Rock was created at the local level, on small, regional labels such as Sun Records in Memphis, Chess Records in Chicago and Spangle Records here in Springfield.
Wait, what?
Didn’t know that Springfield was home to a record label?
“I didn’t even know there was a record company here,” the late Jimmy Crain once told me.
That’s really saying a lot, considering he ended up signing a deal with Spangle in 1957 at the age of 17.
A longtime Springfield resident, Crain passed away in 2009 at 69 after years of failing health.
The era of his youth gets a truly fresh look in a new book, “1950s Radio in Color: The Lost Photographs of Deejay Tommy Edwards” ($49, Kent State University Press).
A 1958 photo of Crain serenading a redhead with a monogram on her chest and a Calrad Model 400C microphone in his hand graces the book right alongside candid shots of Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran.
Between 1955 and 1960, Edwards shot more than 1,700 slides of the performers who visited the studios of Cleveland’s WERE-AM or graced his many in-person record hops.
At Edwards’ invitation, Elvis played Cleveland on Feb. 26, 1955, making for his first-ever show before a northern audience.
The fact that Edwards always had Kodak Ektachrome film loaded in his camera means we’re now given a rare chance to see rock royalty the way their music sounded — in living color.
Before, that era always looked like the first part of “The Wizard of Oz.”
Now?
Hey, Elvis, the munchkins just called — they want their pink jacket back.
Chuck Berry, captured right before “Maybellene” took off, is really stylin’ in those blue slacks.
And, lipstick in the ’50s apparently came in just two shades — cherry red and cherry redder.
“I felt like a treasure hunter and my shovel hit a hard thing,” author Chris Kennedy said of his discovery of the obscure photo collection.
Edwards also produced a weekly newsletter during his time on the air.
“When you combine the photographs with what he wrote,” Kennedy said, “you have probably the definitive accounting of the birth of rock ’n’ roll.”
The more than 200 color photos used in the book proved so revelatory, in fact, they’re now the focus of a new exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland as well.
Presenting more than 30 oversized images from the collection, the show opened last month and runs through the summer.
Kennedy got to pick some of the photos for the exhibit — and, unbelievably, he chose the one of Crain.
“I liked him. I liked what he did,” said Kennedy, a member of the pop-punk band Ruth Ruth, who interviewed Crain several times for the book.
“That photograph, to me, is iconic. It just captures an era perfectly.
“He was a good-looking kid.”
Crain, who played shows with Dion and the Big Bopper on the strength of his rollicking Spangle A-side, “Shig-A-Shag,” quit rock ‘n’ roll after just three years to raise a family.
“It ended up not being his calling in life,” daughter Vicki Perks said this week, “but it was always something he enjoyed.”
Crazily, he became a Springfield cop in 1966 on a $50 bet he couldn’t pass the entrance exam.
It’s fitting that the book and the accompanying exhibit make no distinction between the singers on, say, the legendary Sun label and those on our own ill-fated Spangle label.
The pages just preceding the photo of Crain contain pictures of the Bopper, Dion and a young, greasy Conway Twitty.
A photo of another Spangle act, The Sprouts, can be seen just a hop, skip and a jump from one of The Everly Brothers, the more famous duo whose harmonies they replicate on the supremely bouncy “Goodbye, She’s Gone.”
At the time, stars and aspiring stars alike were all guilty of the same crime — of liberating society.
If you were daring to combine rhythm and blues with country and Western, you were no longer looking at the world in just black and white.
Whether you had a hit or didn’t have a hit, you were one and the same.
You were a “race mixer” — a supposed insult that honestly sounds more like a title of distinction.
Perks, a music teacher for Northwestern Local Schools, said it’s “very cool” to see her dad’s inclusion in the book.
“Then to see the company he’s in,” she added. “He’d see that and just think it was hilarious. In his own little way, he was a part of it.”
The big blue label
For a fleeting moment in 1957 and ’58, Spangle was, indeed, part of it.
The “Big Blue Label With the Stars” actually was headquartered in the East Rose Street home of the late Floyd Whitehead.
“I remember he didn’t have any teeth, and he sat there without any shoes and socks on, pickin’ his toes,” Crain remembered the last time we spoke before his death.
“He just struck me as an old hillbilly.”
Makes sense, actually.
Early on, rock ’n’ roll was more or less considered hillbilly music. Elvis’ last single for Sun, “I Forgot to Remember to Forget,” hit No. 1 on the country chart.
In a 1957 issue of Billboard magazine, Spangle is referred to as a country music label.
“The only hesitation,” Crain told me, “was getting the pen out of my pocket. I had stars in my eyes.
“I actually believed I was going to be somebody.”
We’d never done a story on Crain until I called him out of the blue one day back in 2000.
But, while the label was local, sessions were held in Nashville.
“That’s where the sound was at,” Crain said.
While Whitehead released just a dozen or so singles before his business went kaput, Spangle had a competitive sound — so much so that RCA came calling for The Sprouts.
United Artists licensed “Tear it Up” from the local label by Chuck Wiley, a piano-poundin’ cat who sounded a lot like a white Little Richard.
And 17-year-old Spangle artist Chuck Sims, along with his 1957 single, “Little Pigeon,” were bought by Kapp Records.
Sal Mineo ended up covering “Little Pigeon.”
“That was their business plan,” Crain recalled. “Record unknowns, make enough noise and unload it to a major label.”
You can occasionally find Spangle 45s on eBay these days, but, lucky for us, most of the recordings have been uploaded to YouTube.
When Crain’s turn came, Whitehead apparently decided to go for broke.
United Artists wanted him.
But Whitehead wanted more money, so he reportedly sent the offer back so they could, ahem, “wipe” with it.
“I remember sitting at his kitchen table and about crying,” Crain said. “He said they’d call back. I went over there every night and I waited for the (expletive) phone call, and he’d sit there trimming his toenails.”
Nearly 55 years later, with the book and the exhibit at the rock hall, the phone is finally ringing for Jimmy Crain.
Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.
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