Hey, look what’s finally on TV! Let the Good Times Roll (1973)

There was a void in rock music in the early 70s that was filled by a revival of 50s rock & roll. Sha Na Na was playing the Filmore East and Woodstock. WCBS-FM changed its format to all-oldies and handed over Sunday nights to doo-wop scholar Gus Gossert. Madison Square Garden began hosting – and selling out – package shows of 50s artists, has-beens and relics to the outside world, but royalty to the reformed juvenile delinquents and greasers who lined up for tickets.

My friends and I attended one of those Rock & Roll Revivals, as they were billed, the infamous Garden Party in October 1971. (Two of my first three concerts were the Garden Party and a January 1973 concert during which Neil Young announced that the Vietnam War was over with the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty that evening – excuse me for thinking every show I’d ever attend would be eventful). My memory of the bill at the Garden that night is hazy (and there’s no reliable online resource to help), but I do remember Little Eva and Rick (Not Ricky) Nelson, plus show-closers Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry.

There’s commentary online from people WHO WERE AT THE CONCERT insisting that the booing during Nelson’s set was directed at cops hassling (to use the vernacular of the day) some kids smoking weed. It’s not true and the Rick (Not Ricky) distinction is important. Distancing himself from being the annoying kid brother on that annoyingly corny television show, Nelson took the stage with a band of LA session musicians playing countrified versions of his old hits and a few covers.

I’m sure they were good, but nobody was listening. There was a twang (mostly courtesy of a pedal steel guitar) to the music that didn’t go down well on 33^rd Street in those days when us city folk generally considered country and western “shit-kicker music” and a joke funny above the Mason-Dixon line. Nelson got it right on “Garden Party” – he didn’t look the part and the music didn’t fit. Of course, he got the last laugh with “Garden Party” going top ten and later fathering the twin boys who fronted the atrocious rock band Nelson. 

Let The Good Times Roll, filmed around the same time as the Garden Party, captured similar revivals. There’s Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, looking and sounding much like they did the night we saw them – Bo stutter-stepping, Chuck duck walking – tried and true schtick that the sold-out crowd ate up. It was exciting and still one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Let The Good Times Roll does a great job, sometimes using split screens and “psychedelic” camera tricks, of capturing that excitement.

Other highlights from Let the Good Times Roll: Chubby Checker, minus his American Bandstand baby fat, turning the Twist into an Olympic sport; Little Richard sitting in his dressing room accepting visitors (including Chubby and Bill Haley) like the queen; and Rob Reiner introducing the Coasters with a dead-on impersonation of Murray the K’s hyperactive jive talk. Reiner grew up in the suburbs of Westchester County; obviously he spent a lot of time listening to New York City radio.

Hey, look what’s finally on TV! I bet it’s been more than 20 years since I last watched Let The Good Times Roll before TCM showed it over the Labor Day weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

A history of popular music as told by 100 one-hit wonders (part 4) 

70. Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs –•– Stay — (Peaked: November 21, 1960 at # 1)  

"Stay" doesn’t actually stay very long, clocking in at 1:36, the shortest record to reach #1.

69. Miriam Makeba –•– Pata Pata — (Peaked: November 25, 1967 at # 12)        

Miriam Makeba fun facts: She was married to a fellow South African, trumpeter Hugh Masekela (another one-hit wonder with “Grazing in the Grass” in 1968), as well as Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael (not at the same time).

68. The Chakachas –•– Jungle Fever — (Peaked: March 25, 1972 at # 8)

The list of songs with orgasmic moaning in the mix includes Donna Summers’ “Love to Love You,” Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s pornographic tour de force “Je t’amie,” Robert Plant’s heavy breathing during the “psychedelic” instrumental break on “Whole Lotta Love,” “Pillow Talk” by Sylvia (who will come up again later on this list) and "Jungle Fever" – a record you never wanted to come up on the radio if you were trapped in the car with your parents.

67. Buckner & Garcia –•– Pac-Man Fever — (Peaked: March 27, 1982 at # 9)

Underemployed and with too much time on my hands, I began to search out the bowling alleys and makeshift arcades where I might find the jolt I needed, a trip to a universe where I was the unforgiving, stalking predator. With enough quarters and a shaking hand on the throttle, there was Pac-Man. In a pinch, Ms. Pac-Man worked just as well.

66. The Fendermen –•– Mule Skinner Blues — (Peaked: July 11, 1960 at # 5) 

This song always struck me as a kind of silly novelty song, then I came across Dolly Parton’s dynamite version from 1970. Turns out to date back to the early 30s and is something of a country standard. The Fendermen (true to their name) introduced electric guitars, but it still veers awfully close to novelty record status. The lame “cha cha cha” ending doesn’t help its case.

65. Johnny Ace –•– Pledging My Love — (Peaked: March 19, 1955 at # 17)

Johnny Ace, 25, was playing around with his revolver backstage at a 1954 concert. Someone told him to be careful. Just after he claimed, “Gun’s not loaded,” it went off, the starting pistol that sent his "Pledging My Love," released posthumously, to #17 nationally and #1 on the R&B charts for 10 weeks. Billboard at the time said Ace's death "created one of the biggest demands for a record that has occurred since the death of Hank Williams just over two years ago." Paul Simon was old to enough to be affected by Ace’s death and his “The Late Great Johnny Ace” connects Ace’s death with that of two other Johns, Kennedy and Lennon. 

