Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Remembering Huggy Boy



In The Catcher in the Rye Holden remarks that after reading a really good book he wants to phone the author. Today we send email, and I received a cool one this morning: "As a guy who grew up in Beverly Hills, I understand exactly your reaction to Huggy Boy." The reference is to my personal essay Birthing Little Richard, which has been around a while and gained a lot of fans, no doubt other white teenagers who grew up in L.A. in the 50s and listened to the several black radio stations.

Here's part of what I say about Huggy Boy, the late night DJ:

To "hip" white teenagers, however, 1954 was most
remembered not for "Sh-Boom" or Elvis but for three
extraordinary records released by Hank Ballard and The
Midnighters: "Work With Me Annie," "Sexy Ways," and
"Annie Had A Baby."

In "Work With Me Annie," the lyric "let's get it while
the gettin' is good" was considered so dirty, so
obscene, that for a time the song was banned from the
airways in Los Angeles. This was the situation when I
heard Huggy Boy announce on his early morning radio
show that, the law be damned, next week at 3 a.m. he
was going to play "Work with Me, Annie" on the air!
(You can hear "Work With Me Annie" online at
http://www.iei.net/~drifter/blues/ballard.html).

My Jr. High was abuzz with the news. Would Huggy Boy
really dare to do this? Of course, those of us who
were hip (and I was one hip nerd) knew the song
because we owned a 78 rpm record of it or at least had
heard it on the radio before it was banned. And no
wonder it was banned: "Annie please don't cheat, Give
me all my meat!" My God, who had ever heard anything
so sexually explicit on the radio before?

Hank Ballard and The Midnighters, more than any other
black group in the early 1950s, had a reputation for
being sexual and dangerous. Their songs were full of
references to, well, SEX. "Sexy Ways" had the
mind-boggling lyric: "In the hall, on the wall; Dance
baby dance, now crawl crawl crawl!," followed by so
many repetitions of "Oh baby; Do it, baby" that a
teenager could have a premature coronary just from
imagining the activity being described. Ballard's
quivering voice suggested more sexual abandon than
anyone before Little Richard. Hank Ballard and The
Midnighters would have made "The Star Spangled Banner"
sound sexual.

Despite being banned, "Work With Me, Annie" was so
popular -- at the time it was referred to as the Negro
National Anthem -- that it inspired a sequel, "Annie
Had A Baby." This song was filled with predictions
about male-female relationships that many male
teenagers would encounter in the very near future:
"She sings to the baby instead of me, Clings to the
baby instead of me; Now it's clear and it's understood
-- That's what happens when the gettin' gets good!
Annie had a baby, can't work no more."

And so we spent a long week at Wilson Jr. High in
1954, the tension mounting, as we awaited the early
morning when Huggy Boy was going to defy the law and
put Annie back on the airways. Would he chicken out at
the last minute? One day a rumor spread around school
that Huggy Boy had been fired. In my room, I
nervously waited up late for his show to start -- and
felt incredible relief to hear his usual opening
banter, "This is Dick Hugg -- Huggy Boy!"

On the morning in question, I had no trouble getting
up at 3 a.m. I often set my alarm for 3 in order to
get up and look at the stars with my telescope.
Sometimes I would take a portable radio outside with
me, listening to Huggy Boy at low volume as I
star-gazed. This night, however, I stayed in bed,
turning on the show around 2 and waiting for the
count-down to the magic hour.

As 3 approached, it became clear that he was going to
go through with it; at least, he kept talking about
it. And then the hour came, and it really happened:
the introductory guitar riff played, Hank Ballard sang
"Work with me, Annie" in a voice drooling with sex,
and the Midnighters followed with their suggestive
chorus, "Ah-oom, ah-oom." Jesus Christ, Huggy Boy was
breaking the law just like he said he would!

I wanted to call up one of my nerd friends to make
sure he was listening. I wanted to shout at the top of
my lungs -- without waking my parents. I wanted to
masturbate. Maybe I would have gotten around to the
latter if an unexpected sound hadn't come from the
radio.

Someone was pounding on a door! Huggy Boy explained
that the police were outside, trying to break into his
studio! And then there was a crash, a confusion of
noise suggesting breaking furniture ... and then the
radio show was off the air! Huggy Boy had been
arrested, right on the radio!

It doesn't matter that later, as an adult, I realized
this was all staged. And good radio theater it was,
too. But at the time it all made perfect sense because
there was, in fact, something deliciously wicked about
listening to the songs of Hank Ballard and The
Midnighters. The sizzling abandon in these songs was
as different from Patti Page's proper singing about
doggies in the window as the chaotic mess in my room
was from the perfectly made bedspread in my parents'
bedroom. (Of course, no teenager could imagine his
parents making love.)

Read the essay.

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