This 1961 Dude Magazine article about a cool, cool night in a New Jersey grove is utterly fascinating. I highly recommend that anyone interested in the decade read the rest of it (or at least look at the pictures) after the jump.
I’ve researched a few of the key players from this “bash in low key” and found out that mustached actor Al Dekker would be found dead in his apartment seven years later, that “swinging chick” Linda Lombard can still grace your dorm room wall, that the “mellow, mellow” Don Elliot created a band called the Nutty Squirrels that was a failed precursor to Alvin and the Chipmunks (complete with cartoons), and that to “make hay” means “to turn to one’s advantage”.
Jim
8:47 am on
November 21, 2009
This is an amazing snapshot of a scene too hip for Mad Men and too square to make the annals of Playboy-inflected pleasure history. Utterly fascinating.
The slang-packed narrative is wild: “What’s a good time to get all these day people and night people on the same shift? Right? The graveyard swing, from midnight to dawn. Too early to sack out and too late to be going anywhere else.”
Anna
6:51 am on
December 20, 2009
WOW I know Linda Lombard personally. This was very interesting. Amazing the things that appear on the internet. I will be adding this page to her web site. Thank You
Brittany
9:37 am on
December 21, 2009
How cool, what a small world! I wonder if she remembers this night of jazz and New Jersey – it looks like it was fun.