shaould have been a rock star 3 the Stereo

RCA and the first stereo?

We really didn’t have much at the house as far as music goes. Most of the family music was at the church when I was a young kid. Mom led the song service. My Aunt Bonnie played the piano. Sometimes, Mom, Bonnie and Dad would sing a special song at church. It was “surely Goodness and Mercy” which always had a joke in it for we kids. We knew my Mom was “Surely” (Shirley Dugan) but the question was who was goodness and Mercy? Dad? Aunt Bonnie?

Sometimes dad would sing one of two songs in front of the church. It was usually wither “The Old Rugged Cross” or “How Great Thou Art.” Dad has now been gone from us for one and one-half years. He dies at the age of eighty-eight, but I can still hear him singing “How Great Thou Art” in his low voice. He’d take off his glasses, hold them in his hand and sing the song with all his heart.

The 21^st century was a little tough on him. He was in his eighties, failing vision and an eroding patience, when the church and it’s new song leader started to bring in a lot of new music and drift away from the old standards that he could sing along with even without a song book.

We did have a couple of transistor radios back then. I know my older brothers; Keith and Randy listened to music. In fact, Keith, who graduated in 1963 along with randy, listed “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by the Four Seasons as his favorite song in his senior yearbook. Later on, after the went into the service, they came back as country and western fans. But, I heard some of the early pop stuff on those transistor radios, and a few tempting offerings from TV variety shows. The only place to really hear rock and roll music was on Dick Clark’s American bandstand. The pickings were pretty slim for chances to hear new music.

My dad had the Tulsa paper every single day. On a fateful Sunday, there happened to be an insert from the RCA record club. I scanned over the offer that screamed out to me with a chance to not only receive a stack of new 45 rpm’s of the latest hits, but also receive with this special offer a new stereo turntable! I thought of all the arguments, the pros and cons before approaching Mom with the possibility of owning our own record player. Mom thought it was a good idea too and she talked Dad into signing and sending off the RCA offer.

The wait was agonizing. It seemed like the thing would never arrive, and just as I had given up hope, one morning, it arrived. After his morning trip to the post office, Dad brought a brown box in stamped with the black letters R-C-A.

We unwrapped the box and in side, the desperately awaited stereo sat. It was light blue and white, with a clasp lid. It had speakers on each side, a spindle, a 45-rpm adaptor and adjustments to play 33, 45 and 78 rpm records. Inside there was a stack of 45 rpm singles. I shuffled through the records greedily, unsure which treasure to play first!

I still remember many of those first discs that were destined to be played over and over and over as I memorized each word, each writer and length of play. There was Skeeter Davis sadly mourning the “End of the World.,” the Troggs and “Wild Thing,” Barry Saddlers “ballad of the Green beret.” Roger Williams snag “My Uncle Used to Love Me (But She Died) and Johnny cash wailed about “The Ring of Fire.” It was a treasure trove of forbidden fruit. The fact that my Mom thought the flip side of the Troggs “Wild Thing” was too suggestive made it even more of a treasure! Just as the world of the 60’s was splashed across the TV news with rebellion and riot, I too was rebellious in my own kid-like innocence. I was a rock and roll rebel from the small country town of Kiefer, Oklahoma.

Civilization had come to the Dugan house. The outside world had invaded in the form of black vinyl discs and tinny speakers that bleached forth single after single unceasingly until it was time for the rebel to go to bed.