Backstage At The Big Beat

I knocked at the big backstage door of the Brooklyn Fox Theater. Alan Freed, the big daddy of rock ’n’ roll, had invited us to a Big Beat session and then asked us if we’d like to go backstage to meet his singing stars.

“No visitors,” a voice shouted back.

“I have an appointment,” I said. I identified myself and the door opened.

Quicker than a whirr of bird-wings, three teenage girls ducked in behind me.

“Hey,” a gruff voice shouted at them. “You can’t come in here.” The girls looked downcast, as if Elvis had left for Germany all over again—and Rick Nelson along with him.

“Oh, that’s all right,” I chimed in. “They’re with me.”

The man went back to guarding the door and the girls clustered around me.

“Gee, thanks, Mister . . .”

“Christy,” I said, “George Christy. And don’t mention it. I’m here to do a story for Photoplay. Why don’t you tag along?”

The tallest one’s ponytail was bouncing with excitement as she gave me her hand. “Golly, we’d love to,” she breathed. “I’m Kathy and that’s Debbie.” She pointed to her blue-eyed friend, who was busy craning her neck up at the backstage maze of wires and pulleys, the beams of silvery light and midnight-blue velour drapes.

“I’m Sue,” piped up the third girl. She was just about five-feet tall, with grey eyes and cropped honey-blond hair. I could hardly hear her above the waves of applause that had just started.

Out front, every possible seat, including those on rafters, was taken for Alan Freed’s “The Big Beat” show. Alan Freed himself was emceeing, introducing such sputniks as the “Ginger Bread” Kid, Frankie Avalon; “Bird Dogs” Phil and Don Everly; “Just a Dream” Jimmy Clanton; the “When” Twins, Hal and Herbie Kalin; the Elegants flying high with “Little Star’’; the “Born Too Late” Poni Tails.

“Girls, look!” Debbie cried. They looked and leaped—right at the Everly Brothers, coming off-stage with their mahogany guitars slung over their shoulders. The girls surrounded them, waving their blue souvenir programs and ballpoint pens. Don and Phil grinned and obliged with autographs.

Both boys were wearing blue blazers edged with cool white piping, striped ties and neat-fitting Oxford grey pants.

“Darn,” lamented Sue, “I wish I had my Brownie camera with me.”

Don, 21, the older of the Everly Brothers, chuckled. “I bet backstage looks weird to you, but to Phil and me it’s practically home. It has been ever since I was eight and he was six and we started touring with our folks.”

“Gee, you fellows dress so great,” Kathy was saying to Phil, who’s 19, “my steady dresses like a mess! How do I get him to dress like you?”

“You can lead a horse to water, as we used to say in Kentucky,” Phil answered in his quick way of speaking, “but you can’t make him drink.”

Don’s usually the quieter of the two, but today he was feeling talkative. “Only one way,” Don offered. “Power of suggestion. It usually works. Make your guy think its his idea instead of telling him he doesn’t know what he’s doing. That’s the way my wife wins me over every time.”

Debbie sighed, “Gee, I could stand here all day listening to you.”

“Later on,” Phil said, “we’re going to have a backstage jam session. Why don’t you all come?”

“Who, us?” the three girls cried out.

“Yeah. You might get a kick out of it. Right now, I’m hungry,” Phil continued. “I’m going to the cafeteria across the street. How about you, Don?”

Don nodded. “Phil’s the big eater but I wouldn’t mind a good piece of steak and some French fried potatoes myself.”

“Maybe apple pie a la mode for dessert,” Phil added.

For a moment, the three girls seemed rooted there, only their eyes moved to follow Phil and Don. Debbie came out of the daze first. She spotted Jimmy Clanton, in a pebble-grey silk suit, picking out notes on a battered upright piano in a corner.

“Girls!” Debbie commanded, and Kathy and Sue rallied to Jimmy’s side.

“Autographs, please,” Sue asked. Jimmy looked startled. “Gee,” he said. “You kids are even backstage. This is the greatest turnout I’ve ever seen anywhere for the Big Beat.” Tall, chubby-faced and with bright dark eyes, eighteen-year-old Jimmy Clanton spoke with a soothing Louisiana drawl. He ran his fingers over his long brownish hair, glinting with gold from the glittery backstage lights.

“Where d’you ever get that haircut, Jimmy?” Sue questioned in a timid voice. “We all flipped!”

“Funny you ask,” Jimmy said, shaking his head from side to side, “because, you know, a bunch of barbers have called me up about it. Lots of guys seem to want the same trim. Some of the Brooklyn barbers even came out here for a close-up inspection. The haircut’s called a Balboa, only my girlfriend used to call it The Waterfall. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s because the front part falls over like Niagara. What do you think?”

“Oh, Jimmy,” Kathy interrupted with a long sigh, “we’re just crazy about your haircut, and gosh, we’re crazy for your song, ‘Just a Dream.’ Did you really write it yourself?”

