THE PAT BOONE CONNECTION

ROCK AND ROLL: THE EARLY DAYS (RCA/Columbia Home Video)

Bill Holdship

Hey, this ain’t bad. Any video that begins with a clip from The Adventures Of Ozzy & Harriet is at least a little inspired, and this one features young Ricky Nelson listening to Big Mama Thornton’s version of “Hound Dog” in his bedroom, as brother Dave tries to listen to a classical symphony in the living room below. The future teen idol/pop star eventually turns the song up so loud that his turntable explodes. What a great opening!

Rock And Roll: The Early Days attempts to portray the origins of rock in a one-hour video format, and while no video can accomplish this in 60 minutes, this one does touch on many of the important events and figures. I’ve had some problems with the video rockumentary in the past. Mainly, they don’t warrant many repeated viewings. Better that the video just presented the musical acts in their entirety—with as little dialogue and comment as possible. After all, this is what the average collector is looking for in the first place, and most people with enough interest to buy a tape of this nature already know the history to begin with.

You could make the same complaints about this tape. It would have been nice to see Little Richard performing “Lucille” (greatf) in its entirety or the complete Elvis Presley/Hy Gardner interview. And a lot of the footage here may be overly familiar from appearances in other rockumentaries like NBC’s Heroes Of Rock ’N’ Roll (which this most closely resembles), This Is Elvis or PBS’s Buddy Holly tribute. (Granted, I realize that a lot of film doesn’t exist from rock’s early years—which makes it all the more wonderful that we’ll have abundant visual recordings of such musical giants as Motley Crue, Missing Persons and Duran Duran now that rock has entered its “visual age.”) Still, it’s nice having the various clips together in one place, and Rock And Roll: The Early Days may be worth owning due to some skillful film editing and writing, not to mention its inclusion of some rarer musical clips.

There’s a terrific Elvis montage with several silent clips I’d never seen before, as well as his classic bump ’n’ grind performance of “Hound Dog” (always a treat!) on The Milton Berle Show. Chuck Berry performs “Maybelline” and “Sweet Little Sixteen,” the latter from his rarely-seen appearance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. We see a young Bill Haley & the Comets “tearing it up” to “Rock Around The Clock,” and Bo Diddley leering his namesake song. There’s a montage of black doowop groups (to the sound of the Chords’ “Sh-Boom”), shots of Alan Freed on the air (and during the payola hearings), and Frankie Lymon being interviewed and singing “I’m Not A Juvenile Delinquent” with his Teenagers. The Everly Brothers look and sound wonderful doing “Bye Bye Love,” Buddy Holly & The Crickets are classic performing “Peggy Sue” on The Ed Sullivan Show, and Carl Perkins looks hilarious performing “Blue Suede Shoes” in a clip from The Perry Como Show.

There is sociological footage, including ’50s teenagers just having fun, and the anti-rock (religious, racist and “commie-plotted”) diatribes from ministers, Ku Klux Klanners, government officials and Steve Allen. Both Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame” and Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” segue into a clownish Pat Boone performing his whitewashed cover versions of the same songs, culminating with a revealing interview in which Boone admits he ’’didn’t want to record ‘Tutti Frutti’ and songs like that which don’t make sense,” and only did so after his producer advised there was money to be made. Especially noteworthy are the obscure Jerry Lee Lewis clips, including the Killer pounding a wild “Great Balls Of Fire” on a Dewey Phillips Memphis program and a ’57 TV (Steve Allen?) show, plus an incredible interview with Lewis and his 13-yearold bride after their return from his boycotted British tour.

In addition, Fabian represents the teen idols (and the first “death of rock”) with “Turn Me Loose,” Gale Storm represents the prerock “wholesome white pop performers” of the early ’50s, Big Joe Turner performs a great “Shake, Rattle & Roll” to represent the music’s jazz and R&B influences (there are also some brief clips of black Southern blues singers), and Ernest Tubb (why not Hank Williams?) is shown to illustrate the country music connection.

Several complaints: Both Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran (as well as a few other artists) are conspicuous in their absence. You hear their music in the video, but they are never acknowledged. And historically speaking, it’s true some people thought Carl Perkins could have stolen the crown from Elvis at one point, but it’s absurd to insinuate that Elvis was “King” by default, that is, only because a car accident put Perkins out of commission for nine months. No slur to Perkins, whose talent is undeniable, but all one has to do is look at the "Blue Suede Shoes” clip here to realize this claim is ridiculous. Perkins looks like a country bumpkin who just got off the farm, and is hardly a match for Presley’s dynamic magnetism. Finally, the writers make a drastic error when they claim that Chuck Berry “survived” the first rock ’n’ roll era following Elvis’s army induction, Holly’s death, Lewis’s blacklisting, etc. In fact, Berry was jailed for violating the Mann Act around this same time, and the adverse publicity did little to futher his career.

Still, these are minor complaints, and Rock And Roll: The Early Days is well worth both your time and money. What hit me most while watching it was the old adage they used to teach us in school about history repeating itself (“Record executives didn’t understand rock ’n’ roll...”). This is especially evident when the video touches on the teen idols: “Their music pretended to be rock ’n’ roll, but—for the most part— was just a parody of it. The fans didn’t seem to notice...(but) the spontaneity and spirit were stifled.”

Did anyone notice that Billy Idol just won “Punk Of The Year” in CREEM’s Reader Poll? How about Nikki Sixx as second “Best Songwriter”? Guess some things never change.