Phil Everly 1939 - 2014
Summer of '58 - the Everly Brothers, a friend's back porch, his
older sister's little 45RPM machine. 13 years old and I know about
those dreams, the world on the horizon, just out of reach almost too
much to hope for and just aching not to be just a boy any more. Tail
fins and chrome bumpers like big breasts on two tone cars and Little
Suzie in the back seat. Drive in movies and hot dogs and big Schwinn
bicycles with springer forks and how I wished it was an Indian.
Year
before I had rigged mom's Motorola 5 tube, battery radio to take
earphones. WJJD in Chicago and when she took it back, those batteries were expensive, I built a
germanium diode radio with a one transistor PNP audio amp and a wire out the
window and Rock & Roll under the blankets late at night like a new
283 cubic inch, fuel injected V8 world coming to replace the old one.
Fuelie Chevy, Duntov cam - three speed trans. Everly Brothers on a
Summer night. All I have to do is dream.
Good night Phil, good night
We gotta go home.
"The movie's over, it' 4 o'clock, and we're in trouble deep."
ReplyDeleteIt's a smalish crowd - those to whom it makes a difference. Few remember how different it was, how much the older generation hated it and in a world of twerking, jerking, tattooed, product-haired, asses bared millionaires, those kids, in sport jacket and ties singing about the growing pains of America might as well be space aliens. Life is too different, memory too non-existent and if anything remains of this seminal period of history, its music, politics and passions, it will be re-written, redacted and recast into something to support the conceits of younger generations and the corporate political powers that control them.
ReplyDeleteMe? I still remember the crunch of bias ply tires on drive-in movie gravel and the 'ohmygod-look-at-her' car-hops at Skip's Fiesta drive in and greasy fries at Henry's and those drag races past the cemetery where we marked off a quarter mile with paint on the road.
Drivin' late
First date
'48 Chevy runnin' great
All I have to do is dream
I also remember that we all listened to the top 40 music that featured C&W, Rock and Roll, movie and Broadway hits, and pop songs by mainstream singers. My mother loved to sing "Oh My Papa" by Eddie Fisher to my Nonno, and it always made him cry. Now it makes me cry. Today's music is fragmented. I have no idea what's popular or what the GENRES are anymore.
ReplyDeleteMy mother, who could sing all the soprano parts of the popular Italian operas, LOVED the Everly Brothers. I can still picture her hanging the clothes out on the line singing "Dreeeeam, dream, dream."
Remember Your Hit Parade? All pretty tame stuff today, but I remember when Rock was going to "Africanize" our kids and people weren't embarrassed to mean "white kids" by that. The rock I listened to on WJJD had been cleaned up substantially - "Tutti Fruitti, oh rootie" used to be "tootie fruitty, tight booty" before it got the Pat Boone treatment. but that's pretty tame today too.
ReplyDeleteI remember driving around half an evening before anything you could call Rock & Roll with a straight face came on the AM radio. Endless crap like "Rag Doll" and "Patches" and remember the "Purple People Eater?" Took quite a while until the real kings of Rock & Roll made the mainstream: Little Richard, Bo Diddly, Chuck Berry and all. There was a real terror with many parents, mine included and a real sense of a new day coming.
I still bring up the Everly Brothers once in awhile on YouTube, just for old times sake. My 51 Ford coupe had a pretty good radio, but the floorboard was rusted out. Buddy Holly and the
ReplyDeleteguys played our town and their plane crashed a week later. They put up an odd little place out by the highway called McDonalds. I was a nerd, but those were the days!
I remember the first local McDonalds. I thought it would soon go out of business because it lacked the "atmosphere" of a place called Zesto's where you were handed your food through a wire screen. Didn't last 6 months.
ReplyDeleteTown I live in now got it's first McDonalds a couple years ago. If they build a Starbucks I'm moving.