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

epub or mobi

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.'

Most rockabilly lyrics freely express sex as a positive thing

pdf (210 pages / 198MB)

ANDY STARR started out saying things like, "Yeah, we had a good time. It was the era of Elvis Presley . . . " - it sounded like I was talking to Eisenhower. Next time I talked to him he said, "You know, Bill, I didn't tell you, but I had sex with over 5000 women! ... Did I tell you about the time this guy was shooting at my car - his wife was hiding in the back seat while I had two blondes in the front!" He called me up and said, "Billy, I'm doing these big shows now - I'll send you photos." Then he sent these pictures, and he's singing in front of a potato chip rack.

the dirtiest sound you could ever imagine

epub or mobi, with thanks to the original sharer

“Sputnik” Rock Monroe was a professional wrestler of considerable renown who had gone through a number of names (“Pretty Boy Rock” “Elvis ‘Rock’ Monroe”) and territories before finally arriving in Memphis as “Sputnik.” He was prone to describing himself in a voice several decibels above the normal range as “220 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal with the body that women love and men fear.” In looking for a way to distinguish himself that was consonant with both character and commerciality, Sputnik hit upon race. He was a hero to the black man, a villain to the white—he liked to boast that he practically desegregated Memphis’ Ellis Auditorium single-handed, calling up to his colored fans in the “crow’s nest,” with a seating capacity of less than one hundred, “Let my people go.” Every time he threw an opponent down, he would raise up his hands to his fans, and they would just call back, “Sweet man!” When the promoters objected, he said, “Hey, if their money’s no good, just give it to me, and I’ll give it back to them,” and gradually “colored” seating capacity was expanded until the auditorium was de facto integrated. He and Dewey walked a goose down Beale Street on a leash—“Dewey came up with the goose, I came up with the Chihuahua collar and the leash. The people would holler and hug me and jump up and down. I knocked a white guy out on the corner of Third and Beale one time for calling me a nigger-lover, and a little black guy says, ‘Sputnik Monroe, you a mean motherfucker when you drinking, and I believe you drinking a little bit all the damn time.’”

records so sexually explicit they still carry parental advisory warnings

epub or mobi, with thanks to the original sharer

In the United States, the excluded, underestimated, marginalized music included all but the most schooled music made by African Americans, virtually all music of rural and small-town white Southerners, and while there had already been, in Jelly Roll Morton’s description, a “Spanish tinge” in American popular music for many years, Latino music wasn’t going to cross the border into American parlors or stages, either. And then Ralph Peer came along. He saw as much potential in passed-over, professionally neglected music, and did as much to make something of it, as any one person ever has. In the initial breakthrough idea Peer had defined and worked on at Okeh, they had looked for homespun performers, in blues, hillbilly, gospel, regional jazz, and began to record them, specifically for the same populations from which they had emerged.

I learned to put ketchup on my fries or else Elvis would eat them all

pdf, with thanks to the original sharer

That night Elvis used the room to have sex with a girl he had met earlier in the day. We were the only people in the lobby, aside from the desk clerk. Finally, after what seemed like hours, I looked up and saw Elvis coming down the stairs with the girl at his side, wild-eyed and clinging to his hand. After a moment of indecision, he left her at one end of the lobby and walked over to where we were sitting. We could tell from his face that something was wrong. Elvis walked up to us and stood there a minute before speaking. Finally, he said matter-of-factly, “The rubber busted. What do I do now?”

Bill laughed. “I think you had better marry her—or get the hell out of town.”

Realizing that I didn’t have a follow-up to Bill’s comment, I simply shook my head. Neither of us had any pearls of wisdom to offer, so we went upstairs to the room and went to sleep, leaving Elvis and the girl in the lobby. Before he had sex with her we cautioned him about disease and getting girls pregnant. Short of putting the condom on him and monitoring its condition during the experience, what more could we have done?

The next morning we asked Elvis how he had handled the crisis.

“Oh, I took her to the emergency room at the hospital,” he said nonchalantly.

“The emergency room!”

We had both had condoms break. It’d never occurred to us that it was a matter for the emergency room. “So what happened?” I was really curious.

“Yeah, I got them to give her a douche.”

I looked at Bill. “I didn’t know they did that.”

“Me either.”

Elvis was certainly an original thinker.

"Do you know what the words are to “Work with Me, Annie”?"

pdf, with thanks to the original sharer

“So we went to the club, and James started to sing. Now he must have seen an act named Big Jay McNeely. Big Jay had a thing where he would get on his back and he’d crawl all over the floor on his back blowing his horn, his saxophone. James must have seen this because James got on the floor and did the same thing, crawling from table to table singing this song I’d heard on the dub, which was ‘Please, Please, Please.’ It was fantastic.  I got back to Cincinnati and called the group. I told them to come up to Cincinnati at a certain time and I’d put them up in a hotel. They came up and we did the session. I was in St. Louis when Henry Glover and Andy Gibson, an arranger for King, came in on their way to Hot Springs, Arkansas. “They said, ‘You better call the old man right away. He told us when we found you to tell you you were fired.’ And I said, ‘Fired? For what? What did I do this time?’ They just said, ‘You’d better call.’ So I did. Nathan got on the phone and said, ‘What are you on? What kind of shit are you on?’ See, everybody in those days thought I was smoking pot because of the crazy things I did. Henry Glover said to me once, ‘I’m black, but I won’t go in some of the joints you do.’ So, I had to be on some shit, right? Anyway, Nathan says, ‘You gotta be on something, because how could anybody in his right mind record the worst piece of shit I ever heard in my life? Sounds like someone stuttering on a record, all he says is one word.’