Still Rock and Roll to Me
Sermon by Steve Edington
March 21, 2010
I first heard the song sometime in the mid-1960s when I was in college. It was written by a country and rockabilly singer named Wayne Raney who passed away in 1993. Mr. Raney had a number one country hit in 1949 called "Why Don't You Haul Off and Love Me", and that was pretty much the height of his music career. Well, I missed that big hit of his, but the Wayne Raney song I do remember led off with these words:
"You can read it in the morning paper; hear it on the radio
How crime is sweeping the nation; this world is about to go.
We need a good old case of salvation; to put the love of God in our soul.
We need a whole lot more of Jesus and a lot less rock and roll."
Believe it or not, no less a recording star and artist than Linda Ronstadt, released her rendition of this song on an album of hers in 1969. And if you don't believe me, give a listen. [The first verse of the Ronstadt recording is played here.]
There are a few more verses but you get the idea. The thing I get the biggest kick out of is that while this number was written as a country song, when Ms. Ronstadt got a hold it, it came very close to being a rock and roll song about how we need "a lot less rock and roll."
If the Ronstadt version of this song had played on the old American Bandstand someone probably would have said, "It has a nice beat; you can dance to it." As for the recurring line about needing a "whole lot more of Jesus," I think the reference to "Jesus," in this song is really a kind of shorthand for everything that is good, right, decent, and proper in this world; all those things, in other words, that rock and roll is subverting and undermining. As for the actual person of Jesus, who knows? He was something of a cultural rebel himself, so he may well have liked rock and roll had it been around in his day.
So, what am I doing talking about rock and roll this morning anyway? The answer is simple enough. I was asked to; and someone paid for me to. Someone paid the church, I mean. As many of you know, each year at our goods and services auction, I offer a sermon of one's choice to the highest bidder. This time around it was our resident rock and roll enthusiast, Billy Parker, who got in the top bid; and asked that I do a sermon on, well, rock and roll. Now, Billy actually knows far more about this subject than I do, but asking him to write and deliver a sermon he'd paid for didn't seem quite fair - so you've got me doing it.
Setting out to write a sermon on rock and roll is like setting out to write a sermon about the universe. You have to narrow down the subject quite a bit in order to say anything at all. For me that wasn't too hard. I can neither read nor sing a note of music of any kind; and I've never played a musical instrument. So my talking about how to create and sing a rock and roll song went off the table before it ever got on.
But I have done a certain amount of work and study and writing on how things like music and art and literature impact and shape the larger society and culture of which they are a part. That gets me on familiar enough ground to share some thoughts on how rock and roll defined--in a major way--the generation of which I and Billy and many of us here are a part; and on how that shaping and defining still goes on for subsequent generations even as I start applying for Medicare.
It will come as no surprise to you who know me that if I'm going to talk about pop culture in the 1950s and beyond I start with the Beat Generation. This generation, in many ways, was the precursors of the rock era. In 1950 John Clellon Holmes published a novel titled Go, which is regarded as the first "Beat Generation" novel--coming out seven years before Jack Kerouac's On the Road.
The setting for Go is New York City in the immediate aftermath of World War II with basically the same cast of characters who later show up in On the Road. In Go Holmes writes about a fictitious--but quite real--jazz club which he calls the "Go Hole." This is how Holmes writes about the young people who frequent the Go Hole:
"These restless youngsters were finding a passion in this music that belonged defiantly to them. The Go Hole was where all the high school bands, the swing bands, and the roadhouses of their lives had led these young people...In this modern jazz they heard something rebel and nameless and their lives knew a gospel for the first time. It was more than a music; it became an attitude towards life...and these introverted kids...who had never belonged anywhere before now felt somewhere at last."
As I say, Holmes wrote that in 1950 and the music he's referring to is jazz. This was well before the Cleveland disc jockey, Alan Freed, coined the term "rock and roll." But if you were to jump Holmes' words ahead about six or seven years, you could substitute the term "rock and roll" for jazz and you'd have a perfect fit. Listen again: "They heard something rebel and nameless and their lives knew a gospel (a "gospel" mind you) for the first time. It was more than a music; it became an attitude towards life...and these kids who had never belonged anywhere before now felt somewhere at last."
