Every Woman's Dream - Every Husband's Nightmare

The great Nick Tosches introduces the great Andre Williams at the "Sweets & Other Stories" reading at The Saint Mark's Poetry Project, New York City, February 2010.

Marlon Brando, Preston Epps, and Other Bongo Beatin' Beatniks

The late 50s and early 60s were rife with bongo beaters--with all the bongo-rific riffery seeming to reach some sort peak around 1959. What follows is another scatter-shot round-up of some favorites.



First up, Marlon Brando, making the scene with Jack Costanzo in this 1953 television interview. So, okay, technically those aren't bongos they're playing, but rather congas. Still, check out the old, hep meaning of the phrase "losing his mind." And dig that set! Looks like the Corleone-to-be descends a staircase into some kind of swinger’s grotto.



Joe Hall and the Corvettes “Bongo Beatin’ Beatnik” (Global 751, 1959). This one plays on the beatnik’s reputedly sophistimacated preference for jazz over greasy kid stuff, with Hall chanting “I’m a bongo beatin’ beatnik and I just don’t dig RnR” over and over, ironically enough, to a groovy RnR beat. Can still be found on the Sin Alley volume 2 compilation.

Andre Williams and the 5 Dollars

Andre Williams “Mozelle” (Fortune 827, 1956). What’s left to be said at this point? This is possibly the greatest bongo song of all, while it also rates highly among the Greatest RnR Songs Ever.

Preston Epps' single “Bongo Rock” (Original Sounds, 1959) also appeared on the 1960 LP Bongo Bongo Bongo. After a couple of late 50s – early 60s trips to the top of the Billboard charts, Epps settled into a career as session player. He appears in the 1968 film Girl in Gold Boots, and the following title clip contains not a single Epps bongo beat, as far as I can hear, but I include it anyway for its obvious...uh, cultural/anthropological significance.




Finally, here's Henry Mancini’s title theme to Orson Wells’ classic from 1958 Touch of Evil. Factoid: for the set they didn’t use some Tijuana border town streets, but rather Venice Beach during its late 50s bohemian heyday. Lawrence Lipton gives a detailed account of the Venice Beach of that period in the oft-maligned The Holy Barbarians (J. Messner Books, 1959).

Twine Time: The Deliverance Was Good

So maybe Alvin Cash was not the Hardest Workin’ Man in Show Business. In fact, maybe “Twine Time” could go down as one of the easiest paydays in soul music. Any way you slice it⎯vocal performance or novelty dance number⎯Alvin Cash & the Crawlers got a lot of help on this one. Kids invented the dance that inspired the song, and Andre Williams wrote the song and produced the record. But delivery, baby! That's what Alvin Cash & the Crawlers gave it.

You probably already know the part about how Alvin Cash attended the same St. Louis high school as Tina Turner. In St. Louis, Alvin and his younger brothers also garnered modest notoriety as the dance team the Step Brothers. Seeking greater fortune, and maybe a record deal, the brothers took their act up the road apiece, to Chicago, in the early 1960s.


Around the same time, Andre Williams had entered his post-Fortune Records phase, and was busy forging a career as writer/producer/A&R man. During those frequent periods when he was on the outs with Barry Gordy, Andre moonlighted at George Leaner’s Mar-V-Lus records. Andre caught Alvin Cash & the Registers’ club act one night in 1964 and invited them to lay down some vocals on a new song he’d written with Verilie Rice, “Twine Time,” a song aimed at milking some chart action from yet another Chicago teen dance craze.


Apparently the A&R man’s work takes him far afield, ‘coz up-and-coming talent wasn’t all that Andre scoped in those days. From Robert Pruter’s informative book Chicago Soul (University of Illinois Press, 1992): “The Twine was one of those dances that emerged from the black high school kids before it was put on record. Months before the record was released kids around Thirty-fifth to Thirty-ninth Streets were doing the dance to the Miracles’ ‘That’s What Love is Made Of.' Most of the kids in that area attended Dunbar High, and it was at one of the school’s dances that one of Leaner’s producers, Andre Williams, discovered the dance.”

Kinda makes you wonder how, on these scouting missions, Mr. Rhythm managed to slip past the school chaperones. Did he use a disguise?

Anyway, back to “Twine Time.” It’s generally considered to be a more up-tempo rewrite of Andre’s 1957 R&B hit “Bacon Fat.” In the early weeks of 1965, “Twine Time” b/w “The Bump” climbed as far up as the no. 14 position on the Billboard pop charts, and hung as high as the no. 4 position on the R&B charts. That chart action helped Alvin Cash & the Crawlers land appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand, despite the record being banned by NY stations for its suggestive, rhythmic "ooh" and "ah" background vocals.





During that period Chuck Berry was touring Britain. Melody Maker nabbed him for their “Blind Date” feature, February 13, 1965. “Twine Time” was among the stack of new singles selected for him to identify and rate. Chuck had this to say: “Wine time? Oh, Twine time⎯hmm. Top 40. It sounds very Americanish, yeah definitely American. As a matter of fact I could almost name the part of the country it comes from (laughs)…The deliverance was good but it was just one of those songs…You could dance to it but there was nothing significant there.”


**Chuck Berry caricature by Melody Maker illustrator Jimmy Thomsen.