SUMMERTIME BLUES IN THE SPRING

4/17/1960 - Sadly, another never to be answered WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN question begins in the world of entertainment, specifically the young genre of rock-and-roll music, when 21-year-old American guitarist, Edward Ray "Eddie" Cochran succumbs to the injuries he suffered the day before in an automobile accident while touring Great Britain with singer Gene Vincent.

Cochran

Cochran is born October 3, 1938 in Albert Lea, Minnesota, the youngest of five children, to Alice and Frank R. Cochran, northern transplants from Oklahoma.  From a very young age, he is drawn to music, and when the family moves to Bell Gardens, California when Eddie is eleven in 1952, his destiny becomes more apparent.  Enrolled at Bell Gardens Junior High School and wanting to play drums in the school orchestra, the young musician is told he can't play drums without first mastering the piano, but piano lessons take too much time and money, so he decides trombone is what he wants to play, but the director of the school band tells the Cochran Family that the boy doesn't have the "lip" for the instrument.  Debating whether to quit the band altogether, Eddie's brother Bill teaches him how to play a few chords on his old Kay guitar and Cochran finds his instrument.  In 1953, he and a fellow junior high school friend, Fred Conrad Smith, form a band they brand The Melody Boys.  Honing his craft, by 1955 they are backing up country singer Hank Cochran (the pair are unrelated, but will soon tour as the Cochran Brothers) on the road and in the recording studio.  Hearing Elvis Presley in Dallas in late 1955, Cochran soon is mixing his country stylings with rock-and-roll chording into a type of playing that becomes known as rockabilly. 

Just A Baby

Young Eddie

California Youth

Studio

Buying guitar strings at the Bell Gardens Music Center in the fall of 1956, Eddie meets Jerry Capehart, who will become his mentor, manager, and songwriting partner.  Partnership formed, the Cochran Brothers is soon left behind for writing, recording, and performing songs with Capehart (who needs a front for his lack of singing ability).  Rocket launch, in 1956 Cochran sings their song, "Twenty Flight Rock" (in 1957, it is because 15-year-old Paul McCartney knows the chords and words to the song that an impressed John Lennon invites the young musician to join his band at the time, The Quarrymen) in The Girl Can't Help It, one of the first color rock-and-roll movies, signs a recording contract with Liberty records, in 1957, he sings "Sittin' in the Balcony" in the movie, Untamed Youth, and puts together the only studio album to be released during his lifetime, Singin' to my Baby (in 1959, as himself, he appears in his third and final film, singing "I Remember" in the Hal Roach Production of Go, Johnny, Go ... his song will be cut from the final release of the film).  1958 sees Cochran create his masterpiece of teenage angst, "Summerime Blues:"

I'm gonna raise a fuss, I'm gonna raise a holler
About a-workin' all summer just to try to earn a dollar
Every time I call my baby, try to get a date
My boss says, "no dice son, you gotta work late"
Sometimes I wonder what I'm a-gonna do
But there ain't no cure for the summertime blues

Well, my mom and pop told me, "son, you gotta make some money"
If you want to use the car to go ridin' next Sunday
Well, I didn't go to work, told the boss I was sick
"Well, you can't use the car 'cause you didn't work a lick"
Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do
But there ain't no cure for the summertime blues

I'm gonna take two weeks, gonna have a fine vacation
I'm gonna take my problem to the United Nations
Well, I called my congressman and he said "whoa!"
"I'd like to help you son but you're too young to vote"
Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do
But there ain't no cure for the summertime blues

Reaching #8 on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1958, the song will be performed by a plethora of artists over the years that includes The Who (a staple of their early concerts), Blue Cheer, Brian Setzer (who will portray Cochran in the 1987 film, La Bamba), Alan Jackson (who turns it into a #1 country tune), the Beach Boys, T. Rex, Rush, and Jimi Hendrix.  

