Early Teen Scene Music
Already in the Fifties, there was a singer to please any segment of the new teen world and the budding adolescent baby boomers. Since what we now call “mainstream” was all that existed, even crooners like Eddie Fisher suddenly sang their teen-style hit songs like ”Dungaree Doll” for everybody to hear. “‘Hot Diggity Dog Ziggity-- Boom what you do to me!” sang crooner Perry Como. Nat King Cole sang “Too Young to Go Steady.” Even Frank Sinatra sang “ […] Waddle like a duck, that’s what you do when you do ‘The Huckle Buck.”’ In 1956, ole Bing Crosby duetted with Louis Armstrong in the film High Society: “Now you has jazz from the equator up to the pole, through the air you hear everywhere rock and roll.” But the real gutsy, bluesy sound came from the Black bluesmen that led up to recordings like “I’m the 60 Minute Man.’ Fifteen minutes of kissin’, […] and fifteen minutes of blowin’ my top.” (That got very little play—I only heard it decades later.) Or the 1954 hit “‘Shaboom, Shaboom,’ Yadadadadada…” Suddenly we had a whole new lexicon of teen terminology. And lots of teen freedom. Ever since then, we have lived on a Youth Planet. For better or for worse...!
Comments