Since I Lost My Baby

The teenage coffin songs — narrative ballads performed in a pseudo-operatic style of crooning — have customarily been portrayed as representing the Dark Age of Popular Music. Influential New York rock critic Richard Goldstein, for one, frequently characterizes the emergence of the Liverpool four as saving the world from “death songs, pretty boys, and payola.” Richard Meltzer takes a similar tack, in part, arguing that the rock and roll of the early 1960s was an attempt to return to the golden roots of rock observable in fhe 1950s. He writes: ^

To rock ’n’ roll, renaissance is merely necrophilia, and this notion has frequently burst forth into the very content of rock song. Mark Dinning’s ‘Teen Angel’ is such a song, as is nearly everything recorded by Dicky [sic] Lee.

Meltzer’s major thesis, supported by the subsequent popularity of the Motown sound and country music, misses the point that coffin songs had a significance — sui generis — of their own. They were not ipso facto just an uncomfortable way station from Elvis Presley to Lennon and McCartney. The teenage coffin song instead may be interpreted within the framework of Camus’ thesis on the nature of rebellion. In the prototype coffin song the protagonists — Tommy and Laura, Jimmy and Mary — are placed in conflict with the expectations of adolescent social status. Consequently the antagonists customarily are symbols of adult society — the parents, economic institutions, and the like. In confronting these obstacles, tragedy, in the form of death, strikes. The conflict, as perceived in coffin songs, is a product of the uniqde status of youth. Lewis Feuer suggests that generational conflict is entirely different from that of class struggle in that one’s gerontocratic status is both temporary and diffuse. Moreover, the conflict between generations is more a competition since neither wishes to destroy existent dominant-submissive relations. Therefore, the adolescent does, not overtly proclaim his superiority over adult society,. As Friedenberg indicates, the teenagers of the early 1960s did exist in a colonial status with one significant qualification:

The maintenance of a colonial system requires that the native accept enough of the dominant culture to meet its schedules, work for payment in its smaller currency, desire and consume its goods, and fight in its , armies . . . But the native is not expected — indeed^ not usually permitted, — to actually ‘pass’; he is never granted full membership in the dominant culture, and the dominant culture does not depend for its survival on his ultimate willingness to accept it.

Unlike the proletarian, slave, or peasant, the teenager through the passage of time becomes part of the gerontocratically dominant group. The teenager does not have a permanent stake in generational revolution. The teenage role is tied to working within established channels. For example, the singer in “Summertime Blues” chronicles the tribulations of youth, but concludes “there ain’t no cure for the summertime blues.” Tommy, in “Tell Laura I Love Her” loses his life in his adherence to the “get rich quick” theme. Beyond absolute revolution and conformity to the “colonial” adolescent role lies a middle range of dissent outlined in Albert Camus’ conceptualization of rebellion, and evolution or existence and death. Existence involves rebellion: “I rebell therefore we exist.” Death is the absolute 'act of resistance in that it involves a total withdrawal. Death not only negates the existent relationship of power — parent and child — but also finalizes the positive relationship. Death at. the physical Jevel negates. At the metaphysical level it stabilizes. For example, life is perceived by theologians and philosophers as transitory. Life after death, on the other hand, is permanent. The truncation of life, opting for death, is rebellion since it negates .existence. Camus writes: ✓

Metaphysical rebellion is the movement 'by which man protests against his condition and against the whole of creation. It is metaphysical because it contests the" ends of man and of creation.

So it is with the teenage coffin songs. The actor cuts short his subservient “colonial” role and rejects the potential of adulthood by asserting a higher power or option available to him. In choosing life the subject affirms the status quo, while in a subservient position. In death the physical withdrawal of services becomes rebellion since the outcome is final.

The early coffin songs found on the pop charts Were transfers from the couhtry music genre. ,The first of these was Jody Reynolds’ “Endless Sleep” which was a precursor of things to come. The story line Was aptly summarized by the chorus:

I looked at the sea and it seemed tb say “I took your baby from you away”

I heard a voice crying in the deep \ “Come join me baby in my endless sleep.”

(Johnstone-Monter-Inc./Elizabeth Music)

Reynolds, in exhorting Presleyian tones, documents how an external force — the sea — has taken away his girl friend, who in turn implores him to “come join her” in death. This basic Romeo-Juliet theme is a staple motif in coffin songs. Tmmediate adversity can be overcome with the absolute of death. Even the last second revelation that the heroine is saved from drowning does not lessen the impact of J:he song since nearly all of those following, with the exception of “Bobby” and Roy Orbison’s “Leah”, did not end happily.

