Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (82 page)

6.
b)
Apparently they weren’t happy about giving up their school mascot—a sketch of a frowning, belligerent midget, so they replaced three members of the school board. One of the board-members who was dumped, Diane Melbye, said simply: “I understand that people are desperately clinging to what they have known in the past, but the mascot is not appropriate.” But the dentist who’d spearheaded the recall vote responded that he was angry that “70-plus years of tradition [had been] taken away from us in 15 minutes.” He was one of the three elected to the school board.

7.
All of them.

a) In September 1996, first-grader Jonathan Prevette was suspended for a day for “sexual harassment.” When his outraged parents took it to court, the case received worldwide publicity…and the school was widely ridiculed. Finally, after about six months, the U.S. Education Department exonerated Prevette and called on school officials to use “good judgment and common sense” in fighting harassment. The school changed the charge to “unwelcome touching.” Prevette’s comment: “See, I told them I was just trying to be friends!”

b) The incredulous shop owner called newspapers himself.

c) The rule applies not only to ballcocks, but to stopcocks, too. (They have to be called “stop-valves.”) “This is political correctness gone mad,” said the head of the National Plumbers’ Association. One plumber responded with an announcement that he would now charge $22 to fit a
stopcock
, but $45 to fit a
stop-valve.

ANSWERS TO ROCK QUIZ
(from
page 39
)

1. b.
“Hound Dog” was written in 1952 by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller specifically for Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton. Her record went to #1 on the R&B charts in 1953. Then a lounge act named Freddie Bell and the Bellboys made a joke out of it in 1955. That’s the version that Elvis copied.

How did he first hear it? In 1956, after “Heartbreak Hotel” had hit #1, Elvis was signed to do his first gig in Las Vegas. Later he’d be king of the town. But the first time around, he was fired—a two-week engagement at the Frontier Hotel was shortened to one week when audiences failed to respond to the hip wiggler. But Elvis still lucked out: he wandered into the lounge and watched Freddie Bell’s group perform their humorous takeoff of “Hound Dog.” He thought it was hilarious…and decided to do it himself. Note: The Bellboys had already recorded the song, and Elvis may have picked up a copy of their record to refresh his memory before he recorded his own version.

2. c.
Blackwell had just taken a job writing for a publisher called Shalimar Music when Moe Gayle, the head of the company, called him into his office with an unusual offer: Elvis Presley was interested in recording “Don’t Be Cruel,” but the deal was contingent on Blackwell giving up half his writer’s credit (and thus half the royalties) to Presley. “Elvis Presley?” Blackwell answered. “Who the hell is Elvis Presley?”

Blackwell recalls: “I just felt that I was getting the shaft, man. It took them about two weeks to convince me. They pointed out that if Elvis did become big, I would make a good deal more money this way than not doing it at all. And if he didn’t become big, I really wasn’t losing anything…so I said okay.”

It may have been an unjust arrangement, but it wound up an extremely lucrative one for Blackwell. “Don’t Be Cruel” was released in July 1956 as the flip side of “Hound Dog.” The double-sided hit reached #1 in August and stayed there for over two months; it was on the charts for six months, becoming the year’s #1 record and Elvis’s favorite early record. Blackwell was instantly established as a major songwriter. He went on to write “All Shook Up,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Return to Sender,” and many more hits.

3. a.
Fats Domino wrote the song from real life: “I was walkin’ down the street and I saw a little lady spankin’ a baby. And I heard somebody say ‘Ain’t That a Shame.’” But Pat didn’t relate to it—he objected to it because the grammar was bad.

“[When the record company asked me to record] ‘Ain’t That a Shame,’ I balked,” Boone says. “I said, ‘Look, I just transferred to Columbia University, I’m an English major. I don’t want to record a song called “Ain’t That a Shame.’ ” I mean, ‘ain’t’ wasn’t an accepted word. It is now in the dictionary, but I was majoring in English and I felt that this was going to be a terrible thing if it was a hit. I tried to record it ‘Isn’t That a Shame,’ but it didn’t work.’ ”

He finally gave in and used the original lyrics. It hit #1 on the charts. Domino’s version was a hit, too—but with Boone taking the lion’s share of sales away, it only reached #10.

