WPCNR THE BIG BEAT. By Big Melvin Mead, of the BIG KKIX The Mighty 1440 on your Dial, Home of your Saturday Night Rock N Roll Party in Your Mind.  August 10 ,2009: Leave it to Westchester Broadway Theatre  and Westco Productions, the two local theatre professionals, to put things into perspective.  This past weekend I saw reams of copy written about  Woodstock as being celebrated, it is reassuring to note that we “Aging Teen Angels Who Refuse to Grow Up"  (making every use we can of our senior citizen discounts, however),  still remember the real rock concerts that started it all.

Only they weren’t called concerts then – they were called Rock N Roll Shows and Alan Freed, America’s first personality disc jockey started them at a place called the Brooklyn Paramount.

The Great Alan Freed, emceeing one of his original Rock and Roll Shows at the Brooklyn Paramount. 1950s, in front of Sam The Man Tayler and the Alan Freed Rock and Roll Band. Photo, Courtesy, www.alanfreed.com. Used with permission.

The Platters (SOLD OUT)

Next Tuesday night only at the original Westchester Broadway Theatre – The Platters and the Coasters are  coming back and the place is sold out, Pink Ladies, Amboy Dukes, Tempests and Jesters. The folks who have tickets to next week's  WBT Platters-Coasters Time Slide are the only ones  who get to rock and roll once more, up close and personal, maybe even scream. Will the fire laws let you slow dance to Only You? Will there be an Alan Freed séance? Will Steve Calleran the long tall impresario put on his plaid Alan Freed jacket and bowtie and do the eager, enthusiastic classic Alan Freed disc jockey patter -- often imitated, never duplicated? Only those who have tickets will know because The Coasters and Platters are sold out.

The old rock and roll lives still thanks to Westchester Broadway Theatre and Westco Productions.

The WBT – the little Westchester theatre – hip curators of the classic entertainments of all time – bringing Westchester  he best shows and entertainment of all time live still has dinner and performance tickets for two more classic pop music one night only one-of-a-kinders coming up for less than the cost of two entrées off Schubert Alley. You can see Hotel California, featuring The Eagles Tribute Band on August 25 at WBT and The Roy Orbison Story next at WBT on September 15. www.broadwaytheatre.com has all the hoopla.

These local mini rock and roll shows produced in the County by  not only Westchester Broadway Theatre and but also by the unique White Plains Westco Productions (this fall bringing in the Marshall Tucker Band on October 16, and on October 24,  blues guitar man, Johnny Winter. (For details, see www.westcoproductions.org). Both theatre organizations are  following a tradition started  by the original Rock and Roll Disc Jockey,  Alan Freed

The King of Rock and Roll, Alan Freed on stage at the Paramount clapping his hands to The Big Beat.

Alan Freed was my first radio friend in New York  when I was around 11 years old. He read dedications  to teens on the radio. His was a voice you trusted, always on the kids's side. He played the music that made me feel good,  he gave you the record labels the songs were on ("That's the Fat Man who has another hit on his hands on Imperial")

He played the music that gave you that Itchy, Twitchy Feelin’. He played  The Platters. The Coasters. The Moonglows. The Impalas, The Dells, Little Richard, Frankie Lymon (I Love You and I want You to Be My Girl).  It was doo wop. It was slow-dancing. It had a beat and you could dance to it. It was music that though the magic of a couple of Jewish guys named Leiber and Stroller , writers for The Coasters, that articulated the feelings a teenager felt back then – and probably still feels today.

Alan was a radio friend.

When you had a bad day at school. When you were sent to detention for foolin around or talking in study hall. When you heard Alan play Charlie Brown by The Coasters – hey that was you,baby. And when The Platters sang, The Great Pretender, man that hit home when Jacqueline, the legendary heart throb at Pleasantville High School (every high school had one -- so pretty you could not tear your eyes away, remember, the girl who seemed impossibly out of reach?)

Alan Freed put black artists into the main stream.

He played Little Richard on "white radio" in New York. He played Fats Domino. He played Chuck Willis (King of the Stroll), he played Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. He played Chuck Berry – music your parents hated—music that you didn't hear on Make Believe Ballroom on WNEW and WABC and WMCA didn’t play. 

Mainstream record companies got white artists to “cover” hits by the black artists  Alan Freed played, so the tunes teens wanted to hear would be sung and bought by white cleancut artists instead of the black performers who created them. Hearing Pat Boone sing Blueberry Hill and Ain’t That a Shame,  and Tutti Fruiti (a Little Richard tune) are examples of  cover records.

Alan Freed not only did not play  “covers” he brought the original black artists to town so white teens could see them, and really made parents and the government mad.

Postcard of The Brooklyn Parmount, circa 1928, at the corner of Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues. Photo, Public Domain.

The Marquee for an Alan Freed Rock N Roll Show. The show went on some 3 or 4 shows a day inbetween movies. Photo, courtesy, www.alanfreed.com

Alan, left, with The Great Little Richard, 1958.

Alan staged Rock and Roll shows at the greatest movie palace of them all: the fabulously oranate Brooklyn Paramount hosting them himself with Sam The Man Tayler and his big Rock and Roll Band playing live backup for all the groups. No lip sync at Alan’s shows. Those artists had to perform!

Teenage girls in crinoline dresses, pedal pushers and bobby sox flocked in to the shows, selling out two to three shows a day at the cavernous old theatre.

Come back Alan, we still remember you. Can for one day WINS go back to a rock and roll radio format and revive the Rock and Roll Kingdom once more?  (The worst day in radio history was when WINS changed to all-news in 1965, when it changed to “All News All the Time.” Now it’s “All Accidents, All Murders All Shootings. All the Time,” but that’s another column.)

So all you 40-somethings who want to rock roll and remember,  punch up WBT (Westchester’s Boss Theatre) Radio at the BIG 592-2222 on your radio dial – you get dinner, entrée, salad and dessert and coffee and the legendary signature dish, Peach Melba for $73 and the show is FREE! There are still seats for Hotel California and Roy Orbison Story performances. Be there or  be square. Or simply glide on over to their website at www.westchesterbroadwaytheatre.com

 Lighting up the marquee in August 18  is Hotel California – featuring The Eagles Tribute Band, a salute to the fabulous 70s band, the Eagles: (Take it to the Limit, Tequila Sunrise, Already Gone, Lyin’ Eyes, Peaceful Easy Feelin, and Take it Easy, followed on September 15 by The Roy Orbison Story starring Bernie Jessome as Roy Orbison hailed as “Unforgettable” –on September 15 –a retrospective performance special telling the story of the great Texas legend, and one of the pioneers of the rockabilly sound invented by Sun Records, who gave us Pretty Woman,  Crying, The Ooby Dooby,Domino, Only the Lonely, Mean Woman Blues, Dream Baby.

Plenty of food and 30 minutes from anywhere in the County and did, I mention, free parking.