“Endless Sleep,” perhaps due to the rock-a-billy singing style, did not start a trend although several songs did capture segments of the original. Thomas Wayne’s recording of ' “Tragedy” lamented the departure of a loved one:

Blown by winds, kissed by snow

All that’s left is the dark

You’ve gone from me oh oh tragedy

(Bluff City Music BMI)

Wayne’s youthful semi-operatic style laced with high pained and throbbing “oh’s” left little doubt in the listener’s mind that this was ijnmistakably a teenage tragedy. Mark Dinning’s “Teen Angel” combined the dominant feature of both the Reynolds and Wayne recordings. “Teen' AngeP’^had a clear story line of a car stalled on a railroad track with a girl being killed while searching for her boyfriend’s high school ring — which he gave her. The singer’s response to the accident paralleled Wayne’s haunting “oh, oh tragedy.” However, as in “Endless Sleep”, the grief stricken suitor attempts to reestablish the relationship. Consider the closing stanzas of “Teen Angel”

Teen angel can you hear me

Teen angel can you see me

Are you somewhere up above

And am I still your own true love

Teen angel, teen angel answer me please?

(Acuff-Rose Pub.)

“Teen Angel” reached the top position on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart. As with any song that accomplishes this feat and remains on Billboard’s list for 18 weeks, “Teen Angel” generated several imitations. On June 13, 1960 “Tell Laura I Love Her” by Ray Peterson began to climb the same Billboard ladder of success. In the Independence Day issue, the trade paper alerted its readers with “ ‘Tell Laura’ Leaping Charts.” “Tell Laura” was cast in the classic mode of an English ballad with all of the audio embellishments of its predecessors, not to mention the inclusion of screeching brakes and an automobile crash. As with all teenage coffin songs the conclusion was preordained; however, the ideology of the song was clear. Tommy, the protagonist, was killed persuing the Horatio Alger ideal. More importantly, love did not conquer all, especially economics. Tommy wishes to buy Laura a wedding ring, but does hot have the money. He enters a stock car race which offers a thousand dollar prize. He is, as the lyric notes, “the youngest driver there.” During the race Tommy is killed. He tried and failed, at least within the ideological context of the colonial power. In the last verse we find Laura kneeling in a chapel praying for her departed lover, but she can hear him reutter his dying words:

Tell Laura I love her

Tell Laura I need her

Tell Laura not to cry

My love for her will never die.

(E.B. Marks Music Corp., BMI)

While “Tell Laura” did not reach the exalted Number One ranking on the Billboard chart it did stay on for 14 weeks. The song also introduced the thesis that death was an outcome caused by a social problem in the here and now. Indeed, the final solution in “Tell Laura” may be portrayed as a worthy endeavor to transcend the Governor-Colonial aspect of adolescense. As Camus suggests, this is the highest and noblest form of resistance since death curtails the master’s power and also, the willingness of the resistor to rebel with his life affirms the validity of these rights for him and for all human beings.

The Everly Brothers’ rendition of “Ebony Eyes” was a country and western death ballad as opposed to teenage coffin song both in style and structure. It did, however, reiterate the “external intervention — death — reunited in afterlife” framework. A young soldier on leave arranges to have his fiancee join him so they can be married. The plane crashes. Ebony Eyes is taken away. But in heaven, when death comes to the soldier, they will be rejoined ‘‘and I’ll know she will be my beautiful ebony eyes.” (Acuff-Rose Publication Inc.). “Ebony Eyes” also was a commercial success, to be emulated by Jim Reeves’ “The Blizzard”, Neil Scott’s “Bobby”, Pat Boone’s “Moody River”, and the Fleetwoods’ remake of the Thomas Wayne song “Tragedy”. In the country field songs such as Tex Ritter’s “Hillbilly Heaven” and Wilma Lee and Stony Cooper’s “Wreck on the Highway” received some air play. By the fall of 1961, the original wave of coffin songs was exhausted.