Cochran

Cochran With Jerry Capehart

Liberty Recording #55144 

At the same time, Cochran (who by now has also mastered playing piano, bass, and drums) is experimenting with multitrack recording, distortion techniques, and overdubbing in the studio, and becomes one of the first guitarist to use an unwound third string to bend notes up a whole tone.  Horrified when his good friends, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens die in a 1959 plane crash (along with the Big Bopper), Cochran days afterwards records a tribute song by DJ Tommy Dee called "Three Stars," and begins having premonitions that he might die young too, premonitions that he answers by staying in the studio instead of touring.  Bills to pay though, he decides to go out on the road with another hot rock-and-roll property, Gene Vincent (his smash is "Be-Bop-A-Lula"), and agrees to a 1960 tour of Great Britain where the pair are considered to be major stars.

The Day The Music Died - 1959

Vincent

Cochran & Vincent  

A major success (the tour of Great Britain is promoted by Larry Parnes), playing since the middle of January, the string of concert dates ends with a performance at the Bristol Hippodrome on April 16, 1960.  Gig completed and wanting to return to Southern California as quickly as possible, the men return to their rooms at the Royal Hotel, grab their stuff, and make plans to get out of Dodge as quickly as is possible ... the car support act Johnny Gentle is driving back to London already full, no trains south available until the next day, Cochran, Cochran's girlfriend, songwriter Sharon Sheeley ( a Newport Harbor High School grad and the writer of Ricky Nelson's #1 hit, "Poor Little Fool"), Vincent, and tour-manger Pat Thompkins decide to take a taxi, a Ford Consul driven by George Martin (not the man who will become famous recording The Beatles).  Setting off, Thompkins is upfront, next to the driver, and the back seat is occupied by Vincent, Cochran, and Sheeley.  Taking A4 through the town of Bath, Martin decides to use a shortcut on the outskirts of Chippenham, but traveling too fast, at 11:50 in the evening, misses the turn, and slams on the brakes to correct his course, a decision that causes him to lose control of the vehicle on a bend at Rowden Hill, spin backwards, and slam into a concrete lamp post.  Inside the vehicle, trying to protect Sheeley, Cochran wraps himself around his girlfriend and after being thrown against the ceiling of the taxi, is flung out when the rear door comes violently open.  Over in a few heartbeats, Martin and Thompkins walk away from the wreck uninjured (Martin will be found guilty of dangerous driving, fined, and sentenced to six months behind bars for failing to pay the fine ... he also forfeits his driving license, taken away, it is reinstated in 1969), Vincent has a broken collarbone, ribs, and has damaged a leg already weakened by a 1955 motorcycle accident, Sheeley is in shock with a broken pelvis, and Cochran needs immediate medical attention for his injuries to his brain.  Rushed to St. Martin's Hospital in Bath, Cochran dies at 4:10 pm on April 17, 1960.  Flown home, Cochran is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California on April 25, 1960.

Cochran & Sheeley

The Smashed Car

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Twenty-One forever, Cochran's influence lives well beyond his death.  A posthumous album is released in 1964, he is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, his song, "C'mon Everybody" hits #18 in the UK in 1988, he becomes the first person to be inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame (located in Nashville, Tennessee) in 1997, Rolling Stone magazine will rank him as #84 in it's 2003 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all-time, his short life will be chronicled in Don't Forget Me: The Eddie Cochran Story by Julie Mundy and Darrel Higham, EMI Records will release The Very Best Of Eddie Cochran in 2008, and in 2010, the mayor of Bell Gardens, will declare October 3rd, the anniversary of the musician's birth, to be "Eddie Cochran Day."  And of course there is also the influence he has on a host of artists that have covered his songs: U2, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Who, the Beach Boys, the Stray Cats, Led Zeppelin, George Thorogood, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, the White Stripes, Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart, Simple Minds, Tom Petty, Van Halen, and so many others.  Rest in peace, Eddie!   

Memorial At Crash Site

Forest Lawn In Cypress, California 

Cochran

FIRE IN NEW YORK CITY

3/25/1911 - Designed by John Woolley in an architectural style known as neo-Renaissance, the ten-story iron and steel Asch Building goes up in New York City at 23-29 Washington Place (at the site where writer Henry James, Jr. was born, the location is on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place), in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan between 1900 and 1901.  Named for it's owner, businessman Joseph J. Asch, the loft structure instantly begins attracting tenants in the garment business for its newness and the security of it's terra-cotta "fireproof" rooms ... but the structure is not fireproof at all, because it stands only 135 feet high, unlike structures of over 150 feet in height, it is allowed to have wooden floors, wood window frames and trim, and a sprinkler system inside is not required.

