What We Can't Do Without is Music

 

The Topic Where Everybody Is An Expert

Guessing most feel as vested in music as any pastime. Cannot think of anyone offhand who says, I don’t care for music at all. Take it away and movies would not mean half so much, or much of anything for that matter. Imagine watching silents without accompany. I had to run The Birth of a Nation mute, and 8mm, to a college class (apx. 1974), a sudden request, so no time to arrange even shellac escort. Would have preferred ants crawling over me. Music is as breathing in this quarter. How many listen as they read/write onscreen? Fred Hamm and His Orchestra are playing Sugar Foot Stomp as I type, Exclusively 20’s part of “Online Radio Box.” Name please, your earliest song memory. Mine are tied between Fred Kirby singing Big Rock Candy Mountain and Debbie Reynolds doing Tammy, both 1957. There was more from that year, surprising what tunes could be absorbed at age three. I recently got a CD, Hard To Find Jukebox Classics Volume One: 50’s Pop, each track repurposed for stereo, among them Perry Como performing Round and Round, another from 1957 to oddly stay with me even as Elvis and others spun more prominent. And how is it 1958 sustains on strength of Tommy Dorsey’s Tea For Two Cha-Cha, a tune I still repeat-hum without being conscious of it. Early exposure to music depended on what was brought into the household. Having four older siblings was for me like living in a record store. No room was without song, competing at times, but add my own to their choices and it was like Tin Pan Alley as described by passersby who described non-stop cacophony within that busy address.

I find appeal in music however old. Remember what The Sting did for Scott Joplin and ragtime? His The Entertainer, as performed by Marvin Hamlisch, went to #3 on the May 1974 “Hot 100.” I had the single, then the album, used Joplin as backdrop for silent comedy. He made serious study of ragtime while others performed it purely by instinct. Did The Sting bring about resurgence for ragtime beyond Scott Joplin? Seemed in 1974 that whatever was spent could be made fresh again, this the year That’s Entertainment came out after all. Ancient enough songs traveled on wings of elementary school attendance, Norman “Chubby” Chaney in Little Daddy (1931) singing “Asleep In The Deep” (1897), none of us caring how far back the tune went, so long as it captivated here and now. I memorized lyrics for “The Curse of an Aching Heart” (1913) after seeing it performed in Blotto (1930), a song we felt no one outside Laurel-Hardy fandom would know. Could I have revived it for prom night and been voted a senior superlative? Appreciation for oldest music came invariably from left field. Shock for me was learning Frank Sinatra sang “The Curse of an Aching Heart” on his 1961 album, Swing Along With Me, done straight, no irony. I wonder if Frank saw Blotto and got the idea. He was known to enjoy L&H during off-hours on location doing Sergeants Three. “The Curse of an Aching Heart” sounds like something comical and dated, but really, it is not. Stan Laurel reduced to tears by Frank Holliday’s rendition might happen to anybody, given a right emotional circumstance. Those undone by lost love could easily respond the same. If Sinatra made it work, why not someone able enough doing a same even today?

You Tube affords a lot of footage that looks way older than we know it to be. I found a Dick Clark Beech-Nut fragment where Connie Stevens and Edd Byrnes do Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb. You’d think it predated parade footage of Queen Victoria lately found, a ghostly pop recital to make 1959 look long before anyone’s lifetime. Sobering is fact I sat on our screen porch that year and played Kookie, Kookie, etc. on loop that was my portable phonograph, just why beyond my kin to answer. Did this five-year-old imagine he would someday meet Edd and Connie, former at Columbus, latter twice in Charlotte? D. Clark had artists lip-sync to songs, a regret later when fans preferred performance live, “unplugged” even, which everything on Bandstand was determinably not. Clark and spontaneity seem not to have met, let alone melded. Or maybe he knew popsters for props barely able to singalong with offstage recordings. From such wind-up clay were teen idols made. Observing Edd/Kook by himself waiting on breakfast buffet at Cinevent gave moment to ponder an alternate reality where he stood before a thousand frenzied kids fifty years before panting to see him introduce Yellowstone Kelly at one of key stops Edd flew to. How many knew such fame, if studio-generated illusion of it, then retired to anonymity complete as most obscure among us enjoy? Wonder if it is too late to package and exploit the old Bandstand programs. At a peak, forty million watched daily, but as many saw The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and who remembers it now? Effort to raise funds and restore these went kaput, pop culture headed toward seventieth year less likely per annum to see resurgence, especially where it’s Ozzie and sorta bland to begin with. With so much of old TV streaming, I ask why not American Bandstand?