In the waning days of Summer, 1962 three songs dealing with the subject of death appeared on the Hot 100 chart. Roy Orbison’s song “Leah” was structurally and lyrically similar to “Endless Sleep” and “Laura”. In the melodramatic phase a Hawaiian skin diver dreams he is drowning while fetching pearls for “his lost love”. The other two “hits” added another dimension to death and resistance. Rex Allen, the veteran of numerous “Ringing cowboy” films, recorded “Don’t Go Near the Indians” in the so-called “Tex-Mex” style of Marty Robbins’ “El Paso”. In true narrative ballad form the song chronicles the experiences of an Indian boy who is raised as a white. He is unaware of his ancestry. He, despite the warnings of his adopted father, does associate with the local Indians. He falls in love with an Indian maiden and asks his father’s permission to marry. In reply, the authority figure relates how the hero is an Indian and that his object of affection is “ . . . your sister/and that’s why I’ve always said: ‘Son don’t go near the Indians please stay away/Son don’t go near the Indians please do what I say’ ” (Acuff-Rose Publishing). Implicitly “Indians” revived the Romeo-Juliet theme of dissent to societal impositions upon romantic relationships between adolescents. The motif was based upon social endogamy and propinquity. The polarization along the lines of Camus’ “them and us” had entered the consciousness of popular songs. Songs such as the Crystals’ “He’s A Rebel”, produced by Phil Spector and Ann Cole’s “Don’t Stop the Wedding” decried parental interference in love rites. “Indians” inversely introduced the social and class barrier in absolutist terms. For Rex Allen’s unfortunate Indian only reincarnation or a spiritual after-life could possibly transcend the barriers of incest. Dickey Lee and the Shangri-Las saw death as an outcome to equally unsolvable problems. Dickey Lee in appearance could in no way be classified as a rebel. Posing as a college letterman with a crew cut he was reminiscent of the Pat Boone image during the Presley rock-a-billy period. With songs such as “I Saw Linda Yesterday” and other rating-dating musical statements Lee’s image was that of America’s big brother. Nonetheless, his two most popular records were classics in the coffin song genre. “Patches” was a documentary of social injustice. Patches was a Shanty town girl who was in love with a middle class youth. The youth’s parents disapprove of the relationship: He laments:

Patches oh what can I do

I swear I’ll always love you

But a girl from that place

Will just bring me disgrace

So my folks won’t let me love you.

The parental interdiction of the relationship causes Patches to throw herself into the river and drown. Upon overhearing the news of the drowning, the singer announces he will join her:

Patches oh what can I do

I swear I’ll always love you

It may not be right

But I’ll join you tonight

Patches I’m coming to you

(Aldon Music Inc.)

In an act reflecting both guilt and protest the youth commits suicide. In a fdture recording Lee relates the tale of a teenage boy who.“falls in love with Laurie.” Laurie, at the time of this encounter had been dead a year. Dickey Lee’s longevity on the pop charts was fleeting at best; however, his downfall was not directly caused by the emergence of the Beatles as some observers have claimed.

The unit which epitomized the “death as rebellion” genre ! was the Shangri-Las, a female trio named after James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. The name Of the group was designed to connote i “ . . . a place where everything was quite perfect, a restful j place of contemplation, a true Utopia”. Mary Weiss was the j lead singer with the Ganser twins, Margie and Mary Ann providing the harmonic background. The Shangri-Las were an existential contradiction. They dressed and appeared middle class WASP, yet their singing style was distinctively Black modeled on the Shirelles and later the Crystals, of “He’s A Rebel” fame. As one observer noted they were “the tough j mama goes soft.” Yet their songs transcended the Mailer “White Negro” posture since they came on as white middle-Americans who painfully were attempting to cope with a world not of their making. The first Shangri-La’s production, “Remember \Walkin’ In The Sand)” was a standard torch song as all their recbrds were. However, the influences here were the Donald .Wood rhythm and blues hit “Death of an Angel” (c. 1955) with a touch of “Endless Sleep”. The lyrics of a discarded womamcontained all the elements of a “weeper” not to mention the soqnd of a crashing ebb tide. “Remember” did moderately, well onvthe charts. “Leader of the Pack” totally surpassed “Remember” and actually pushed a Beatles record out-of the hig)i spot on the “Hot 100” in 1964.

v “Leader of the Pack” was in the .45 rpm genre, a mammoth production akin to the American International films of the time. The production Opened with several of the singers describing the honored status of the heroine, Betty, who was dating the leader of a motorcycle gang. Betty in short order notes the disapproval of * her parents and -her humanj itarianism in relating to Jimmy >j — the leader of the pack: \

