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FIRST OFF A LITTLE BACKGROUND BROUGHT TO THE FOREFRONT - SOME EARLY MUSIC INFLUENCES

Perhaps best brought forth in this excerpt from my music - biography "If The Devil Danced In Empty Pockets, He'd Have A Ball In Mine"

What three year old would not want to have this one in their record collection ?

Chapt 2 SHAKE,RATTLE & ROLL

Music seemed to catch my ear at a pretty early age. When I was around three, I was crazy about Leadbelly's song "Goodnight Irene" that The Weavers had out all over the radio. My Mom soon realized this and went and bought the record. I made her wear it out playing it. She also got an album of other Weavers songs that had "On Top Of Old Smokey","Shenandoah", "So Long It's Been Good To Know You" etc in it. That was my introduction to folk music, along with Burl Ives who sang a lot of them for kids. As a toddler I called our radio "YA YA" My folks figured that out when I touched a hot radiator and yelled "YA YA DAY!" My main exposure to live music was when we visited my Grandmother who had a piano. Mom and Pop both played by ear. Mom played standards and Pop had a few songs he wrote with humourous twists.The main one one I recall, that had both verses and a chorus was "Oh Gosh, Oh Gee, The're Gonna Build A Monument For Me"

I was the youngest of the clan. My big sister Gerri, became a teenager at the dawn of Rock & Roll. Her radio station was WINS aka 1010 WINS (now a 24 hour news station) After school she would tune into DJ Jack Lacy, who had a jingle. "Listen To Lacy, A Guy With A Style, Spinning The Discs With Finess, Yes Yes. You Just Set Your, Dial To Ten Ten A While, To WINS.... You Should Listen, YOU SHOULD LISTEN, EVERY DAAAYY, WHEN JACK LACY COMES YOUR WAY" Listen she did and at night we would hear the voice of the man who gave this new music a name. Alan Freed, and he called it ROCK & ROLL.

Rock Radio back then was pretty loose, seems they played everything. Freed's favorite music was R&B and Doo Wop, but he also played the stuff that was fermenting out of Memphis, Rock A Billy. I really liked that. I think radio was a hodge podge of music then because two ugly words had yet to be coined. Format and Demographic. Two of the most un musical terms these ears have ever heard. How the hell they got involved is some one elses sinister plot. I'd bet that master tunesmith Cole Porter, who rhymed a 101 species in his classic copulation ditty "Let's Do It" back in the 1930s, could not do much with those two ugly words.

In 1950, we moved about seventy miles east of Queens, NY, to a sleepy little seaside town called Mastic Beach. The house was small, but real nifty like a vacation home. It had a knotty pine living room, with sleeping lofts above it. My brother Butch and I shared one half just over the staircase. Mom was very bullish about getting us to bed early. When I was eight we still had to be in bed by 8:30, which had to be tougher on Butch, him being three years older. In 1952 we got a TV and we could listen in to shows like, Milton Berle, Sid Ceaser, Dragnet, Phil Silvers and Dad's favorite Navy Log before drifting off. One night I recall hearing our mom shout " WALLY, COME HERE QUICK, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS!" Butch and I got up and peeked over the balcony wall. We couldn't believe it either. Just a few feet below us in the corner of the darkened living room, was a guy filling up the B&W 17" screen of our Halicrafter TV , singin', shoutin' and shakin' for all the world to see. Elvis had entered the building.

Don't Be Cruel

For my sister's 15th birthday, she got her own portable record player, that had 3 speeds. The traditional 78 RPM, which would play what records were in the family collection, the newer 33&1/3, for playing LPs. of which we might have had one or two, but most important, 45 RPM, along with several of those new 7" vinyl records. One I recall was on the Decca label. The "A" side ( I was always a fan of the fine print) had a song title "Thirteen Women and Only One Man In Town " that went right over my 7 year old head. " However it was what was on the "B" side, that dropped an atomic bomb on the untamed youths in the listening public and the old men that ran the music industry. The group that recorded it, was originaly a western swing outfit from the eastern state of Pennsylvania, called The Saddlemen. For this outing they had changed their name to The Comets, perhaps hoping to hop on the Atomic age bandwagon. Led by a guy long past his teens, with a spit curl on his forhead, I'm betting you know his name and how he counted this one off. "One Two Three O'Clock, Four O'Clock Rock" .....Not ringing any bells, millenial are you ? Don't know the song or his name ? Hint :Bill's last name tied in perfectly with The Comets.

1955 and '56 were years of big changes for the world and for me. In the fall of '55 my brother Butch opened up a cedar chest to show me what was stashed under the blankets. A bunch of orange and blue boxes that said Lionel Trains on them. As he said SEE with glee, he slowly closed the lid on Santa's coffin. I skipped over the fourth grade, because the principal told my mother, I got my work done too fast and needed bigger challanges. If not she said she saw me getting into trouble down the road. Mrs.Tribble sure had instincts. So I took the 5th (grade that is) which also caused me to be mixed in with our newly formed high school. Complete with students that wore motorcycle jackets, engineer boots, sideburns and listened to lots of rock and roll.

In the fall semester of the 5th grade, where I was already having difficulty, not academically but socially, Mom asked me . "What would you like for Christmas?" It was the first time Santa's name was excluded. "A guitar", I shot back. " A guitar? __Really, you want a guitar? "Yep, I sure do." Though I couldn't grow sideburns, I was already wearing a pompadour and making big plans. "Well, how about a uke? you know I used to play one and I could show you what I can remember on it." Sheessh, now Elvis, Carl Perkins, or Bill Haley for that matter, did not play a uke. The only guy I knew who did, was Arthur Godfrey, and I didn't care too much for him or his music. Neither did my grandfather Jack Spooner, who knew him personaly and said , "He's the cheapest son of a bitch I ever knew." Trust me gramps knew a whole lot about almost every famous celebrity, be they actor, politician, sports figure, journalist, musician, and more from about 1905- 1955, that ever came down the pike. Don't take my word for it. Google Jack Spooner and the Stork Club and see for yourself.

