Rockabilly community - people living like it's 1951

[Liberal_in_LA]

The people who are STILL living like it's 1951: Captivating portraits take a look inside America's Rockabilly community
It may be 2014 to the rest of us, but for the subjects in Jennifer Greenburg’s photographs, it is still 1951.

The assistant professor of photography at Indiana University Northwest has been photographing America's Rockabilly community for more than ten years; people that not only dress like it’s the Fifties, but also drive perfectly preserved Cadillacs and decorate their homes with furniture to rival the retro sets of Mad Men.

---

The community of people Ms Greenburg has documented, she believes, usually have a desire for this kind of joyousness that was lost in the 21st Century. 'Happiness, I believe, is everyone’s primary full-time job. And living a life that resembles, visually, the 1950’s helps make that just a little easier,' she said.

From re-wiring a lamp, to re-sewing the seams of a Fifties cocktail dress, Ms Greenburg added that most true participants of the culture are skilled at repairing and restoring most of their possessions.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2543580/The-people-STILL-living-like-1951-Captivating-portraits-look-inside-Americas-Rockabilly-community.html#ixzz2rHNquW4R

[sakabatou]

1. Pleasantville

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. with color

[CBGLuthier]

65. may be color but the dominant tone is still white

I notice folks of color do not share such a fondness for the "good old days."

[Ken Burch]

21. Hope they aren't eating Pleasantville breakfasts:

those portions would kill you inside of a month.

[Lithos]

3. Ah yes...

The days of driving without a seatbelt...

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. that's a beautiful car but I would like to see a seatbelt installed... if she drives it

[Cleita]

11. Very few people could have afforded that car. Most cars were

Ordinary sedans in dull colors.

[frylock]

12. looks like a ranchero

[roguevalley]

17. I remember when cars had a rope strung across the front seats for those

in the backseat to hold on. Pre-pre seatbelts.

[Pyrzqxgl]

4. Rock-a-Billy didn't come in to the pop scene til about 1954.

[Liberal_in_LA]

6. oops

[dipsydoodle]

64. Buddy Holly is credited with that.

[nolabear]

7. White socks and all, the guy in #4 is kinda hot.

And that is some awesome, uncomfortable looking furniture there too.

[laundry_queen]

8. I really love this style

and have been following it online for awhile now (didn't know it was a way of life though). I especially love the furniture and am redoing some of mine to make it look more retro. My dad says I only like the style because I didn't live through that era, LOL.

[femmocrat]

9. Didn't drinks come in bottles in the 1950s?

I can't tell if that is a beer or a soda.... but it would not have been in an aluminum can with a pop top.

[csziggy]

22. There were steel cans - you had to use the pointy end of a bottle opener

And make two holes - one to drink out of and the other to let air in. Take a look at this eBay listing:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/GRAB-BAG-vtg-old-tin-cans-Lot-of-9-Soda-cola-Flat-top-SHASTA-MISSION-BELFAST-etc-/141172655121?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20de8bc411

I also found images of twist top steel cans but I never saw one.

[Warpy]

26. My dad's Schlitz came in bottles at home

but he bought cans for cook outs and picnics. You needed a church key to open them. Cans got cold faster in a Kamp Kool.

In any case, Rockabilly didn't happen until the mid 50s and it didn't get rich enough to live like this until the early 60s when they got a little smarter about contracts, royalties, and who had control of the copyrights.

I'm glad the Trendies are doing this stuff. Having lived through it the first time, looking at the bare walls with only a photo or two of a kid on them and acres of square corners and plastic and chrome make my skin crawl.

The 50s are why we all turned to drugs in the 60s.

[MADem]

37. Returnable bottles were by far the most common delivery system.

You got them out of the soda machine, or you bought a case of 24 if your parents were rich or you were having a birthday party!

That looks like an aluminum can of Miller Lite beer (see bottom right of pic, below), but I can't be certain....

[Cleita]

41. Millers Lite came out in the early seventies.

I remember because I was a bartender then and the Miller's rep gave us a free case to try it out. I sold out the whole case during happy hour. I asked the rep to bring me five cases the next day and sold it all that day. I never saw a beer take off so quickly and with the girls, but it was in the seventies not before.

