Million Dollar Quartet (musical)

James Barry (airborn) as Carl Perkins
in "Million Dollar Quartet"
(Great Lakes Theater)

Finally took in our latest offering at the Hanna, the jukebox musical Million Dollar Quartet. Word has been strong, audiences are loving this, I have had the chance to meet and talk with several theatergoers who may not be familiar with the work of Great Lakes Theater but have seen and followed this show from Broadway to the tour to independently produced productions like this one, and their praise for these particular artists is high.

Personally, I was excited to bring my mother-in-law to see the show. She lives in Athens, and the time has never been right to get her to a show there, but I definitely did not want her to miss this one. She is a great fan of live music, rhythm and blues, and the works of Cash, Perkins, Presley, and Lewis. The whole family came and it was a great evening in downtown Cleveland.

Everyone had their favorites, I think my wife was particularly taken with Sky Seals’ soulful performance as Johnny Cash, and the girl had a lot to say about fiery Gabe Aronson as Jerry Lee Lewis, and the production is definitely constructed so that it is that man’s show to steal. The boy, the bass player, was very impressed by Eric Scott Anthony as Brother Jay. We asked if it was because he rode the bass on his back near the end, but no, he was the way he rode the thing across the floor playing slap bass, that he knew had a high level of difficulty.

The term “jukebox musical” used to be pejorative, used dismissively by critics to describe shows made of unoriginal tunes, strung together to create an artificial narrative. But these shows are so prevalent the term itself is no longer a put-down. Yes, these are previously written songs, but if the book is strong enough and carries you through and the artists are to-notch, what you get is an evening where everyone gets a live, powerful rendition of songs they already know and love. The audience last night was quite enthusiastic, indeed.

Growing up in suburban Bay Village, I was raised to believe rock and roll started in the sixties, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. We didn’t listen to R&B or rockabilly, I was only marginally aware of Elvis (who passed, as a punchline, when I was nine) and entirely unfamiliar with any of the black progenitors of rock and roll.

It wasn’t until hooking up with the woman I would later marry and getting to know her family and what they listened to that I started to know, understand, and deeply love the music which inspired the British Invasion acts. Most significantly was when we took a road trip to Memphis, visiting Graceland and Sun Studio.

July 10, 2000 (journal)

Did Graceland. I was amazed. Much more enjoyable than I ever imagined. It’s small -- homey, surprisingly un-opulent. It had been described to me as being tacky, but I would call that classist.

What my wife thought she saw was a man from dirt-poor roots who did not try to become someone else, struggling to be normal.

The much-maligned Jungle Room is great! The decor is fanciful, but also kind of sexy. Loved the wall fountain. It’s funny, by that I mean it has a sense of humor.

Everything is modest. A kidney-shaped swimming pool a small one. An ordinary-sized kitchen. Nothing grand. Normal-sized rec room. It was touching. Charming. Some fun, swinging, 60s, 70s era living.

We didn’t go overboard on souvenirs; postcards, a few books, a CD of gospel songs. I am starting to “get” Elvis.

Noticed Colonel Tom Parker was mentioned exactly once the whole time we were there.

July 11, 2000 (journal)

Drove over to Sun Studio. Our tour guide was named Mick, late 20s. Spiky black hair, great glasses, attitude.

And what’s the tour? The front office, the studio itself, that’s it. Mick described the scene, and played a selection of sound clips from recordings and outtakes created right in that very room. It was more than worth the admission.

Our guide was just so great. The tour group was small, and he engaged each of us. Mick was sincere, he loves this music, tapping his foot. He had this wry smile all the time. I wish we had asked him about himself.

Hard to put my finger on, but that is now my favorite rock and roll museum.

Great Lakes Theater presents Million Dollar Quartet at the Hanna Theatre through May 26, 2019

Elvis at the Arena

November 23, 1956, Elvis played the Arena. One of these days I will document the Moondog Coronation Ball (1952) in some detail ... or at least spread more specious rumors. Regardless, the Arena was an all-purpose venue, the site where boxing legend Sugar Ray Robinson murdered Jimmy Doyle in the sixth (literally, as it turned out) and the Cleveland Barons played hockey.

On Halloween night, 1956, the Cleveland Newspaper Guild went on strike, bringing to an abrupt halt the publication of all three Cleveland papers -- the Press, News and Plain Dealer. At the top of his game, Elvis Presley storms into town. His first movie, Love Me Tender had opened a week earlier, and the theme song was on top of the charts. No. 2 that week was Don't Be Cruel.

There wasn't a single Cleveland paper covering the concert.

Well, there was one paper covering the event. The Black and Gold sent its star photographer, seventeen year-old Lew Allen to cover the concert. Yes, that's right -- the Heights High School newspaper.

