Electric Shock

by Peter Doggett

  The album was forgotten by the time that London’s first skiffle and blues club opened in September 1955. The Round House in Wardour Street formalised a scene that was already operating (literally) below stairs in 1954 and 1955, as amateur guitarists, inspired by Barber’s and Colyer’s bands, gathered in cafés and coffee-house basements to swap earnest renditions of tunes by Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie. As Jazz Journal noted in November 1955, ‘skiffle music has now become54 an industry in itself’. A month later, the Barber/Donegan LP was broken up into singles, as an attempt to recoup some money from the project. Donegan’s ‘Rock Island Line’, a propulsive American folk tune collected by the Lomaxes at an Arkansas prison in 1934 (and subsequently claimed by both Lead Belly and Donegan as their own), was played as a Christmas novelty by two British disc jockeys, and then startled everyone by becoming a pop hit in the New Year – as Peter Leslie reported, ‘without benefit of plugging55, publicity or ballyhoo’.

  This horrified the jazz purists: Jazz Journal jibed that Donegan ‘sounds like a number56 of intoxicated hillbillies returning from some over-lengthy orgy’. But for British teenagers who, at that point, had heard nothing more fiery than ‘Rock Around the Clock’, ‘Rock Island Line’ sounded both impossibly alien, and also eminently reproducible with only the minimum of instrumental knowledge. Sales of acoustic guitars soared during 1956, mothers’ washboards were ‘borrowed’ for their percussive effect, and schoolboys learned how to manufacture an upright bass from an old tea chest and some string. Bizarrely, ‘Rock Island Line’ also caught on in the United States, thereby becoming the first instance of a British act selling black American music to a white American audience. (Stan Freberg, ever awake to good comedy material, immediately recorded a hilarious satire of Donegan’s performance.) There was no skiffle boom in the States, but in Britain, the music not only took off, but was widely viewed by the media as a healthy alternative to the sick hooliganism of the rock ’n’ roll brigade. Donegan seized the moment by dismissing rock ’n’ roll as a ‘swindle’, although a fan retorted that the great rock ’n’ roll swindler was actually Donegan himself, as his career would never have flourished had Bill Haley not broken the stranglehold of the post-war balladeers.

  ‘At worst, [skiffle] becomes57 an amateur rock-and-roll’, noted John Hasted in the British Communist Party paper World News. ‘At its best, it could lead to a new style of national people’s song, with a truly popular basis.’ Hasted added, with an unknowingly prophetic ear: ‘British singers can seldom make a success of singing like Negroes. It is not easy to achieve a convincing accent.’ Similar statements were aired during the British R&B boom of 1963–5. Another jazz critic considered that skiffle might spawn ‘Britain’s future Billie Holiday58 or Jimmy Rushing’, on the assumption that once the adolescent infatuations with rock ’n’ roll and skiffle had passed, big bands would inevitably rekindle the splendour of the late 1930s. Instead, Donegan’s success prompted an outbreak of teenage music-making unprecedented in the nation’s history. Thirty-four groups took part in the National Skiffle Contest of 1957, held in Bury St Edmunds, some even daring to wield electric instruments. The same week, a skiffle group formed by a 16-year-old boy named John Lennon performed at a church fete in Liverpool – where a converted warehouse named the Cavern was now hosting four nights a week of traditional jazz, plus two lunchtime jam sessions, in which skifflers were able to participate. So widespread was the phenomenon that the novelist Valerie Hastings wrote a children’s book entitled Jo and the Skiffle Group; the Salvation Army formed its own band to play spiritual material folk-style; comedian Peter Sellers issued a skiffle demolition of the music-hall favourite ‘Any Old Iron’; and readers of the weekly magazine Woman were offered bank-holiday advice on how to prepare for ‘your outdoor skiffle party59’.

