Monday, December 7, 2020

Be Young Be Foolish Be Happy - The Tams - 1968


The accompanying blurb describes this cut as a "Beach Music/ Northern Soul" classic. It can be hard to pin either of those genres down. 

Beach Music, I believe, is a collection of records that were popular in the musical venues of the Myrtle Beach area of the Carolinas. If the songs share anything, it is a lively, consistent, danceable beat. Beach Music is admirably salt and pepper in its racial makeup. Many of the records, such as this Tams record here, were by black artists. Bill Deal and the Rhondels are an iconic Beach Music band, as white as snow. 

The canon does seem to have a considerable overlap with Northern Soul. This is all dance music, so the beat is critical to a song's usefulness. I watch some Northern Soul videos on YouTube, and I can't say that I've ever heard a song by a white act. (Edit: I just heard "Nobody Like Me" by the Human Beinz over the dancers at the Blackpool Tower Weekend.) Or seen a black dancer, now that I think of it. Beach Music goes back to the 1960s and 1970s, so those dance clubs may have been segregated for all I know. In the 1950s and early 1960s, whole beaches would have been segregated. I'll let one of you social scientists out there tackle that issue. 

I like the instant song, and it's good advice too. "Be young, be foolish, be happy." Take heed, you yongsters. You will not be young forever. Two twenty-year-olds can have a date that lasts forty-eight hours, and stay focused on the object of the date for most of that time. Get that out of your system while you can, boys and girls. That super power will fade. 

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