PLEDGE WEEK: “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” by the Cheers

This is not a proper episode of the podcast.

Rather, this is something else.

I've decided to hold a pledge week to try to get a few more subscribers to my Patreon.

So, every day this week, I'll be putting one of the backer-only episodes I've done over the past year up on the main podcast feed, so people can hear what it is you get if you sign up for the Patreon with this little introductory piece before them.

If you're already a backer, you will already have this episode, so you can skip this and everything else labelled Pledge Week.

I do one of these every week for my backers, and backers even at the lowest levels get them.

If you sign up for a dollar a month, you get each new one as it comes out, and access to all the old ones.

There are fifty nine of them up so far, as well as a few other things like the monthly Q and A's I've been doing for backers.

I'm only making seven of these available on the public feed, so there's a lot still there for you to listen to.

If this works well, I might do another one next year, where there'll be another 50-odd episodes to choose from.

None of this is meant to put any pressure on anyone who can't afford it to back the podcast.

The podcast will always remain free to listen to, and I hope it will remain ad-free as well.

I know times are especially tough right now, and many of you literally can't afford the money you're already spending, let alone paying any more out.

I only want backers who can spare the money.

But if you can afford it, and if you like like these bonus episodes enough, then go to patreon.com/slash Andrew Hickey, that's spelled H-I-C-K-E-Y, or follow the link in the show notes and sign up, and you'll get one of these the same day as every new episode.

If you can't, well, enjoy this extra free bonus, and don't worry about it.

Welcome to the latest 10-minute Patreon bonus episode of a history of rock music in 500 songs.

In this one, we're going to talk about black denim trousers and motorcycle boots by The Cheers.

This episode has some discussion of deaths in accidents and of false rape accusations.

So if that's going to be traumatic for anyone, please turn off now, or read the transcript to check if it'll be okay for you.

The Cheers are not a group who usually turn up in histories of rock and roll.

If they're mentioned at all by anyone, it's usually because one of the trio, Bert Convey, later went on to be a host of several syndicated game shows in the 80s and early 90s.

But Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots was one of the biggest selling singles of 1955 and the Irv example of a genre that would become hugely popular over the next decade.

He wore black denim trousers and motorcycle boots and a black leather jacket with a needle on the back.

He had a hopped upsicle that took off like a gun.

That fool was the terror of Highway 101.

We've talked about Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller before in the main series, and they are going to come up a lot more.

But at the time we're talking about, they weren't the massive stars of rock and roll songwriting they later became.

They were, rather, just one of a lot of songwriting teams who were working in blues and RB in the mid-50s.

Normally, they worked only with black artists, but for once they were working with a white group.

The Cheers were signed to Capital Records, one of the major labels.

They were a trio consisting of Bert Convey, Gil Garfield and Sue Allen, and they were tragically uncool in the way that only white vocal groups of the early 50s could be.

When they were signed to Capital, they were assigned Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller as their producers.

I've not been able to find anything out about how this came to happen.

Lieber and Stoller weren't staffers at Capital, and they never really talked about their work with the Cheers in interviews.

But their first record with the group, Bazoom, I Need Your Lovin', was a hit.

playing.

Bazoom, the moon was shining bright.

I heard someone saying, Bazoom, oh, what a lovely night.

I turned around and bazoom.

I saw you standing there.

I still remember

the flowers in your hair.

Sweet love, loving lover.

Please come back.

Nature loving.

The cheers sound really, really doesn't fit with the style of Lieber and Stoller's songwriting, but the power of White's blandness meant that this was the first Lieber and Stoller song to hit the pop charts.

Around this time, Jerry Liebert was involved in something that would traumatise him for the rest of his life.

The story as Lieber told it, and to be clear, this is his telling of the story.

not necessarily the truth, was that he'd got drunk and then two attractive women had offered to have a threesome with him.

He'd been keen, but then backed out as he'd pulled a muscle earlier that day.

The two women, however, insisted that he should pay them two hundred dollars, or they would accuse him of raping them.

He didn't have two hundred dollars on him, so, very drunk and in pain, he drove them to go and meet a friend who would give him the money.

They never made it to their destination.

Lieber had no memory of the crash, but he and one of the women were injured, and the other woman died.

Now, I don't know for sure that this experience fed into Lieber's writing process.

I have not been able to find out the dates for the car crash, or any interviews about his writing of the song.

But the second and final hit for The Cheers, Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots, certainly seems likely to have been inspired by it, dealing as it does with an automotive crash and a loss of life.

And a black leather jacket with a needle on the back.

But they couldn't find the sickle that took off like a gun.

And they never found the terror of Highway 101.

The main hook for the song, a teen tragedy about a young man who dies in a crash after his girlfriend tells him not to ride his motorbike, was simply that it was about a motorcycle.

There had been no hit records about motorbikes before, and this one latched on to the newfound popularity of bikes and bikers.

But the song was given an unexpected and tragic boost in popularity when the week after it came out, James Dean, a young actor who specialised in moody, rebellious, tormented characters and appealed to almost exactly the same teenage demographic who were buying rock and roll records, died in a car crash.

People started buying black denim trousers and motorcycle boots as a form of tribute to Dean.

Meanwhile, the royalty cheques for Bazoom were starting to come in.

Mike Stoller was astonished to get a cheque for a whole $5,000, more money than he'd ever seen in his life, and he and his wife went on a trip to Europe for three months.

While they were there, they went to see Edith Piaf in concert, and heard her perform this.

It was PF's own version of black denim trousers and motorcycle boots, which had become her biggest hit.

Black denim trousers had become a sensation, the first in what would become a whole new genre of records about tragic, rebellious figures dying in car crashes.

And you can hear its echoes in everything from Leader of the Pack by the Shang Villars to 1952 Vincent Black Lightning by Richard Thompson.

It also inspired this parody record a few years later.

Now, one day, Doofy started feeling sick, and he decided that he better make his will out quick.

He said, Just before the angels come to carry me, I wandered down and writing how to bury me.

I'm wearing canned shoes with pink shoe laces, a poker-dot vest, and that old man.

I gave me canned shoes with pink shoelaces, and a big panama with a purple hat band.

But Stoller, too, would be affected by tragedy.

He and his wife were persuaded that on the way back they should go by sea, on a new fancy ocean liner, the Andrea Doria.

While he was on the boat, Stoller was reading A Night to Remember, the best selling book about the Titanic, as were many of the other passengers.

The night before it was due to arrive in New York, the Andrea Doria collided with another liner, the Stockholm.

Both ships sank, and fifty-one people died.

Stoller and his wife, though, survived and made it to New York.

When they got to New York Harbour, Jerry Lieber ran up to them.

He was excited that they'd survived, of course, but he was also excited about something else.

Mike, you're okay.

We have a smash hit.

You're kidding.

Hound dog.

Big Mama Thornton?

No, some white kid named Elvis Presley.

For Lieber and Stola, nothing would ever be the same again.