  Tens of thousands felt the urge to take part. At a time when guitar tuition books were designed either for the classically inclined, or for those wishing to play complex jazz chords, there was a space in the market for those who preferred to emulate Donegan, Steele or Presley. In the spring of 1958, Bert Weedon was given a Guitar Corner spot on the ITV television show Children’s Hour. His first appearance is said to have prompted 3,000 letters. ‘I am teaching them rock60 and skiffle, to accompany themselves’, Weedon explained. He capitalised on this enthusiasm with the encouragingly titled instruction manual, Play in a Day: Bert Weedon’s Guitar Guide to Modern Guitar Playing. This offered hints on how to tackle skiffle, rock ’n’ roll and jazz, with a chart of common guitar chords, and suggestions on how to play a solo.fn9

  When teenagers began to form their own rock ’n’ roll combos, they were mirroring what had already happened in the United States, where both money and instruments were more accessible to those who had not yet reached adulthood. Many young men posed for the first time in front of a bedroom mirror, guitar or (failing that) tennis racket in hand, imagining the screams as they inherited Elvis Presley’s audience. If his rich, playful, endlessly flexible voice was strictly sui generis, Jerry Lee Lewis’s piano pumping inimitable and Little Richard’s hollering simply impractical to imitate, then other rock ’n’ roll stars appeared to offer a more accessible target. The Everly Brothers demanded only a rudimentary knowledge of chords, and the ability of two boys to harmonise their voices with a brotherly bond. Buddy Holly was even more within reach, or so it seemed: anyone could attempt his mannered, hiccupping vocal tone, while his self-penned songs employed the minimum of basic guitar chords, and (deceptively) simple wordplay.

  ‘After 1955, the amateurs61 took over’, said the songwriter Alec Wilder, lamenting the passing of the era in which Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart and their peers had lifted popular song to unaccustomed heights of sophistication.fn10 His judgement was equally applicable to the process of recording in the rock ’n’ roll era, when the emotional impact of a record was more important than its sonic clarity. The two qualities were not mutually exclusive, but 1956–8 marked a rare moment in the technical history of popular music, when the notion of progress went into reverse. The industry’s goal had always been to produce cleaner and more distinct sound, with electrical recording replacing acoustic, ‘ffrr’ widening the frequencies available to the engineer, and multitrack tape allowing musicians and producers to paint with sound. Suddenly, teenagers were buying records on which it was not clear that the musicians knew how to play their instruments (the 1958 instrumental ‘Green Mosquitos’ by the Tune Rockers), and where noise that was either chaotic or compressed into an indistinct sludge was an acceptable basis for a hit song. There was a burst of records in the early months of 1958 – ‘At the Hop’ by Danny & the Juniors, ‘I Wonder Why’ by Dion & the Belmonts, ‘Jennie Lee’ by Jan & Arnie, ‘Do You Wanna Dance’ by Bobby Freeman, ‘Endless Sleep’ by Jody Reynolds – which suggested that adolescents had seized control of an adult industry. Simultaneously, guitar instrumentals as savage as Link Wray’s ‘Rumble’ and as cavernous as Duane Eddy’s ‘Movin’ & Groovin’’ (on which, unusually, Eddy himself did not actually perform) helped to create an ethos of rock ’n’ roll that went beyond words and actions into the realm of merely being – being rougher, louder and more defiant than anyone else.

  This was the birthplace of garage rock, of punk, of every genre in which feel transcended perfection, and swagger trumped technique – the irony being that it was their very fallibility which made these records so perfect. Rock ’n’ roll fans could relish Scotty Moore’s lost-in-a-maze guitar solo on ‘Too Much’,fn11 or the Silhouettes’ speed-freak incoherence on ‘Get a Job’, or Eddie Cochran’s sly pronunciation of ‘peanuts’ as ‘penis’ on ‘Drive-in Show’.

  Yet the summer of 1958, when many of these strange records were still on the American charts, was also when many pundits declared that rock ’n’ roll had passed its peak; had lost its excitement; was, effectively, dead. Even Alan Freed, the populariser of rock ’n’ roll, was careful to avoid using the phrase on the air. The key word now was ‘beat’ – the Big Beat, for Free
d; ‘beat music’ for TV producers in Britain; soon enough, ‘teen-beat’, a description which named the music’s audience and its prime characteristic, whilst shedding the pejorative sexual verbs and the hooliganism which supposedly went with them. It marked the beginning of an era in which Tin Pan Alley tried to regain control of the music business, and pop became more varied and more bizarre than ever before.

  If you gave the public63 what it wanted, you could smuggle in all sorts of extras – good tunes, good lyrics, good musicianship – even bits of real jazz; but it was the beat that sold the music.

