From Memphis to Myton
Well, if I’m honest, it’s strictly Sculcoates but that’s not catchy or alliterative enough is it? This is a rather more recent tale of family history than earlier ones. So recent in fact it concerns me and it is about how Rock’n’Roll shook the family at 8, Lily’s Avenue, Grange Street and ultimately how Elvis Presley, the boy from Memphis, changed not only the concept of the popular song but also the internal dynamics of a working class family in the 1950’s living in Hull.
Family History
To those who might say this type of article isn’t what they may feel constitutes “family history” I apologise but may I also say that the site of these events was demolished almost 50 years ago and that there are only two protagonists of the story still living today. I am the youngest in my sixties so perhaps within a decade this chapter of my family history, and social history of its kind, may have no living participants left and another part of a “real” family history with characters and their stories rather than the bare bones of BMDs and census returns will be lost forever. I started researching my family history in the early 1980’s with the aim to find out more about the people to whom I was related, rather than simply dates of their birth and deaths however interesting that might be.
Train Spotting
If I wanted to just collect numbers, I’m sure train spotting would have been less fulfilling but certainly easier. So this is family history; recent family history true, but still, in essence, as historic and as long vanished as getting things on “tick” at the corner shop, buying lemonade in bottles with the marble stopper, outside toilets in the back yard with squares of newspaper as toilet paper, playing “block” and “tig” in the car-less streets and the collective gasping at the huge size of Wagon Wheels in comparison to the children we all once were.
Christmas
My role in this story, put simply, was as an onlooker. I was 5 and although not particularly interested in music I could sing Christmas carols with vigour knowing that the appearance of Christmas presents would not be too long in coming. I would hum along to Doris Day and Frank Sinatra without any visible or otherwise stirring in my soul. They did not make me feel that I should jig along to them. In essence then music was simply background to me, much as the wallpaper was; nice to have it there but not essential.
Rock’n’Roll
To others of course their perceptions of music and what they wanted from it were very different. My brother, Dave, was 15 in November 1957; he left school at that Christmas and within a few weeks he bought a small record player; a red and cream Dansette with 4 speeds ranging from 16, 33, 45 up to 78 rpm. Prior to this record player arriving the family had usually clustered around a large radiogram complete with a vast array of valves. To listen to something then you had to switch the machine on for at least 5 minutes prior to the programme as the valves had to “warm up” first. Sometimes the “warming up” process was so slow you could actually watch the valves change colour as they neared their performance levels.
The Generation Gap
My mother liked Perry Como, my father Frank Sinatra. Bing Crosby was a favourite of them both. My brother however had shown little appreciation of such singers as these and had, over the last few months since leaving school, begun to comb his hair in such a way that he now sported a large “quiff” at the front over his forehead and it was unusually radiantly shiny with copious amounts of Brylcreem applied to it. He had also begun to wear shirts that were “colourful” and almost always sported them with the collar turned up. His sensible trousers began to be supplemented with much tighter denim jeans, often with deep turn-ups in the leg. He was still my brother but strangely he had now begun to mumble where once he had spoken clearly. He also affected a demeanour that can only be described as “slumped.”
Family Arguments
My father had obviously noted these changes and began to take steps. These usually consisted of arguments that, to be frank, could not be winnable by either side. My mother, sister and myself were often simply spectators at family arguments where once it had seemed, to me at least, we had all lived in some Enid Blytonesque fairy tale. Meal times were fraught occasions. Mother tried to mediate as did my sister, who at the age of almost 12, sensed the zeitgeist and sided with my brother. I simply couldn’t understand why we could never play a family game of Monopoly anymore without it ending in tears, and not because I was losing once again.
Radiogram anyone?
The final catalyst of change that rocked, in more ways than one, our tiny 2 up and 2 down house in Grange Street was the Dansette. Prior to its appearance in our house the radiogram ruled. We did not have any other entertainment in an evening No television and no transistor radio. In this day and age, it seems incredible that we were so “bereft” of alternative forms of entertainment. Of course, if you didn’t want to listen to Dick Barton on the radio you could always play cards, read a book, watch the flames in the fire leaving sparks in the sooty back. It seems so meagre now but it was so fulfilling at the time. In fact, your entertainment then was curtailed only by the limits of your imagination. A lesson for children of today perhaps but I’m not preaching.
Record Player
With the Dansette came choice, and choice not controlled by parents. Of course, it was simply a machine, nice to look at but useless without something to play on it. Dave, being resourceful, not only bought the Dansette but also 1 or 2 records. The walls of the citadel were about to shake and the world, our little world of 8, Lily’s Avenue, Grange Street, was about to change forever.
Down at the End of Lonely Street
Nothing could have prepared me for it. The first notes of the song shimmered in the air and then the voice representative of rebellious youth all over the Western World sang,
“Well since my baby left me, I’ve found a new place to dwell.”
It was akin to whistling in church. No, it was worse. It was like peeing in church! This was surely the “devil’s music.” Sinatra didn’t sound like this, Perry Como definitely didn’t sound like this and as for Doris Day, well words fail me.
“It’s down at the end of Lonely Street, at Heartbreak Hotel”
The singer then began to mumble about how his baby left him etc and well really it was difficult to gather quite what he meant as he seemed to be singing to himself. Someone should have attempted to help him with his diction.
Welcome to the Silver Screen
My father was unimpressed with this turn of events. He allowed the record player to be played only when he was at work. As he worked shifts this arrangement was successful. He was, however, planning to counter the record player with an innovation of his own. Later that year we rented a television set and a television aerial sported proudly from our terraced house showing to the world that we were part of the new affluence that Macmillan et al had promised. That is to say that we were now part of the £1 down and 1/s a week forever afterwards culture. We never owned anything but we were “affluent”.
All he left was a silver bullet
This of course was a masterstroke by my father and as a family where once we would have played games or even talked together, we now sat around the small flickering grey screen and watched programmes such as The Lone Ranger and Emergency Ward 10 with breathless excitement. Even my brother was drawn in to some extent by the 6.5 Special and Oh Boy programmes.
The Generation Gap widens
However, the cracks had been made in the edifice and my brother bought more records, my sister too contributed after falling heavily in love with Cliff Richard. So rock’n’roll reverberated from the front room whilst the TV played to the living room audience. The “generation gap” in our house was defined by one wall and the generations were never to meet as they once had, in front of the fire, sitting around a Monopoly board and vying to pass Go without landing on that hotel on Mayfair. In essence this was the beginning of the break-up of the family.
The family breaks up
My brother went off to sea at 17, marrying and moving out of the family home at 21. My sister enrolled in the RAF at 18 and also moved out and I left soon after the house was demolished in 1970 to share some hippie flat with a mate. However, since that fateful day when Heartbreak Hotel sang out, to the day when the house finally fell to the demolition men, I believe that Elvis Presley, and that rock revolution, never left the building.
The end?
But I hear you ask, where did I stand in terms of the generation gap at this crucial point in Western Civilization? In all honesty I tried to steer a course to the middle ground. I was only 5 after all. The attractions of The Woodentops and Torchy the Battery Boy coupled with the series Treasure Island starring Robert Newton as the rascally but friendly Long John Silver pulled me into the living room. However, I must admit that whenever that young man from Memphis sang, I had an uncontrollable urge to start jigging around. It still happens today despite the arthritis and on that note, as I’m sure Elvis himself would say, “Thank you, you’ve been a marvellous audience and good night.”