ROCK & ROLL AND I GO WAY BACK!

      "Rock Around the Clock"by Bill Haley and the Comets was my first record that I purchased as a kid. It was around 1953 or 1954 and it was what they called a 78 rpm, the size of a big pancake, thick and brittle. That song kicked off R & R in the early 1950's and the song came from a movie called "Blackboard Jungle."  Unfortunately, I sat on it somehow soon after the purchase and broke it!

       At the time I was nine or ten years old and I loved that music like so many kids did at the time , I started collecting 45's (smaller, vinyl, and had big hole in center) like most guys were collecting baseball cards. I loved Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis. It was the beginning of one of he greatest musical sensations in history.

      A lot of the early groups were African American, but, it made no difference. Some tried to keep white kids from being influenced like having Pat Boone(white singer) singing "Tuttie Fruttie" as did Little Richard. Sorry! That didn't work out for Pat Boone. It was a shock to first see a group called the Diamonds, an all white group that sounded black first walk out on stage on the Ed Sullivan Show. Most kids presumed they were black I am sure.  Just like when Buddy Holly walked out on stage at the Apollo Theater in Harlam( area of New York City) at an all Black audience. Most kids had heard these groups on radio or on their records but not on TV. 

      As of tis writing I still have most of my old 45 records and several 33's. I did get to see The Big Bopper at the Val Aire Ballroom in West Des Moines.