  Ernest Borneman, Melody Maker, January 1959

  If popular music is truly64 the mirror of the people, then rock ’n’ roll is truly a people’s music – for this is the kind of stuff that anybody can sing … we are treated to an orgy of gut-spilling, whimpering and sobbing, which is more embarrassing than soul-stirring. Couple this with the hypnotic beat, and utter lack of vocal ability, and it can add up to a pretty shattering experience.

  Edward Joblonski, American Record Guide, April 1959

  When Elvis Presley was summoned by the US Army in 1958, he left a vacant crown. Little Richard might have seized it, but he was on what the press called ‘an evangelical kick’, though that didn’t prevent him launching his own range of perfume. (First scent? Princess Cheri.fn12) There were confused reports from Australia that Richard had retired from rock ’n’ roll. ‘If you want to live for65 the Lord, you can’t rock ’n’ roll too’, he told reporters in Sydney. ‘God doesn’t like it.’ His saxophonist had teased him that he was only paying lip service to his faith, so Richard had flung his precious jewellery into Sydney Harbour. He would be returning to Los Angeles to be baptised into the Seventh Day Adventist Church and ‘prepare for the end of the world66’. Then he claimed that he had changed his mind, thrown by the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik. Or, in the next breath, Sputnik had triggered an apocalyptic dream where ‘the world was burning up67 and the sky was melting with heat’. Back in America, he began to cancel dates, and was dropped from radio playlists. He went out on the road as a gospel-singing evangelist – and drew only a few dozen people to the sizeable Atlanta City Auditorium. Richard wasn’t perturbed: he cut his hair, because the Bible told him to, and warned his fans that ‘rock ’n’ roll glorifies Satan68’.

  In this belief, he was strangely in harmony with Presley’s most obvious successor: Jerry Lee Lewis. Raised in a Southern Baptist church, he was torn between hedonism and a mortal fear of hellfire. His music pumped a young man’s bravado into the traditions of gospel, country and boogie-woogie, with sexuality oozing out of every bar. ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’, a hit across every imaginable US market from blues to hillbilly, even provided instructions for foreplay and orgasm, prompting an inevitable sequel, ‘Breathless’. But Lewis’s momentum was halted when he took his 13-year-old ‘child bride’ to England. He was forced to abandon his tour following a media campaign to have him deported. When he arrived home, he sorted the issue to his own satisfaction in one quip: ‘She’ll be 14 in July69. But she’s ALL woman.’ The photographs of his barely pubescent bride screamed otherwise.fn13

  Scandal seemed to attract itself to rock ’n’ rollers. Screaming Jay Hawkins (creator of the immortal ‘Constipation Blues’) pleaded guilty to ‘statutory rape’ of a 15-year-old girl, and possession of illegal drugs. Billy Guy of the Coasters was also convicted of underage sex, the girl this time being 16. The male members of the Platters were discovered in a hotel room with three naked call girls (and a fourth in a slip). Chuck Berry was first arrested as a robbery suspect (a case of mistaken identity); then for having a concealed weapon; for ‘weaving his pink Cadillac on a St Louis highway’; and for attempting to date an underage white girl at a high-school fraternity dance. Finally, in 1960, he was jailed for having allegedly escorted a 14-year-old girl over state lines for immoral purposes. There were deaths, of course, too: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in a plane crash; Eddie Cochran in a car accident whilst on tour in Britain.

  British rock ’n’ roll scandals were, on the whole, more restrained. Young rocker Terry Dene was involved in a tempestuous relationship with another singer, Edna Savage. Their ferocious arguments led to his being arrested twice for vandalism. When he joined the army for his national service, his minders assumed that his reputation would be enhanced, as Elvis’s had been, but within days of his conscription, he was revealed to be suffering ‘an emotional crisis71’ and was placed in a military hospital. His crisis became a nervous breakdown, so he was swiftly demobbed – only to discover that his bride no longer wished to be associated with him, and neither did most of his fans. He survived to find Christianity a decade later, and pen a mournfully titled autobiography: I Thought Terry Dene Was Dead.