64. Desmond Dekker and the Aces –•– Israelites — (Peaked: June 28, 1969 at # 9)   

Despite the often-unintelligible lyrics, "The Israelties" was the first reggae song to hit the U.S. top ten. Some say the first was Millie Small’s “My Boy Lollipop,” which had more of that skip-along ska beat instead.

63. The Knickerbockers –•– Lies — (Peaked: January 22, 1966 at #20)                   

The fab "Lies" was the first, and still one of the best, Beatlesque records. Even with “We Can Work It Out” and “Day Tripper” concurrently in the U.S. top ten, the Lennon-styled vocals and guitar work (sounding more like the Who in spots), pushed “Lies” to #20. The band hailed from Bergenfield and took its name from local Knickerbocker Road, which ironically doesn’t run at all through Bergenfield. Keeping that Garden State spirit alive, a reincarnated version of the band called itself Lodi.

62. John Zacherle –•– Dinner with Drac–Part 1 — (Peaked: March 31, 1958 at #6)           

Halloween 1966: Wearing football shoulder pads and nose putty globbed over my face, I stood on a long line to meet The Cool Ghoul, Zacherle, in front of Bamberger’s at the Garden State Plaza. It must have been some sort of costumer contest, and as each kid filed past, Zach made a joke or comment. My turn. Zach asks me who I’m supposed to be. I tell him the Hunchback. Zach: “Wait till your mother sees all that bubblegum on your face.”

61. The Elvin Bishop Band –•– Fooled Around and Fell in Love — (Peaked: May 22, 1976 at #3) 

As with the Beatles’ “Something” and Wings’ “My Love,” two other love songs I always found tedious, "Fooled Around" redeems itself with an inspired guitar solo by Elvin Bishop, who at one time in the late 60s was considered one of the great white wonders of blues guitar.

 

Hey, look what’s finally on TV! Johnny Cool (1963)

Henry Silva had a long film career playing mostly Indians or ethic types when he wasn’t in a role supporting any combination of Rat Pack members, including The Manchurian Candidate with Frank Sinatra or as one of the second-tier members of Ocean’s Eleven, along with professional sourpusses Richard Conte, Norman Fell and Joey Bishop.

With Silva in a rare lead role, a Rat Pack breeze blows through Johnny Cool. Sinatra musical accomplices Sammy Cahn and Billy May wrote the swinging soundtrack. Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop have cameos and the film’s executive producer is Peter Lawford. (Lawford gets an “in name only” cameo, billed on a Desert Inn marquee that Silva drives past).

Silva plays a Sicilian Robin Hood-styled folk hero named Giordano, who gets shanghaied by an American mafioso in exile into knocking off a bunch of competing mob bosses. Now an assassin renamed Johnny Cool, his reptilian features and cold-blooded march across America finding creative ways to cross off the names on his hit list – including machine gunning a gangland boss in his office from a window-washer scaffold and throwing a suitcase bomb into a pool – is making the Mob nervous. As one FBI agent on his trail says, “Everybody remembers him, but nobody knows him.”

Sammy, Liz and Henry

What really makes Johnny Cool cool is the strong supporting cast of recognizable faces. Jim Backus is a corrupt construction company owner (who twice sneaks out a Mr. Magoo laugh off camera). Telly Savalas plays a competing mob boss. A couple of curious casting choices play casino operators. John McGiver’s stern high school principal look and patrician delivery makes his veiled threat of forcing sexual favors from a woman who can’t pay her casino bill even creepier. As McGiver’s partner, political satirist Mort Sahl isn’t much of an actor (and seems to need a shave as well). All four get violently knocked off by Johnny Cool.

John McGiver and Mort Sahl

Sammy Davis Jr. plays a bystander in a backroom craps game with the unlikely name of “Educated.” Elizabeth Montgomery is a bored divorcee inexplicably drawn to dangerous Johnny and in a party scene we get a glimpse of what might happen if Samantha Stevens got out of control at one of those suburban cocktail soirees – dancing the twist with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other; then waking up the next morning hungover, with disheveled hair and wrapped in a blanket, presumably either topless or naked. When she and Johnny rendezvous at one point in a Las Vegas hotel room, she gets to cry out, “I need you! I need you right now!” Hubba hubba.

(Montgomery and Johnny Cool director William Asher met on the set. Within a year they divorced their spouses and were married to each other. Asher, who also directed several beach party movies, later became executive producer on Bewitched).

As an actor better known for his looks than his acting, Silva comes off a little stiff at times, as do most of the mob characters, whose dialogue is awkwardly formal. But the many guest stars (which also includes  Joey Bishop, Elisha Cook Jr. and Richard Anderson) give the film the spirit of a more-violent Burke's Law episode. A fun movie and always worth catching the rate times it airs on TV.

Hey, look what’s on TV! Johnny Cool plays on TCM every couple of years or so; another cable channel occasionally shows a version edited for commercials.