In the meantime, the Carson Twins went on a trip to France with their father and their French maid, Mlle. Bleax (my conception of a French name). Jean’s boyfriend piloted his own private plane across the ocean and Sue played air hostess. Jean wore a helmet and goggles and sat in the cockpit with her boyfriend and also played ship’s nurse. When they got to France, they toured the provinces and saw the famous Percheron horses Sue had read about in geography. While they were in France, they became curious about a stamp shop and soon became involved in a fascinating set of adventures. As it turned out, the counterfeiting ring was operating right there in provincial France, and the Carson Girls solved the mystery, mainly because of Sue’s daring and logical mind. Jean was too busy with her boyfriend to contribute much. The twins won a fabulous reward for catching the crooks, and with the reward they would be able to go to airline hostess and nursing school.
Reaching the Stars: My Life as a Fifties Groupie
Featured in the New Yorker, May 26, 1986
In the late nineteen-fifties, when I was a teenager, I held a national office, published a journal, was interviewed on television and radio, and travelled widely to places like Cincinnati and Detroit and Blytheville, Arkansas. I was a shy, backward, anti-social country kid living on a farm near Mayfield, Kentucky, a hundred and fifty miles from the nearest city, Nashville, but I was ambitious and determined to hit the big time—or at least meet somebody famous. The first star I met was Gene Autry’s dumpy sidekick in the floppy hat, Smiley Burnette. I was about thirteen when he came to town for a show at the Princess Theatre. You could buy a picture of him for a dollar or pay a dollar to have your picture taken with him. Smiley hooked his arm around my shoulders and posed me for the camera, but when I asked him to sign my autograph book he snarled, “I don’t autograph nothing but the pictures for sale.”
The second star on my life list was Tony Martin, the crooner who sang “There’s No Tomorrow” and was married to Cyd Charisse. He came to town to publicize Tony Martin suits, which were manufactured by the Merit Clothing Company, the local factory where my mother worked. She and I went to the Hall Hotel and gawked at him as he got off the elevator. He was surprisingly short.
But from the time I was a child singers impressed me more than movie stars did. I listened to the radio constantly. Perry Como and Patti Page dominated the daytime airwaves in those days, but late on Saturday nights the radio blared out strange music: “John R here, way down South in Dixie, 1510 on the dial, fifty thousand watts of joy! WLAC, Nashville, Tennessee.”
John R played raunchy, stomping-and-shouting blues numbers by black singers like Big Bill Broonzy and Memphis Slim and Little Junior Parker, Little Walter, T-Bone Walker, Elmore James, and Big Joe Turner. The theme song on John R’s show was “Dig Those Blues,” a slow, rolling piano blues. John R was white, but he sounded black. WLAC advertised mysterious products—Silky Strate, White Rose petroleum jelly, “lifetime” Bibles, and soul medallions. My parents and I stayed up late and turned the radio up loud, staring in amazement at our huge console, as big as a jukebox, as it blared out wild music. John R and another white disk jockey, Gene Nobles, who had a show earlier in the evening, played what they called “droopy-drawers songs” (the slow stuff) and “mean, low-down songs.” The mean ones sounded dangerous. I could feel the power of big men stomping into their houses and dragging out their women when they’d been untrue. In the droopy-drawers songs, they cried their hearts out. John R talked through the songs: “Have mercy, baby! … Come on, honey. … Man, don’t that tear you up?” Ruth Brown’s “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean” tore me up bad.
Gene Nobles specialized in bland white imitations of these risqué rhythm-and-blues songs—especially “cover” versions from Dot Records, owned by his sponsor, Randy’s Record Shop in Gallatin, Tennessee. Randy’s artists included Pat Boone and the Fontane Sisters. His star group was the Hilltoppers.
The Hilltoppers, I decided, represented everything I had ever felt and dreamed about my life. As I picked blackberries or hoed vegetables in the scorching morning sun, I longed to travel and see the world. The turbulent music on WLAC expressed my frustration, and the Hilltoppers made me feel there was an answer—some release from the cycle of the seasons, the planting and harvesting. (I didn’t see the glamour in farm life then.) The Hilltoppers’ style wasn’t exactly Big Bill Broonzy and it wasn’t rock and roll yet either—it was sort of like what would happen if Perry Como got hold of some Big Bill Broonzy material—but it grabbed me and shook me up like a religious vision, a calling. This was mainly because the group was from Kentucky. The Hilltoppers were students at Western Kentucky State College, in Bowling Green, where the sports teams were called the Hilltoppers. A Kentucky singing quartet had achieved national fame! The only famous person from Kentucky I had ever heard of besides Abraham Lincoln was Arthur Lake, who played Dagwood in the Blondie-and-Dagwood movies.
