45 Labels Tell The Story

 

   Buried deep in my old stereo cabinet is a tattered red portfolio full of 45 rpm records. Each page is a sleeve that holds one record with a 3” hole to reveal  a colorful label.

   Thumbing through the book I can name almost every record without reading the labels because those labels are so familiar.  The odds are good that orange and yellow swirls on a Capitol Record label means Beatles or Beach Boys.  The solid red Columbia label belongs to my oldest record: The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton. The record is completely unplayable but I can’t let it go.

   The light blue pattern signaled the Rolling Stones on London records and the solid blue label with the white whale was undeniably Happy Together by the Turtles.

  Something I never realized about record labels was how often they changed in the early days of rock and roll.  The most striking example was Elvis Presley who began his career on the colorful Sun label but hit his stride with the black label of RCA Victor Records. RCA was one of the five major labels in the 50’s along Decca, Columbia, Capitol and Mercury Records.

   Beyond the big ones were hundreds of small labels owned by companies that came and went and merged throughout the early 1960’s.  Anyone who owned a stack of 45’s will remember some of the more familiar ones like Bell (Box Tops, Delfonics), Roulette (Tommy James), Dot (Pat Boone), and Scepter (BJ Thomas).

   Teenage record buyers weren’t all that concerned about who owned what but many new labels in the 1960’s were derived from bigger companies.  Columbia Records owned Colpix (later Colgems) the familiar label for The Monkees.   Atlantic or Atco owned Stax Records and Kama Sutra Records (Lovin Spoonful) merged with Buddah (Melanie).

   The 1960’s ended with many of the same big companies dominating record sales although Motown, MCA and the Beatles’ Apple Records gave them all a run for the money.

   I didn’t start this column intending to lecture on record label history. I wanted to say that thumbing through the 45’s was like visiting with some old friends. These guys were played over and over and over again on a cheap phonograph that quickly gave them a scratchy background noise.

   I asked for the record “album” one Christmas so that I could haul my collection of singles around to friend’s houses. We would sit and play take turns playing the new ones or if mom allowed, we would stack them on the grownup’s phonograph.

   While the 45’s were gradually phased out by lps in the 1970’s we continued to have listening sessions in basements and attics and later dorm rooms. I can tell you where I was when I first heard many of the classic rock albums that now fill my IPOD.

   Simply listening to a new recording is something that has been lost with the advent of digital music and headphones.  Listening to a new song is more of a personal experience in earphones or the car although accessibility to music has never been greater.

   My meager 45 rpm collection included 24 records.  Today my IPOD has over 10,000 songs inside of it, including files for every 45 in that old collection. I’d love it if I could have some friends over and we could play them all. They just don’t seem to have the time.  I understand though. According to I-Tunes, my collection is 23.1 days long. 

Celebrity Cruising In The Hometown

 

While visiting my old friend Tom Casey this past week, the name of Connie Francis came up.  The question was ‘where in our hometown of Bloomfield, New Jersey did she live for several years.”  

 

Old time music fans already know that Connie Francis was among the most popular singers in the country about 60 years ago. Let’s call her the Katy Perry of 1960.  Francis actually grew up in an Italian section of nearby Newark and later moved to Belleville, where she graduated high school.  The family then moved “up” to Bloomfield.  To complete the story, her family later moved further “up” to the exclusive community of Essex Fells.  She got her big break in 1958 on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand show.  She was the first woman to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and went on to sell over 100 million records worldwide.

 

Our discussion focused on Bloomfield though. Was it Beverly Road or Huck Road that she lived on? Neither of us really cared but it was out there - kind of like searching for the Bat cave’s actual street address.  A thorough web search turned up no clues for her address but she definitely lived in the neighborhood. 

 

It was after posting this important question on the “I Grew Up In Bloomfield” Facebook page that I realized how much people enjoy connections to celebrities.

 

“She went to the prom with a family friend,” said one post.  Another reader remembered Connie coming to her grandmother’s apartment building to see her dressmaker, Mrs. Zuckerman.  “My friends and I walked by their house and saw the garage had racks and racks of clothing. They also built a bomb shelter while they were there.” Post after post spoke kindly of interactions with the girl who put Stupid Cupid and Who’s Sorry Now on the pop charts.  

 

I never saw her in person but pointed out her former house many times. Today I realized I was pointing out the wrong house all those years. The Facebook crew straightened us both out – she lived on Dalebrook Road, just around the corner. 

 

Connie was probably not there in 1960 but that didn’t stop people from walking or driving by.  There is something fascinating and a little embarrassing about driving up to a celebrity home when the famous people no longer live there - or never did in my case. 

