A secret love affair with Frantic Fred
In 1955, when my class started Seventh Grade at Brownell School,
a new disc jockey hit the local airwaves. An overnight sensation
among the teenage set, Frantic Fred played all the popular 45-RPM
hits. We quickly learned the lyrics to Bill Haley and the Comets’
landmark,
”
Rock around the Clock,
”
and Joe Turner’s
”
Shake, Rattle and Roll.
”
The music and its relentless beat also created a new dance fad,
The Bop.
A secret love affair with Frantic Fred
In 1955, when my class started Seventh Grade at Brownell School, a new disc jockey hit the local airwaves. An overnight sensation among the teenage set, Frantic Fred played all the popular 45-RPM hits. We quickly learned the lyrics to Bill Haley and the Comets’ landmark, “Rock around the Clock,” and Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll.” The music and its relentless beat also created a new dance fad, The Bop.
To dance The Bop, you hit the floor first with a heel, then a quick toe tap, before repeating the step with the other foot. If not twirling, couples danced apart, facing each other, gyrating to the beat. Our thumping feet and flailing arms made it a gawky dance. But The Bop was part of the new Rock ‘n’ Roll culture: ours to claim, and here to stay.
My mother, who chaperoned at the school dances, called it the “Brownell Stomp.” But the more the parents grimaced, the harder we tried to look “cool” and “hip.”
In 1955, Elvis was a newcomer on the scene, but his name quickly became a byword at school. Wanting to appear “with it,” I called up a girlfriend I thought I could trust and innocently asked, “Who is Elvis Presley?” Loud, piercing laughter emanated through the receiver. “Who is ELVIS PRESLEY?” she shrieked, incredulity mingled with mocking. “You mean, you don’t listen to Frantic Fred?”
Despite his overnight success on the radio waves, Frantic Fred was not a hit at my house. My parents wouldn’t allow me to listen to him. All Rock ‘n’ Roll music was seductive, they said, and it was bound to corrupt my morals. The clincher came after we sat to watch Elvis’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. That did it: his next two scheduled performances were off-limits. Elvis’ pelvic movements were suggestive, Mom said. No Frantic Fred, no Ed Sullivan, no Elvis.
At age 12, I didn’t know what “seductive” or “suggestive” meant. But after watching my parents in the kitchen Jitterbugging to the music of KFRC’s “Top of Pops” show, I said thought it was suggestive when Dad tossed Mom in the air, because her skirt flew up. That was different, they said. In their day, the Big Bands played real music and people danced real steps. Not the trash I listened to, with its drivelly lyrics that passed for songs, and certainly not that Brownell Stomp.
I’d been given my mother’s old, gray 1940s clock radio, after Dad bought her a new pink one for her birthday. Stealthily, in my room evenings, I’d dial the AM knob, skipping over the spackly-sounding spaces to search out Frantic Fred’s Watsonville station. With a voice sounding as hyper as his name, Fred’s call-in request show ran weeknights, starting around 7 p.m.
My parents thought I was retiring early to get a good night’s sleep. Instead, I’d plaster my ear up to the radio speaker, turned down to a whisper, just enough to catch the latest hits. Lively tunes by Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Little Richard kept my feet tapping silently inside the bed sheets. The smooth sounds of The Drifters and The Platters, and crooners Frankie Lyman and Ray Charles were enough to send a girl to Dreamland.
Real Dreamland was out of the question. Just as one ear was kept pressed against the radio speaker, the other was peeled for sounds of footsteps. When the stairs creaked, the radio would be snapped off and I’d lie there, barely breathing. After the danger passed, the station would come back on, the little light behind the clock face my only giveaway in the dark bedroom.
The radio ceased to be an issue once I started baby-sitting for the neighbors: they didn’t care about Frantic Fred, as long as their kids were safe. And at my grandparent’s house, no one ever questioned what I was listening to. So, when Elvis made his second and third appearances on Ed Sullivan, I innocently arranged to stay over with them. After watching the performances with me, my grandfather said Elvis sounded like a braying donkey. My grandmother didn’t see what all the fuss was about. To her, Elvis looked like a nice, polite, clean-cut young man.
My parents’ last attempt to cancel Elvis from my life came in 1956, when I spent 98 cents from my baby-sitting earnings on his latest 45-RPM single, “Love Me Tender.” Dad said, from his picture on the pink paper record jacket, that Elvis looked effeminate. I said, what does effeminate mean. He said go look it up in the dictionary. Mom noted that since Elvis had copied the music to an old song, “Annie Laurie,” only adding new lyrics, that he wasn’t capable of original thought. All I could do was shrug at their ignorance.
Not long after we entered Gilroy High School, our class was stunned one day to find that Frantic Fred’s show had been canceled. We never knew the reason, except that a furniture store called Frantic Fred’s soon opened in Seaside. But by then, we were listening to a new station, KYA. It was the area’s first Top-40 station, and called itself “color radio,” doubtless attempting to compete with the new color television sets just appearing on the market.
With their nemesis, Frantic Fred, out of the way, my parents didn’t mind my listening to KYA. They went back to Jitterbugging in the kitchen to KGO’s “Best of Bands,” or listening to their 78-RPMs of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby on the living room record player.
Upstairs, I no longer nursed a sore ear from sneak-listening to the Frantic Fred show, and I’d long since moved beyond Elvis. From then on, I lulled myself into KYA-induced sleep with the lyrics of Brook Benton, Tommy Edwards, Sam Cooke and the soothing melodies of the Coasters and the Skyliners, all played nightly, and unrestricted, in my very own room.
