Year:  1957
Rating: 5.0

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I just recently finished reading a book on Rockabilly and it put me in the mood to watch some of the films that the author mentions. Most of these films are not particularly good in a cinematic sense but they are wonderful pieces in memorializing the music scene of the late 1950's - both for famous artists and for the many who have been forgotten. This film is pretty much all forgotten musicians. You get bonus points if you have heard of any of these - Johnny Carroll, Don Coats and the Bel-Aires, Preacher Smith and the Deacons, Rosco Gordon and the Red Tops and the peculiar Belew Twins, who would have been a perfect fit for Twin Peaks. There are 18 songs in all. In a 66 minute film. The reason that most of you have not heard of these artists is that hardly anyone ever did - they were local Dallas musicians with only Carroll breaking out slightly from that scene.


But that said, the music is quite varied with a few R&B groups, a doo-wop group and some rockabilly and it is fairly entertaining. Carroll is the main star but Elvis Presley should have sued the guy for taking all of his mannerisms and singing style. The three R&B groups are black but like some of these films there are no blacks in the audience - ever. Of course, this was Dallas in the late 1950's. The film was produced by the manager of Carroll in hopes that this would be a great promotion for him. But a better film would have helped. This looks so cheap in its drab black and white cinematography with remarkably cheap sets that I kept expecting this to turn into a 1950's porno. The acting doesn't help - uniformly dreadful. By the way, the woman who dances near the end in black who seems to be a celebrity to the kids was in fact Kay Wheeler, the National President of the Elvis Presley Fan Clubs!



The plot no doubt was written in a day - a small club where the hip talking teenagers hang out to dance and listen to music is being taken over by the mob from Detroit. Why? Who knows. The teenagers fight back and bring in the cops and the bad guys get arrested. That is a spoiler of course but not really. Nothing could spoil this film any more than the movie. But the music is energetic and fun. This is up on You Tube.