 

They didn’t have to fear stalkers and would come out to greet fans. One post said that Connie’s family gave out memorabilia instead of candy on Halloween.  Those are the fun stories about hometown kids who made it big. Many smaller towns and neighborhood fans tell similar tales of celebrities who walked the same streets.

 

One final post caught me by surprise.  A grammar school classmate, Bob Fredette, and his family lived in the Francis house when they moved out in the 1960’s.  The 1950’s split level (now affectionately called Mid-Century Modern I guess), still had the bomb shelter and probably still had Connie Francis fans cruising by now and then. 

 

One of those celebrity seekers was me but the Fredette’s had no worries there.  I was incorrectly showing off a house a block away.  

How Did People Survive Before AC?

This heat is finally getting to me.  I watched a western the other night and could only think about how hot is must have been for them cowboys.  Then I flipped over to a History Channel piece on the Crusades. I imagined that a guy in a suit of armor fighting in 1147 would fry like a corn dog walking across the desert. So, I turned off the television and continued my own crusade to save plants that weren’t meant to survive weeks of 100+ temperatures.

Even the most optimistic Texans must admit that it is exceptionally hot this summer. We have survived about 38 days of 100+ days so far and will hopefully not break the record of 71 days set in 2011 or 69 scorching days in 1980.  Speaking of 1980, it was a doozie. The local record of 113 degrees was set that summer on June 26. There were also 42 consecutive days of 100+ degree days in 1980. For those who revel in the misery of others, the hottest temperature ever recorded in Texas was 120 degrees in Monahans in 1994.

All this talk about heat begs the question “how did people survive in Texas before air conditioning?”  Cultures have been surviving in hot climates for thousands of years and early Texans adopted many of the same strategies they used.

Homes were built with thick walls to keep the heat out and high ceilings to let the heat rise. They were also positioned so that breezes could pass through open windows and hallways.  Folks often slept outdoors or on porches during the heat of summer. One cowboy trick that some might question was soaking their sheets in cool water before bedtime.

Once electricity was added to the equation, fans helped millions survive those hot nights.  The whirring of fans was constant in homes and hotel rooms in the summer months. Fans also led to creative inventions that cooled the air. The most popular was the swamp cooler. The air conditioner was invented in 1902 but was considered too expensive for regular folks until the early 1960’s.  In the meantime, blowing a fan across water was a quick way to drop the temperature and recreate swamp humidity in your home.

When all else failed, there was always the movies – at least in the 20^th Century. The first air-conditioned theater was in Times Square (NYC) in 1925. The head of Paramount Pictures, Adolph Zukor, was in the audience and quickly realized the potential. People flocked to theaters for good and bad movies to enjoy a few hours of popcorn and cool breezes. The banner “cooled by refrigeration” became more important than the movie title.

Central air conditioning was built into most new homes starting in the 1960’s but those with older homes like ours settled for room units that blasted cold air and shook the walls. We had one wall unit that cooled our downstairs. Unfortunately, we slept upstairs. On the hottest days though, sleeping bags were rolled out and the Carroll family camped out for the heat wave in the dining room just like the cowboys – sort of.

Instead of complaining about the heat this week, take time to appreciate the struggles your parents and generations before them faced in the Texas heat. Then head to nearest movie theater for some popcorn and cool breezes.

Send your beat the heat stores to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

Did I See Your Father At The Concert

 

Have you ever paused and tried to imagine what your parents were doing at the same age?  

Last Friday night I tried to imagine them at the Brian Wilson / Chicago concert we were sweating through at the Dos Equis Pavilion in Dallas. It was an enjoyable outdoor show held in intolerable heat. The audience was full of 50 and 60 somethings with a sprinkling of 70 somethings to see Brian Wilson – who turned 80 this week.

The whole affair reminded me of an old Mad Magazine cartoon that showed the 50^th Woodstock Festival reunion attendees with canes and walkers.  It was a joke to the teenage readers in 1970 but it hit home Friday night as fans sang along with Beach Boys tunes that were blaring out of their transistor radios in 1963. Maybe the concert should have been billed as the Medicare Advantage Tour. 

I can’t poke too much at the crowd since I am a card-carrying member of the Medicare generation myself.   I like all sorts of live music but especially enjoy classic rock shows. I checked off a big one last November with the Rolling Stones show in Las Vegas. There was a predictable number of grey-haired ponytails but the surprise to me was the large number of kids/teens in the audience. Many were accompanied by their parents – or grandparents, who were anxious to show them what a big rock show was all about. The Rolling Stones did not disappoint and put on a great performance. Did I mention Mick Jagger turns 79 next month?

