Hot and loud and vulgar music, non-stop for five hours

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To the older generation rock 'n' roll came to mean Teds and violence. There was a riot in Berlin. Some countries banned rock 'n' roll altogether. In Singapore police were called in to stop British soldiers jiving in a cinema foyer after a midnight premiere of Rock Around The Clock. The Rev. Albert Carter of Nottingham denounced rock 'n' roll from his pulpit: 'The effect of rock 'n' roll on young people is to turn them into devil-worshippers; to stimulate self-expression through sex; to provoke lawlessness, impair nervous stability, and destroy the sanctity of marriage.' In Miami, Florida, the head of the local censorship board described rock 'n' roll dancing as 'nothing more than shoving boys and girls around' and 'vile gyrations'! Racialist Asa Carter of the North Alabama White Citizens' Council was scared too: 'Rock 'n' roll is a means of pulling down the white man to the level of the 'Negro'. It is part of a plot to undermine the morals of the youth of our nation. It is sexualistic, unmoralistic, and the best way to bring people of both races together.' Many older musicians hated rock 'n' roll: 'Viewed as a social phenomenon, the current craze for rock 'n' roll material is one of the most terrifying things ever to have happened to popular music ... Musically speaking of course, the whole thing is laughable ... Let us oppose it to the end.'

'gimme some echo and some fuzz and some garbage can sound.'

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The great thing about the Pretty Things was that they didn't give two shits for blues purity, R&B purity, or any other kind of purity, except perhaps when it came to their drugs. They were therefore conceptually free to aesthetically amplify the physical uses to which distortion and proto power chord riffing could be put. Perhaps one downing the PTs was the Downliners Sect who indicated via their roughed up, impolite and impolitic take on the Chess label output that they did not give even a single shit for blues "purity." 

The Kids Dig It, but the Kids Are Sick

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According to its license, the Macomba was to close at four a.m., but if things were cooking, Leonard said, “Fuck it,” or, as they say on the West Side, “Fuck that shit,” pulled the shutters, closed the blinds and roared on, through the dawn, into the morning, the sun beating like a strobe across the lake. The lounge became a crossroads of drug traffic, the connection sitting at the bar like an exposed wire. Exchanges in the bathroom, in the alley, right up front, a packet of cocaine taped under a stool. After closing, Leonard and Phil would check every chair, flushing what they found. There were threats, fights, holdups. One night, a man came at Leonard with a knife. Big Gene, who worked for Leonard as a kind of bodyguard, stepped in front of the blade. It took seventy stitches to close the wound. Another night, when Leonard brought Marshall to work—he was five years old—gunfire broke out. Marshall remembers his father tossing him over the bar and lying on top of him—an incident that probably convinced Leonard there was not much future in the nightclub business.

frantically screaming, hips and hair swinging, pure emotional raving

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This record came out in '51, called K. C. Loving, and it was dirty, and it was banned from the air, so then, after things got going pretty good, I picked up on the song and I just happened to sing it to the audience one night, and they dug it, you know?; well it's just about like it is today, all these dirty records that's out now, but at that time they wouldn't let you play that kind of thing. So after I left Florida and came to New York City, and did this thing, I cleaned it up and I named it Kansas City, & then I changed some of the words round and put my beat to it. I don't know if you ever heard it by Little Willie Littlefield, but it was nothing like the one that I did, and if I had been with the right people at the time I could have got part credit for writing it. Leiber & Stoller bought it from a wino - even Little Willie didn't write it. This guy wanted to get to some wine, and he sold it for $50.00

a reaction against such lewd lyrics and a radio ban was imposed

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The second session was purely to record the song 'Shame, Shame, Shame' which had been selected for the forthcoming film 'Baby Doll', based on a screenplay by Tennesee Williams, starring Carroll Baker, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach. An exhilarating performance, probably the most rocking of all Smiley's records. The original studio version was exciting enough but Elia Kazan, the film's director, wasn't convinced that the first version was suitable for the scene in the film and it was re-cut in October. This longer, riotous version was used in the film but only appeared on the Columbia soundtrack album where the accompaniment was mis-credited to Ray Heindorf and the Warner Brothers Orchestra but, actually, the accompaniment was by Dave Bartholomew's band, as usual. Imperial expected 'Shame' to be a hit and it certainly should have been. I can only assume that the controversy over the film made deejays reluctant to play a record from it. The film was attacked by religious leaders as immoral, and failed to get a showing in parts of the Deep South, where there were threats to burn down any cinema that dared to show it. In Britain It was X -rated.

Every night for fifteen years, I fell to bed drunk

 

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 “Hangman Records,” says Childish, “it’s a bloody joke! All we did was to show people that it’s possible to make records without meaning to make a lot of money. Mind you, we ’re not even managing to do that, but what the hell. We just chuck mountains of stuff at the market and we always hope that something in the heap will turn out sufficiently commercial. Of course, commercial for us means the same as ruinous for others. We are highly talented business losers. We’ve still got some old Milkshakes recordings and with a bit of luck we’ll sell enough to finance the really ‘obscure’ stuff. Music is a really pretty nice old business, people like rhythm and all that stuff, it cheers em up”

 

 

Fast Fuckin’ Fannie, Butcher-Knife Totin’ Annie, Pistol Pete

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Wolf and Sunnyland were arguing on the way to a gig one night. Sunnyland ended the argument by yelling, “Hey, I didn’t tell you that when you chopped that man’s head off with a hoe!” Hubert Sumlin asked what he was talking about. Sunnyland said, “I’m just telling it like it is. The motherfucker did chop a man’s head off!” Shaken, Wolf stopped the car and walked away. Taking Hubert home that night, Wolf told him it was true; he’d killed someone. He’d gotten into a fight with a man and hit him with a hoe, slicing the top of his head off and killing him instantly. Terrified, he ran and hid in a drainage ditch while a posse hunted for him with hounds. The next day, his fellow Masons helped him aboard a passing train and he fled the scene.

"Keep Your Big Mouth Shut" very popular with the birds in Manchester

 

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To those of you who may be shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean in the near future, I offer the following advice; head for Hawaii. There, in a club in downtown Honolulu you will find one of the greatest ravers of all time, the legendary Screamin' Jay Hawkins. [Jay had by now fully recovered from his stab wound inflicted by his ex-partner, a girl called Shoutin' Pat.] "I Put A Spell On You" is the big one. Jay starts by doing a special war-dance, prowling around the stage with tambourine in one hand, and Henry in the other. Accompanied by rolling drums he stalks across stage as though looking for blood. Crash! Jay bashes Henry over the head with his tambourine and leaps back across stage. One, two, three, four, and in comes the well known "Spell" beat. Halfway through Jay leaps back with arms outstretched as a vivid green flash lights up the entire club. Jay's other self-composed song was "Alligator 'Wine," which really shook some of the younger birds - dig the opening line "Take the blood out of an alligator!" ... Tremendous ...  

"Solomon Burke loves to eat," said our man Jalacy Hawkins when asked about the King Of Rock 'n Soul during a crowded car-ride from Blackpool to Manchester. "If a chick goes out with Solomon she has to like food, all kinds of stuff. Solomon has his flat filled with hamburgers all hours of the day and night.'' Jay used to live next to Solomon in New York, so he ought to know. Jay digs chicken gumbo, by the way, and Ginny sure cooks a mean chicken gumbo! I look forward to the day when hamburger sales increase, and Solomon comes to spread some much-needed soul amongst us. Long live the King Of Rock 'n Soul!