[MADem]

46. "Miller High Life" was "The Champagne of Bottled Beers."

I'm not suggesting the use of the can is accurate (it is not) but I do believe that woman in the first picture is drinking a Miller Lite. See this bit of ancient history for reference:

Note the stupid glasses they are using....

[Cleita]

47. Millers High Life has bee around since probably the century before last.

Millers Lite from the same company came out in the early seventies because it was the first beer that was lower in calories than regular beer.

[MADem]

50. The beer can in the first picture is an anachronism.

As is the "Magnavox" television shoved into the old-school cabinet in the second picture, the VCR on the shelf below the TV in the third picture, the hairstyle of the gent in the fourth picture (needs much, MUCH more grease--a little dab'l do ya), the absence of stockings on the woman in the fifth picture...and when one goes to the link, it's obvious these people are living a "lifestyle" where they pick-and-choose aspects of the era that they find pleasing. Full sleeve tattoos and multi-colored hair were not features of the time yet they are featured in the article's illustrations. They aren't going for absolute accuracy, they're playing dress up -- not much different than people who dress up as cartoon characters or Star Wars heroes...only these guys take it a bit further.

[Cleita]

52. It's disturbing when you had to live the real deal

especially when you know it wasn't all that great. Star Trek makes more sense because it never really happened. I have a problem with Civil War re-enacters too. Really, romanticizing one of the bloodiest periods of our history?

[MADem]

60. Think of it more as a social club around a shared interest--these guys aren't going to

get too deep on a sociological level.

I have a friend who plays in a Revolutionary War marching band--the whole fife and drum thing. Most of the players are more knowledgeable about the war than the average slob, but they're really more about putting on the costumes and strutting down the street.

These fifties fans are easy enough to avoid, in any event. You can see them coming a mile away...!

[progressoid]

51. I was served a beer in one of those glasses last week at a restaurant.

[MADem]

61. How very...European!

The Americans often go for the "frosty cold glass" or the mug, I've observed.

[jmowreader]

53. It wouldn't have been a Miller Lite, either

That came out in 1973. A real Rockabilly-era person would have chosen Miller High Life, Pabst Blue Ribbon, a good regional beer or maybe a Bud.

[notadmblnd]

68. I think thats a Miller Light and Miller Light didn't exist in the 50's

The first can I remember were of Carlings Black Lable Beer and you had to open it with a can opener.

[Cleita]

10. I was eleven then and I wouldn't want to go back.

I assume they don't eat the Campbell's soup casseroles. Food wasn't all that great, even if you were rich. Choices in the market were limited and seasonal. Mcdonalds was just one store then. Adults drank too much alcohol and cigarette smoke and butts were everywhere. There were some good things then and I'm sorry they have been lost, but I really like our computerized gadgets of today.

[Warpy]

29. I do miss lunch counters

Yes, the food was mostly dreck but it was a lot more varied than fast food is now. I miss good diners. Everything might have tasted like pot roast gravy but it was usually good pot roast gravy. I miss cafeterias, few are around now.

But yeah, rolling clouds of cigarette smoke were everywhere and butt cans were always overflowing. Ugh.

[Cleita]

30. One thing I do miss is we didn't have homeless then. We had poor people

but they had a place to live. Only hobos, who wanted to be homeless, were and they could always get a job and a room when they decided to turn their lives around. I do miss that.

[Warpy]

32. Same here. Even the winos in Boston

had rooms to live in when I moved there in 1969. Marginal workers like restaurant dishwashers had the same sort of digs, rooms in what had been townhouses 60 years earlier.

Now marginal workers live 10 to a room or in shelters, if they're lucky. The rooming houses have been yuppified and gentrified back into mansions where two adults and one rugrat rattle around like peas in a barrel while patting themselves on the back for "saving" the mansions, never thinking of the 30 or so people they put out onto the street.

I saw bums on the street back in the late 60s. I never saw homeless workers and certainly never homeless families. Someone was always there to whisk them off the street and into rooming houses where they could get back on their feet.

Then Reagan got in.

