Misfit's Manifesto : The Spiritual Journey of a Rock and Roll Heart

by GAINES, DONNA

• ISBN13: 9780679463276
• ISBN10: 0679463275
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-03-01
• Publisher: Villard

Summary

Donna Gaines is the Margaret Mead of heavy metal, a turnpike intellectual, a walking, talking oxymoron.A Misfit's Manifestois the story of her wild-in-the-burbs odyssey--from yeshiva girl to street-punk sociologist. The only child of a glamorous big-band vocalist, Donna had three fathers, including the "Kishka King of Brooklyn." Fat, lonely, and depressed, she found truth and beauty in the least likely places. Wandering the craggy terrain of Rockaway Beach, Queens, Donna embarked upon a path to enlightenment: sex, drugs, rock & roll, sociology, cosmetology, True Love, the occult, tattoos, science fiction, pizza, guns, comic books, and surfing--by Web or by sea. "Popular culture, my unholy redeemer," she proclaims. It was Donna's consuming love of the "profane world" that gave her the courage to be, buffering her against relentless sorrow and self-loathing. Dignity, joy, and communion came not from family, organized religion, or mandatory schooling, but in the sound of doo-wop, then surf music, hard rock, punk, and grindcore. "For most of my life," she writes, "music was the only way to connect that wouldn't eventually kill me." Through all the ripped nights of binge-drinking in rock clubs, Donna Gaines became an acclaimed author and an expert on teen suicide. In an age of conformity and censorship, Dr. Gaines defends popular culture as a powerful spiritual force, a vibrant, valid connection to God. This is an outcast's journey into the black-hole sun, where Divine love and light are found--even in Ramones songs. Donna Gaines has written a work of dazzling originality and iconoclasm, an inspiration for misfits everywhere.

Author Biography

Donna Gaines is the author of <i>Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia’s Dead End Kids</i>. She has written for <i>Rolling Stone</i>, <i>Ms.</i>, <i>The Village Voice</i>, <i>Spin</i>, and <i>Newsday</i>, and contributed to numerous trade and scholarly collections. She has a doctoral degree in sociology and has taught at Barnard College and the New School University. Dr. Gaines lives in New York City. For more information about the author, go to www.donnagaines.com.

Excerpts

Part One

THE KISHKA KING OF BROOKLYN

There’s an old saying, God never gives us more than we can handle. What actually happens is repression: The mind shuts down so the heart won’t explode. This is the story of my mother and father.

In the classical era of swing, the late 1930s and 1940s, large jazz dance bands fused rhythm & blues and pop, generating a rich orchestral sway known today as the Big Band sound. Upbeat, even the ballads were optimistic. Like New Wave was to punk, swing was cleaner, smoother, offering wider audiences a sound more inclusive than the hot jazz of the previous decade. Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, and Artie Shaw were the gods of the day. Vocalists smiled graciously, musicianship was critical, phrasing was everything. A music of celebration, swing catapulted the GI Generation from Depression-era scarcity to Big Yank victory, to a promised land of economic opportunity and prosperity. Pushing upward and onward, propelled forward by the Big Band sound, our parents ushered in the American dream, a paradise of big cars, interstate highways, home ownership, suburbia, television, and a big fat baby boom.

Betty Bradley was a vocalist. She told reporters she came from a showbiz family, although she was the only one who ever really made it. Her mother, Miriam, played piano for the silent theater, her aunts were original Mack Sennett bathing beauties, sirens of the silent screen. Grace was a stage actress, Ethel a drama critic, and Naomi a painter. Betty started singing in 1932. At ten, she won a spot on WINS radio. Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour was one of the most popular shows in America, known for launching successful stars. With Miriam prodding her along, Betty won several talent contests in the tristate area. The first contract was with Gray Gordon and His Tic Toc Rhythm Orchestra. Her father, Willie, a civil engineer, had to sign the papers because Betty was only seventeen.

The contract included out-of-town weekly theater engagements at sixty-five dollars a week, “one-night stands” at ten dollars a night with a minimum of fifty dollars a week. Recordings paid ten dollars a day, and New York City engagements forty dollars a week. In 1939 this was nice money. Gray Gordon had a regular gig at the Edison Hotel. Betty made fun of the slow fox-trots, making silly faces onstage, and he fired her. Onstage, though, her sweet melodies were sultry, soothing, the sort that propelled fans into clouds of sentiment and feeling. Then there were the perky, upbeat tunes like “Feed the Kitty.” Still, by any standard, Gray Gordon’s sound was corny. Betty liked mischief, jazz and swing, so she moved on to bigger and better.

Bob Chester had played sax with Tommy Dorsey in the 1930s; now he had his own orchestra. Once signed to Chester, Betty sometimes filled in as emcee. Critics declared her “a honey with a sweet delivery and the kind of personality that goes all too rarely with these popular singers. She can sing ’em hot and deliver ’em tropical.” The verdict: “She should go places.” Betty’s blues vocals had traces of Mildred Bailey, she had a “delicately husky voice of an extremely attractive quality and two of the prettiest dimples in the business, the right one slightly deeper than the left.” Bradley was known for deft renditions of standards like “I Want to Get Married” and “Hit That Mess,” for “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and “Do It Again.” Bandleaders knew her to be reliable; she wasn’t a drunk or a junkie. And she didn’t run around–she always stuck with one man.