The Twist was a dance, but the Limbo really was not, or was it? Little children enjoyed both because they seemed so utterly silly. I never observed a grown-up doing either, probably would have been embarrassed for us both if I had. Limbo bars were a novelty we tired of unless more people entered the room to join in. Ann has been told she twisted as a toddler, so I guess anyone could be passable at this dance. Record singles were a dollar per, unless you dealt faux versions not by the intended artist. Sister requested Return To Sender from the newsstand my father walked me to each Saturday morning, and out of pure meanness, I picked a 45 for fifty cents by some guy other than Elvis. Dad did not know from the King, but recalled well “King of Jazz” Paul Whiteman, whose rendition of Rhapsody In Blue was a 78 he played on a household Victrola until grooves wore out. This would have been around 1924. I’m blessed to have grown up among people who knew such an era first-hand. So many tastes in music collided as rock rolled, then became merely Rock. I cared less for that, as in not at all, was sorry to see pop singles bow to albums where a song ran interminable, and music seemed suddenly self-conscious art. On Whiteman topic, 1930’s King of Jazz, in restored two-color Technicolor, had a TCM round, but where in 99 minutes was there jazz? The Maestro tried elevating the form at tony auditoriums, one of which introduced Rhapsody In Blue, itself more quasi than real jazz; a historian called it “thrilling, warm music … marvelous tunes linked by classical devices.” Conclusion: This was “excellent pop,” and listeners, including my father back in the day, loved it. Seems the wider jazz went, and later rock and roll, the stronger was impulse to tame both beasts, make them mainstream, irresistible corporate forces against all too movable cultural objects.

So parents had their music too, even if, unlike us, they weren’t still listening to it forty years later. My mother walked through the room one morning as music under main titles for The Hoosegow got underway on Channel 5 out of Bristol. "That’s My Weakness Now," she said, without surprise or emphasis. The song was fresh when The Hoosegow came out (1929). I knew the tune but didn’t realize it had been popular apart from Hal Roach usage. To whistle this at school set you apart from peers, but all of them, any of them, knew Our Gang background themes where someone, anyone, whistled them. These were imbedded deep in all of us who grew up with access to NC viewing markets, where the Rascals were rife. My regard for classical music grew out of need for background to 8mm. I’d embrace Chopin, Liszt, the rest, for themselves and not just as adjunct to silent clowns. Collecting film and the need to score it gave great composers a utility that grew into fuller appreciation as we got used to their backlog, as good a way as any to introduce oneself to so-called Great Music. Having no aptitude for instruments themselves was reality hard-taught by calamity that was piano lessons, the instructor so put out by debacle of crowded recital that she finally took my fingers and poked them onto each key (selection was “Dance of the Elephants,” regarded as the simplest composition anyone sitting at a keyboard could possibly play). Audience glee was unbounded, my purpose served as there would be no more lessons after that night. The clarinet would also come a cropper, me expelled from band for too animated reaction to instructor Priscilla Lyon, former child actress, mentioning to her immediate regret that she had visited shooting of The Wolf Man in 1941, that story GPS-told years back. Some have a performing gift, but such gift is rare. I decidedly did not, don’t to this day. They say musical genius manifests early, or never. I am among nevers.

Data says Swing got close as Jazz ever did to a mass audience. That was because Swing made its audience dance, more so even than they had in the 20’s. Look at a scene from The Gang’s All Here where soldiers with girls gather round Benny Goodman and his band. Theirs was understood to be typical crowd reaction wherever Goodman played, like at theatres given up on keeping jitterbugs out of aisles whenever he took the stage. War enlarged the frenzy. Big bands ran on a stopwatch and left nothing to chance. Goodman like other leaders was a martinet. He knew members for often undisciplined lot they were. Performers who wanted to widen jazz beyond its obvious commercial realm looked to offshoot Be Bop, which detractors thought strictly on the downbeat, a “cult” whose music required “intense listening,” but never dancing. Be Bop or not, Swing was headed out thanks to changed postwar priorities and risen cost of travel and expense of big bands. Be Bop took licks for being too serious. Marty Milner’s combo in Sweet Smell of Success dodges an egghead fan who wants to know “meaning” behind their music. Even oily Sidney Falco makes better company than this chick. 1961’s Paris Blues has Paul Newman’s group upping tempo so basement club patrons can dance, but it becomes clear this band is for sit-still concentration. Be Bop made for LP’s a fan could solitarily groove with at home, stereo by the late 50’s a major spike to disc sales. Wonder who and how many of the jazz fraternity missed opulent days where it looked like everyone was climbing aboard their bandstand. How many cling yet to traditional jazz? As many, or more, who have stuck it out for classic movies?

