Jim Bishop: Threading the phonograph needle
Do clothes make the person? I don’t think so, but songs about articles of clothing sure made a closetful of hit records over the years.
This was certainly the case in the mid- to late 1950s. The recipe was simple: identify a random clothing item, make a fashion statement about it in about two minutes and wrap the lyrics around a catchy melody, typically with a lengthy instrumental bridge in the middle.
This awareness hit me anew as I played “Black Slacks,” a top 20 hit for Joe Bennett and the Sparkletones in1957, on my weekly “Friday Night Jukebox” ’50s music show on public radio station WEMC-FM.
“Black slacks with a cat chain down to my knees, I ain’t nothin’ but a real cool breeze, black slacks . . .” the groovy group intoned. Anyone know what a cat chain is? If so, don’t pussy-foot around – admit it – a long watch chain worn by hep cats and zoot-suiters.
The formula worked well the first time, so the group followed up with a musical footnote, “Penny Loafers and Bobby Socks.” This footloose effort stopped in its tracks at #42.
The same year, the late Marty Robbins tore up the charts with his ballad of unrequited love, “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation,” peaking at #2. I’ve often thought, if everyone in the country drove a pink car (picture that!) the US would indeed be a pink car nation.
The Royal Teens popped the musical question, “Who wears short shorts?,” in 1958, the lyrics apparently written on someone’s coffee break. Today, it’s obvious that short shorts have made a comeback. The group’s follow-up quasi-hit informed us that if you didn’t wear a “Big Name Button” then “you’re a square and you’re really nowhere.”
Remember the sudden but (fortunately) passing craze for the sack dress and the chemise? Singer Gerry Granaham protested with his 1958 song, “No Chemise, Please,” declaring whoever came up with this designer travesty “must have been a woman- hater . . . Take back the sack and hang it on the rack, bring the sweater back.”
Bobby Pedrick, Jr., a 12-year-old with a squeaky tenor voice, gave us “White Bucks and Saddle Shoes” in late 1958. He renamed himself Robert John and had a top 3 hit in 1972 with a remake of the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and topped the charts in 1979 with “Sad Eyes.”
Frankie Avalon vocalized on the syrupy “Bobby Socks to Stockings” (#8 in 1959), a song one can hardly imagine being interpreted on a music video some 50 years later.
Clothing songs continued to help promote certain styles. In 1959, Dodie Stevens sang the praises of her fashion plate boyfriend Dooley, who wore tan shoes and “Pink Shoelaces” (#3), a polka-dot vest and a big Panama with a purple hat band . . .” Dooley worked for the Barnum & Bailey circus, I believe. The “I’ve Had It” group, the Bell-Notes, sported “White Buckskin Sneakers” the same year.
That good-time group, The Coasters kept me in stitches in 1960 with their “Shoppin’ for Clothes,” a “spoken” story of a dude checking out jazzy threads against a funky sax backing. Alas, once he selected a suit, the would-be Dapper Dan’s credit “didn’t go through,” and he sulks out the door, despondent and saying out loud, “That suit’s pure Herringbone . . . ”
A novelty song about minuscule clothing item became a #1 hit in 1960 for 16-year-old Brian Hyland, “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.” The KAPP record label was reluctant to even release the disc because it might “lower the image” for its middle-of-the road artists such as pianist Roger Williams and singer Jane Morgan. Hyland went on to have a #3 hit in 1962, “Sealed With a Kiss.”
I look at what teenagers/young adults wear today and shake my head, then remind myself that our parents responded similarly to what we wore back in Medieval times.
My all-time favorite cool cat ensemble, circa 1958, consisted of the following: black slacks with a belt in back and pegged cuffs; a long-sleeved white shirt with the sleeves rolled back one time; a pullover sleeveless, v-neck charcoal sweater, a thin, shiny plastic belt; a red bow tie (“they say me oh my”) and white buck loafers (with not a single scuff mark). I was ready to dance the night away to the jitterbug, the bop, the stroll and my favorite, the slow dance.
In the early ’60s, I was proud – and oblivious to what it looked like – to wear a boatneck shirt with three-quarter-length sleeves and clamdigger slacks that rode down over my calves. By then my hair style had morphed somewhat, still a precision flat top but with flowing long sides. It took a special barber, a cut above the rest, to make it look just so.
These days, I’m just about the only person who wears a tie to my church, and that’s okay. I’ve found over the years that if I keep my skinny and paisley neckwear it’ll eventually be in style again. That’s also been the case for many of the sports shirts in my limited collection.
