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Coming of Age With Gene Nobles and WLAC
by Beth Boswell Jacks
Once upon a summertime, a season stashed a lifetime away in my memory but not so far away in my heart, a fellow named Gene Nobles came into my life.
I'd been out catching lightning bugs in a fruit jar, racing around and jumping ditches. I was a knobby kneed, barely thirteen year old girl with nothing better to do on a summer evening.
Truth is, at that time the only other pastime that could even come near the magic of pinching tails off lightning bugs (and watching the de-tailed appendage continue to flash on and off and on and off) was tadpole dipping. I'd probably been doing that too if we'd had some good rains, I can't recall, but I do remember the lightning bugs because I had the jar there by the radio on my nightstand when I first met Mr. Nobles.
Don't get me wrong. I wasn't a complete tomboy. I took great pride in the 13 crinoline petticoats I could pull off in one swift swoosh, leaving them standing at attention in a single lacy stack in the corner of my bedroom. I did like pretty things. And romantic notions. And spinning 45 records on the hi fi or listening to folks like Bill Haley, Teresa Brewer, and Dean Martin on my RCA AM radio.
Piccolino flats were lined up in my closet--red, black, green, yellow--just waiting for junior high in the fall. Yes indeed, I knew thrilling moments were in the near future, glittering on the horizon like the tails of a thousand lightning bugs.
Every summer evening I'd sit on the side of the bathtub and wash my groddy feet, which is probably what I was doing that night when my friend Delia called.
So through that evening, in cotton jammies, and with lightning bugs and scrubbed feet, I sat on my rumpled bed and listened to the requests on Pete Webb's local radio show, "Pete's Platter Party," until 10:15, then tuned the dial to 1510 and fell in love with . . . Gene Nobles.
Introduced by "Swannee River Boogie," the voice of Nobles swept into my bedroom and that of millions of teenagers throughout 28 states on mega watts of glorious music from WLAC, Nashville's premier radio station. Sponsored by Randy's Record Shop in Gallatin, Tennessee (at that time the largest mail-order phonograph record shop in all creation), Nobles beamed us rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and sometimes a bit of gospel, and we loved every soulful minute of it.
Goodbye, Pat Boone, Perry Como, Patti Page. Hey, goodbye to Bill Haley and his square, jellyroll-haired Comets as well.
We were in Coolsville now, rockin' to the real thing -- Fats Domino ("Yes, it's me and I'm in love again!"), Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Reed, Little Richard ("Tutti frutti, allll rootie!"), Chuck Berry ("Oh, Mabellene, why cancha be truuuuue? You done started back doin' the things you usta do!") -- and dreaming about our one true love as we swooned to the mellow notes of the Platters ("Oh-oh-oh, yes, I'm the great pretender . . ."), and, of course, Elvis, whose "I want you, I need you, I love you" set many a teenage heart afire.
I doubt I ever chased any more lightning bugs. Didn't need to. I had the pure magic of Gene Nobles coming from my little radio that summer night and many, many nights thereafter.
Life was sparkling . . . and I was heading for junior high.
Beth Boswell Jacks is the editor of USADEEPSOUTH.COM. She is a humor/personal essay columnist for a number of Southern newspapers and is the author of Grit, Guts, and Baseball, a story of sports and race relations in the Mississippi Delta. [Read excerpt.]
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Read about Beth's SNIPPETS books -- two collections of her columns.
Contact Beth at bethjacks@hotmail.com
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