The Asch Building

Occupying the top three levels of the structure is the Triangle Shirtwaist Company of Russian-born Jewish immigrants Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the era's "Shirtwaist Kings" (the men have a history with fires ... their Triangle operation has been scorched twice in 1902, and their Diamond Waist Factory burned down twice, in 1907 and 1910, conflagrations that the men received insurance money for both times) manufacturers of the popular shirtwaist, a high-necked blouse usually made of light, crisp translucent cotton or sheer linen that had come into fashion at the end of the previous century, due in large part to it being featured on the models of "Gibson Girl" illustrator, Charles Dana Gibson.  The company's profits exceeding a million dollars a year by 1908 (the blouses sell for roughly $3), Harris supervises garment production, overseeing the machinery and workflow of the employees, while Blanck is in charge of sales (though Triangle is their largest enterprise, the men also own shirtwaist facilities elsewhere in New York City, Newark, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).  In 1911, the company employees roughly 600 individuals, most of them easily replaceable teenage girls just arrived in America from Russia and Italy that don't speak English and can't protest working conditions and wages ... employees work as late as to 9:00 at night during the peak season with no overtime pay or a supper break, have shifts that call for nine hour days during the week, and seven hours days on Saturday and Sunday (for which they are paid between $7 and $12 a week), although against the law, doors are kept locked to prevent keep employees from absconding with company property, workers are searched day before leaving for home to make sure they haven't stolen anything, doors at the factory swing in instead of out, there are four elevators with access to the factory floor, but only one is operational, the women aren't allowed to join the Ladies Garment Workers Union (thugs are hired to deal with strikers and political payments are made for authorities to look the other way), there are no fire alarms in the building, and though more were promised as part of the original build, the building has only one fire escape.  Tragedy awaiting only a spark, the spark comes as the factory's work day is ending, at 4:40 on a Saturday afternoon.

Gibson

Shirtwaist Fashion 

Max Blanck & Isaac Harris 

Before

Fire breaks out in a scrap bin on the 8th floor filled with two months of the factory's cuttings, hundreds of pounds of material in a wooden bin, under a wooden table, surrounded by hanging fabrics.  The culprit, though smoking is banned, with no breaks, employees sneak smokes while on the floor, and someone deposited a still warm cigarette butt in the bin.  Water buckets on the floor to put out just such a fire prove inadequate, and when a shipping clerk tries to put out the fire with a hose, he is horrified to discover that not only has the hose rotted, its valve has rusted shut ... the flames are soon out of control and chaos soon reigns in the building.  At 4:45 the first fire alarm is given when a passerby on the street below sees smoke coming from the 8th floor.  Inside, a bookkeeper on the 8th floor, Dinah Lifschitz, calls on the telephone to warn the 10th floor of what is taking place below, information which Blanck and Harris use to immediately flee to the roof and then across to another building to safety with members of their families, two of Blanck's daughters and their governess, who are visiting the operation (thanks to Professor Frank Sommer and his law student class next door, placing ladders left by painters, across to the 10th floor of the Asch Building, in all, 69 of the 70 individuals on the 10th floor when the fire breaks out will be saved).  The 8th floor, aware of the flames, escapes downward, the 10th floor goes up and over the roof, but the 9th floor suddenly finds itself in mortal danger ... the stairway down to Washington Place is locked and the supervisor with its key has already fled, withing three minutes, the Greene Street stairway becomes unusable in both directions, the single exterior fire escape collapses from the heat and overcrowding, sending 20 employees to their deaths on the street a 100 feet below, and with the two elevators giving access on to and off of the floor, both soon made non-operational by the raging flames, able to take only 12 people to safety at a time, elevator operator heroes Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortillalo, risking their own lives, are able to rescue 150 souls (after the elevators break down, prying the doors of the elevator open, more employees plunge to their deaths in the shaft trying to climb down the elevator cables, 36 in all, and four hours later, after the holocaust has finally been put out, its last survivor will be found in the rising waters inside the shaft).  And even when New York firefighters arrive on the scene their rescue efforts seem cursed; the fire department's ladders only reach six stories high, and its jump nets prove inadequate, jumpers tear straight through the netting to the cement sidewalks, or bounce out with the same result ... death for the jumper.