I remember her for her ballads, for “My Funny Valentine,” “Tenderly,” and “Summertime.” How she walked through the room like a goddess, shining so much larger than life, so powerful, seductive, awesome, and vibrant. I grew up besotted, captivated by her beauty and charm. Watching her sing, dazzled by her charisma, I hung on to her every note. I knew Betty Bradley was singing to me, straight from her heart. Every great singer has that ability to make you feel like the only person in the room. But when that singer is your mother, you know the sun, moon, and stars all revolve around you. In that moment, when she looked directly at me, I felt like the center of the universe. Music was mother’s milk, nourishment my soul needed to thrive.

By 1945 Betty Bradley was hanging poolside with Sinatra in Hollywood. He and Dean Martin knew her from Florentine Gardens. L.A. critics dubbed her “the Hollywood Lush Thrush.” She had already shared a bill with Martin and Jerry Lewis in Jersey at the 500 Café, with the Three Stooges at the Golden Gate. She was crowned the Queen of Mint at a University of Virginia jubilee and featured in Downbeat and Billboard. She did it all–the radio commercials, product endorsements, performing for the troops stateside.

Her clothes were fabulous: high glamour, top-shelf Hollywood. At five foot three, with a tiny waist, strong shoulders, and full bosom, she was curvy, elegantly dishy in velvet and satin. A writeup in the New York Journal and American described a “vivacious Betty Bradley, favored with lovely features and the oval face . . . the most beautiful in facial contour.” Bradley wore her gowns trimmed in lace with feathers, elbow-length gloves, lush hair, dark like Joan Crawford’s, brown waves cascading around her face. She had those dimples, high forehead with a widow’s peak, cupid’s-bow lips, and perfect white teeth. Above her strong chin and high cheekbones, her bright hazel eyes were boldly accentuated by half-moon brows, Bette Davis style.

Betty Bradley had her clothes made to order, suits fitted tightly around her torso and suede platform shoes with ankle straps that made her legs look longer. She starred in pictures, too. She sang “Shoo Shoo Baby” in a film called Trocadero, based on the club she performed at on Sunset Strip by the same name. I saw Trocadero on TV when I was about four. I loved seeing Mommy all dressed up and Hollywood. She was as dramatic in life as she was onscreen, stormy, raging from within, delivering it all with grace and charm.
Then there were the one-nighters with the Bob Chester Band, or else solo six-week stints, back-to-back shows, a different city every night. Betty toured America by bus, the featured vocalist, the only girl in the band. Sometimes she had a boyfriend, but she took care of herself. Other women knew not to move in on her guy; she’d fight if she had to. She was tough, but she was a lady, too.

Miss Bradley played the Chicago Theater, New York’s Strand, Capitol, Apollo, the Earle in Philadelphia, the Orpheum Theater in Omaha, the Golden Gate in San Francisco, and the Club Moderne, in Long Beach, California. She recorded “Do It Again” and “Summertime” for Jewel, sharing the label with Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Harry James. With a sweet French accent, she did comedy as Fifi, the singing cigarette girl, as a regular on NBC radio’s Rudy Vallee’s Drene air shows. In her Hollywood days Betty Bradley knew everyone from the Rat Pack to Pinky Lee.

By 1948 Betty Bradley had become a prominent radio vocalist and Milton Berle wanted her for the Latin Quarter. He fought to keep her with him. They had great rapport. Bradley was a seasoned professional, a beautiful presence with strong comedic timing. The Latin Quarter was owned by Lou Walters, Barbara’s father. When Walters was signing Berle, Uncle Milty, as he was known, insisted on bringing in his own singer, Betty Bradley. Walters said no way, he was using one of his sweeties. Berle held up the contract and,
waving it, said, “If Bradley doesn’t sing, you have no Milton Berle,” and Bradley sang.

Broadway columnists were now acclaiming Milton Berle as “the greatest all-around entertainer in the history of show business.” Betty’s manager was Frank Berle, Milton’s brother. Around this time, Milton Berle was poised to break into television. Once a week Uncle Milty charmed the nation, and he wanted Bradley. With her looks, her voice, and her comedienne’s sparkle, she was perfect. But the star had another plan. She was twenty-six and wanted to settle down. Although both Berle brothers pleaded with her in letters and telegrams, Betty Bradley had made up her mind. She was getting married. Milton Berle was livid. How the hell could she walk out at her peak, in her prime, on the dawn of a new era, “to marry the Kishka King of Brooklyn”? But Bradley was tired; she’d been on the road most of her life. She wanted a home, a family, children, so she married Herbie Denmark. Some say this decision destroyed her career, maybe even her life. But, baby, it was my big break.

