A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - PLEDGE WEEK: “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” by the Cheers

Episode Date: July 18, 2020

Welcome to the sixth in the Pledge Week series of episodes, putting up old bonus episodes posted to my Patreon in an attempt to encourage more subscriptions. If you like this, consider subscribing to the Patreon at http://patreon.com/join/andrewhickey . This one is about “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” by the Cheers, one of the first Teen Tragedy records, and Leiber and Stoller’s biggest hit. Content warning — contains mentions of deaths in accidents, and of false rape accusations. Click the cut to view a transcript of this episode: (more…)

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 labeled 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 59 of them up so far, as well as a few other things, like the monthly Q&As 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 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 er-example of a genre that would become hugely popular. over the next decade. 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 Rockett.

and roll songwriting they later became. They were, rather, just one of a lot of songwriting teams who were working in blues and R&B 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 Capitol Records, one of the major labels. They were a trio consisting of Bird 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 assigned 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. Libre 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, Bassoon I Need Your Loving, was a hit. The cheers The cheers sound really, really doesn't fit with the style of Lieber and Stoller's songwriting, but the power of white blandness meant that this was the first Lieber and Stoller song to hit the pop charts. Around this time, Jerry Lieber was involved in something that would traumatise him for the rest of his life. 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 $200, 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've 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 The main like a devil there was fire in his eyes He said I'll go a thousand miles before the sun can rise But he hit a screaming diesel that was California bound And when they cleared the wreckage all they found Was his black denim trousers And motorcycle boots

And a black leather jacket with an eagle on the back But they couldn't find the sickle that took off like a gun And they never found the terror of highway The main hook for the song A Teen Tragedy about a young man who dies in a crows 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 checks for Bazum were starting to come in. Mike's dollar was astonished to get a check 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 Piaf'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 Shangralars to 1952 Vincent Black Lightning by Richard Thompson it also inspired this parody record

a few years later now one day doodies started feeling sick and he decided that he better make us whiplow quick he said just before the angels come to carry me i want it down and writing how to bury me but tan shoes with pink-sheelaces a polka-dive vest and that old man gave me can's shoes with pink-sheelaces and a big panama with a purple half band but stella 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 51 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 Libra and Stoller, nothing would ever be the same again.