PERSPECTIVEnI”- p’ •*? -li-# My^% ^n’- ^’ 4 ^jimmm^j^l^J^ ‘^ .# ^nf %’:%^ 4 -ir-^ ^r4i’-^*”f •^i’i^5S-;$f 1^nRock and Roll Never ForgetsnIn the 1950’s any real American boy knew that whatevernhe wanted to be when he grew up, it was not annunderemployed television father like Ward Cleaver or OzzienNelson. Our fictional heroes were from another time. Theynwere the cowboys, frontiersmen,. and pioneers who hadntaken risks that seemed inconceivable to a generationnsheltered by the capacious umbrella of the New Deal.nTelevision in the 50’s sometimes could seem like a strugglenbetween the bumbling suburban fathers, who never knewnbest, and the Matt Dillons, Paladins, and wagonmastersnwilling to back up their word with a gun. Somewhere out innthe world, we felt, there had to be a real life, a life filled withnpassion and risk.nIt is no accident that the culture of the 1950’s is dividednbetween genteel novelists like John P. Marquand or JamesnGould Cozzens and the wild and rebellious beats like JacknKerouac. Paul Goodman was the first to pose the essentialnquestion, in his still-relevant book. Growing Up Absurd:nhow could boys learn to be men in an increasinglynbureaucratized, sanitized, and safe society of whitebreadnsandwiches with bologna and Miracle Whip? It is a questionnthat George Roche has been asking more recently in suchnbooks as World Without Heroes.nPeople look back to the 50’s as the golden age ofntelevision and as the Indian summer of American popularnculture. But what I remember is the tasteless vulgarity ofnUncle Miltie, film stars like Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis,nand the lifeless mannerism of barber-turned-singer PerrynComo. Then came the summer of 1954, and for the nextnseveral years, nice little children all over the country werenintroduced to life in the raw by a wild group of Southerners,nblack and white: Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, CarinPerkins, Johnny Cash — all recording for Sam Phillips’ SunnRecords — not to mention Chuck Berry, Little Richard,n10/CHRONICLESnby Thomas FlemingnnnSam Cooke, and Jackie Wilson.nThese boys did not come out of Tin Pan Alley, wherenprofessional songsmiths were still rhyming croon and June.nThey were still more remote from the suggestiveness of thenbisexual Cole Porter, whose “Let’s Do It” might have beennwritten as a theme song for sophisticated hypocrisy. In thenworid of pop music, fornication and adultery were fine, asnlong as you were nicely dressed, drank cOcktails with clevernnames, and called it love instead of sex.nWhat were, after all, the popular songs of the BR (beforenrock) era? I can remember them from the butcherednrenditions given by Gisele MacKenzie and Snooky Lansonnon Your Hit Parade. The big hits of 1954 were songs likenEddie Fisher’s “Oh, My Papa” and Dean Martin’s “Whennthe Moon Hits Your Eye Like a Big Pizza Pie, That’snAmore.” The naive hedonism of “Blue Suede Shoes” andn”Rock Around the Clock” had a dangerously liberatingneffect on an entire generation.nPerhaps the real anthem of doomed youth hit the chartsnin June of 1957. A young scapegrace from Mississippi, whoncould not make up his mind if he wanted to go to heaven ornhell, started fooling around with a song he could only halfnremember. The result was “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Coin’nOn,” a song so suggestive that DJ’s refused to play it, untilnthe singer appeared on the Steve Allen show. Jerry LeenLewis became the first of three cousins to make it big in thenentertainment business (the other two are, of course,nMickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart). Many an Americannboy resolved that if he couldn’t grow up to be a classicsquotingngunfighter like Paladin, he wanted to be at least asnwild and as menacing as Jerry Lee.nThe great rockabilly and rhythm and blues artists set thentone for all that would be best in rock and roll music. Unlikenthe slick and saccharine mass-produced songs of the 40’sn