“Sure did,” Jimmy said. “I wrote it when I was suffering from a broken heart. My girlfriend and I stopped going together, just last year, and I was upset, busting inside from sadness and I kept hearing this song in my head, so I said, ‘Let it out, Jimmy, itll do you good’; and, you know it’s the best thing that could have happened to me. I love her still but the song, it makes the break-up all easier somehow—if you know what I mean. Maybe it’ll all be over when I go to L.S.U. to study geology.” The girls just stood there, as if waiting to catch Jimmy Clanton on the rebound. They were so quiet all you could hear was the sound of Debbie cracking her gum. Jimmy began to fidget under their stares, then he spotted relief.

Don and Phil Everly were the first Big Beat stars we met. Singing had made Don hungry. As to Phil, he he was bushed!

“Hey, here’s little Jo Ann Campbell!”

It was Jo Ann all right, tiny doll-like Jo Ann, with her pale blond hair and cornflower-blue eyes decked out in a bulky-knit sweater and red toreador pants. Jo Ann was carrying her big guitar.

“Say honest, Jimmy,” she laughed, “Who’s the harem?”

Autographs first, introductions later. “How about a little Elvis music?” Jo Ann asked and before you had a chance to snap your fingers, she was slapping her guitar and singing a medley of “All Shook Up” and “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock.” For such a little girl, she can sure belt ’em.

Kathy, Debbie and Sue tapped their toes to the rock-rhythm of Jo Ann’s music.

Jo Ann and Jimmy sang a little harmony and swivel-hipped all through the singing. Suddenly, running down the stairs in a white jacket, black frontier pants and white buckskin loafers—flashing a smile big enough to see anyone through a long school day—was the “Ginger Bread” Kid himself.

As if on cue, the three girls chorused breathlessly, “Frankie! Frankie Avalon!”

“Hi, gals,” he said while he signed the blue program books. “Say, how’d you kids sneak in?”

They pointed to me. “Wait’ll I tell the doorman.” Frankie laughed, want to see the upstairs? Come on, Frankie motioned to us, “have a look!”

No prodding needed. The three girls walked right behind Frankie, following him up the steel stairs to the second floor.

“We don’t have any star dressing rooms,” Frankie told the girls as he showed them the cream-colored room he shared with Jimmy Clanton. Kathy, Debbie and Sue stared in fascination at the low-ceilinged dressing room with its mirrors bordered with naked light bulbs, the long wooden makeup shelf.

In a corner was Frankie’s gleaming golden trumpet.

“Play it for us,” Sue begged. “Please, Frankie, please.”

Frankie obliged with sassy snatches of trumpet music, and all three girls sighed and leaned against each other for support. Through the open dressing-room window came loud cries and catcalls of “Frankie! Frankie!” from the gangs of guys and gals waiting on the street, all of them hoping for a peek at the stars of the Big Beat.

Frankie walked over to the window and smiled. One wave from his hand was like lightning. A roar of teenage thunder followed.

“I love ’em,” Frankie said to the three girls in the dressing room. “If it weren’t for all you fans liking my kind of jive, I’d be nowhere. I’d be back home in Philadelphia, practicing the trumpet and playing ‘Tenderly’ to the four walls in my bedroom. And that’s no fun. A musician likes to make people happy with his music.

“You know,” Frankie went on, “I lived real close to St. Edmund’s Convent, and there was this Sister—her name was Sister Marita—who loved to hear me play, especially ‘Tenderly.’ The other Sisters used to compliment me, too, but Sister Marita always went out of her way to encourage me. We had a grouchy neighbor who used to say I practiced too much, and, lots of times, I’d feel guilty about bothering the people on the street with my trumpet-playing and so I’d knock off practicing for a day, and then, if Sister Marita saw me the next day, she’d say, ‘Frankie, you’re not practicing!’ in a kind of scolding tone of voice, and I’d go back to my trumpet that afternoon and practice an hour longer.”

Frankie showed the girls his Big Beat costumes, all of them hanging on a long pipe across one wall of the dressing room. There were red flannel blazers with coin buttons, tiger-striped sweaters, button-down pink shirts with yellow bow ties.

Then, Frankie asked, “Hey, you gals, you met the Poni Tails yet?”

Kathy, Debbie and Sue nodded their heads.

“Come on,” he shouted. “You’ll love them!”

Next thing we knew, we were all marching through the second floor corridor to the last dressing room. Who popped their heads out of a doorway? The Kalin Twins!

“Hey, Frankie, who’s the company?” one of the Kalin twins asked.

Frankie made proper introductions and then Kathy, Debbie and Sue asked for autographs.

Herbie Kalin, the skinnier of the two, asked the girls if they’d like discs of their new record, “Forget-Me-Not.”

“I’m Hal,” the other twin said after Herbie gave the girls their gifts. “He’s married but I’m not, so let’s leave Herbie out of this while we have a talk!”

“No fair,” Herbie hollered.

