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Music Part 1: Dancing
By Marc Jennings
My Mother said that as a small child I always danced when I heard music.
That was before you could take videos with your cell phone so I only have
her word to go on. I do vaguely remember a few times as a child when music
made an impression on me. However, it was not that big a deal. Going to
elementary school we had music class and I discovered I had a slight musical
talent and could sing on key for the most part. I also found that I enjoyed
music. However, none of this gave me even the slightest hint of the effect
music would have on my life.
I have long had a theory, and I’ll bet when you hear it you will agree with
it. It is this: when we enter adolescence, and all these heretofore dormant
hormones begin to circulate in and change our bodies, we suddenly discover
the opposite sex as something other than a worthless nuisance. While this is
happening, we become fixed on the music we are listening to at the time. We
bond to it, it says things to us; universal things. It becomes more than
music, it is a way of understanding the world around us, which is suddenly
pretty confusing. This music, whatever it is, will be the music you love the
rest of your life. This is why our parents liked goofy music that we thought
was….old fashioned. This is why we can’t understand the music our kids
listen to. This is why 99.8% of the songs we or any generation listened to
were about love, or broken hearts, or “going to the chapel”, or something
having to do with relationships between a boy and a girl. This is why we
still like the songs we listened to when we attended FHS.
I remember, like it was yesterday, when this music spell hit me like a ton
of bricks. I lived at 4545 St. Johns Ave. The next street closer to school
was St. James. At 4545 St. James lived a friend, Dave Skiles. Dave Skiles
had an older sister. She had a collection of 45 rpm records. One bright
sunny day in 1958 it was just me and Dave Skiles sitting on his living room
floor next to his sister’s portable record player with a stack of her 45’s
on it. We were kids, we didn’t listen to the radio; we were always outside
playing, so I had never heard these songs before. But on this day they
entered my head forever. “Short Fat Fannie”, “Whole Lotta Shakin’”, “Peggy
Sue”, “Little Darlin’”, and “Little Star” were some that I recall hearing
that day.
This was not the first time I had heard rock and roll songs. I had heard all
of Elvis Presley’s records and others. But this day I heard music that for
the first time strangely moved me. Have you ever seen these TV shows about
Elvis, when he first started out, and his music upset some people? They
usually show old news clips from the mid-50’s of community leaders and
ministers, and they’re trying to stop this rock and roll music and they said
“it’s the Devil’s music”. They were right. It was the Devil’s music and when
it got in you, you had to move. I’m not saying the music was evil, or that
it took possession of your soul, but it had a beat that made you want to
move your hips and your shoulders and your feet. Some of it had vague sexual
overtones, but if you were real young that level of the music just passed
over your head
I remember the neighborhood I lived in at the time had a
building that was called the “union hall”. I guess it was used for meetings
sometimes but I never knew of one taking place there. One Friday night there
was a dance at the union hall. Someone was playing records, and there was a
group of kids my age and older. What I remember about this night was that
the music made me want to dance. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no idea how
one would go about dancing. I had never seen American Bandstand or any other
TV show to give me a hint how it was done. And no one was dancing. Everyone
was just standing around talking; boys with the boys and girls with the
girls. It was frustrating.
I began listening to the radio. And, about this time a new innovation made
that easier to do. Transistor radios were introduced in Dayton. You could
carry them around with you and they had an earphone so you could listen to
them almost anywhere. They were pretty expensive at first and they often
came with a leather carrying case. We listened to WING, 1410 on the AM dial
(there wasn’t any FM dial then). I think it was Bob Holliday and Gene “By
Golly” Berry. And sometimes we listened to WONE, 980, but it wasn’t as good.
You could take your transistor radio to bed with you and listen at night.
One night I heard a WING disc jockey use the term “golden oldie” for the
first time.
In 1959 our class put on a show at school for our parents. It was called
“The Soaring Sixties”, and it was supposed to be about what we would all be
doing way off in the future; in the sixties. Various classmates were
assigned to be rocket scientists and brain surgeons, but my part was to say
I decided to be a rock & roll singer, at which point I began singing the
song “Jim Dandy to the Rescue”. After the show was over, Sandy, one of my
classmates, told me in obvious disgust: “anybody can get up there and shake
their butt!” I guess she didn’t care much for my performance, but I was
surprised because I hadn’t realized I was “shaking my butt”.
In 1960, dancing teenagers got a break when Chubby Checker released a record
called “The Twist”. I heard the song and I saw the kids on Bandstand do the
dance. Now this, I could do, and so could everybody else. I now had an
outlet for my dancing urge, but we had no more dances until the eighth
grade.
In the eighth grade we had one dance at school, during school hours. I don’t
remember that much about it except I had on a coat and tie and I did the
Twist until my side ached, rested and then did it some more. I did more
Twisting at that short dance than I have done in all the years since. I
think I wore out three different partners.
Also, in the eighth grade, I decided I wanted to learn to play the guitar.
My Mother had made me take piano lessons earlier in elementary school. For
some reason, I believed that taking piano lessons was just about the
sissiest thing you could do, and I went to great lengths to conceal from my
friends that I was doing this. Oh, I hated it, and, not surprisingly, I quit
as soon as my Mother would let me, although I had learned the basics.
Playing the guitar was another matter entirely. That would be cool. My
parents bought me an inexpensive acoustic guitar and I started taking
lessons. I would take the bus downtown to Hauer Music for my lessons. While
waiting at the store for my lesson I would look longingly at the shiny new
electric guitars on display. Unfortunately, I found the music I was being
taught to play was about as dumb as the stuff I had to play on the piano. I
was looking for an experience like the song, “The All-American Boy”:
“Well I bought me a guitar a year ago;
Learned how to play in a day or so;
And all around town it was well understood;
That I was knockin’ ‘em out like Johnny B. Goode.”
