Chapter Four
At twelve I wasn’t aware that the decade in which I was about to become a teenager was the Eisenhower fifties, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit fifties, the postwar celebration-of-material-things fifties in which “swell” meant excellent and “gay” meant merry. I had no idea of the limited control people had of their destiny if they were anything other than a wealthy male white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. And the way women were depicted on television gave me the idea that society expected little more from a young girl than being attractive and helping men accomplish great things. If she got good grades in school and helped her mom around the house, so much the better.
From my father’s comments as he listened to the news I inferred that politically there were two sides: “them” and “us.” “We” were proud, patriotic Americans, but if you questioned anything the government did, you were “them.” “We” stood for capitalism, freedom, and democracy. “They” stood for communism. The prevailing message was that America’s enemy was the Soviet Union, whose goal it was to take over the world, country by country, until everyone in the entire world was a communist. I learned about the domino theory: if one country fell to communism, the rest would follow. As a Jewish child I had heard over and over how Hitler had annihilated six million Jews and nearly taken over the world in the forties until patriotic Americans and our allies in Europe defeated him. By the early fifties, communism had become the new enemy of patriotic Americans.
At twelve, I had trouble identifying the enemy. Hadn’t the United States fought against Hitler on the same side as Soviet Russia? And what about the other “they”—Communist China? Which country was the worse bad guy? And why, if the Soviet Union and China were both communist, were they not getting along with each other? As my generation entered adolescence it was natural for us to see the adults in our lives as “them,” but there was more going on than just a generational separation.
At first we didn’t see any indication of revolution brewing under the blanket of conformity that lay across America, but seeds of racial integration were already taking root in film, theater, dance, and the visual arts. A momentous change occurred in major-league sports with the addition of a man of color—Jackie Robinson—to the lineup of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. But the field with the most fertile soil for radical transformation and the greatest ability to capture the attention of young people was popular music.
Before the fifties, music written and performed by black Americans was listened to mostly by black Americans. The popularity of such recordings was tracked on rhythm and blues charts. Such music was largely absent from the popular music charts that typically reflected the taste of white mainstream listeners. A sampling of pop charts over the first half of the decade shows the first signs of black music crossing over. This crossover was a tangible measure of the increasing influence of R&B music on white teenagers—a trend that would continue into the twenty-first century with rural white teenagers rapping urban rhetoric over boombox beats.
In 1950, Teresa Brewer’s “Music! Music! Music!” topped the charts. As were most artists on the pop charts that year, Miss Brewer was white.
In 1951, “Rocket 88,” a paean to an Oldsmobile, reflected the enthusiasm of young people for cars. Written and performed by black Americans, the Jackie Brenston version shot to the top of the R&B charts, but it was the recording of “Rocket 88” by Bill Haley and the Saddlemen that connected with white audiences.
In 1952, Ruth Brown’s “5-10-15 Hours” hit #1 on the R&B charts, but Miss Brown didn’t break onto the pop charts until the following year with “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean.”
In 1953, a young white man recorded his first demo in Memphis. With his good looks, shockingly sexy presentation, and parents’ fears that their children would be incited by his pelvic movements to participate in wild orgies, Elvis Presley was uniquely positioned to make black music and dance popular with white teenagers.
In 1954, a group of black male singers known as the Penguins waddled up the R&B charts with “Earth Angel.” (Let the record show that when I was thirteen “Earth Angel” accompanied my first kisses.) Though the Crew Cuts, a white group, released a cover the following year, it was the Penguins’ version that inspired teenagers to form couples, dance, and make out. When both versions appeared in 1955 on the pop charts, the white group peaked at #3, five places above the black group.
In 1955, Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” held the #1 position on the pop charts for eight weeks. Initially I didn’t know or care what color the group was, nor did any of the kids I knew. We just loved listening and dancing to that song.
Before “Rocket 88” was accredited by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 as “the first Rock and Roll song ever recorded,” I had attributed that status to “Rock Around the Clock,” a misperception undoubtedly enhanced by the inclusion of that song in a popular movie. To my knowledge, The Blackboard Jungle was one of the first films to cross-market a theme song. I believe “Rock Around the Clock” flew up the charts because teenagers like me saw the movie and ran out the next day to buy the single.
African Americans from my generation would likely cite a different song as a significant point of change, but for me it was unquestionably Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock.” That may not have been the first rock and roll song, but that 45 rpm single in 1955 divided my world into Before Rock and Roll and After Rock and Roll.
Before Rock and Roll, whenever I was upset about something, I had found comfort in going to the piano and playing whatever came out. I had needed more comfort than usual in the years between 1951 and 1955, when two events transformed my family and permanently realigned the planets in my emotional universe.