The Hilltoppers’ first hit was “Trying,” a ballad written by one of the original members of the group, Billy Vaughn, and later on they were awarded a gold record for an old Johnny Mercer song, “P.S. I Love You.” With the arrival of rock and roll, they started recording livelier imitations of black tunes—“The Door Is Still Open,” “Only You,” and Ruth Brown’s “Teardrops from My Eyes.” On some of the songs you could hear a rock-and-roll saxophone or a boogie piano, and even a bass vocal “bum-bum-bum” against the “do-do-do-do-do-do-do” background harmony. But their style was born in an earlier time. Jimmy Sacca, the lead singer, had a strong, distinctive baritone that strained to be a tenor—a cross between matinée-idol crooning and big-band swing. He was a dreamboat.
I started a Hilltoppers fan club, and the day that the package of membership cards, autographed glossy eight-by-ten photographs, and buttons (“I AM A HILLTOPPERS FAN”) arrived was the turning point of my life. I advertised for members in Betty Burr’s fan-club column in a New York fan magazine, and for a time my whole life revolved around the mailbox and the radio. I corresponded with a Hilltoppers fan on Long Island who monitored all of New York’s radio stations, flipping the dial ceaselessly after school. She constructed elaborate charts, on graph paper, of Hilltoppers airplay. Over the next year, I diligently worked my way up through the Hilltoppers’ power structure, mostly by pestering the Hilltoppers’ secretary in Gallatin and trying to impress her and the Hilltoppers with my devotion so I could get to meet them, and at last became National President of the Hilltoppers Fan Clubs. As National President, I wrote and mailed a newsletter to three hundred fan-club chapters on an addressographed list—mostly addresses in the exotic environs of New York City. One of my jobs as National President was to conduct request campaigns to d.j.s. I wrote to d.j.s in all the big cities:
MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL HILLTOPPERS FAN CLUB
TO: ED BONNER, KXOK, ST. LOUIS
Please play “Do the Bop,” the new Hilltoppers record, on your show. It’s a big hit! Thank you very much.
—“Till Then”
BOBBIE MASON, National President
(“Till Then” was one of the Hilltoppers’ early recordings.)
I prayed for their records to be hits. After reading Norman Vincent Peale, I applied the power of positive thinking to a tune called “Searching,” so that the Hilltoppers might earn another gold record.
My memories of the Hilltoppers are vague. I actually got to know them very well, and if they walked into my house today they would be thoroughly familiar to me. I’m sure Jimmy Sacca would give me one of his big bear hugs and we would fall easily into joking conversation. We were friends. But even though I spent a lot of time with the Hilltoppers during my high-school years I knew very little about them. I didn’t ask about their backgrounds—their parents, brothers and sisters, schooling, and the rest. Background had no meaning to me, because I hadn’t been anywhere; where I was going was what counted. The Hilltoppers were stars, brilliant presences, and my function was to promote their fame, so that their glow would rub off on me, like the luminescent s
tuff from lightning bugs.
In Hilltoppers Highlights, the fan-club journal that I wrote and published, I reported what I knew of the Hilltoppers:
“Jimmy Sacca stands six-two and has black hair and brown eyes, loves steak, pizza, spaghetti (you can tell he’s Italian!), and when time permits this ex-football player’s hobby is miniature golf. He is also accomplished on the clarinet and saxophone. Jimmy comes from Lockport, N.Y.
“Blond, pug-nosed Don McGuire, the ladies’ man of the Hilltoppers, surprises everybody with his deep bass voice. He went to Western Ky. on a basketball scholarship and became one of their star players. He planned to be a dentist until stardom beckoned. He hails from Hazard, Ky., is fiveeleven, collects sports clothes, plays piano and drums.
“The clown of the Toppers, Seymour (‘Sy’) Spiegelman of Seneca Falls, N.Y., was Jimmy’s roommate at college. He is five-eight, weighs 178, and has black hair and brown eyes. His hobbies are drawing and fishing, and he loves football, swimming, and tennis.
