ø - Razorcake

SEAN CARSWELL
When we went to the shows in
Brooklyn, the crowd was pretty
well mixed, ethnically speaking,
too. It was Brooklyn, after all. You
get all kinds there. I never gave it a
thought.
Race was a big deal in other
places, though. In the fifties, there
were “white” radio stations and
“black” radio stations in the South.
The “white” radio stations would-
n’t play any of the hits by the
famous black stars like Little
Richard or Fats Domino, even
though those guys were from the
South. Instead, white musicians
like Pat Boone and The Diamonds
would listen to the radio in the
northeast, and, as soon as a song
became a hit, Pat Boone or The
Diamonds or someone like them
would go into the studio and record
the song. So the white stations
wouldn’t play Little Richard’s version
of “Tutti Fruitti,” but Pat
Boone had a big hit with his version
of the same song.
The white versions of the songs
usually weren’t as good. The difference
was really obvious if you listened
to the radio show that came
on after Alan Freed’s, Jocko and
His Rocket Ship. Jocko was a black
DJ, and he played really soulful
music, like Sam Cooke songs and
Ray Charles songs. For a while, he
always played a song called
“Hearts of Stone” by a black group
called The Charms. When you
heard The Charms do “Hearts of
Stone,” it was a really low down
song with a kind of “bop-bopboom”
bass to it. After “Hearts of
Stone” became a hit, a white,
female group called the Fontane
Sisters covered it, and they took the
low down song and sang it like a
bunch of perky cheerleaders. Their
version was really white bread. It
was a different thing altogether.
Anyway, getting back to the
show, Cathy, her cousin, and I got
to see The Penguins, The Nutmegs,
The Flamingos, Lillian Briggs, and
about a half dozen more acts all do
one song each. During the whole
show, the energy in the Paramount
was incredible. Everyone was
screaming and jumping around, but
staying in front of their seats.
Cathy’s uncle kept reading his
Daily News. At the end of the show,
Alan Freed came out and introduced
one of his all-time favorites,
Fats Domino. Fats Domino had
been doing Alan Freed shows since
Alan Freed was still the Moondog,
but Fats Domino was more rock
and roll than R&B. He came out
and belted through two or three of
his hits at the time: “Blueberry
Hill” or “Ain’t That a Shame” or
“I’m in Love Again.” When he was
done, Alan Freed came back out,
thanked everyone for coming, and
that was it. Including the hour and
a half movie before the show, the
whole thing only lasted about three
hours.
The house lights came on.
Cathy’s uncle folded up his newspaper,
stuck it back under his arm,
and stood to leave. The ushers were
quick to clear everyone out. As we
left, we saw another line stretching
down the side of the Paramount and
around the corner. It was full of
teenagers waiting to see the day’s
four o’clock show.
We walked back to the subway,
and Cathy’s uncle and cousin rode
with us all the way to the Jamaica
station. When we got off, we
thanked Cathy’s uncle for taking
us. He said, “You’re welcome.” I
think it was the only thing he’d said
all day.
Over the next few years, I went
to something like twenty to twentyfive
different Alan Freed rock and
roll shows at the Brooklyn
Paramount and the New York
Paramount (after the Brooklyn one
was torn down). I saw a whole
bunch of the big, rock and roll pioneers.
I saw Chuck Berry do his
duck-strut across the stage. He was
amazing, and he was a feature act,
so I got to see a few of his songs. I
saw Screamin’ Jay Hawkins jump
around, waving a shrunken head on
a stick, singing “I Put a Spell on
You.” I saw The Platters sing “Only
You” and “The Great Pretender.” I
saw Little Richard stomp on the
piano and sing, “Good golly, Miss
Molly, she sure like to ball.” I had
no idea what he was talking about
until I was much older, but I sang
along, anyway. (I also found out
much later that the original words
to “Tutti Fruitti” were “Tutti
Fruitti, good booty,” but the studio
made Little Richard change “good
booty” to “aw, rootti” when he was
recording it.)
I saw the Big Bopper before he
got into that plane with Buddy
Holly and Ritchie Valens. I saw
Sam Cooke before he had a onenight
stand with a woman who
robbed him, and he got shot and
killed trying to run her down. I saw
The Shirelles sing, “Will You Still
Love Me Tomorrow?” I saw Dion
and The Belmonts sing “Little
Runaway” and Little Anthony and
the Imperials sing “Tears on My
Pillow.” I saw Frankie Lymon and
The Teenagers before Frankie
Lymon’s voice changed and he
could no longer hit the high notes
that made him famous. To tell the
truth, I can’t remember who else I
saw play, but the shows were
always different and they were
always fun.
After high school, I moved to
upstate New York to go to college.
During my first year there, a few of
the major record companies insisted
that songs by independent
record companies were becoming
hits only because the independent
companies were paying DJs to play
their songs. It was called “payola.”
The majors urged Congress to
investigate the practice of payola.
Congress focused their investigation
on two famous DJs: Dick
Clark and Alan Freed. This was in
1960. I don’t know if either of them
had done anything, but WINS fired
Alan Freed when the investigation
started. It pretty much killed his
career. He tried to get back on the
He was even the first guy to use the term “rock and roll” to describe music
(before that, “rock and roll” was ghetto slang for sex). But Alan Freed knew
all of this and everyone knew it, so he didn’t have to play it up.
radio a few times, but nothing
worked. He basically drank himself
to death by 1965. Nothing ended up
happening to Dick Clark, though.
He kept doing American
Bandstand.
No one could replace Alan
Freed after that. A few DJs tried to
fill his shoes, but it wasn’t the
same. There was something about
him and his shows. He was so gung
ho, and there was just this sense of
everything being fresh and new.
A bunch of those old performers
are dead now. A lot of them got
famous and suddenly had a lot of
money when they were used to
having nothing, and they killed
themselves with drugs and wild living.
A lot of them had one hit and
went back to being nobody again.
A few of these old acts still perform.
I’ve seen some of their
reunion shows on TV. It’s funny to
see these seventy-year-old guys
singing songs about teenage love,
but I still love those songs. I think
it’s funny, too, that, fifty years ago,
my father told me that rock and roll
would never last, and it’s still
around now.
Music has always been like
that, though. One generation never
seems to understand the music of
the generation that comes after
them. Parents rarely understand
their kids’ music. They never think
it will last, when really, it’s not that
different. It’s just the next step in a
long musical progression.
When I think about this, I
always think about Cathy
Lobasso’s uncle, because he didn’t
care about rock and roll at all. He
just read his paper through the
whole thing, through all my
favorite bands and all the songs that
are the soundtrack to my generation.
It was like he wasn’t even
there. He tuned the whole thing out
because the three of us wanted to
go, and he knew that we could only
go if he took us. He was a good
sport. Without him, I may have
never made it to any of those rock
and roll shows.
–Sean Carswell