[MADem]

40. They locked a lot of those people up, involuntarily, in mental wards.

The burst of homelessness that happened in the Reagan era came on the heels of tossing mental patients out onto the streets, to no small extent.

1980s: THE PROBLEMS BECOME NATIONAL

Until the 1980s, most people in the United States were unaware that the deinstitutionalization of patients from state mental hospitals was going terribly wrong. Some were aware that homicides and other untoward things were happening in California, but such things were to be expected, because it was, after all, California. President Carter’s Commission on Mental Health issued its 1978 report and recommended doing more of the same things—more CMHCs, more prevention of mental illness, and more federal spending. The report gave no indication of a pending crisis. The majority of patients who had been discharged from state hospitals in the 1960s and 1970s had gone to their own homes, nursing homes, or board-and-care homes; they were, therefore, out of sight and out of mind.

In the 1980s, this all changed. Deinstitutionalization became, for the first time, a topic of national concern. The beginning of the discussion was heralded by a 1981 editorial in the New York Times that labeled deinstitutionalization “a cruel embarrassment, a reform gone terribly wrong.” Three years later, the paper added: “The policy that led to the release of most of the nation’s mentally ill patients from the hospital to the community is now widely regarded as a major failure.” During the following decade, there were increasing concerns publicly expressed about mentally ill individuals in nursing homes, board-and-care homes, and jails and prisons. There were also periodic headlines announcing additional high-profile homicides committed by individuals who were clearly psychotic. But the one issue that took center stage in the 1980s, and directed public attention to deinstitutionalization, was the problem of mentally ill homeless persons.

During the 1980s, an additional 40,000 beds in state mental hospitals were shut down. The patients being sent to community facilities were no longer those who were moderately well-functioning or elderly; rather, they included the more difficult, chronic patients from the hospitals’ back wards. These patients were often younger than patients previously discharged, less likely to respond to medication, and less likely to be aware of their need for medication. In 1988 the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) issued estimates of where patients with chronic mental illness were living. Approximately 120,000 were said to be still hospitalized; 381,000 were in nursing homes; between 175,000 and 300,000 were living in board-and-care homes; and between 125,000 and 300,000 were thought to be homeless. These broad estimates for those living in board-and-care homes and on the streets suggested that neither NIMH nor anyone else really knew how many there were....

[Cleita]

45. I've had this conversation here before and today those same homeless go to

jail in and out, also involuntarily. Wouldn't it be better for them to be in a hospital? Also, back then people just didn't get tossed into a snake pit mental ward. It took legal measures and family participation to put them there, guardianships, court orders and such. Our homeless today are families and people often with jobs who don't make enough to pay rent so it isn't just the mentally ill. Also, I remember when the VA in Los Angeles had to close the old soldier's home because of budget cuts during Reagan. All the old vets from WWII and Korea, who suffered from disabilities and PTSDs were thrown out in the street to fend for themselves.

[MADem]

48. You aren't going to hear any arguments from me.

I thought what Reagan did was reprehensible. He shredded the social safety net.

[Jetboy]

13. I don't want to tell others how to be happy, but it works for me.

I have zero tolerance for the crap they are shoveling us in 2014 so I live in the 1950s as well. I listen to the music and surround myself with the items of that era. Why? Because they make me very happy.

The years between World War II and the day Kennedy was shot were not perfect of course, but they had elements of joy rivaled only by the roaring '20s IMO.

I'm going to a fifties celebration next weekend. We'll swap obscure doo wop and rockabilly 45s at the record show during the day and take our best girls out dancing all night.

[Cleita]

14. So what do you think of the racism and misogyny of the era? n/t

[Jetboy]

16. What do you think of the racism and misogyny of THIS era? n/t

[Cleita]

18. Actually, we are doing something about it now instead of forcing women to

work at menial jobs for low pay and keeping them from even being able to work at the good paying jobs. We don't make brown people live on the other side of town or make their children go to different schools either today. Today we talk about it instead of pretending the injustices don't exist.