  Having ousted Marty Wilde from the starring role in TV’s Oh Boy!, Cliff Richard endured nothing more damaging than assault with rotten eggs and tomatoes during a 1959 performance at the Lyceum Ballroom. ‘Boys out for an evening72 with their girls get jealous’, he explained. Eggs were a fashionable weapon in the late 1950s: they were aimed at Shirley Bassey during a 1958 performance at the Chiswick Empire, shortly after she had been accused in the press of ‘faking’ a kidnapping. Just 21, she had already been scolded for recording indecent material, and then involved in an unsavoury incident at the Cumberland Hotel in London, where she was staying with a 35-year-old man. One of her ex-lovers arrived at her suite with a gun, assaulted her companion, and then held Bassey hostage for three hours, firing occasional shots into the furniture. She was eventually rescued by police, but during subsequent court hearings her ex maliciously alleged that she had ‘got rid of73’ four children from four different men. She was forced to admit that she had given birth to an illegitimate daughter when she was 17, who was being raised by her sister. But whereas a rock ’n’ roller’s career could be ruined by notoriety like this, Bassey continued untarnished, topping the British singles chart in 1959, winning popularity polls, and enjoying a succès d’estime at a New York cabaret club in 1961. Britain was unwilling to lose its sassiest and most sultry stage performer, at a time when most of the country’s stars were pale imitations of American originals. Skiffle and Tommy Steele aside, British acts virtually vanished from the charts during 1956 and 1957, the only convincing moments coming from singers reared in the variety tradition, such as Frankie Vaughan and Alma Cogan. Hence the jolt to the teenage nervous system provided by Cliff Richard’s debut, ‘Move It’. Spare, hip and as smooth as a snooker ball racing across the green baize, it was the first (and arguably last, until the arrival of Johnny Kidd & the Pirates in 1959) British rock ’n’ roll record to capture the rebellious spirit of the Americans.

  This was an era when Britain waited to see what was selling in the US, and then attempted to copy it before the original release could take off. But the variety of music coming out of America was bewildering, and singers often found themselves in a London studio struggling to imagine what songs such as ‘My Boy Flattop’ and ‘Green Door’ might possibly symbolise. At least they were dealing with their own language. Performers elsewhere in the world could sense the visceral impact of rock ’n’ roll; the challenge was to adapt it to the culture from which they came. It helped if they were performers for whom English was not entirely foreign. Vince Taylor could take France’s rock ’n’ roll scene by storm because he was British-born and American-raised; Mickey Curtis, both of whose parents were Anglo-Japanese, could head the rockabiri craze in Tokyo. White South Africans preferred to borrow their idols from the US and UK; their black counterparts, left unexposed to the rock ’n’ roll of African-Americans by the nation’s racially determined radio playlists, considered that the likes of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley had nothing to say to them.

  Rock ’n’ roll also penetrated the Communist bloc in Eastern Europe, carried by the Voice of America radio network, and hence by word of mouth. Indeed, the military presence of Elvis Presley in Germany between 1958 and 1960 briefly enco
uraged the US government to think that rock might be a potent cultural weapon against Marxism. In response, successive waves of liberalisation and repression, ultimately emanating from the Kremlin, sent confusing signals to citizens behind the Iron Curtain. Western influences might be discreetly ignored by the authorities one year, and barred the next. Below the surface of Communist culture, young people maintained a semi-concealed network of musicians, fans and venues. Russian gangs operated a flourishing underworld trade in American rock ’n’ roll recordings, often ‘pressed’ on postcards or X-ray plates which had been smuggled out of state hospitals. These ‘records of a criminally hooligan trend74’ were swiftly declared illegal. The authorities in Moscow complained that dance bands were smuggling rock into their repertoire by pretending to mock it. In Czechoslovakia, Ji rˇí Suchý (a less threatening version of Bill Haley) performed translations of US hits at clubs off Wenceslas Square. In East Germany, the authorities sanctioned the creation of a dance called the lipsi (‘a mixed-up rumba75’, said Time magazine), to discourage teenagers from jiving to rock ’n’ roll. ‘Dancers bending at the knee76 were pulled up by their hair’, according to historian Timothy Ryback: ‘People caught dancing apart were beaten up and thrown out of the bar.’ It took a public demonstration of the twist by Communist Party leader Walter Ulbricht in 1962 for the censorship of Western dances to be withdrawn – although not in the Soviet Union, where the party continued to promote officially approved dance steps such as the moskvichka, the terrikon and the infiz. (Only government officials chose to employ them.)