The show did not begin punctually at 8 PM that night as advertised. Excited fans were left waiting for fifteen minutes before Elvis took the stage. Legend has it he was receiving a phone call from a very ill and disappointed, ticket-holding girl who was in the hospital, and he just chatted with her for a while to try and make her feel better. Believe it or not, that's the story Lew Allen himself told, and has a picture of Elvis backstage on the phone as proof.

Allen went on to study photography at the Rochester Institute of Art, and went on a rock and roll tour in 1958, take great photographs of Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Frankie Avalon, Duane Eddy, Bobby Darin, the Hollywood Flames and others.

The Cleveland Arena and Elvis Presley were demolished in 1977.

Hockey stick.

Sources: Elvis Australia
ScottyMoore.net

See also: Elvis Presley at Brooklyn High (1955)

Rock Hall, Revisited

Happy 65th Birthday, Sir.
Photo: Janet Macoska, Cleveland (1976)
Took the boy to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum today. Always been a big supporter of the Rock Hall, glad it's here where rock and roll, well, you know. Has always been really popular. Moondog Coronation Ball, Alan Freed. Brooklyn High. You know.

My wife and I checked out the hall shortly after it opened in September 1995. As the years have progressed, aspects of the hall remained firmly in the mid-90s. The 500 Most Influential Songs exhibit featured only a half-dozen tunes from that decade, and none since. The opening film, Mystery Train is an excellent short film, which shares, without narration, the different forms of early 20th century, American roots music which came together to inspire rock and roll by mid-century. But it was followed by another film (which felt much longer) called Welcome to Rock and Roll which attempted to describe the lasting legacy of rock, but was really an irritating collection of white, male artists (many now dead) lecturing us about why rock music is so important.

The upper floors change all the time, and is where most temporary exhibits are displayed, but the vast, main floor stayed in this time warp. No longer. Along with his new drum set, we gifted the boy tickets to the Hall (the boy is six, in reality he gets in free, we gave him the idea of going to the Rock Hall) and I was delighted to discover upon exiting Mystery Train that the second film had been eliminated! The other theater wasn't even there.

The Early Influences exhibit used to be a gallery of photos and a lot of reading about the pioneers of popular music. It now features touch screens to choose music by these artists, and for a time I thought I was never going to get the boy away from them. He wanted to hear everything from Woody Guthrie, and was seriously bopping to Willie Dixon's I Ain't Superstitious. I did my best to explain when he asked what Waist Deep in the Big Muddy is about, but the reasons for our involvement in Vietnam (and our enchantment with The Smothers Brothers) was a little complicated when there were so many pleasing diversions to be attended to right then.

A small boy is not so interested in artifacts; costumes and hand-written lyrics. When DMC's glasses were pointed out to him, he stated flatly, "I know, I saw them in a video." That's good enough, breathing the same air as Run's Adidas (His! Ah! Didas!) does not impress. The boy was much more enamored of the interactive exhibits, the escalators, and anything that had to do with technology that he could grasp and appreciated.

For example, guitars do not interest him. John Lennon's mellotron would be interesting, only you can't tell by looking at it how it works (it is actually quite fascinating) he was more into bass drum heads with the band's name painted onto them, and the exhibit featuring the advancement of sound reproduction from the wax cylinder to the iPod. He could also listen to Funkytown a thousand times straight, but didn't we all?

Concluding our tour in the Hall of Fame, watching short films of all of the artist, the boy observed, "They all smoke."

Yes, son. They do. That's rock and roll. And if you so much as touch a cigarette, I will kill you.

Tonight With Steve Allen

The program Tonight With Steve Allen debuted on September 27, 1954, featuring bandleader Skitch Henderson and announcer Gene "Match Game" Rayburn. Allen shared hosting duties with Ernie Kovacs beginning in 1956 and the show was later helmed by Jack Parr beginning in 1957. This NBC late night talk show continues to this day under the more recognizeable name The Tonight Show, though the element of comedy Allen originally introduced to the show is no longer present.

Stephen Valentine Patrick William "Steve" Allen (December 26, 1921 – October 30, 2000) -- if that truly was his name -- was a remarkable talent. Watch this video of Steve interviewing one of his favorite subjects (and anathema to the network) Jack Kerouac in 1959. The dude riffs on the piano while conducting the interview.


Allen created The Tonight Show in New York in 1953 for NBC-TV before it went nation the following year. The program ran from 11:15 PM to 1 in the morning, broadcast live (because that's the only way you could broadcast) from New York City. Everything you know about late night talk shows was created by Steve Allen, no one has created anything he didn't do first.

Though Allen must be given credit for bringing individuals like Kerouac and Lenny Bruce onto his programs (people the networks must have wished he hadn't) he was irksomely stodgy about rock and roll. NBC gave him a primetime slot in addition to Tonight in 1956, The Steve Allen Plymouth Show where he famously put Elvis Presley into a tuxedo and asked him to croon Hound Dog to an actual dog.