“Maybe you can talk later,” Frankie interrupted. “I want the Poni Tails to meet them.”

“All right,” Hal said, “but don’t forget. We’re having a jamboree backstage. Why don’t you join us when it starts?”

“Okay,” the girls answered. We continued down the hall and found the door of the last dressing room open.

There they were, the Poni Tails, all three of them wearing their flowered-silk chemises from the show. The tallest, LaVerne Novak, was tidying up the makeup shelf. Patti McCabe sat on a stool studying some sheet music, and all-smiles Toni Cistone was painting her fingernails a pale coral color.

Ballpoint pens and souvenir programs flourished in mid-air, “Oops, don’t spill the nail polish,” Toni cried out. Frankie excused himself to check on the backstage jam session, leaving the girls to get acquainted.

“Come on, girls,” LaVerne urged, “sit down. Sorry, all we have are folding chairs,” she said. “Gee, I’m so glad you stopped in. It’s a good excuse to take a break. I was straightening things up.”

Toni, pointing the nail-polish brush toward LaVerne, said, “LaVerne, she’s crazy for housework!”

“You are, too,” LaVerne smiled.

Toni peered upward through her glitter-framed eyeglasses. “You know, every time we finish touring and we go back to Cleveland, guess what I get a kick out of? Doing the dishes! It’s crazy, I know, but I stand by that kitchen sink and wash away and daydream, and I just have a ball.”

“Me,” Patti joined in, “I love to catch up on all my letter-writing. I do the dishes, sure, but I can’t wait to answer all the nice letters we get. It’s fun to write to fans and get to know them through the mail.”

Sue piped up, “How’d you kids get started, all of you singing together?”

LaVerne smiled a wide Doris Day-smile, “Well, nobody believes it but we were all friends at Bush High School in Cleveland, ind we liked to babysit together because we got a chance to sing. We used to sing for ourselves, just for the fun of it, and one night some parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jewett, came home and heard us harmonizing, and they asked if we ever thought about singing professionally. We said no. So they asked us to meet some people who could help us. At first, we sang in Veterans’ hospitals and at big banquet parties for experience, and, gee, before we knew it, we sang at one of Joe Finan’s record hops and everybody said we were ready to make records—and so, here we are . . .”

Debbie asked sheepishly, “I have a question! Isn’t it hard to keep your own personality and still be a part of a group like this?”

Patti looked at the other two Poni Tails. “Well,” she ventured, after a minute’s thinking, “it’s like this. Look at LaVerne, she’s got green eyes and likes a good time, but it’s Toni who’s the real whoopee girl and live wire. I guess ’m the reserved one. We’re different to begin with, and when we have time to ourselves, we give in to our own personalities. When we go back to our hotel rooms after a show, for instance (we all share a suite together when we travel), Tony’ll turn on the radio, and maybe LaVerne’ll wash her hair and I’ll take a nap. We do whatever suits our own particular moods. We don’t believe we have to do everything together. But. I will say we’re always picking up phrases from each other. Toni’s always saying, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ and now she’s got LaVerne and me saying it all the time.”

“I never thought about it,” Toni said, “but, you know, we get along pretty well. We were friends to start with, but maybe it’s because we can laugh at each other, and nobody gets offended.”

“That’s one thing we do a lot of,” LaVerne commented. “Laugh—and tease!”

Bouncing into the dressing room, Frankie Avalon announced that Phil and Don Everly had come back from the cafeteria across the street, and “. . . we’re all getting wound up for the backstage jam session.”

Buzzing with excitement, Kathy, Debbie and Sue walked alongside the Poni Tails to the other end of the long corridor where the Big Beat gang had gathered—The Everly Brothers, Jimmy Clanton, Jo Ann Campbell and so many others, everyone full of skyrocketing spirit, everyone waiting for Phil and Don to start the music-making.

S-t-r-r-r-u-mmm! and the Everly Brothers’ guitars rang with music. In a minute everybody was stompin’ their feet, and singing about Johnny being a joker . . .

Kathy, Debbie and Sue exchanged Seventh-Heaven looks.

“Come on,” LaVerne of the Poni Tails coaxed. “Sing!”

Next thing you know, the three girls shrugged their shoulders, as if to say “Why not?” and their voices sang out in that let-yourself-go rhythm and pretty soon everybody was just listening.

“Hey,” said Herbie Kalin, “that’s a solid sound.”

Frankie Avalon and Jo Ann Campbell exchanged looks. “Not bad,” he said.

“People have gotten started on a lot less,” said LaVerne.

“Anybody got a contract with a dotted line?” asked Phil Everly.

THE END

—BY GEORGE CHRISTY

ALAN FREED’S BIG BEAT IS SEEN ON WNEW-TV, NEW YORK, MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY, FROM 5 TO 6 P.M., AND HEARD ON WABC, NEW YORK, MONDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, FROM 7:15 TO 10:30 P.M.

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 1959