Speaking of jumping ahead six or seven years, although he was working on On the Road at the same time that Go came out, Jack Kerouac would not see his novel published until 1957. And, shortly before its publication, Kerouac actually considered changing the title of his book from On the Road to Rock and Roll Road before he and his publisher decided, in the end, to stay with the original. But even though the change in the title was not made, Kerouac saw what was happening. His musical passion remained that of jazz, but Jack recognized that the generation that would be reading his book, the "kids who had never belonged anywhere before but now felt somewhere at last" the kids whose music "belonged defiantly to them" and who were hearing in it "a gospel" were now listening to rock and roll.
More to the point, the white kids who were reading On the Road had discovered rock and roll. By the fall of 1957 Bill Haley and the Comets had released Rock Around the Clock. Buddy Holly and the Crickets had hits with That'll Be the Day and Peggy Sue. Alan Freed, as just noted, while not inventing the phrase rock and roll, was the one who popularized it at that time. And by 1957 Elvis Presley had made his landmark appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" with the stipulation that he only be televised from the waist up while singing Hound Dog for fear that his swiveling hips would offend the sensitivities of that portion of the middle-class American public who could afford television sets.
I use the term "white kids" deliberately. All the names I just mentioned were white singers and performers. There is a racial component to the rock and roll phenomenon that cannot be ignored. Rock and roll, as we use the term, became rock and roll when it found its way into white culture. It had existed for decades prior in the African-American community as various forms of rhythm and blues, and gospel.
It was the same with jazz. Both jazz and rock and roll are born out of the Black, African-American experience, particularly from the early to mid-20th century. So when white folks discovered and popularized rock and roll it was both embraced and feared, all at the same time, by the predominant culture. In fact, one of the more crudely racist terms I recall hearing that was used to characterize rock and roll was to call it "jungle music."
I'll offer just a couple of markers along this line. In 1956 a group called Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers had a huge hit called Why Do Fools Fall in Love? The group was very short lived. Mr. Lymon, very tragically, only lived to the age of 26. The group's make up was African American and Hispanic. They really were teenagers and they went to some length to affect a very clean cut, almost collegiate look--which made them OK enough to get on a clean cut, collegiate looking rock and roll show called "American Bandstand" that was emceed by a clean cut, collegiate looking guy named Dick Clark.
Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers were singing their hit Why Do Fools Fall in Love on American Bandstand with the kids in the studio audience dancing to it. During one of the instrumental riffs in the song young Mr. Lymon spontaneously jumped onto to the dance floor and for no more than 30 seconds, with a camera on him, jitterbugged with one of the dancers--who happened to be a white teenage girl. American Bandstand was immediately hit with a flood of angry protest letters and phone calls along the lines of it's OK to have those nice looking colored boys on your show, but there's no way you should have allowed one of them to dance with a white girl. There you had it: Embracing on the one hand, and fearful on the other.
Cut to about ten years later to 1966. A very short, dark haired, somewhat skinny 16 year old Jewish young lady from New York named Janis Ian had herself a hit called Society's Child. It's about an interracial couple who are being forbidden to date. "Can't see you anymore baby...can't see you any more..." as the recurring lyrics went. Ms. Ian, who is now a short, white haired and not so skinny, 59 year old lady recently published her autobiography in which she writes of how, at some of her concerts, even in the late 1960s, she got shouted off the stage for singing Society's Child. It was that subversive old rock and roll again.
It was at about the same time that Janis Ian was singing Society's Child that Eldridge Cleaver, a founder of the original Black Panther Party, published a book called Soul on Ice in 1968. In many ways the book can now be seen as a period piece in that it reflects the intense, and sometimes painful, and sometimes violent, racial turmoil of that time. And before he died in 1998 Mr. Cleaver's life had gone though a number of rather unlikely changes to the point of his embracing a very conservative political philosophy and becoming a supporter of Ronald Reagan's Presidency.
But there's one chapter in Soul on Ice that has stood up well over time, and contains certain truths that stand on their own, above and beyond their author. It's the chapter in which Cleaver writes on some of the same things I've been saying--about how the Beats, and then later how some of the rock and roll singers and artists were really cultural, and even political, revolutionaries. Using Chubby Checker's The Twist as his focal point, here's where he goes:
"The Twist, superseding the hula hoop, burst upon the scene like a nuclear explosion sending its fallout of rhythm into the minds and bodies of the people. The fallout (was) the Hully Gully, the Mashed Potato, the Watusi, the Frug, the Swim. The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded as politics, religion, and law never could in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write in the books."