Well Christmas came ( can't recall if it snowed that year ) and I got a uke. Our Dad worked his entire life for the NY Phone Co, that provided a steady job, but you wouldn't get rich there. It could of been the family food budget, (mom spent a lot on good food and was a tremendous cook) that shrank my musical ambitions and my first instrument, but I was still thrilled with it and the sound it made. Mom showed me what she knew. It was a chord progression. G, Gmaj7th, G7th, C, E, A,D7, G. I learned to resolve right out of the chute. With a little book of standards like, Blue Moon, Streets Of Laredo, When You Were Sweet Sixteen, that had chord symbols in it, I progressed enough, that I could figure out the songs I wanted to play, like "Young Love" that had a chord move from I to III (that still catches my ear ) rather than most that were just I IV & V and were really not too sophisticated. Soon I was toting my little guitar to school, trying to impress girls and not getting too far. During lunch the high schoolers were allowed to play records in the cafeteria. My classroom was just across the breezeway from it and with the windows open I could hear the music loud and clear. One song really caught my ear and I wanted to get it ASAP. An advance on my 50 cent allowance and a 14 mile trip to the nearest 5 & 10 solved the problem. As I placed the needle down on the "B" side, which was the one I wanted badly, an intro and beat I will never get tired of hearing, filled the room, followed by the singer's first words. "You Know I Can Be Found, Sittin' Home All Day Long, You Can't Come Around, Then Please Please Telephone, Don't Be Cruel, .... " On the "A" side was "Hound Dog" with two hot guitar solos from Scotty Moore. If you could of told me then that 35 years later, I would be in a Nashville recording studio, cutting one of my own songs along with the legendary Jordanaires for the ABC-TV show "Elvis, The Early Years" I would have said , WHAT ? ARE YOU NUTS?

After the session, we got to talk a bit and I asked them about that session. Gordon Stoker, their leader, who started the story with. "We were in New York City to do the Ed Sullivan Show with him. They were fitting in his sessions piece meal around his exploding personal appearance demands. We must of done 30 takes of Hound Dog, and were really getting worn out. Neal Matthews: That AHHH we did during Scotty's guitar break was just awful. Scotty thought we had nailed the song after a dozen takes, but Elvis just kept going at it after something only he was looking for. I think they finally used take 17 or 18." Gordon: "Don't Be Cruel" went down much easier, probably only 20 minutes start to finish." WOW ! I said and thought to myself. Twenty minutes to create one of the greatest rock tunes I had ever heard. Everything seemed to be in the right place on it. Word is, that songwriters Leiber & Stoller weren't that wild about how Hound Dog turned out. Big Mama Thorton's original version was what lit their fire. But the royalties from Elvis sure put a big smile on their face and gave them money to burn.

The only guy who wasn't smiling was Col. Tom Parker, Elvis' manager. Believe it or not, what got his ass in wad, was the incredible success of "Don't Be Cruel" 13 weeks at the # 1 spot , a record for a record that held for over 30 some years. His response to the suits at RCA was "YOU IDIOTS JUST GAVE AWAY A FORTUNE". From that point forward, the Colonel's law was nothing but weak filler songs on the "B" sides. Who wants to hear "Do The Clam"

One day my father came home with a handful of 78s, that Irv Rosen, the guy who owned a new music and record store gave him as tip, for installing the telephones. Irv and I would have a great long relationship in the years to come. They were rock records, but were on 78's, probably because they were promotional copies, marked not only A side B side but with a note printed on them to the DJs to play the A side. I can't remember what two of them were but the third one caught not only my ear but Butch's too. They were on Brunswick and the A side was called "I'm Looking For Someone To Love" an uptempo jangly tune with lots of energy. The B side sounded similar, but it also sounded better to both of us. Apparantley it did to DJs too as they played it a lot and "That'll Be The Day" launched the Crickets and started the legacy of their leader Charles Hardin "Buddy" Holly.

The following Christmas I got a real 6 string guitar. It only cost $17 and was a real finger buster to play, but I didn't know what a good guitar played like, so I soldiered on. The first song I learned, after learning to deal with the two new strings was "Singing The Blues". A very unfortunate event in the family, led to a most fortunate one not soon after and I found myself in the audience of the Alan Freed Rock & Roll Party, concert at New York's Paramount. Of all the acts on the bill, The Crickets stole the show for me. I now had another guitar hero besides Scotty Moore and Carl Perkins. However it wasn't too long after, that Butch showed me the newspaper with an awful picture of a plane crash and ambulance in a snow covered field, with the headline, Three R&R Stars Killed In Iowa Plane Crash. It was the first of too many plane crashes with musicians (some who were friends ) that would deeply effect me in the years ahead.

DON'T BE CRUEL / HOUND DOG 45 - FREE CRICKETS 78 RPM & THE ORIGINAL CRICKETS ALBUM THAT I WORE OUT

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Ken Spooner's Brief Music Bio :

Born Ken Joseph, In Brooklyn In 1947_ Musician and songwriter since 1956 . Turned pro in 1961.
Guitarist & Hammond Organist & Veteran Of Long Island Band Scene In The 1960's