"Summertime Blues" by Eddie Cochran
Singalong 021: “Ain’t” ain’t in the dictionary
“I'm a-gonna raise a fuss, I'm a-gonna raise a holler / About a-workin' all summer just-a tryin' to earn a dollar”
“Summertime Blues” was the first rocknroll song that hooked me. Eddie’s squeal when he says “AIN’T no cure…” just cracked me up and I couldn’t get enough.
I might have been seven years old. We were listening to the Beatles and watching “Help” on VHS, but Eddie Cochran had a wildness.
“Every time I call my baby, try to get a date / My boss says ‘No dice son, you gotta work late’”
I had no idea what the guy was talking about. Teenage stuff was grownup stuff to my child brain. It had the same allure all music had: this was where I’d be able to eavesdrop on adults’ workings and doings. Music had a mystical power because you could, as a child, hear what the adults really thought. It didn’t matter that it was mostly indecipherable. “Dating” and “working late” were totally unknown things, to be learned about in a distant mature future. Perhaps once I turned ten.
“Sometimes I wonder, what I'm a-gonna do / But there AIN’T no cure for the summertime blues”
This part! I had to play it over and over again, and I couldn’t stop laughing. Good northeastern kids ain’t supposed to use the word “ain’t”. “Ain’t” ain’t in the dictionary but hearing Eddie Cochran wail it out in the chorus of this song proved otherwise.
“Oh, well, my mom and papa told me "Son, you gotta make some money" / If you wanna use the car to go a-ridin' next Sunday / Oh, well, I didn't go to work told the boss I was sick / ‘Uh, you can't use the car 'cause you didn't work a lick’”
A very Dennis-the-Menace vibe here. He ain’t gonna do what you tell him, this one.
“I'm gonna take two weeks gonna have a fine vacation / I'm gonna take my problem to the United Nations / Oh, well, I called my congressman, and he said, quote / ‘I'd like to help you son, but you're too young to vote’”
And it became my introduction to politics as well. Seven years old. Reagan was coming in. He seemed like a nice man to me but my mom and dad were petrified.
Now we’re all too young to vote.
Ain’t no cure:
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