So, getting back to my parents…I could not imagine them attending any concert, even Frank Sinatra, at this age.  Instead, I could imagine my father driving us to Roosevelt Stadium (NJ) for a concert and patiently waiting in the car to drive us home. “Come on inside dad, Pink Floyd is a really cool band – you should check them out!”  That wasn’t going to happen.

My parents weren’t prudes and accepted the fact that our music wasn’t their music. They also appreciated the comfort of a recliner and a television over big noise and big crowds. Concerts were not common in the 1930’s when my parent’s taste’s for music were being formed. It was the depression and large venues didn’t exist outside of the major cities. Big bands like Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller dominated the radio but they usually performed in ballroom settings, not major concert halls.  The big guys like Frank and Elvis and the Beatles took it to a new level.  Tens of thousands of people wanted to see them perform and concert mania was born.

 I’ve taken my kids and kids in-law to classic rock concerts.  In turn they have invited me to their shows and still do.  Some are hits and some are misses.  I imagine the kids would say the same thing but at least we all have a better understanding of what’s going through those earbuds.  Rock on dad.

Send comments to Flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

Who Or What Was Alvis Stalwart

 

  Who or what was Alvis Stalwart?  For the price of 50 cents, I was willing to find out. That was the price of a Matchbox car in 1966 when the Alvis Stalwart was first introduced to American kids.

   The name was fittingly strange for a vehicle that sported six wheels and looked like a prop from Lost In Space.  I never cared to research the name – it probably wasn’t in the library card catalog anyway.

   Fast forward 53 years and I came across a Facebook group dedicated to diecast metal cars.  I pulled out my childhood Matchbox car collection for a quick photo.  After all, here was a group - possibly the only group, that actually cared what was in the box. 

   Out popped weird named vehicles like the Mercedes Unimog, the Iso Griffo and of course the Alvis Stalwart.  It took me 53 years but finally I learned the origin of the Alvis Stalwart.

   Wikipedia describes the Stalwart as a highly mobile amphibious military truck built by Alvis that served the British Army from 1966 until 1992.  British servicemen apparently called it a Stolly. 

   My miniature Matchbox version was labeled BP Exploration to probably misdirect Russian spies who looked to steal the design.

   There is no single toy from my childhood that consumed more of my time and gave me greater pleasure than my collection of Matchbox cars that were stamped “Made in England by Lesney.”

   Lesney Products was an industrial die casting company founded by Leslie Smith and Rodney Smith in 1947. The pair began experimenting with die cast toys and created the first toy under the Matchbox name in 1953.  A Lesney co-owner named Jack Odell designed a miniature car for his daughter because her school only allowed children to bring toys that could fit inside a matchbox. The rest is history as they say.  

    Because each model had to fit in a matchbox, the idea was born to sell the models in replica matchboxes. For many years that followed, the name Matchbox was synonymous with die cast cars.

   Competition from Mattel’s Hot Wheels cars seriously cut into Lesney’s business in the late 1960’sand they were eventually bought out by their old rival Mattel in 1996.

   One thing that made Matchbox cars special was the price.  For fifty cents, a kid could buy a toy with his/her own money that lasted more than an afternoon. 

   I hauled my cars in their special Matchbox case for sleepovers and vacations frequently scanning the free catalogs for new models.  These days a mint condition catalog is worth more than the cars but I never saw them as an investment.

   Instead, they were just comfortable old “friends” that had personalities and helped me fill hours of my childhood and then hours of my son’s childhood.

   My photo on Facebook drew 130 likes from the die-cast group last week and prompted several others to pull their collections out of the closet.  I wonder if there was an Alvis Stalwart was among them.

Cigarette Jingles Taste Better & Last Longer

 

I got a tune stuck in my head the other day.  It was the Winston cigarette jingle: Winston tastes good like a (clap clap…).  If you’re over 60, you know how it ends. If you fit the demographic, you could also complete these followings phrases:  LSMFT mean…, come on over to the L&M … and Tarryton smokers would rather fight than…  How did you do?

Despite the obvious dangers of smoking, cigarette smoking and commercials were a part of our lives in the 1950’s and 60’s. Smoking has been around much longer but it became a popular trend for men after World War I and for women in the 1920’s.  Cigarette advertising in national magazines helped make smoking glamorous and sophisticated.  It also helped turn about 42% of the nation’s adults into smokers by the late 1940’s.

