I am trying to be organized and begin with early rock music and saving the British Invasion, mid sixties and supergroups for later. Dusty Springfield sort of crept in there.
I looked up the following and–thank goodness for you tube–I listened to:
Rock Around The Clock/Bill Haley and The Comets
Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire/Jerry Lee Lewis
The Bristol Stomp/ The Dovells
Jailhouse Rock/Elvis Presley
Rock Around The Clock came out when we still lived on Shady Ave.Ext. I was barely a teenager but it was the first true rock and roll I’d ever heard; it was really exciting and exhausting as well. Arlene, my neighborhood friend, and I talked about it. So that’s what you do when you got to be a teenager: you rocked around the clock. I asked Arlene if her parents would ever let her do that–stay out all night and dance with boys. Of course both of our answers were NO. We didn’t even know how to dance then; but the music was true rock and it “rocked us” all over and backwards. Here’s a very interesting fact. On you tube, while the music was played, there were different scenes connected with that time. Mostly, though, there were kids dancing. It was amazing. BUT there were black teenagers in at least one scene, not dancing, just standing and watching.
Timewise, Jerry Lee Lewis came later but I don’t associate him with the British Invasion in the early and mid-sixties. I just loved the way he played the piano and almost shrieked when he sang. “You shook my nerves and you rattled my brain…you broke my will, but what a thrill! GOODNESS GRACIOUS, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!!!! It came, again, at a time when I was trying to get the idea of what it meant to grow up and be a teenage girl. So that’s what happened?! You break some poor guy’s will and he thinks it’s a thrill?! Yecch! But I loved the music and the energy.
My parents bought me my first record player when we were still living on Shady. I bought one “45” and it was The Bristol Stomp by the Dovells. Arlene and I listened intensely, over and over, to the words. We knew one thing for sure; these guys were not from Pittsburgh. They had to be from New York or Philadelphia, someplace where the kids were “sharp as a pistol.” We were still playing with dolls….
I wrote briefly about Elvis but I made a mistake. He’s as big and all-encompassing than any supergroup. I watched him perform Jailhouse Rock and I could barely sit still. He threw his body around like a panther and his grin, so self-confident and blindingly white, made me think about things I thought were long-forgotten. I think he had some mysterious quality that made girls feel a bit maternal. He had a boyish quality even though he was SO masculine.
lgmwriting 