So after I thought I had learned the essentials I quit taking lessons but
started teaching myself to play some of the rock & roll songs on the radio.
It was slow going, but I worked hard at it. After a few months I convinced
my parents that I was serious and they bought me a used electric guitar with
an amplifier. I worked even harder. My friend, Mike Overly, had one too and
he helped me learn new songs. Mike was not only very talented musically, but
he had also started earlier than me and I learned a lot from him. So, when I
walked into Fairview High School in September, 1962, I had everything I
needed to: (a) follow the latest music, (b) dance, and (c) play in a band.
And that is exactly what I did; in that order.
The next stop on my musical journey was the Mascot. I used to arrive early
at school and go to the Mascot because that was the only place to go. It was
always full of people and a lot of them were eating French fries. The
jukebox was always playing and the only song I ever remember was “409” by
the Beach Boys. It seemed to play constantly. I remember the same two girls
were always dancing to “409”. I had a lot of pent-up dancing energy in me,
but still, 7:30 in the morning just didn’t seem like the proper time to let
it out. But I watched the girls dance—they had this compact little bouncing
step that really fit the early 60’s music—and by the time of my next musical
event, I could do this step myself.
The event I am referring to happened at an old corrugated steel building on
Kings Highway, near where the Dayton View Little League Park was, and pretty
close to Fairport Elementary. The building was what was called a Quonset hut
in WWII, a semicircular, pre-fabricated structure. I don’t know how it made
it to Dayton, but there it was. This place was called Menker’s Party Hut,
and was available for events. Two brothers at FHS, Jim and Gary Burt,
somehow came up with the idea of renting the place, hiring a band, passing
the word at school and charging admission to get in. They called it an “Open
House”. These two entrepreneurs must have been “sweating bullets” that
enough people would show up to cover paying the band and the rent. If so,
they worried for nothing cause on the appointed Friday night, the place was
wall to wall people. For high school kids there weren’t any places to go and
socialize and dance and listen to a band play music, so this was an
opportunity waiting to happen. And guess who was there dancing until flames
started coming from the bottom of his shoes. That’s right.
I’ll bet a lot of you went to an Open House at Menker’s. The place was
really a dump, not that that mattered. It was loud, smoky, dark, crowded and
usually hot. There were always a couple of hoodlums wandering around the
place, acting tough and looking for someone to pick on, and sometimes they
would position themselves outside the entrance and bum quarters: “hey, man,
loan me a quarter; got a cigarette?” But most kids were there to have a good
time.
Sometimes the Open House at Menker’s would just have a disc jockey playing
records, and sometimes there was a band. Later, when I played in a band, we
played a couple of times at Menker’s. That is where I won my first dance
contest (the prize was a 45-Walkin’ the Dog by Rufus Thomas). That is where
I taught Barbie Barth and some other class of 64 girls to do a line dance I
had learned from a guy at Chaminade. And, that is where I first heard my all
time favorite dancing song: Louie, Louie.
There continued to be Open Houses at Menker’s, but they were so successful
that they were naturally moved to larger venues. Wampler’s Ballarina and
Wampler’s Barn were two frequent locations at which dances were held.
Sometimes they were at Sinclair Park, off Needmore Road. At Wampler’s there
were sometimes entertainers you heard or would hear on the radio. And of
course, it wasn’t just kids from Fairview who went to these dances. Kids
came from all over our side of Dayton, although we mostly knew kids from
Colonel White and Meadowdale. But, wherever there was a dance I made it a
point to attend.
I guess I was lucky cause most guys either didn’t dance well or didn’t care
to dance; but, there were lots of girls who liked to dance, and I tried to
grant the wishes of as many as possible. I remember several girls in
particular who were very good dancers, but I will refrain from mentioning
their names for fear of missing someone and hurting her feelings. Let’s just
say, if you ever danced with me, you are on my list of very good dancers.
I suppose I was pretty cocky about dancing, but that can be very dangerous
because, as they say, pride comes before a fall. One night I was at a dance
over in Colonel White territory, on the dance floor, getting ready to show
them how we do it at Fairview, when I noticed another guy dancing and he
wasn’t bad. I went on over and broke out some moves. I was mildly surprised
when he kept up. I found out later his name was Sammy Kingston, a really
great guy that I came to know and like, later on. I almost felt bad when I
finally had to shut him down and leave him in my dust. (Just kidding; Sammy
and I were pretty evenly matched. Who looked the best kind of depended on
how good our respective partners were—and this was his home territory.)
I didn’t exactly live only to dance in high school, yet when on the dance
floor, with a cool song playing loud, I found great joy. I could almost
become that music, moving every part of my body to the beat. It was
literally impossible not to dance to songs like “Mashed Potato Time” by Dee
Dee Sharp, “Let’s Dance” by Chris Montez, “Da Doo Ron Ron” by The Crystals,
“Tallahassee Lassie” by Freddy Canon, or “Twist and Shout” by the Isley
Brothers. And then there were a few special songs with beats so mystical and
compelling that they caused me physical pain until I could get to the dance
floor and relieve it. Songs like: “Last Night” by the Mar-Keys, “Louie,
Louie” by The Kingsmen, “Do You Love Me” by the Contours, and “C’mon and
Swim” by Bobby Freeman. But don’t take my word for it, listen to any of
these songs and tell me if you can stand still.
In my office is a small piece of marble upon which is a ceramic black and
white saddle shoe. It is a dance contest prize that my best dance partner
ever, my wife Darlene, helped me win. Inscribed on a brass plate on the
marble is:
“Bop Till You Drop”
Class of 66
1986
In my mind, I think I could do it again—if they played Louie, Louie; the
Devil’s Music.