Some of the earliest TV shows were sponsored by tobacco companies and cigarette ads began to dominate the airwaves within ten years.  A popular 1950’s trend was using celebrities to pitch cigarettes as part of the show. Desi Arnaz, Jedd Clampett (Buddy Ebsen) and even Fred Flinstone pitched cigarettes during their shows.

Search YouTube and you will find hundreds of cigarette commercials. Among the most popular ones are the Marlboro Man commercials that used the Magnificent Seven theme song. Of course, it’s hard to stop humming the Kent tune: to a colonel - it’s a regiment, to a smoker - it’s a Kent. The only way to stop humming the Kent song is to whistle the opening lines of this one.   You can take Salem out of the country but… you can’t take the country out of Salem.  For a smoking commercial, it makes no sense but that doesn’t stop you from whistling along.

The jingles were catchy but the ad copy bordered on ridiculous. For example, did you know that “in a national survey of doctors in all medical fields, it was found that more doctors smoked Camels than any other cigarette.”   I learned that dentists recommended Viceroy cigarettes for a fresher breath and a medical report proved conclusively that Phillip Morris cigarettes helped eliminate throat irritation and scratchiness.

Chesterfields had “man sized satisfaction” while Virginia Slims reminded women “you’ve come a long way baby.”  Lucky Strike encouraged smokers to “reach for a Lucky when tempted to overindulge.”  A particularly offensive campaign used babies to push Marlboros. “Gee mom, you sure enjoy your Marlboro.”  Prior to his terms as president, Ronald Reagan pitched Pall Mall cigarettes by testifying that Pall Mall has a “he-man aroma that wows the ladies and makes a difference for any studly guy.”

A public report in 1952 first linked cigarette smoking to cancer but major anti-smoking campaigns didn’t show up for another 10+ years. Broadcasters were required to run one anti-smoking ad for every three cigarette in the late 1960’s. Richard Nixon, a heavy pipe smoker, reluctantly signed legislation to end  cigarette ads on TV in 1971. Ironically, the move freed tobacco companies to put more money in print advertising and anti-smoking ads disappeared from television.

Knowing what we do about the harms of smoking, it’s hard to look at smoking ads nostalgically but there is little harm in humming along with the Marlboro Man.

Share your jingle memories at flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

Remembering Darkroom Days and Nights

 

   The term for today is disruptive technology. It means that new technology changes or disrupts what we know.  Take the typewriter, for example. No nostalgia can convince us to give up our computer keyboards and bring back the white-out correction fluid. The personal computer slowly killed the typewriter and not many people put up a fight.

   The same is true in photography. Digital cameras gradually improved year by year and before we realized it, our film cameras were obsolete. If you don’t believe me, try finding a roll of film.  In the days of Plus-X and Kodachrome, I carried a dozen rolls of film on vacation. I now have just one roll in the familiar plastic film container to remember “the good old days.”

   The good old days for me started in 1970 when I received a Kodak Instamatic Camera with flashcube for Christmas. Kodak introduced the auto loading camera in 1963 and sold 50 million of them by 1970.  The cost of film and processing slowed me down but I fell in love with photography.  My first official photography role was as the Boy Scout Troop 22 photographer – a title I claimed after earning the prestigious photography merit badge.

   A few years later I joined the high school yearbook staff and was introduced to “real” film cameras that our private school could afford. There was the Leica camera that may have come home with a GI from WWII and an ancient Yashica-Mat format camera that may have previously been used by Jimmy Olsen.

   The cameras were unimportant. The fun was working in the darkroom.  I logged hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours in darkrooms through high school, college and later work. Like a chain smoker, I carried the strong smell of chemicals like D-76, Dektol and acetic acid on my fingertips and clothes everyday.  Darkroom work was rewarding and fun but inefficient. 

   Franchises like Fotomat began offering low cost film processing and soon you could drop off your film at Target, shop and pick up your prints on the way out. The darkroom days were numbered but not dead until the digital camera appeared. Invented in 1975, digital camera sales boomed in the late 1990’s when the quality caught up with standard film cameras and costs came down.

   I was reminded of those good old darkroom days this past week when I came across “vintage darkroom equipment” listed on Ebay.  For only $50 you could get an enlarger, reels, trays, and a snappy red light.  That is a bargain if you are interested in taking up photo processing as a hobby. Vinyl records are making a comeback – maybe darkrooms are next.  The whole thing is a bit depressing when I see my old darkroom equipment listed as vintage.

   My darkroom days are over but I have boxes of old black and white prints to remind me of those many afternoons in the high school darkroom.  Today, no darkroom skills are needed to process smart phone pictures.  People can literally shoot, edit and send high quality photos with one finger and that finger won’t be stained with photo chemicals. Now that’s progress.