Hours spent at the main library in front of a newspaper viewer and a pocket full of quarters can yield an immense amount of printed material, both useful and otherwise about the city that was and became Long Beach.
Early references to music not to be confused with old timey, big band and dreamy pop first appeared just under 60 years ago in the Long Beach Independent of Nov. 20, 1940. Among ads for clubs like the Bomb Shelter at Lakewood Blvd. and Spring St. where a complete meal would set you back a buck along with “3 super floor shows every night,” or the Coast Inn at Pacific Coast Highway at State Street with “genuine Mexican food,” was a well displayed advert with photo for the Four Tones at the Rainbow, located at 337 W. Seaside (On the Pike).
It so happens Dusty Brooks & the Four Tones – five were pictured in the photo – were a pioneer black vocal group on both disc and film – a precursor to the rhythm and blues sound that would shake up record sales as of the early 50s. Back then, the term for their sound was “race music.”
In the same Independent issue, but at the novelty end of the musical spectrum (think Dr. Demento) was an article headlined “Spike Jones and the City Slickers to play at Municipal Auditorium“…just steps away from the Pike, but worlds away in coverage given to this national best selling act of zany musicians.
The hometown aspect of the story played large. The article began, “Frankly, Spike Jones is a surprised little feller.” From that corny start, the article generated a short Jones history: “Spike’s first novelty combination was the Five Tacks, a sharp quintet of prep school days that played with plenty of tact the musical taste of the young ‘uns over Hal Nichol’s KFOX.”
Running out of tack/tact puns, the article referred to Spike’s controversial best-selling slap at Germany with “Der Fuhrer’s Face” and mentioned his radio appearances on KFI and on CBS Radio.
Two years later, the Independent published “Gruesome Life Of Spike Jones As Told By the King of Corn,” a highly abridged autobiography. It was hysterical, or at least, mildly amusing.
Through all this Spike-steria, nary a press release or profile of the Four Tones, a group that made plenty of appearances on the Pike and survived into the Fifties, with members emerging as the Shipmates, a combo that entertained on the S.S. Catalina and sold autographed copies of their LPs to those passengers who enjoyed their music. Surviving copies are to be sought after. I’ve yet to find one that wasn’t autographed.
By May 11, 1943, the Independent had shifted to publicizing another Long Beach-educated entertainer who had also made the big time, Jo Stafford who had just recorded with “Tommy Dorsey’s vocal group, the Pied Pipers.”
The term rhythm and blues was invented for use in Billboard in 1949. Rock and roll as a term denoting a certain musical style first came on the scene in about 1954. But when did the local area press first take note of these terms and how well did they treat fans of the music? Next time.