Layout Of The Tragedy

The Fire Escape Wreckage

South Side Of The Building - Where 50 Jumped

Rushing To The Fire

The Asch Building On Fire

A hell of fire and smoke, employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company die from fire, smoke inhalation, and the smashings they take when trying to escape the other two killers, they jump away from the flaming building to the streets below (over sixty by some estimates, often holding the hands of another jumper, some experiencing a last kiss before leaping, and many plummeting, already on fire) ... scenes of horror that fire fighters, police, and witnesses (over ten thousand will rush to the scene, including dozens of pick pockets taking advantage of the situation) will remember for the rest of their lives (a reporter will write, "I learned a new sound that day, a sound more horrible than description can picture - the thud of a speeding living body on to a stone sidewalk.").  Minutes of forever, the fire is out 18 minutes after its start, taking 146 lives with it ... 123 women and 23 men, the oldest victim is 43-year-old Providenza Pannino, the youngest victims are 14-year-olds Kate Leone and Rosario Maltese.  Corpses removed, the dead are brought to Charities Pier on 26th Street (also called "Misery Lane") where they are placed in simple wooden coffins for identification by their families prior to internment in a host of local cemeteries (six, unidentified at first, will be buried in Brooklyn's Cemetery of the Evergreens ... over 100 years later, it will take historian, Michael Hirsch, four long years of research to eventually identify them by name).

Carnage

Victims

On The Street Below

Inside - After

At The Pier

Deaths not in vain, in the aftermath of the tragedy, over 80,000 people will march on 4/5 through the streets of New York City in protest of the working conditions the women faced, and in October, the state will pass the Sullivan-Hoey Fire Prevention Law (between 1911 and 1914, thirty-six new labor laws will be enacted to protect workers), also in October, the American Society of Safety Professionals is created, and a nine-member Factory Investigating Committee is created to investigate safety and working conditions in New York factories.  And of course, given the circumstances, Blanck and Harris go on trial for the deaths of their 146 employees.  Indicted two weeks after the fire on charges of first and second degree manslaughter, the pair are prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Charles S. Bostwick, and defended by famous New York attorney, Max David Steuer.  Trial beginning on December 4, 1911, in the courtroom of Judge Thomas Crain, Bostwick presents 103 witnesses, while Steuer puts up 52.  It all takes two weeks ... on 12/27 the judge charges the jury using the test of Article 6, Section 80 of New York's Labor Law ... and only two hours later, both men are incredibly found not guilty, jurors deeming there was no hard evidence that the pair "knew" the stairwell to safety from floor #9 was locked (Bostwick will go after the men again in 1912, but Judge Samuel Seabury will throw out the case, deeming it constitutes double-jeopardy over a matter already tried) ... escorted by five police officers, the pair flee the upset citizens of New York (screaming "Justice. Where is Justice?") through the judge's chamber and private entrance, barely beating a mob to the nearby subway station.  In civil suits over the matter, in 1913 plaintiffs in twenty-three individual cases are awarded an average of $75 for each life lost (while Blanck and Harris receive a payout of $60,000 from their insurance company).

Bostwick

Steuer

Listening To Testimony        .

Over a century ago, the fire has had its tale told in films and on television, with music, theatre, and dance, and in literature.  The Asch Building still exists in New York City, but it is now called the Brown Building and is part of the campus of New York University (it is deemed a National Historical Landmark in 1991 and is designated a New York City landmark in 2003).  The last living survivor of the fire, Rose Freedman, dies in her Beverly Hills home in February of 2001 at the age of 107.

Rose

Rose

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