Source: Wikipedia

Screamin' Jay Hawkins

"It's Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and he's a wild man, so bug off."
- Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Jalacy "Screamin' Jay" Hawkins (July 18, 1929 — February 12, 2000) was born in Cleveland, Ohio. The man studied classical piano and like his idol Paul Robeson, Hawkins had aspirations to be an opera singer. Instead, Screamin' Jay created rock and roll.

Okay, maybe he didn't. But he was the first singer (fronting for Tiny Grimes) at the Moondog Coronation Ball at the Arena on March 21, 1952, ergo Screamin' Jay Hawkins performed the first rock show in history. Unless he wasn't, because no one can agree whether or not Tiny Grimes went on first, or if the show even got under way because it was shut down before the first note was played.

In 1956 Alan Freed suggested Hawkins arrive in a coffin before performing his hit record I Put a Spell On You, and a legendary stage persona was born, incorporating outlandish voodoo-themed costumes and stage props into his act.

Source: Wikipedia

The Moondog Show

It's Friday night in Cleveland, and all through the 1980s that meant that at precisely 5 PM Kid Leo was going to play Ian Hunter's Cleveland Rocks on WMMS.

You know it? Of course you do. You know the opening bit featuring Alan Freed saying "Hello everybody, how are y'all tonight, this is Alan Freed here the King of the Moondoggers,and it's time again for another of your favorite rock and roll sessions as you enjoy the Moondog Show --" cue guitars?

Ever wanted to hear where that clip comes from?

Why it was recorded on April 6, 1954 on WJW. Play it loud, it's the weekend. And grab an Erin Brew.

Alan Freed

On The Air
by George E. Condon
The Plain Dealer, August, 1954

King of the Moondogs Quits WJW

The spectacular career of Disk Jockey Alan Freed, who has reigned on Station WJW here as "King of the the Moondogs” for three years, will begin a new phase next month, when he shifts from the Cleveland station to Station WINS in New York.

Billboard reported the Cleveland disc jockey's move "may involve the biggest sum of money ever paid to a rhythm and blues jockey by an independent radio station."

Freed has enjoyed a meteoric career in Clevelabd radio and television. He came to this city from WAKR, Akron in April 1950. In July 1951 he began the late-hour "Moondog" program over WJW. When the disc jockey staged a "Moondog Ball" in Clevelabd Arena in March, 1952 a near-riot ensued. A crowd estimated at 25,000 showed up and the Arena's capacity is about 10,000. It took a section of the Cleveland Police to restore order.

The "Moondog Show" would continue on the Cleveland station with another disc jockey, although it was possible the station would buy Freed's program out of New York.

The disc jockey’s career here nearly ended in tragedy in April 1953. He fell asleep at the wheel of his car in the early morning hours, after work, and the car crashed into a tree in Shaker Heights.

Source: The Plain Dealer
AlanFreed.com

Elvis Presley at Brooklyn High (1955)

Elvis Presley at Brooklyn High

Yes, the 50s. In Cleveland. The birthplace of Rock n' Roll, where a riot where no music was played, certainly none anyone could hear, and was broken up during the first song, has been declared the first rock concert. That was in 1952.

None of the characters in These Are The Times would have listened to "rock and roll" during the 1950s, not even the younger ones. That was strictly for teenagers. However, it happened. And there is history.

Elvis Presley was 19 years old in mid-1954 when he recorded That's All Right in Memphis, Tennessee. And that is a dynamite freaking record. At that time they called what he was doing "rockabilly" and one of his nicknames was "The Hillbilly Cat." For the time being, he was strictly a Southern phenomenon ... until October 20, 1955 when he played his first gig above the Mason-Dixon Line.

Autographs for Cleveland girls

Brooklyn High School (that's Brooklyn, Ohio) held a rock n' roll concert that night, crafted by DJ Bill Randle, and starring Bill Haley & The Comets, The Four Lads and Pat Boone. Elvis was an unknown addition to the bill.

Randle had been playing their records in Cleveland since January and still thinking he had spotted a winner, he plugged the "sensational young singer" in his Oct. 1, 1955, newspaper column, "Randle on Record," as the singer "whose style is a combination of hillbilly nasalties, rock ’n’ roll, Johnnie Ray and a peculiar sound all his own. The new phenomenon looks like Tony Curtis and drives a pink and black Cadillac. Watch him roar."
- scottymoore.net

Elvis was wearing an orange suit. His set included Mystery Train, That’s All Right, Blue Moon of Kentucky, Good Rockin' Tonight and I Forgot to Remember to Forget.

Sources:
Wikipedia
scottymoore.net