nine o'clock and no foolin'

 

David Cassidy

--------------------------- [excerpt from Last Train to Memphis:  The Rise of Elvis Presley, by Peter Guralnick] ---------------------------

The Presleys were themselves relatively recent arrivals in Memphis in 1950, having picked up stakes in their native Tupelo, Mississippi, in the fall of 1948 when their only child was thirteen years old.

Their adjustment to city life was difficult at first.

Although the husband, Vernon, had worked in a munitions plant in Memphis for much of the war, good steady peacetime work was not easy to come by, and the three of them were crammed into a single room in one boardinghouse or another for the first few months after their arrival.

        Wary, watchful, shy almost to the point of reclusiveness, the boy was obviously frightened by his new surroundings, and on his first day of school at Humes High (1600 students, seventh to twelfth grade) he was back at the rooming house almost before his father had finished dropping him off.

        Vernon found him "so nervous he was bug-eyed.  When I asked what was the matter, he said he didn't know where the office was and classes had started and there were so many kids.  He was afraid they'd laugh at him."

His father, a taciturn, suspicious man, understood.... "I thought about it a minute," said Vernon, "and I knew what he meant.  So I said, 'Son, that's all right for today, but tomorrow you be there, nine o'clock, and no foolin'!"

______________________________

I've heard of "A New York State of Mind" -- I was kind of getting into "An Elvis State of Mind," since there's a movie called "Elvis" (2022) starring Austin Butler, and directed by Baz Luhrmann.

I remembered when a biography of Elvis Presley came out in 1981, written by Albert Goldman -- I looked through it at the library, I think, and I was shocked by how much the author must have hated Elvis Presley, or -- hated the idea of him, or something...  I mean, it was crazy the amount of bad things Goldman was writing (or typing) about Elvis.  I'm no book critic, but I was thinking, "This guy Goldman must be nuts!"

        (Truman Capote:  "That's not writing, that's typing.")

I guess there's Money To Be Made, picking out a celebrity and writing a book about them that says

All Good Things about them

or

All Bad Things about them.

And it might be not only the money from book sales, but maybe some people want to say or write hyperbole about famous people, whether positive or negative, because of the way the famous person makes them feel.  Sort of a psychological reaction....

Like teen girls screaming at rock concerts -- this was a thing, in the '60s.  Keith Richards was asked about this phenomenon, and he answered, "I don't know what that was all about."

My question was always, Why would you pay to attend a concert and then scream so much that you can't hear it?

I was a teen, or pre-teen girl once, and I do recall that some of my contemporaries were really into Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy -- I liked some of the songs by these people, and I enjoyed it when my friend Robin put a 45 on the record player and we all -- four or five of us -- listened to it.

But then after one or two songs, someone would turn off the record player and there would be fervent and emotionally-dedicated conversation about how "cute" the singer was, and what they had read about him in a fan magazine.

        And I had the distinct feeling that there was going to be more conversation about "cute" and less playing of records, when I would have preferred the opposite.

        I would start to get bored, and I remember the idea I had in my mind -- 'Why are we obsessing over these singers as if they're going to be our boyfriends?  You know? - they are not going to date us.  We're in fifth grade, and they are grown-up men.  They live in southern California, and we live in northeastern Ohio.  We probably aren't even going to get to be at a dance where they are....'

It's different ways of relating to the music, or responding to it.  For a lot of girls, the "crushing on" the singer and reading about his life and habits was a big part of appreciating the music.  For me, I wanted to listen some more, turn it up, and dance to it.

A customer review on Amazon, under an Elvis Presley biography says, "Elvis was about music..." and making the point that reading about little small details of a singer or actor's life isn't really as interesting as paying attention to their art.  I would agree with that.

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