Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Falcons performing You're So Fine.
CD Review
The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: 1959-Still Rocking, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1989
I have recently been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in this extensive Time-Life Rock ‘n’ Roll series. A lot of these reviews have been driven by the artwork which graces the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may, to the themes of those artwork scenes. This 1959 is a case of the latter, of the not fitting in for this reviewer. On this cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time when we had least at the feel of our generational breakout), two blondish surfer guys, surf boards in tow, are checking out the scene.
That scene although not pictured (except a little background fluff to inform you that you are at the beach, the summer youth beach and no other, certainly not the tortuous family beach scene with its lotions, luggage, lawn chairs, and longings, longings to be elsewhere in early teen brains), can only mean checking out the babes, girls, chicks, or whatever you called them in that primitive time before we called them sister, and woman. No question that this whole scene is nothing but a California come hinter scene. No way that it has the look of Eastern pale-face beaches, family or youth. These is nothing but early days California dreamin’ cool hot days and cooler hot nights with those dreamed bikini girls. These are, no question “beach bums”, no way that they are serious surfer guys, certainly not Tom Wolfe’s Pump House LaJolla gang where those surfers lived for the perfect wave, and nothing else better get in the way. For such activity one needed rubberized surf suits complete with all necessary gear. In short these guys are “faux” surfers. Whether that was enough to draw the attention of those shes they are checking out I will leave to the reader’s imagination.
As for the music, the 1959 music, that backs up this scene we are clearly in a trough, the golden age of rock with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, and Chuck Berry is fading, fading fast into what I can only describe as “bubble gum” music. Sure I listened to it, listened to it hard on my old transistor radio, mainly because that was all that was presented to us. It will be a while until the folk, folk rock, British invasion, and free expression rock engulfs us. As the bulk of this CD’s contents will attest to we are marking time. There are, however, some stick-outs here that have withstood the test of time. They include: La Bamba, Ritchie Valens; Dance With Me, The Drifters; You’re So Fine (great harmony),The Falcons; Tallahassee Lassie (a favorite then at the local school dances by a local boy who made good), Freddy Cannon; Mr. Blue (another great harmony song and the one, or one of the ones, anyway that you hoped, hoped to distraction that they would play for the last dance), The Fleetwoods; and, Lonely Teardrops, Jackie Wilson (a much underrated singer, then and now, including by this writer after not hearing that voice for a while).
Note: After a recent trip to the Southern California coast I can inform you that those two surfer guys are still out there and still checking out the scene. Although that scene for them now is solely the eternal search for the perfect wave complete with full rubberized suit and gear. No artist would now, or at least I hope no artist would, care to rush up and draw them. For now these brothers have lost a step, or seven, lost a fair amount of that beautiful bongo hair, and have added, added believe me, very definite paunches to bulge out those surfer suits all out of shape. Ah, such are the travails of the baby-boomer generation. Good luck though, brothers.
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