“Eddie Crowe, a friend of Jimmy’s from Lockport, replaces Billy Vaughn, the original member of the group who penned their first hit, ‘Trying.’ Eddie lettered in four sports in high school. He’s single, girls! In the Hilltoppers’ show, he plays the trumpet and does comic impressions—James Cagney, James Stewart, Robert Mitchum.”
In time, my mother and I travelled to Cincinnati to see the Hilltoppers perform. It was my first trip anywhere. The ride took sixteen hours, overnight, on a bus that jolted miserably around the curves along the Ohio River. I remember waking up at each stop and checking the town on the map, so I could say I had been there. I was so excited I couldn’t eat, even though the group performing was not entirely the original Hilltoppers. While Don and Sy were in the Army (they’d been drafted, and this was just after the Korean War), Jimmy hired a series of replacements. The Hilltoppers were appearing with Barney Rapp’s orchestra at the Castle Farms Ballroom in Cincinnati. It was a huge suburban dance hall that was packed with glamorous couples who drank liquor. Women smuggled in whiskey bottles under their wraps: I saw them do it. The Hilltoppers bounded onstage, wearing their red sweaters and beanies with “W” on them—the football sweaters and freshman beanies from their college. (I had ordered a beanie for myself from Western and had considered wearing it that evening, but it didn’t go with my taffeta dress and borrowed rhinestone jewelry.) Their act was sensational. They sang all their hits, including “P.S. I Love You,” “From the Vine Came the Grape,” “I’d Rather Die Young,” and my favorite, “Poor Butterfly.” Their sound was principally Jimmy Sacca’s lead backed up with a simple “doo-wah” harmony. In their sweaters and baggy gray flannels, they swayed from side to side in unison, sort of like cheerleaders. I learned later that their moves had been choreographed. At intermission, I was allowed to go backstage to meet my idols, and during their second show they introduced me proudly to the audience. In the second show, they wore tuxedos.
After the show, they bought my mother and me Cokes and potato chips. The Hilltoppers didn’t drink, but they smoked and drove a Cadillac. They drove us back to the hotel in their sky-blue 1954 Fleetwood, and Jimmy Sacca gave me forty dollars to help operate the fan club.
At school, the Hilltoppers were my secret. I had few friends, because I lived out in the country, and also because I was shy and not interested in suntans and pajama parties. I read a lot: “The Search for Bridey Murphy,” “The Practical Way to a Better Memory,” “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.”
The next time we saw the Hilltoppers was in Vincennes, Indiana. Mama and I were walking down the main street from Woolworth’s to our hotel there when we spotted the Cadillac. It was the Hilltoppers, arriving in town for their show. I waved at them, and the Cadillac pulled over. Jimmy was driving.
“It’s us again!” Mama cried. Jimmy hopped out and hugged us. While the other members of the group—more replacements—checked into the hotel, Jimmy took us to eat at a grill down the street. We sat in a booth and ordered pork chops with applesauce and French fries.
“Well, what did you think when you heard the news?” Jimmy asked us worriedly.
“I was shocked,” I said lamely. I didn’t know what to say. I had seen the newspaper: one of the various substitute Hilltoppers had been arrested for possession of marijuana. My mother and I had never heard of marijuana, so the news didn’t really faze us.
“I was at the racetrack,” Jimmy said. “And the P.A. system called my name. I had no idea he was using the stuff. I fired him so fast he didn’t know what hit him.”
“He wasn’t one of the real Hilltoppers,” I said loyally. I longed for the day when Sy and Don would rejoin the group. I knew I would like them, because they looked like such cutups in their pictures. Jimmy and Don and Seymour and Billy, the original group, were all family men, with wives and children.
After we finished eating, Jimmy lit up a Pall Mall, and Mama said, “If y’all come to Mayfield, I’ll get you some free Tony Martin suits from the Merit.”
“How will you do that?” I asked, surprised.
“Willie Foster will let me have them,” Mama said confidently.
Willie Foster was the president of the Merit Clothing Company. We had been to his farm for the annual employees’ picnic—fried chicken and roasting ears and washtubs of cold drinks. His farm was like a plantation—a magnificent place with acres of pasture and horses and a little lake with rowboats.
“We’d love to come to Mayfield,” Jimmy said. “But you don’t have to get us any suits.”