They told me he was bad 4 7 But I knew he was sad

Betty’s father then orders her to j dissolve the relationship which j she does. Upon telling Jimmy of I her father’s command:

He sort of smiled j

and kissed me goodbye

The tears were beginning

to show

As he drove away

on that rainy night

I begged him to go slow

Whether he heard

I’ll never know

(Trio Music Co. Inc. BMI)

Amidst the sounds of shattering glass and bending steel, Jimmy is killed. Betty’s friends commiserate but “now he’s gone”. As in Jariis Ian’s song “Society’s Child” the lyric ends upon a note of resignation but implicit accusation, and internal self righteousness. Had not the colonial rulers interferred, Jimmy would still be alive! In death, victory, however shallow, was present.

Ray Peterson in June of 1963 attempted to recreate “Tell Laura” with another coffin song “Give Us Your Blessing” written by Barry and Greenwich, later the lyrical brains who produced the Shangri-Las’ Red Bird productions. The song reached 70 on the Hot 100 and remained on the chart six weeks. In industry circles this ranking is, for established performers, a mediocre effort. Two years later the Shangri-Las covered this song with a much greater degree of success. “Give Us Your Blessing” incorporated all of the variables and indices noted and added the DeMille touch to record making. The song opened with the sound of thunder clapping, and three shrill voices chanting “Run, Run, Run, Mary/ Run, Run, Run, Jimmy ...” A sad but very youthful voice began to recite the ensuing tale of tragedy:

Mary and Jimmy were both very young But as much in love as two people could be . . . all they wanted was to be together And share that love eternally.

The adolescents approach the girl’s parents requesting permission to be married and are rebuffed. During the song it is made readily apparent that the weapon of resistance is a viable alternative:

They wouldn’t have laughed at Mary If they could have seen through the door

Jimmy and Mary drive off to be married with tears in their eyes. The next day they are found dead. The elopers in the song, nonetheless, appear to triumph:

... as their folks knelt beside them in the rain

They couldn’t help but hear the last words that Mary said:

“Give us your blessings

Please don’t make us run away

Give us your blessings

Say you’ll be thei^e on our wedding day.”

(Trio Music Inc. BMI)

The group’s next song “OiXt in the Streets” was a restatement of the “Leader of the Pack” theme. This time, however, the boyfriend is not potentially rejected, but rather accepts the conventions of middle class America. “He don’t Comb his hair like he did before/ He don’t wear those ole’ black boots no more . . . [but] ... his heart is out in the street.” It is a Promethean plot with the protagonist attempting to accomodate the normative societal prescriptions. His past in Pavlovian or behayiorist terminology prohibits this endeavor. “Out in the Streets,” while in the “Dawn”, “Society’s Child” genre of exogamous relationships between rich and poor, city and"suburb, and black and white, brought together the social dissent found in both Dickey Lee’s “Patches” and the Shangri-Las previous successes. “Streets” transcended the customary rating-dating themes of endogamy, and unlike the other compositions found the relationship failing on the basis of socio-eultural differentiation rather than adult interventions As in the George Stevens film Shane the “marginal man” can attempt to acculturate, but in time he must return to the role of being a gunfighter who will “die by the gun”. This fits neatly with the storyline in “Leader of the Pack” where Jimmy, the Hell’s Angel — like suitor is killed in a motorcycle accident.

Several death songs in the iatter half of the 1960s — “Ode to Billy Joe” and “Honey” — sold quite well. Still, the teenage coffin song did not return after 1965. The demise of coffin songs correlates with the introduction of overt statements of social dissent as found in Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” and Glen Campbell’s version of “Universal SQldier.” Conversely the “He’s A Rebel”, “Tell Laura I Love Her”, “Patches”, oriented songs* were passe with the advent of the counter-culture and its disavowal of the Social Ethic of the 1950’s, and indeed parental authority. The coffin songs of the early 1960s were quantitatively novelties, no doubt; however to discount them as a meaningless nodal point in rock music history is to miss a significant aspect of its evolution. For in the early 1960s, the only viable form of rebellion for many adolescents was withdrawal either in running away or death. Drugs, politics,^ and changing economic standards, perhaps, have temporarily mediated Camus’ ultimate question of existence or death.