Well, that about covers it for this tuneful treatise on clothes, except to add this musical advice from the late Carl Perkins: “You can do what you want, but lay off of my blue suede shoes.”
Postlude: You can hear most of the aforementioned “fashionable oldies” on the next edition of the “Friday Night Jukebox,” 8 p.m. Aug. 27 on 91.7 FM, WEMC, online at www.wemcradio.org.
Jim (Fashion Plate) Bishop is public information officer at Eastern Mennonite University. He can be contacted at bishopj@emu.edu.
Jim Bishop: And now for something completely different …
I am unique, just like everybody else, the saying goes.
Don’t we all want to be considered unique, distinctive, to stand out from the crowd?
When we perceive or call someone else “different,” usually it’s not meant as a compliment. More often, it translates as weird, odd, peculiar, even bizarre, and we take steps to avoid them. Yes, but different compared to whom or what? Who decides what is the norm?
It gets more complex when you’re plunked into another culture. Then what is the measuring standard? Who is different? Who needs to adjust?
So, who wants to be considered different?
I’ll speak for myself: I do.
I don’t want to follow the herd instinct, but still desire to be heard. It’s not difficult to be ostracized or discounted for holding a minority view on certain issues or advocating an unpopular cause, dressing a certain way or refusing to jump on the latest fad bandwagon.
I grew up being different. I knew it then and didn’t mind it. As a youngster, while my peers were out riding bikes or playing ball, I was at my parents’ roller desk, using a fountain pen to create stories and sketch drawings of the comic book characters I’d created of Hamey Humbug and his gang.
Or, I had my ear literally glued to my Silvertone 6-transistor radio, grooving to this strange new sound of rock ‘n’ roll emanating from a tinny speaker (or earplug when I was tuned in during classes).
My first car, purchased for $300 in 1962, was one of a kind, much like its crazy driver, I liked to think – a BMW Isetta 300. The miniature motorcar opened in the front to let in its occupants, had a 12-horsepower, 1-cylinder engine, got 53 miles to the gallon and delivered me where I wanted to go, albeit more slowly than my distracters.
Today, if I didn’t already have a vehicle that serves me well and I had the cash in hand, I’d be driving a Mercedes SmartCar, a modern-day replica of the Isetta but with more safety features and more horsepower than a washing machine motor.
I also like hot weather (this summer a case in point), as long as I can be swimming or crusin’ and playin’ the radio (with prehistoric tunes from the 1950s; thank you, Mr. Berry) while others huddle near the air conditioner and complain about the heat.
The central question to ask in this discussion, I believe, is not so much how (ital.) one is different but why (ital.) – what is the bottom line motivation? Is the impetus largely to say, “I’m different,” just for the sake of being different, refusing to be squeezed into the mold of uniformity?
Or, does that drive arise from a higher calling – to challenge the status quo, to offer some alterative ways of looking at things or even offering a prophetic word, however unpopular, amid the myriad voices of uniformity?
I enjoy interacting with some – not all! – persons whom I see as “different.” We may not agree on many issues and have different tastes, personalities, mannerisms and outlooks on life. But isn’t this what helps keeps life intriguing, unpredictable, challenging, as long as we’re willing to listen to and learn from each other?
Part of what keeps life fascinating for me and the person closest to me in this life, my spouse Anna, are those differences that could erect walls between us if we’d allow it but instead we determine to respect and celebrate as channels for growth in our journey together.
This doesn’t mean we don’t change, however.
Recently, while returning from a quick trip out of town, Anna remarked, “Are you getting soft in your old age? You filled the car with gas before we left instead of waiting until we’re running on vapors, you stopped at a convenience store for me that required a left turn across the roadway and since my bunion surgery you’ve been walking beside me instead of a step or two ahead as you used to do.”
Just trying to become a little different from the old me, wifey.
To be or not to be . . . different or unique . . . that is my ongoing question.
Jim Bishop is public information officer at Eastern Mennonite University. He can be contacted at bishopj@emu.edu.
Jim Bishop: Be thou my vision – the eyes have it
“I can see clearly now, the rain is gone . . .” proclaims the 1972 hit by Johnny Nash, and I am more than delighted to second that emotion.
Well, almost. I had just completed my annual visual exam with my long-time ophthalmologist Dr. Capstack and given an “all clear” signal for another year but, thanks to drops administered to dilate my favorite pupils, everything appeared rather blurred and muddy.
I put on sunglasses, stepped outside and was “blinded by the light,” a la Manfred Mann (the 1977 song written by Bruce Springsteen, by the way). I sat in the car awhile until I felt more adjusted to the brilliant scenario.
