The “behind the scenes” look at the Ed Sullivan Show in Sidereal Days is based on photographs and descriptions supplied by such informed “we were there,” rock & rollers as Ringo Starr and Jerry Allison, the great Cricket (Buddy Holly and the…) drummer. The various biographies of Buddy Holly provided written and photographic documentation of his two appearances on the show, and The Beatles Anthology is rich with similar data and accounts of their first appearance on the show. (The 73 million viewers in 1964 would be the equivalent of 146 million viewers in 2012. Even the viewership of the Superbowl doesn’t come close to that.)
Ed Sullivan himself is a vivid and familiar figure but a great plus for me in researching the Ed Sullivan material for the book was to see in person appearances by Ed Sullivan and his number 2 man, son-in-law Bob Precht, in the movie Bye, Bye Birdie. I had to scrub the initial description of Precht I’d written because I’d made it up. Figured no one would know or care what he actually looked like. Bob Precht’s brief, fortuitous appearance was the only good thing about that otherwise execrable movie.
The dilapidated state of the production equipment used on the show and described in the book is accurate. Most of it, painted in clumsy khaki, was military surplus. The high drum riser that makes it impossible, during the rehearsals, for Billy Tuck to hear his band-mates actually happened to Jerry Allison when Buddy Holly and the Crickets appeared on the show. The Crickets appeared and performed with that handicap. The Sparrows explain things to the set designer (who was the actual set designer) Bill Bohnert. Bohnert muses aloud about an earlier drummer whose complaints about the same issue were disregarded. He’s thinking of Jerry Allison.
All the incidents and preparations described in Sidereal Days were fact-based and realistic. The man who chauffeured the Sparrows around, “Louis Savarese” was a real person and an actual chauffeur. His appearance in Sidereal Days and his claim to fame is the fact that in February 1964, it was Louis Savarese who chauffeured The Beatles aroundNew York.
Speaking of The Beatles… While their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show is pretty familiar to most of us and has been seen by most of us somewhat recently, it’s a real education to see a rerun of the ENTIRE Ed Sullivan Show. We hear what a jolt the appearance of The Beatles was to the culture of the day. But to see their performance in the context of the rest of the show—including the TV ads and the other acts—is to witness one era being snapped shut like a cheap suitcase and carried out the door. An amazing and instantaneous transformation.
Note: Most of the material contained in the following Blog was derived from the book All Roots Lead to Rock edited by Colin Escott specifically Chapter 12 by Colin Escott and Hank Davis, entitled “I Heard You Died in ’64”
Rock & roll and Buffalo are not strangers. The Goo Goo Dolls, Annie DiFranco, Rick James, have shown brightly in the rock & roll firmament. Buffalo radio stations and DJ’s have been fervent purveyors of the culture and sounds of rock & roll.
But lurking in the footnotes of Buffalo’s rock & roll history is one of the great might-have-beens, one of the most intriguing and most engaging of rock’s lost souls. The one who never got what every hustling performer wanted, the thing even the one-hit-wonders got – the thing our rocker did not. No Cadillac for Ben Hewitt. However Ben Hewitt does get some serious attention in my e-book Sidereal Days The History of Rock and Roll A Romance. He looms as a Buffalo and Western NY performing legend to the fictional producer at Gobi Desert Records.
He was born September 11, 1935 in a log cabin on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation. Things went smoothly for him until about 1948 when a $12.50 Stella guitar appeared in his life. A few years later, in a Buffalo venue called the Zanzibar Club, Ben Hewitt came down with a fever he never got over. Little Richard and his band played the Zanzibar for a week. Ben caught every show as well as the aforementioned fever.
The next thing. Ben had his own show and took it on the road. He’d put a little band together. They were playing a bar called DeFazio’s in Niagara Falls. Ben, as he described it, was “shakin’, carryin’ on, doing flip-flops.” Though he was doing his idol Little Richard, he was coming across as Elvis. Up comes a gent who looks remarkably like the notorious Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s manager. This gent writes songs and wants someone to help him. He wants to make a demo record so he can shop his songs around. Ben agrees to make the demo with a couple of stipulations. This, that and the other thing and “You supply the booze.” Perhaps not the most astute career move.
According to Ben, this Colonel Parker look-alike writes a bunch of different songs but all of them sound the same. At the end of the demo tape, Ben adds his own self-penned song, You Break Me Up.