Certain of convulsions in the music game make compelling reads, as in two early 40’s strikes that nearly took the industry out. Reminds me of hardship Hollywood sustained after the war. First there was ASCAP withdrawing member songs from broadcasters, retaliation the forming of BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.), which opened the field to artists and independent labels all over the country. This made possible … inevitable … rhythm and blues, then the coming of rock and roll. Maverick outfits like Chess Records evoke freewheelers at film like American-International. These platter and picture men had lots in common. I listen to R&B compilations like Blowing The Fuse (a CD series from Bear Family), stuff from far back as 1945, and it sure sounds like rock and roll to me. Somebody’s been dispersing bum history with Bill Haley, early Elvis, etc., as progenitors of R&R. Fact is, we could trace roots clear to 20’s with broad enough a brush. I like especially what survives of “air-checks” with meat-eater D.J’s that fans, or old-time station employees, have uploaded to You Tube. Amazing how guys who started in the 50’s are still at the game in 2021. The great tragic figure, of course, was Alan Freed, his fall Homeric on Big Beat, hubris-driven terms. The more I read about Freed, the more I believe Big Powers put a neat frame around him to let radio know that bosses way above them would henceforth pull strings. “Payola” was just another term for “Doing Business,” a same way it was always done, and is still being done. When greasing palms quits, so does commerce. I knew an exhibitor who gave out country hams with homemade hootch to whatever booker fixed him up with desired product, a system theatre-men embraced in glory day when people panted for the new and novel. Same way with records needing to be heard … a couple century notes more/less, did it every time. How grand it must have been to be part of such daily corruption!

“Top 40” was the drab fix puppet masters put in. Nothing henceforth would be left to chance, or whim of jocks who forgot their subservient place. Major labels got back what they considered rightful place at the top, upstart independents fallen like flies sprayed by big corporate flit. Song sales should be reasonably predictable … they’d see to that. Even The Beatles, “phenomenon” as they were, got that way not by effort or initiative of tiny “Swan” or “Vee-Jay” Records, distributing a few of their earliest singles, but mighty Capitol Records, whose entry to the race clinched notoriety for the band. Still the game of “moving up the charts” was observed with stilled breath by those who would follow leaders. I had a friend at college who, each Friday night, tuned in to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Countdown, three hours in which Tom would sit rapt and update his hand-written charts in accord with Casey updates. I was impressed at the time by Tom’s diligence and accuracy. No one would catch him napping re song status. Primary engagement for me was local radio outlets, AM still the format, if a primitive one, for hearing what was new. You could say ours was at least remnant of “Golden Age” that was pop music, assuming the 70’s has not been altogether discredited as a source for listening pleasure. I would drive around college town Hickory, NC, hear a peppy number on WHKY, pull off to a handy record store where the 45 single was mine for a dollar, it to join stacks beside the dorm room hi-fi. As to banner years these were or weren’t, I cede the floor to historians better equipped to evaluate epochs of song. Rest assured the 70’s is someone’s idea of epochal, even if there are increasingly less of them to celebrate it. Swoon for me was the “Philadelphia Sound,” Philly Soul, TSOP, whatever label stuck … these on a seeming loop, a previous week’s sock surpassed by what showed up this week, both in shade by what next week would bring. Busy groups were the O’ Jays, Spinners, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, each to be lasting favorites --- or possibly not, for here I am of late listening to way-back call of 20-40’s pop, needing, or wanting, less to be reminded of the youth I had than what generations before me seem to have enjoyed more profoundly, based on cheerful music they made.