A few years earlier, at twenty-four, lonely, in Hollywood, on the rebound after a stormy romance with an alcoholic trumpet player in the Bob Chester Band, Betty Bradley married her first husband. Ray Cootman was the band boy–a roadie, bisexual, a Jewish junkie. After they married, he became her manager. He worked her when she was sick and squandered her money freely. Betty had a butch girlfriend named Electra who worked the circus. They fooled around in the dressing room, held hands, and partied like real galpals. But the wild life wore on her; it wasn’t really her style. So she divorced Ray and secured a get (Jewish divorce) for a high price. Down and defeated, she returned home to Brooklyn to lick her wounds.

Betty Bradley was restless and curious. As a child she suffered from St. Vitus’s dance, a movement disorder characterized by rapid, irregular, aimless, involuntary movements of the limbs, face, and trunk. She was given to fits of hysteria and high fevers. Playful and always very dramatic, she’d dress up like a gypsy kid, wander down to Brooklyn train stations feigning a foreign accent and charming the strangers. Like any teenager, she wanted to hang out with her friends, date, and go to parties. Why did she have to go to another audition? But Miriam pushed her.

Betty had been a chubby child, and her fame brought her popularity at Erasmus Hall High School. She was gearing up to be an English teacher. She loved words, excelled at vocabulary, grammar, and spelling. But she gravitated to the limelight, went for the glamorous life instead. At sixteen she had enjoyed a fling with Herbie. He was twenty-four, a big stud, six foot two, and built. Blond, with green eyes and a strong nose, he was a manly man, not a pretty boy. Rumor had it women dropped their pants at the sight of him. Street-smart and suave, Herbie had a hot car and a backseat made for love. The first time they had sex the fireworks exploded, but Betty was headed for Hollywood and Herbie was fresh back from the army, all set to run the family business.

A playboy well into his thirties, Herbie wasn’t the marrying kind. He spent his nights painting the town, days working hard at the kosher catering hall. As was the habit of the day, he lived with the family till he got married but kept a room for the broads downtown at the classy St. George Hotel. As a child, Herbie preferred the streets to the books, and was considered a trombenik, a fun-loving bum. His boyhood cronies nicknamed him Gyp the Blood; the family called him Hertzie.

Herbie loved the business. He dropped out of high school and went to work while his two older brothers went on to law school. Bernard and Joe read the Times, The Saturday Evening Post, or Collier’s. They hung out at the family’s other establishment, which Bernard managed with his sister Florence. An upper-middle-class Jewish businessmen’s haunt on Ocean Avenue, the Elite Club catered to Brooklyn’s prominent lawyers, doctors, judges, professional men on the move.

Herbie wasn’t like his stuffy brothers. His idea of relaxation was to get drunk and get himself a broad. He was a party guy, a weekend warrior, but he never drank at home or at work. Like the rest of the family, food, not booze, was Herbie’s medicine. A sharp dresser, he was a regular at the haberdasheries around town. An early Buddy Hackett fan, Herbie frequented the Rusted Cabin, the Copacabana, and the Latin Quarter, all the New York nightspots, usually with a showgirl on his arm. He partied at the Concord Hotel, where he was known as a good tipper, a loudmouth, always a great time. He had a whole crew of friends he traveled with, including Uncle Butch, the father of gay-rights activist and author Karla Jay. All aboard for funtime, the bad boys of Brooklyn would invite girls up to their rooms, strip them, and throw them out without any clothes, just for laughs. That men like Butch and Herbie should beget two such radical feminist daughters is pure Goddess power, divine justice. But Herbie was young, wealthy, at the top of his game, and that’s what men were like in those days.

Herbie always did the right thing. He supported his nephews through college, took young nieces to Broadway shows and nightclubs and introduced them to all the big names. Having lost his mother at age sixteen, and then his oldest brother, Oscar, just a few years later, Herbie didn’t want to miss anything. He enjoyed the high life and swore the woman he was going to marry hadn’t been born yet.

Meantime, back in Brooklyn, after her Hollywood divorce, Betty ran into Herbie and that old black magic started cooking. With the clothes, the good looks, the charm, and vitality, they were charismatic, wild and sweet, two good kids, family people at heart. Herbie would give Betty a normal life, Herbie would settle down. They loved language games. Herbie was known for making up words; Betty told great jokes. Herbie had met his match; Betty had found a fun, solid guy. They preferred storytelling around a large table of friends to reading books, enjoyed live entertainment, the movies. Opera and theater were for squares. These alley cats liked the night life.

Herbie said he married Betty ’cause she was the only broad he could trust. Still, he warned her, “I don’t want you any further from me than I can throw an elephant.” In time, Milton Berle would become known as “Mr. Television,” acknowledged as the single most critical factor in the proliferation of TV sets in American homes in the late 1940s. Although Uncle Milty’s television gig would never have required Betty to be any farther than Philadelphia, Herbie issued an ultimatum. He wanted her with him, where he could see her. So at twenty-eight, at the top of her game, Betty Bradley walked out on Berle, on Hollywood, on the dawn of American television, and married my father, the Kishka King of Brooklyn.

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Excerpted from A Misfit's Manifesto: The Spiritual Journey of a Rock and Roll Heart by Donna Gaines
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