Rock ‘n’ roll’s rebellious early days

I receive a dai­ly email called “This Day in History.” It lists a num­ber of notable events that have tak­en place on that day, rang­ing from ear­ly Greek and Roman times to the first decades of the twen­ty-first century. 

One of the — some­what humor­ous — events that occurred on June 3, 1956, was “Rock ‘n’ roll is banned in Santa Cruz, California.” 

This struck me as fun­ny because it was right in the midst of my teenage years, when I was total­ly immersed in the rock ‘n’ roll craze, like every­one else. 

I must say that at the time I had no inkling that the adult pop­u­la­tion held such a neg­a­tive view of the trend; my par­ents nev­er uttered a word of con­cern about my musi­cal tastes. 

Flynn’s, on Boone Avenue, was a favorite hang­out for us. It had a juke­box and a dance floor where we could rev­el in the music of the day, pur­chase snacks and soft drinks, and play pin­ball machines. 

Teen Town was anoth­er place we could fre­quent. It was a one-sto­ry, long, clap­board-sided build­ing locat­ed back and to the right of what is now College Park Gym. We were over­seen by Mrs. DeVary, a won­der­ful lady who vol­un­teered her time to keep us in check dur­ing the evenings. At Teen Town, we were also able to dance to juke­box music, play ping-pong, and pool. 

Rock ‘n’ Roll ush­ered in the 50s, fol­low­ing close­ly on the heels of the Big Band era, which had shep­herd­ed the coun­try through the throes of World War II. It was flam­boy­ant. It was loud. It was rau­cous. And it was prob­a­bly all these things that brought it into dis­re­pute amongst the old­er generation. 

It’s pos­si­ble that it didn’t gain any wide­spread accep­tance until the air­ing of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Bandstand had its start as a local broad­cast around Philadelphia in 1952 and became a nation­al phe­nom­e­non in August, 1957 when it went on nation­al TV on ABC. 

Each pro­gram was notable for fea­tur­ing a cur­rent rock ‘n’ roll star who lip-synced his or her hit while the dance floor filled with Philadelphia teenagers gyrat­ing to the music. 

Music of the day high­light­ed artists such as Elvis Presley (famous for hav­ing his hip gyra­tions cropped out of his TV appear­ance on the Ed Sullivan Show), Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Avalon, Paul Anka, Connie Francis, and scores of oth­ers. We now look back and lis­ten to the tunes of these indi­vid­u­als with nostalgia. 

But back to the Santa Cruz ban. According to Santa Cruz police lieu­tenant Richard Overton, a crowd of some 200 teenagers had packed the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium for a dance in which the teenagers were “engaged in sug­ges­tive, stim­u­lat­ing and tan­ta­liz­ing motions induced by the provoca­tive rhythms of an all-negro band.” 

It seems obvi­ous now that the even­t’s mul­tira­cial aspect may have con­tributed to the shutdown. 

Within the next two weeks, Asbury Park, New Jersey and San Antonio, Texas insti­tut­ed sim­i­lar bans on pub­lic rock ‘n’ roll events, cit­ing “unde­sir­able elements.” 

Obviously, these bans did not deter the evo­lu­tion of rock ‘n’ roll as it con­tin­ued into the ear­ly 1960s until over­tak­en by the Vietnam-era anti-war music and the likes of Woodstock. 

We can now look back on the rock ‘n’ roll era as one of the great peri­ods of American his­to­ry, at least to a vast seg­ment of peo­ple who were of the right age at the time and who rev­eled in the music, while their elders were con­cern­ing them­selves with McCarthyism and red scares and the hydro­gen bomb.