4. a.
In the mid-1950s, “respectable” people—including Mrs. Kern—thought doo-wop rock was a travesty. According to one account, she was so appalled and outraged by the Platters’ treatment of the song that she explored ways of stopping it legally. Of course, when the Platters’ record became a hit—and sold more copies of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” than anyone had before—her opinion changed. And she never turned down a royalty check.

5. c.
Hard to believe, but although he may have been the most influential rock musician ever, Berry only had one #1 song—a novelty tune full of sophomoric sexual innuendo called “My Ding-a-Ling.” He’d been using it to close his concerts and did it as “My Tambourine” on a live album in the mid-1960s. Then in 1972 he recorded it live again, in London. For some reason his record company released it as a single. As Bob Shannon and John Javna wrote in
Behind the Hits
: “It’s kind of depressing for music fans that the biggest single Chuck Berry ever had was this…this.
..thing!
But what the hell, at least Chuck got a hit out of it.”

6. a.
Radio stations found all kinds of reasons not to play it: it was too suggestive, he cursed on it (the part where he goes “We-ell-a” sounded like he was saying “Weh-hell-a”), he sounded black (most stations didn’t play songs by black artists). But when the record was banned by BMI (Broadcast Music Inc., which licenses music for airplay) because it was “obscene,” the record died.

Sun Records knew it could be a hit—and Jerry Lee Lewis could be another Elvis—if it was handled right. So they took Lewis to New York to try to get him on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” They flew to New York, but Sullivan wouldn’t listen—Lewis didn’t have a hit, and Sullivan didn’t like that kind of music, anyway. So they called NBC and got the talent coordinator there to set up a meeting with the producer of “The Steve Allen Show” (a variety program that ran head to head with Sullivan’s). Allen’s biggest coup had been to introduce Elvis Presley as a guest after Sullivan had turned him down the first time. Now the Sun people hoped they could get Allen to do it again. They took Lewis with them to the meeting. When the TV execs asked to hear a record, Lewis stepped out and played in person. The NBC execs were blown away and scheduled him for
that
Sunday night.

What people at NBC never found out was that the song Jerry Lee was going to play—“Whole Lotta Shakin’”—had been banned. Why? Because after NBC agreed to have Lewis on, the head of promotion for Sun Records called BM1 and convinced them that if NBC didn’t mind about the lyrics, why should they? He neglected to add that no one at NBC had actually heard the lyrics. But BMI gave in, and the way was clear for Jerry Lee’s appearance.

On July 28, 1956, America was introduced to Jerry Lee Lewis and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” on “The Steve Allen Show.” Jerry went crazy, playing piano with his feet and inadvertently involving Allen himself. At one point he jumped off his piano stool to play standing up and sent the stool careening across the stage: Allen, who was stomping and clapping with the rest of the audience, tossed it back toward Jerry. Then Allen grabbed another piece of furniture and tossed it. Reportedly, he was about to throw a potted plant when Jerry finished playing. The exposure sent the record zooming up the charts. By the end of August it was a million-seller and Jerry Lee was the hottest new rocker in America.

7. b.
Little Richard was so incensed by Boone’s cover version of “Tutti Frutti” (which outdid Richard’s on the charts), he purposely made the follow-up, “Long Tall Sally,” too fast for Boone to sing. Nonetheless, Boone figured out how to adapt “Long Tall Sally” and gave Richard a run for his money. Little Richard’s version did beat out Boone’s—barely. Richard hit #7 in
Billboard
, Boone hit #8.