En route to my office, I closed my eyes – waiting at intersections, not while driving busy E. Market St. – and breathed a prayer of thanksgiving for the gift of good eyesight, especially at this elder life stage.
A year ago, I was told that my eye pressure was “slightly elevated” and that the doctor wanted to keep an eye, as it were, on my situation. One year later, I’m told that my eye pressure was “within acceptable range,” that my eyeglass prescription didn’t need changing and a test found no sign of glaucoma, which runs in my family history.
I am making notes for this column on a yellow legal pad while waiting for the dilating medicine drops to take effect and am having some difficulty deciphering what I’ve written (and reading my handwriting is a challenge even under normal conditions – for myself and others who have the unfortunate task of trying to interpret my hieroglyphics).
Yes, I need to wear glasses, bifocals, if you will, but again am grateful that these corrective lenses ensure sharp images both at a distance and for close-up reading. More recently I’ve had to enlarge the font size on computer screen copy,, especially for email texts, but that’s a small price to pay for easier reading even though many messages translate into more work to do.
Seeing clearly, even if our vision isn’t perfect, is truly a gift too easily taken for granted. (When it comes to hindsight, we all are 20/20).
Ever done the exercise where you are blindfolded and someone else leads you around, trying to direct you verbally towards a certain object or destination? You begin to get an idea of what persons face every day who have deteriorating vision or are totally blind. They learn to compensate and attain remarkable levels of achievement, but it takes special effort.
Of course, some persons with perfect vision quickly learn to act as though they’re blind towards other people and needs around them.
At checkout, the staff assistant asked if I wanted to schedule another eye appointment a year from now. “Sure,” I said, “Can you make it for as soon as you open at 8 a.m.? I like to take care of this and then go directly to work.”
The little white card reads 8 a.m. 8/02/2011. Only after leaving the eye doctor’s office did it hit me: “Uhhhh, a year from now will it matter that the appointment is first thing in the morning? I’ll most likely be stumbling around at 8 o’clock telling myself to put my pants on before my shoes and wondering what’s for breakfast. I’ll be retired. It won’t matter what time of day the appointment is.”
That’s a reality that’s just now slowly sinking into my thick skull. The bigger issue then will be, will I have adequate coverage to pay for regular eye exams and other health-related care?
Each of us needs to care for our eyes and other vital organs with regular checkups, especially as we age. While you’re at it, consider becoming an organ donor and make sure that designation appears on your driver’s license.
On this point, may we all see eye-to-eye.
Column by Jim Bishop. Jim can be reached at bishopj@emu.edu.
Jim Bishop: Thank you for being a friend
“Friend, I will remember you,
Think of you, pray for you …”
- John Denver (Friends With You)
A friend I heard described as “someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.” I seem to be forgetting a lot of words these days, Not only am I verbally challenged, but am having difficulty remembering where I’ve parked my car, placed the greeting cards that I purchased on vacation and have promptly disappeared and deposited my cell phone (it was under the car seat last time).
When these hapless events arrive, sooner for some than others, I need friends more than ever to help rejoin those lapses in the mental synapses, offer counsel and words of encouragement – and if needed – to just let me know, “I’m here for you . . . and expect the same from you.”
Little surprise, then, to say that my companion of 46 years, my loving spouse Anna, is my best friend. That’s a long time span, yet it seems like only yesterday that I cast my first longing gaze across the college dining hall at this petite, dark-complexioned lass and thought to myself, “Who is this fair young damsel? Would she even give me the time of day – if she knew my persona and checkered past?”
I hasten to add that this “best friend” concept this wasn’t immediately apparent when we first wed that stifling hot July night in 1967. (Ah, the infamous summer of love; it was for us, and neither of us wore flowers in our hair).
We all need other persons around us, not only to call our friends but also to put in a good word for us when we’re not around.
Part of the process of finding friends is you first have to be one yourself, to be open, somewhat vulnerable, and genuinely interested in getting to know new people. It’s easier to run with the pack, always talk with the same persons in whatever social setting you find yourself, but a bit of risk-taking may result in building a friendship with someone whom you initially thought you’d have little commonality with (maybe open the conversation by asking him or her whether a sentence can end with a preposition).
I’ve found over the years that one way to find out who your friends really are is when you’re flat on your back because of an illness, injury or surgery. See who responds without even being asked to and doesn’t just say, “Let me know what I can do” but just goes ahead and does it.
Here’s a quotable note: “A friend is one who understands your past, believes in your future and accepts you just the way you are.” While that’s true, I would add that a true friend isn’t satisfied with the way I am but will go out of his or her way to help me sharpen my gifts and encourage me to use them to not only help others but to help mold me into becoming a better person.
