1950-1959

My parents hated the music I found so exciting (and which my mother in particular was certain would never last). In turn, I found an afternoon spent in the car with them listening to Tony Bennett was more than I could endure. Their music – Cole Porter, Benny Goodman, wonderful music really – made no […]

Elvis was my first musical hero, indisputably the King (though he wasn’t called that, yet. There was no need.) His smile was charming, and America, as straight as a thin string tie, reacted in horror at his rotating leg. And there were the others: Jerry Lee Lewis (with his thirteen year old bride; these boys […]

I was ten when Elvis came along. I sang his songs in front of the mirror. I imitated his smile, raising the corner of one side of my mouth. I tried to move like him, rotating one leg from the hip. And I tried to comb my hair like him. I used Vitalis, Butch Wax, […]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO_r1drXn0I&feature=youtube_gdata_player

“Dylan hit a nerve for me, opened a door into a trove of barely distant memories when I was a grade-schooler and would be told to huddle under my desk in case of attack. I had grown up with Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove and had lived through the endless grade-B Japanese horror films where everything […]

When I was 12 Elvis joined the Army. He was taken to boot camp where they cut off all his hair. It was awful to see him lose his hair. But it never occurred to me that Elvis wouldn’t go into the army. Why would it have?  (“Elvis died in the army,” John Lennon later […]

“My room was tucked away at the top of a three-story house, past the attic room where the suitcases were kept. My brother and I would roam the top floor, our plastic flintlock rifles cocked, and ambush each other. On television Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, the strong, serene American hero, told us, “Be sure […]

For FULL SCREEN click on video control bar far right. Roy Brown http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO_r1drXn0I&feature=youtube_gdata_player Elvis Presley “But at the same time Truman was announcing the loyalty oath, another, arguably more impactful, movement, was unnoticed.While the communist cauldron was seething, rock and roll was being born. In 1947 in blues artist Roy Brown’s sings “Good Rocking Tonight”, […]

In my room at prep school, Bobby Vee’s voice is replaced by that of Joan Baez, swelling in nasal perfection. She sings “folk music.” It is different from rock, but simple, affecting. It reaches inside you. Time magazine puts her on their cover. Outside the window of my dormitory room, the California sun shone upon […]