’s and earlier TV never equal to the task. Power mongers take over a peace movement and it is for amnesiac Peck to unfurl truth with help of Diane Baker. I like watching Peck utterly confused by events uncannier as narrative rolls toward “unexpected” finish, his help (Walter Matthau) not so helpful and could-be furtherance of threat, while George Kennedy engages fist play with Peck that works for both being big guys who make fights credible (GP takes tumbles well). Action was default direction for Peck by the sixties, notwithstanding Mockingbird, him struggling like the rest for worthwhile properties, which Mirage was/is despite underserved obscurity.

FRANKENSTEIN’S DAUGHTER (1958) --- To define “risible” is to define Frankenstein’s Daughter: “such as to provoke laughter,” but then again, maybe not, for here was a thing to invite more derision than mirth we expect from sci-fi off basement floors. I never laughed at cheap genre expression anyhow, that too much the thing of camp following which is no fair way to sum Frankenstein’s Daughter or its kind. A feature shot in six days for $60K or less commands respect, at least mine, for as many might ridicule, others touched by empathy will ask, Yes, but could you do it? A man named Richard E. Cunha built Frankenstein’s Daughter from dust up, a monster maker all his own and mirror to drama he so badly portrays. Astor enabled Frankenstein’s Daughter, a deal believably made on bar stools, Cunha in this for nothing other than hoped-for profit. He would finish up running a video store, amiable to master scribe Tom Weaver who ran him to ground. One could generate a Frankenstein movie, as many as one pleased, because the name and everything but Universal-controlled face design (for their monster) was PD and thus free range. Same with Dracula by 1958. It is for this reason a market was saturated with makes and remakes and finally shamble that was Frankenstein’s Daughter. How much audience blundered to this when good word-of-mouth was instead for The Curse of Frankenstein, or to Blood of Dracula when Horror of Dracula was the one to see? Frankenstein’s Daughter opens with a girl (not the title girl) dashing about streets in a nightgown and fright face. Monster of title’s promise was mistakenly cast with a pug ugly male to which they applied lipstick, us reminded of same cosmetic put on pigs, or however that expression goes. Being now the fifties, it is a grandson of Dr. Frankenstein who fashions fiends, so who was Dad, Wolf or Ludwig? Fun would have been a “ghost” cameo by Rathbone or Cedric Hardwicke, both which could have been had for a price, but not so low as Cunha could pay. There is instead Sandra Knight and John Ashley as familiars, her a pin-up also for Thunder Road and later The Terror, so for sure I’m interested, plus Ashley an already overaged teen who’d go far places doing penny Pilipino scare shows in the 60/70’s. We best know genre product by company they keep, familiar faces a balm against heavy weather that is cheapness or boredom, which Frankenstein’s Daughter has less of thanks to recent and first-rate Blu-Ray treatment from Film Masters, and look you, there are extras here to beat any majors’ band.

THE GREENE MURDER CASE (1930) --- You may need smelling salt with popcorn, soda, what not, to keep slumber at bay while watching The Greene Murder Case, one of three Paramount Philo Vance mysteries released of late, and on Blu-Ray, by Kino. Greene like Canary is of 1929 vintage, so bar door against stately pace and dialogue dealt deliberate, but oh how we’ve wanted these, and for myself, over much of so-far lifetime. Best seen in solitary confine, the Vances are very definition of “For Dedicated Only,” that is, to ancient talking. You could wonder if Egypt or Babylonia of old spoke as here, so remote does much of it seem. And yet there are spasms of the unexpected, a lively pay-off and unmasking of the killer, an inherited madness theme that for me spiked interest. I’m guessing 1929 audiences stayed still as tombs so as not to miss William Powell’s unravel of mayhem and who’s committing it. Lots of us fans dote on mystery, sameness and formula a relaxant little else in life supplies. Think of Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes, others of detecting fraternity. One of streaming’s most popular categories is who done or is doing it. Britain has made cottage, no empire, industry of such, Miss Marple hanging shingle all about the Isles. How many Marples have we had just in our present generation? I dare say Vance no matter how old will sell as if new to mystery’s fan base so dedicated. I got a tingle watching Greene, that is except for ten or so minutes when sleep stole me away. Vance is more studied and serious than sleuths Powell otherwise played, so venture not with expectation he’ll be like Nick Charles. Fact is, Powell wearied of being Vance and said no to further ones after The Kennel Murder Case from Warners in 1934, arguably best of the lot. It’s sure enough a lucky corner wherever one can sit for 1929 shows on High-Def, and here I was still pinching myself for luck getting Oland Fu Manchus last year. Is there no end to boutique Blu-Ray miracles? Please Kino --- enter into another contract with Universal so you can release more rarities from them and pre-49 Paramounts they own (like for instance Clara Bow talkies).