Wife Anna and I settled in the ‘Burg and have remained rooted here some 39 years. That has certainly helped in developing new friendships but at the same time has made it more difficult to bid farewell to certain persons whom we deemed some of our best friends over the years. The emergence of electronic mail has helped us get back in touch, but meanwhile, I stubbornly refuse to become anyone’s “friend” on Facebook.
Life is not an easy road but the journey is heightened and its trials are lightened when we have friends to join the fray along the way. Social media networking has its place, but for me, nothing can replace a touch of grace from someone extending the hand of friendship.
This simple song from childhood sums it up: “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our griefs and sins to bear . . .” Now there’s Someone who knows the song in my heart even before I forget the words.
Column by Jim Bishop. Jim can be reached at bishopj@emu.edu.
Jim Bishop: Going to Surf City, gonna have some fun, yeah …
Want a real test of love? See how well your family relates to each other while being cooped up in a room together on a beach vacation as the rain beats against the windows facing the ocean.
Sooner or later, the grandkids, five-year old twins in our case, will start picking on each other and then their parents and if that doesn’t bring the desired response, move on to the grandparents.
Anna and I, along with our daughter Sara and family, were spending a week in a duplex right on the beach in the Topsail Island, N.C., village of Surf City (not the place Jan & Dean made famous). The place was small, nothing fancy, but adequate for our size group. The area is less commercialized and beach houses stretch on for miles. This is when a boardwalk, such as the traditional one that has rescued us many times in the past just one block away from our rental place in Ocean City, N.J., would come in handy.
We don’t have this option readily available here the several times the weather favored the local wildlife rather than us vacationers, so we work on alternative strategies to fend off familial stress disorder.
It helps to have a large flat-screen television in the living room area with a bazillion channels available on the cable system – some better speed-dialed through with big-eyed youngsters looking on – and the Disney Channel and UNC-TV public television system serving up some decent fare with high-definition images. There’s also a stash of DVDs on hand and a variety of board games. I play “Scrabble” for the first time in years – and lose to Sara (I was left stranded with the letters “Q” and “Z”).
The water is warmer and appears so much clearer here, largely devoid of seaweed and those nasty jellyfish that often invade the Ocean City beaches. This is only the third summer since 1975 that we didn’t make tracks to “America’s Greatest Family Resort.” It might be awhile before we return there.
The best part of each day: sitting on the deck overlooking the water, slowly imbibing that second cup of robust coffee and becoming mesmerized by the waves pounding the shoreline. A fisherman standing out in the surf when we’re just getting up and still casting his line when we call it a day tells me the rest of his family “likes to sit and read” on vacation, while he “has to be more active – might as well be fishing.” He filets and pan-fries his catch of the day – “nothing like it,” he smiles.
Speaking of which, we ventured out for supper one evening to a local seafood restaurant and I’ve have never been in a noisier eating establishment in my life. We paid too much for quite ordinary fare, but made up for it by finding an ice cream parlor nearby with a 50’s motif. I dropped a quarter into an authentic Rockola jukebox and watched the original Atco 45 disc plop onto the turntable. Walden Robert Cossotto, aka Bobby Darin, crooned his 1959 hit, “Dream Lover.”
By midweek I’m standing in the surf and telling myself I must be unwinding. I need to think what day of the week it is and, like the Chicago song inquires, “Does anybody know what time it is? Does anybody really care?”
Pretty, dainty shells with interesting markings cover the beach. I’d pick one up, thinking it’s a keeper, then find another that surpasses the appeal of the previous one. Grand kids Grant and Megan had a blast picking up shells and deciding which ones to keep. They had a bagful to haul back to Virginia by the end of the week. I even gathered my own small collection, which now decorates a bookshelf in the office.
I spent a major block of time in the pounding surf with the twins. I think both my arms were stretched a half inch, hanging on to trusting little fingers.
“Jump, Paw-Paw!” they’d cry, and then emit screams of delight as the waves smacked against them and eventually knocked them over. “Get all wet!” Grant ordered, and I’d comply. The water was so warm and felt good, even if the sand accumulating in my bathing suit didn’t. It was memory-building time; it’s a grandparent’s mission.
At first, I felt out of my comfort zone in this different vacation space, but my persistent spouse was right once again: “We need to check out new places – it’s an adventure,” she insists – and while it’s good to be safely back home, I’m so glad we heeded the clarion call to go down to the sea again.
Column by Jim Bishop. Submit guest columns, op-eds and letters to the editor at freepress2@ntelos.net.