“Well, you come, and I’ll cook you up a big supper and get you some suits,” Mama said. “I used to sew labels in coats, but the foreman told me to slow down because I was making more than the men. So I quit. I could make a dollar an hour, I was so fast.” She laughed. “But with all the farm work I didn’t have time to sew labels anyway.”
“Well, since you quit, they won’t let you have any free suits,” I argued.
“Oh, Willie wasn’t mad at me,” Mama said. “Willie’s good to his workers. And if the Hilltoppers wore his suits, that would be good publicity.”
“Well, gee, Mrs. Mason,” Jimmy said. “That would be swell.”
He bought us strawberry sundaes and then we went to the show.
After that, Mama and I travelled many places to see the Hilltoppers. We went to Centralia, Illinois; Princeton, Indiana; Herrin, Illinois; Blytheville, Arkansas; and Cape Girardeau, Missouri, as well as St. Louis and Detroit. Daddy had to milk the cows and couldn’t go. The Hilltoppers always welcomed us. Don and Sy got out of the Army and took their rightful places in the group. They were boyish, modest, and funny. I adored them. Being a groupie in the fifties was as innocent as the Girl Scouts. The Hilltoppers never even swore around me, except once—the day Jimmy forgot the words to “My Cabin of Dreams,” which they lip-synced on Johnny Slagle’s “Dance Matinee” on WXYZ in Detroit. They took a protective attitude toward me, and they were crazy about my mother, who didn’t put on any airs just because she knew some stars. “I think it’s nice they’ve got that Cadillac and ain’t stuckup,” Mama said. She still talked about those Tony Martin suits and how good the Hilltoppers would look in them.
During my years with the Hilltoppers, I met lots of stars: Buddy Morrow, Bill Haley and the Comets, Billy Ward and the Dominoes, the Fontane Sisters, the Four Lads, Ted Weems, Wink Martindale, Jaye P. Morgan, even Paul Hornung (the Green Bay Packer), and many others. In Memphis, I visited Vicki Woodall, the National President of Pat Boone’s fan club, and a photo of me with Pat and Vicki appeared later in 16 Magazine. (After she graduated, Vicki went to Hollywood to be Pat’s secretary. Something like that was my ambition; the only alternative I could see was working at the Merit.) When the Hilltoppers played the Michigan State Fair, in Detroit, I appeared with the Hilltoppers on Soupy Sales’ original TV show, and I was also interviewed by Robin Seymour and Don McLeod, major d.j.s on my request list. Johnnie Ray, whose big hits were “Cry” and “The Little White Cloud That Cried,�
� stopped by the Hilltoppers’ trailer at the fair one day. He flirted with me and seemed a little reckless, but his show was terrific. On the same bill was Eydie Gormé—before she married Steve Lawrence and they became Steve and Eydie. Eydie told me she admired my pixie haircut. Some weeks later, I saw her on TV and she had had her hair pixied. And at the Cotton Ball in Blytheville, Arkansas, I met Narvel Felts, a guy with a slick pompadour who said he was a singer in the style of Elvis. He asked for my autograph because I was a National President. More than twenty years later, I heard his name again, on the radio. He had finally made it. He had a hit record.
The day my mother and I drove to Blytheville and met Narvel Felts was the day the Russians sent up Sputnik. After the Hilltoppers’ show, Don McGuire drove back to Mayfield with us in our Nash Rambler and then caught a bus to his home in Owensboro. As we rode through the night, listening to Chuck Berry and Little Richard and Elvis Presley on an after-hours show from New Orleans, we were aware of Sputnik spying on us. I noted the Sputnik launch in my diary:
October 4. Blytheville, Ark. Cotton Ball. Hilltoppers and Jimmy Featherstone Ork. Russian sattelite, Sputnik, launched.
November 3. Sputnik II.
November 7. 40th anniversary of Russian Revolution. President Eisenhower’s address to the nation. Senior rings.
November 15. UFO sightings increase.
December 11. English theme, “National Security,” A+.
That fall, when I was a senior, a girl named Janine Williams went with my mother and me to see the Hilltoppers at a ballroom in a little town in Tennessee. Janine was popular at school, and she made a great impression on the Hilltoppers with her teasing, flirtatious personality. All the crinolines she wore under her dress made her look ready for flight, for a trip into outer space. “My brother went to Louisville to the basketball tournament last year,” she told the Hilltoppers. “He won the tickets, and he flew up there in an airplane. And he stayed in the same hotel as the teams.”
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