BEATLE BOOTS ON!

A Remembrance Of When The World Changed Forever

The calendar had just turned to 1964, but it was still the 1950s. Yes, JFK had inched the clock forward a bit, but then he was assassinated and, well, that seemed to be that. Like most new decades, the previous one held on for dear life well into a new era. So, in February, 1964, not too much had changed. Bouffant's were still fashionable among women and crew cuts were it for men. Poodle skirts and penny loafers reigned. There was Elvis and a host of other rockabilly style artists, but in late January 1964, number one on the Billboard Hot 100 was a squarest of square tune called Walk Right In, sung by an all-white trio named The Rooftop Singers.

Walk right in, sit right down

Daddy, let your mind roll on

Walk right in, sit right down

Daddy, let your mind roll on…

Walk Right In had an interesting, very American history. The song was originally written and recorded by a black medicine show banjo playing bluesman named Gus Cannon. It was first etched onto vinyl in 1929, sold little and made Cannon not a cent. By the early 1960s, Cannon’s performing career was long over and he was living in poverty, even having pawned his beloved banjo in order to pay the rent.

Then along came folk singer Erik Darling and his 12-string guitar. The upcoming folkie stumbled upon Cannon’s Walk Right In and decided to record it. But Darling wanted to surround himself with an early Peter, Paul and Mary style group. So, he recruited fellow 12-string folkie Bill Svanoe and former jazz singer Lynne Taylor to form The Rooftop singers, as white bread a group as there ever was. Flattop crews, suit and ties, lyrics bleached and all traces of Gus Cannon’s rough and playful version of Walk Right In erased. Writing credits were attributed to Darling and Svanie. Of course, Rooftop’s “updated” take on the song immediately upon its release shot to number one on the charts.

But…things do eventually change, and a new decade eventually tends to catch up to its own newness. Thank the Gods for that.

What I remember is that, one day, in February of 1964 my older sister Genevieve, then 15, came running home from school into the house. And instead of any acknowledgment to the rest of the family, breathlessly ran up the stairs to her third floor bedroom. Genna had one of those little plastic record players…with which she immediately jacked the volume as high as it would go and “blasted” something never heard by any us before. It was a 45 record, with one of those little round discs in the middle. “Who IS this?” we asked, shocked. It was The Beatles, who we, or anybody else in the U.S., had absolutely zero knowledge of. The song was I Want To Hold Your Hand. Immediately, we knew it sounded different. Radically different to our white suburban ears. And within a day or so, the song wiped The Rooftop Singers and their Walk Right In off the face of the earth.(Songwriter Gus Cannon eventually got his due, performing in Folk revivals and even recording again in the last years before his death in 1979.)

A week or so after I Want To Hold Your Hand hit, The Beatles made their first appearance on TV’s The Ed Sullivan Show. Beatlemania was already sweeping the nation. These four “lads from Liverpool” with shocking haircuts, skinny suits, guitars, drums and voices that blended together into one, sang songs--some self-penned--that grabbed you by the ear and wouldn’t let go. Of course, The Beatles were hugely influenced by black music artists from the U.S., Motown particularly, but most white teens were woefully ignorant of this. The Beatles were different. The Beatles were new. The Beatles were revolutionary. And, yes, The Beatles were white.

But, before continuing here, just thank God forever for Ed Sullivan. A New York gossip columnist turned TV variety show host, Ed was the stiffest, least hip guy to ever stand in front of a camera. But, inside, Sullivan was a true showman. Sure, he specialized in presenting Borscht Belt stand-up comics, plate-spinners, tumblers, jugglers, Broadway singers and the like. But he also knew how to hook in an audience. So…once the word had spread, he booked John, Paul, George and Ringo for their first American television appearance. The rest is legend.

That Sunday evening on February 9, 1964, I got into a laughing fit at the dinner table for whatever reason. My father banished me to my bedroom. So, unlike my three sisters, who were now in a state of heightened hysteria, I didn’t get to see The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. I’ve never quite forgiven my father for that.

Dad tended to favor listening to Marine marching band records on the living room Hi-Fi. And, hearing The Beatles for the very first time, he declared “they’re worse than that Elvis Presley,” and banished any playing of their records to my sister’s third floor bedroom, if allowed to play them at all. Undeterred, we teens and pre-teens would grab tennis rackets, and, pretending they were guitars, would gloriously “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” along with the 45 rpm’s.

Of course, as the only boy in the family, my crew cut was suddenly totally embarrassing to me. I was only in the fourth grade at the time, so still went with my father to the barber to get my haircut. But I now wanted my hair longer than a crew. I wanted a “Beatle-cut.” Dad put his foot down on that, only “acquiescing”to what he told Tony the Barber was a “modified JFK,” and absolutely no longer. I was humiliated.

I didn’t really have a favorite Beatle, though I avidly collected Beatle cards that came with cardboard tasting gum inside the wrapper. Paul was the kind of dreamy one, even to a prepubescent boy. John was kind of edgy…but really funny. George was, of course, the “quiet one.” And Ringo? Well, he was loveable Ringo.

“A Hard Day’s Night” came out in August that first Beatles summer. My family was vacationing in the ocean town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The Beatles’ film debut was playing in Elizabeth City, about an hour’s drive away. My parents weren’t about to drive that far to see this atrocity on a beautiful summer’s day. So, a sea cottage neighbor took my sisters and I and her own child to a weekday matinee. The movie theatre was mostly empty, but we all screamed our lungs out anyway. It was thrilling.

Of course, everyone of a certain age has their own Beatles story. How they changed through the 1960s, changing us forever along with them. No, the world was never the same again. But I guess you had to be there.

Oh…one more thing. Footwear. Almost more than their music and hair and personalities, I was enthralled by the four Beatles’ footwear. Beatle Boots, to be exact. Those black leather, ankle high, pointy-toed, Spanish-heeled boots. I wanted a pair of Beatle Boots more than anything in the world. I prayed to God for a pair of Beatle Boots. But my Mom wouldn’t let me have them. So…I stayed in sneakers.

Hey! Listen to my song, the international hit…Beatle Boots On! (click on link below)