In 1968, we lived on a ranch in Tucson, Arizona. It was on 40 acres of desert. Our ranch house was made of old whitewashed adobe that was never painted in the 14 years I lived there, which gave it a rustic old pueblo look. Arizona was land of the cowboys and that is why it was so hard for me to live as a closeted hippy. I might have only been ten years old but if you asked me what I wanted to grow up to be, I said a hippie. 

 Now to me, a hippie had many meanings. It meant to be a free, outspoken musician and write and sing protest songs even though I wasn’t sure what I was protesting. It meant writing like Bob Dylan, singing like Janis Joplin, and playing like The Beatles, while secretly listening to Tommy James & the Shondells and the Monkeys.

 It was hard being a 10-year-old hippie living in a town filled with cowboys. Hippies did not wear cowboy boots and listen to Johnny Cash and go on hayrides in Winterhaven at xmas. In fact, hippies would be against that. Winterhaven was probably part of the “establishment,” whatever that meant. As a young-child hippie, I had to be against everything. Life was free and easy. My job was to stand on the corner of the ranch property, flashing peace signs to people driving by. It meant never trusting anyone over 30. It meant saying phrases such as “make love not war,” “here come the judge,” and “sock it to me.” It meant I could be groovy and dig it all while tuning in, turning on, and dropping out.

 Being 10-years old and a closeted hippie proved to be challenging at times. My mother would go to Sears when it was part of downtown Tucson to buy me those stiff, frilly, wash-n-wear, polyester dresses that would go on sale for 3 for $10. They crunched when you walked they were so stiff. Being a hippie meant wearing love beads, headbands, fringe vests, and grungy jeans with holes in them. So I would have to make my dresses look dirty and raggedy, sneak my love beads under my dress, and put a flower in my headband because clearly the 60s were about flower power and not the 3 for 10 specials at Sears.

 Because I was such a young hippie and I could not always dress the role, I learned how to act the role. I was always angry about the war. I vowed that I would dodge the draft by the time I was 12. I was not sure what the draft was, and I did not know how I was going to dodge something I did not know about, but all the hippies were doing it, so I knew I would have to it to prove my hippiehood by dodging the draft, and I knew in order to do that, I would need to find my way on campus to the U of A because that was where all the hippies were born, on college campuses.

 I am sure my family and friends thought I was a little off kilter but I didn’t care. I was a hippie and I had to seek out my own course through the world and literally experiment with all that there was to offer. Problem was I was too young to know what the world had to offer. However, I was willing to do my research. As a young hippie in training I would have to investigate and where better to investigate then on 4th Ave?

 My cousin lived right by 4th Ave and when we went to his house, I would see real life hippies sitting at the cafe’s and shops along the Ave. Long-haired men with beards would be selling leather necklaces, love beads, and incense while playing bongos and singing, and the women in their exotic outfits would be dancing to the beat with their eyes closed. They had no idea I was staring. If I got caught, it would be okay, I would just tell them I was a young hippie in training. All I knew was they were real.

 Today 4th Ave is a reminder that it was once a hippie haven. Guitar players in dreadlocks, selling beads, and hemp tattoos still sit upon the cracked sidewalks with their cases open playing old Dylan awaiting a hand out. An assortment of old hippies walking into the co-op to do their grocery shopping, and the younger generation of what could have been hippies all walk the streets. I suppose that is why 4th Ave is still one of my favorite spots in Tucson; because in some respects, I will always be that 10-year-old hippie.

I remember as a kid in third and fourth grade my parents would run up to the corner on Monday nights to Hardy’s Hamburger stand where they served five burgers for a buck. My mother would buy three dollars worth of the hamburgers and several bags of fries and we all would be happy as clams.

 

When I was in seventh grade, there was a drive-in hamburger joint called Frontier on the corner of 22nd street and Kolb. There was a huge cowboy boot on the rooftop and if you went to the drive-in, girls on roller skates took your order. My mother would give me a dollar on Fridays, and my friends and I would go down to the hamburger joint. Sometimes on Thursday night, I would get so excited by the idea of going to Frontier Friday after school that that it made being tortured in seventh grade somehow worth it. My mouth would start watering by 2:45 pm on a Friday afternoon. I would order the Hamburger-boat special. This was a huge burger with fries in a blue plastic boat and served with a frosty mug of root beer all for a buck. Once in a while I would order the yellow boat which was the same except it was a hotdog. This is what childhood memories were made of for me. Slurping down that mug of frosty root beer and biting into that huge burger was what it was all about on Fridays.

 

These memories got me thinking recently about fast-food chains and just how long they have been part of our culture. I did some research and tracked down fast facts about fast-food chains in America.