ANSWERS TO ROCK QUIZ #2 (
page 347
)

1. a.
The story told in Grace Slick’s biography is that members of the Great Society (Slick’s first band) kept trying to get her to write music. Finally they practically locked her in a room and told her she couldn’t come out until she’d written some songs. She emerged with several, including “White Rabbit,” which was loosely based on a classical piece by Ravel called “Bolero.” However, Slick has said repeatedly that “White Rabbit” isn’t about drugs. Her explanation: “We were talking about opening up, looking around, checking out what’s happening. We were also talking about the fifties mentality, which was really bottled up.” She added: “Feeding your head is not necessarily pumping chemicals into it.”

Most of the imagery she used came directly from Lewis Carroll’s two books,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
, and
Through the Looking Glass
(see
page 79
). Three examples from the book
Behind the Hits:

      
1. “One pill makes you larger.”
Alice was about three inches tall and wandering around Wonderland when she spotted a caterpillar. It was about the same height as her, except that it was sitting on top of a mushroom, smoking a hookah. She asked it how she could get big again; as the caterpillar was walking away, it turned back and said, “One side makes you larger, the other side makes you smaller.” Alice asked, “One side of what?” The caterpillar replied, “The mushroom.” There weren’t any pills in the story, but maybe they were magic mushrooms.

      
2. “When the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go.”
The premise of
Through the Looking Glass:
Alice is trying to get her cat to play chess with her; she falls asleep and dreams that she’s a pawn on the chessboard and has to get to the other side to become a queen. Each chapter of
Through the Looking Glass
takes place on a different square of the chessboard, and the characters in it are characters in a game of chess. Occasionally they do tell her where to go (of course, she’s lost). At one point, the White Knight guides her across a brook that turns out to be the space between the squares on the board.

      
3. “When logic and proportion have fallen softly dead.”
Everything is out of whack in Wonderland (although Carroll wrote a book about symbolic logic). What could be more illogical than the dialogue at the Mad Hatter’s tea party? About proportion—Alice goes from three inches to 15 feet high. Hard to keep a sense of proportion with that pening. She mentions that it’s rather uncomfortable to be so many different heights in one day.

By the way: The dormouse, who’s sitting in a teacup at the Mad Tea Party, says, “Twinkle twinkle little bat. How I wonder where you’re at.” He doesn’t say, “Feed your head.”

2. b.
In 1966 there was an amusing story coming from Lawrenceville Academy, a New Jersey prep school: People said that a student named Mark Sebastian—John’s 15-year-old brother—had submitted the poem that became “Summer in the City” to his English teacher …and had gotten an “F.” It might well have been true—John Sebastian didn’t particularly like the poem when he first saw it, either. But he did like the chorus—the part that went, “But at night there’s a different world.” Mark gave it to John and asked if he could do anything with it. John said he’d see. He put Mark’s poem aside for a few months and in the interim came up with a little piano figure that he liked but didn’t have a song for. Then one night as John was going to sleep, Mark’s chorus, his own piano riff, and a set of new lyrics popped into his head.

“[Bassist] Steve Boone contributed a middle section,” Sebastian says, and the song was done. His first impression of the song: certain notes sounded like car horns. “I said, ‘Gee, this sounds sort of like Gershwin—sort of like “An American in Paris.” Maybe we could put traffic on it.’ ”

The band went into New York’s Columbia Studios for two nights. On the first, they did the entire instrumental track. The second night was for vocals…and sound effects. Sebastian says, “I remember this hilarious old sound man who’d never had a job with a rock ’n’ roll band before looking at us quite puzzled as we auditioned pneumatic hammers to find the one that had the right intestinal tone to it.” For car sounds, the old man brought in tapes of traffic jams and horns that he’d used when he worked in radio. The band listened to them for hours, then chose their favorites. John wanted the automobiles to start off softly, so the sound-effects man threw in a Volkswagen horn at the beginning.

The song was released in the summer, of course, and within a few weeks was #1 in America. It was the Spoonful’s only #1 hit in their phenomenal string of seven consecutive Top 10 records between September 1965 and December 1966.