Jim Bishop: Cheesy jokes-It’s as gouda as it gets
Column by Jim Bishop
bishopj@emu.edu
“Cheese it, the cops!”
Now, where did that phrase originate? Did a bunch of dudes get caught while breaking into the refrigerated section of a super market?
Fortunately – I guess – a quick Google search provides this cheesy explanation:
“Cheese it!” was a popular expression in the 19th century, usually a warning from one person to another to stop their current activity because a policeman was approaching. The expression was used in English slang by at least the 1810s and quickly came to America” – Barry Popik, The Big Apple (www.barrypopik.com).
At any rate, fromage to you, my first (and likely last) attempt to sit right down and write myself a Cheddar on the subject of cheese. Herman Muenster would be proud . . . Read more
Jim Bishop: Neither shy nor retiring – not yet, anyway
Posted by afp on August 25, 2010 · 1 Comment
. . . sitting in the back of Martin Chapel, surveying a swirling sea of backs of heads, many familiar-looking, some not. Some are losing their hair and compensated by growing beards, while others sport speckled-gray or flowing silver manes.
Time may heal all wounds, but it also seems to nibble away at our vitality, deflate our egos and increasingly thwart attempts to fully pursue our first loves and passions.
Such anxious thoughts reverberated in my own cobwebbed noggin as I watch a Power Point of new faculty and staff members who have joined our learning community as another school year is about to unfold. It will be my last time to partake of this annual ritual that signals the countdown to the start of the new school year at my workplace, Eastern Mennonite University.
As I listen to the conference keynote speaker, a number of references she makes to persons and events that occurred while a student here in the late 1960s I suspect are lost on a goodly number of the attendees. Some who weren’t even born then now enter this academic arena in similar fashion as I did nearly 40 years ago.
Some persons, on learning that I’m in my 40th and final year at EMU, as much as ask outright: Isn’t it tempting to back off, to go with the flow, disengage the mental cogs and coast to the finish line?
Yes, I confess that notion has knocked me up side the head a number of times, but I don’t intend to yield to that enticement.
I truly want this 2010-2011 year to be among my best. I’ll try to engage in some campus activities and causes that in the past have not been priorities. I’ll take a lot of photographs of people and events to document the year for my own personal record.
I didn’t want to take on one more thing when asked last semester to be a mentor to a first-year honors student, but agreed to do so first because it was an honor to be asked and secondly – even though it sounds a bit selfish – this involvement will give added flavor to the year and, hopefully, help contribute to the student’s maturation.
In the midst of much change – especially as I perform certain tasks and write certain articles and stories for the last time – I will continue to adhere to a long-standing resolve to only attend and contribute to those committee meetings and related gatherings that I absolutely have to. I will steer clear of taking on any more assignments in this final go-round.
I haven’t sent messages, or better yet, given face-to-face words of affirmations to my workplace colleagues to the extent that I should have. I intend to do more in this last year of my vocational career. I’m also asking persons who have recently retired or are about to for counsel on how to maximize this year and what I can do now to make the transition to retirement less traumatic.
Former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda reportedly said, “Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
I’m grateful that, apart from sitting in too many meetings or writing hometown news releases, I can resonate with that observation.
Over the years, I’ve received more than I’ve ever been able to give at this place. Despite a share of sweat and tears, setbacks and regrets, the joys, satisfactions and accomplishments have far outweighed the burdens and disappointments.
One of the biggest challenges for me, day in and day out, especially at this life stage, is living with unrelenting deadlines. Practically everything I do must be completed, usually to meet others’ expectations, in a certain time frame or rendered useless (some would say everything I write meets that criterion). Weekly radio programs and a newspaper column add to the workload.
At the same time it’s been an incredibly valuable discipline to force me to get a lot done in often short time spans. I worry already that I’ll get lazy after leaving this place, wanting to continue a high level of
journalistic output but knowing I no longer have to do it. Will I find myself slipping away from the computer and getting hooked on that vast creative wasteland of daytime television?
Interestingly, as persons find out that both Anna and I are in our last year of active employment – she a kindergarten teacher starting her 29th year in the Rockingham County School System – they seem more concerned about “what next” than we are. While we appreciate everyone’s interest in our welfare, the usual response is: we have more concrete plans in mind than we’ll ever be able to accomplish. I breathe prayers of petition that both of us will have sufficient physical and mental health and stamina to be able to pursue them.
It’s been a good, exhilarating journey, albeit fraught with potholes and obstacles along the way, I entreat God that I’ll have sufficient resources to pay the fare after exiting the toll road.
Jim Bishop is public information officer at Eastern Mennonite University. Contact him at bishopj@emu.edu.
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