Wonder of wonders and within about a week, Ben’s songwriting friend has Ben Hewitt and Ben’s remarkable guitarist Ray Ethier in the recording studios of Mercury Records in New York City. Unfortunately, Ben has already signed a contract that ties him up in legal knots. And Mercury Records isn’t interested in any of the quote unquote “songwriters” material. They like Ben Hewitt’s song. They like You Break Me Up.
Then Ray Ethier called it quits. The chance of a profitable career in New York City as a session guitarist didn’t mean a thing to Ray. His reason was as simple as the excuse he gave to Ben Hewitt. “I don’t know anybody here.” That was that. Ray headed back to the Buffalo area. He had to choose between his guitar and his girl. He wanted to get married and he couldn’t marry that guitar.
So Ben Hewitt was off and on his own. Nicknames proliferated but the name “Smoky” caught on and Ben kept it. Unfortunately Ben’s music never really caught on. He had a checkered and luckless recording career. He signed with one record company and a lawsuit laid them low. A postal strike in Canada killed off an ambitious promotional campaign. A case of mistaken identity irreparably soured his relations with Mercury Records. The ultimate career killer was the fact that Ben was legally handcuffed to the Colonel Tom Parker look-a-like. Opportunities to sign with Musicor, Capitol Records, United Artists, fell through because of it.
Ben’s relationship with DeFazio’s kept him going as a performer and a musician. “Smoky,” in his one smart contractual decision, deliberately excluded DeFazio’s from any deals he made. It was the only gig he kept to himself. For thirteen years he played there and no matter where else he ever played, as far afield as Okinawa, someone in the crowd recognized him as “Smoky” from DeFazio’s. Some of them were surprised to find him still with us.
But alive he was. And there’s a grainy video proving that he had what it took to wrangle a crowd. He was still rock & rolling in his late fifties, doing the great old hustle-bustle for the hundred millionth time. Hewitt still had it, he was still kicking up the dust.
Ben “Smoky” Hewitt took the big bow December 8, 1996. He was sixty one.
Ben Hewitt’s recordings are characterized by his methodical, prominent, rhythm guitar playing. Some of the most interesting samples of his work:
Whirlwind Blues is, all considered, not bad, with a nice little lead crescendo, by, I assume, Ray Ethier.
You Break Me Up vocally channels Ricky Nelson through Elvis Presley with some tasty lead guitar work, presumably by Ray Ethier, and the very pleasant, steady chug of Hewitt’s rhythm guitar.
I Ain’t Given Up Nothin’ is well recorded, a good song, with strong echoes of Elvis’s recording,Kiss Me Twice.
I Need Your Kind of Love is the best Ben Hewitt recording I’m aware of. A spare recording, no percussion, almost a folk song approach, with an Elvis inspired vocal performance, a decent set of lyrics and a compelling rhythm guitar accompaniment.
Check on-line retailers for his CD “You Got Me Shook” containing all of Ben Hewitt’s Mercury recordings or go to the website of Bear Family Records www.bear-family.de.
If one would walk into our house or office, the obvious first thing one would notice: books, many, many, many books. Predominately history books but there are shelves dedicated to Anthony Trollope, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow, Charles Dickens, Wright Morris, Evelyn Waugh, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joyce Cary, James Joyce, Elizabeth Taylor, Jean Rhys, Jane Austen, George Gissing, J .D. Salinger, J.K. Rowling to name but a few and not even including my shelf.
When E.B. was writing Sidereal Days, as a traditionalist, he saw only one route to getting a book published. The same route he used with Maps and Mapmakers of the Civil War, published by Abrams in 1999. Find an agent, who finds a publisher, who not only publishes the book, but has the means to distribute and find an interested audience for the book.
So he followed that route. Finished the book and looked for an agent. It was a tough sell—not because the book wasn’t good because it’s fabulous. But because the industry changed! And no one wants to take a chance on an unknown….
We didn’t realize the significant changes going on at the time. After his first agent rejection, he tried again. The second agent’s return e-mail suggested that things weren’t like they used to be. He continued on the traditional route after her e-mail, but an article in the Wall Street Journal caught his eye—and captured both of our imaginations. The article was about the new world of digital publishing.
It’s funny how things happen. My traditionalist husband, who throughout the whole computer/information age has been buried in books, reads the article and sees the benefit of going digital. I wasn’t skeptical, I just always thought the WSJ was only good for a few stock tips, interesting editorials and a quick peak at the news!