 

1921 White Castle Hamburgers

1922 A&W

1925 Howard Johnsons

1926 Orange Julius   

1937 Krispy Kreme

 

1940 Dairy Queen

1941 Carls Jr

1945 Baskin Robbins  

1948 McDonald’s

1948 In-N-Out

1948 Marie Callendar’s

1948 Coco’s 

1948 Winchell’s Donuts         

1949 Bob’s Big Boy

 

1950 Whataburger

1950 Dunkin Donuts         

1951 Jack in the Box

1952 KFC Colonel Sanders

1952 Churchs Chicken

1952 Fatburger

1953 Denny’s

1954 Burger King 

1954 Shakeys 

1956 El Taco

1956 Burger Chef

1958 IHOP

1958 Sizzler

1958 Pizza Hut

1958 Village Inn

1959 Little Caesars

1959 Round Table Pizza

 

1960 Dominos Pizza

1960 Hardees

1961 Wienerschnitzel         

1962 Taco Bell

1964 Arbys

1964 Blimpie

1964 Del Taco

1965 TGI Fridays

1965 Subway         

1966 Sirloin Stockade

1966 Subway

1967 Chick-fil-A

1967 Minnie Pearl Chicken 

1968 Red Lobster

1969 Red Robin

1969 Taco Johns

1969 Long John Silvers

1969 Spaghetti Factory

1969 Cracker Barrel

1969 Wendy’s 

 

1970 Carrow’s

1971 Schlotzsky’s

1971 Starbucks

1972 Popeye’s

1972 The Cheesecake Factory

1972 Ruby Tuesday

1972 Super Popeye’s Fried Chicken

1972 Cousin’s Subs

I am a “semi-retired” musician. I have played in rock and roll bands in Tucson since I was seven or eight years old. I have had the opportunity to play with great musicians.

I quit playing professionally about five or six years ago to focus more on my professional career; however, I never stop thinking about where does rock and roll come from?

 Where does one begin to explore and trace styles of music back through time? I suppose all we really need to know about the origins of rock ‘n’ roll is that it started with slavery. The slaves sang the blues, which were simple, repetitive rhythms, chords, and lyrical phrases. However, for those searching for a more traditional, “where did rock and roll really begin?” I would have to start with Les Paul. He created some of the greatest guitars of all time. As a guitar player and owner of several Les Paul guitars in my time, he was my hero. Les Paul introduced in 1945 “echo delay,” “multi-tracking,” and many other studio techniques that would change the industry.

 There was a time in the mid-to-late 40s that I like to call “pre-rock”. Some people called it rhythm and blues (R&B) or the Chicago blues, but if you listen to some of these old tracks, you will discover these R&B songs were the very core of Rock and Roll. Based strongly with electric guitar-based version of the Chicago blues, rock and roll incorporated jazz, country, folk, swing, and other types of music with a real emphasis on bebop jazz and boogie-woogie blues.

 In 1946, Billboard writer Jerry Wexler invented the term “rhythm and blues” for electric blues, Roy Brown wrote and cut “Good Rockin’ Tonight”, Leonard and Phil Chessm promoted blues that later became known as rhythm and blues. Then, in 1948 the taste of rock and roll began when Detroit R&B saxophonist Wild Bill Moore released “We’re Gonna Rock We’re Gonna Roll”and John Lee Hooker recorded “Boogie Chillen”. This is the time that Columbia Records introduced the 12-inch 33-1/3 RPM long-playing vinyl record.

 Still where does one begin to talk about the introduction to rock and roll? Some say the 50s, with Fats Domino and Bill Haley. However, if we look at the year 1946, Muddy Waters cut the first records of Chicago’s electric blues and Carl Hogan played a powerful guitar riff on Louis Jordan’s “Ain’t That Just Like a Woman.” Then in 1949 Fats Domino was introduced to the general public scene with his song “The Fat Man,” which was a new kind of boogie music.

 It was 1951 that the first “rock and roll” record, Ike Turner’s “Rocket 88” was released and Gunter Lee Carr cut the dance novelty “We’re Gonna Rock”. In 1952, another turning point in music was again Les Paul who invented the first solid-body electric guitar, named the “Les Paul”, for the Gibson Guitar Company. Oh yes, the sounds that those guitars could make. Also in 1952 Little Richard came to the scene, Sam Phillips founded Sun Records, and Elvis Presley recorded his first record.

 Some will say that the 50s gave birth to Rock and Roll. Perhaps what was given birth to in the 50s was not necessarily rock and roll, but the name and a certain attitude that came with the music and I for one embraced that attitude.