That's a very remarkable statement, and I'm not sure how far I go in accepting it in its entirety. But just try the last line again: "The Twist succeeded as politics, religion, and law never could in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write in books." The reference to the Supreme Court, I assume, is about some of the desegregation decisions they made from Brown vs. Board of Education on.
What I take from Cleaver's statement is something I've long believed; which is that when it comes to transforming or moving a society and culture to another level, it takes more than laws or judicial decisions--important and necessary as both are. But it's also the artists and the poets and the writers and the composers and the musicians who have to reach into the hearts and souls of the people in a society and culture, in order that those hearts and minds and souls can be prepared and readied to recognize and move towards a greater vision of who they may yet be.
Bob Dylan, to cite one of the more obvious examples, knew this. He was never all that overtly political, but his songs--I would say--had as much of a transformative effect upon the latter part of the American 20th century as any political figure did. And I think Dylan's embrace of rock and roll came about at least in part from his recognition of the power that medium had for his message.
A couple more things before closing: There's good and bad art, good and bad literature, good and bad poetry--and there's good and bad rock and roll, and rap and punk, and whatever else that's out there that I'm most likely missing. I don't embrace any of these things uncritically, but I try to appreciate their value and their role in our societal and cultural life. And now, as I move into old fuddy-duddyhood (if I'm not there already) the fact that I may not get it when it comes to a particular musical genre doesn't really make it worthless.
When I think of how the Beats and many of the early rockers were both disparaged and feared in many quarters, I try not to fall into the same trap myself. Maybe it is still rock and roll--at least in spirit even if it's not always a form I readily recognize.
I said at the outset that asking Billy Parker to write his own sermon on rock and roll would be to miss the whole concept of the auction sermon. But Billy did pass on to me a chapel sermon he gave out a Star Island a few years ago on the subject of Diversity, which he tied into rock and roll. I'm just going to give you the opening lines--which I like a lot. You can bug Billy for the rest of it if you'd like more:
"Rock and Roll again? Sorry, it's what I know best. So, what is diversity? It's that people may be different from me. They may be old people [how long ago did you give this, Billy?], people with no hair or gray hair. They may be young people with no hair or long hair. They may be in a different economic class from me. Richer. Poorer. They may be gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual, transgendered. Maybe of a different race. They may have different physical abilities from mine. We are all people. All together.
"So where does rock and roll come into all this? Just listen to the words. Sometimes you have to listen carefully. Maybe change them around a little. But it's there if you listen to the words. Ringo Starr: What would do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me? Lend me your ear and I'll sing you my song..."
I'll stop with just that for Billy's part. Rock and roll is one of number of avenues and outlets by which persons who have a song to sing, and a story to tell, can put it out there. They may be persons who are otherwise invisible to those around them, but they have a voice--and a story to tell, or a song to sing, or a poem to be offered, or a picture to be painted. Whatever the means may be, each of our lives, and the stories we tell with our lives, call for some kind of expression. So, whatever the means, find your voice and tell your story, whether your medium is rock and roll or something else.
As some of you know, several years ago it was my honor to work with our UU poet, troubadour and minister Ric Masten in telling the wonderful story of his life and musical and poetic ministry within and beyond our UU family. As saddened as I was by his death two years ago, I was also grateful that we got his story in book form and published.
In one of our conversations, which I did work into the book, Ric told me about being an aspiring song writer and singer at a very early age, and how he tried his hand and his talent at rock and roll, just as it burst on the scene in the mid-50s. He even got Warner Brothers records to record a few of his early attempts at rock and roll, including such works as Rockabilly Blues, Teenage Creature, and Baby, Baby, Baby You're a Thinking Man's Gal. Both Ric and Warner Brothers soon decided that being a rock star was probably not in Mr. Masten's future.
But Ric found his voice in what he called his speaking poems; many of which he did set to music. One of those poems and songs--as so many of us know--is the enduring gift he left us with Let It Be A Dance. We'll close with it now
Stephen Edington
March 21, 2010