[Jetboy]

25. Of course no one was working hard for progress back then. eye roll n/t

[Cleita]

28. They weren't. That didn't happen until the sixties.

I know I was a teenager during the fifties and a young woman I the sixties. I have very clear memories of what things really were like. It wasn't "Happy Days". There were strong unions so there was a large working middle class, but it was no paradise, so to have all that nostalgia is misleading. It's not real.

[Jetboy]

31. That's a pretty big slap in the face to all of the civil rights workers from the 1950s.

I'm sure you'll want to take that back ASAP.

http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/timelines/a/50sCVTimeline.htm

[Cleita]

33. I never saw it until the sixties.

People just went their merry ways until it became know in the sixties. Up until then I went to high school with one black kid and a small group of Latinas of which I was part of the group. Needless to say we were ostracized by the entitled white kids. The first time I sat in a class room with African Americans was in college. Then the big underground hero was Jack Kerouac. Nope no one talked about civil rights, women's rights etc.. I was the only girl in my advanced math classes and the boys made fun of me. They couldn't see the point of it being I would never be allowed into engineering school or universities like Cal-Tech which were for men only.

Trust me no one talked about civil rights until the sixties. No one knew.

[Jetboy]

35. None of what you've said in this thread has anything to do with '50s fashion, music, cars, decor or

furnishings which is the point of the article. No one was defending the status quo of racial or gender inequities of the era let alone pining for it.

And there were plenty of good people who worked hard for a better and more fair America in the 1950s whether you saw it or not.

Let's get back to the topic which is people today enjoying the style of mid-century America. I happen to be one of those people and would be glad to answer any question relating to the topic (which once again is NOT about what was wrong with '50s America but rather about what was right.)

If you don't have any questions about the topic of this thread then please enjoy your evening.

[Cleita]

38. As a woman who had to wear fifties fashion, which was very

uncomfortable especially to work in, I still have to come back to the misogyny. In the fifties you were squeezed into girdles, pointy bras, sweaty stockings, high heeled shoes and expected to spend eight hours, in many jobs on your feet in them. Since your boss was a man, they set the dress code and that's what fashion was like. Sorry, but it's like being nostalgic about fashion and furniture in the ante-bellum south. Only a few people really had enjoyment from that life style.

[Jetboy]

58. Other people in this thead enjoy their mid century furniture.

Why don't you explain to them how that means they support 1950s racism and misogyny? It's just like being nostalgic for the ante-bellum south ya know!

It may be painful, but I would recommend you rock a poodle skirt, throw on some Little Richard and see if your feet don't get movin'. It's good for OOOH YOUR SOUL!!

You seem unhappy and it is scientifically impossible to be unhappy while listening to 'Tuttie Fruitti.'

[snooper2]

71. You are at least using dial up right?>

You really shouldn't be on the intertubes at all to stay true to yourself..

but if you have high speed (a meg or faster) you better shut that shit down!

[Egalitarian Thug]

62. Did you notice the lack of a girdles and hosiery?

It's a lot like the "deeply religious" people that ignore most of the dogma and dictates of their religion.

[kwassa]

43. I have a question. Why is it called "rockabilly" ?

Most of this retro 50s fashion has nothing to do with the music known as rockabilly. Is this just a current marketing tag?

I remember the first 50s retro craze. It was in the late 60s, resulting in the band Sha Na Na, which appeared at Woodstock, and also the tv show Happy Days.

I remember seeing furniture like this commanding high prices in retro shops on Melrose Avenue in LA in the late '80s, including that oval TV set seen in one of the pictures in the OP. It was cool stuff, but real rockabillys were from poor backgrounds and never owned things like this. I was a fan of the Stray Cats back then, too, speaking of earlier revivals.

I still have an Eddie Cochran album I bought in the early 70s.

[The Midway Rebel]

54. Good question. Its part marketing and part self described international subculture.

But you are correct about the original rockabillys, they were mostly poor rural Southerners. The term rockabilly was hurled as an insult by country music DJs and recording artists of the 1950s at the young white kids playing Black rhythm and blues music. That music and culture eventually morphed and was absorbed by American popular culture into what is now called rock n' roll.

All rockabilly is rock n' roll, but not all rock n' roll is rockabilly. The term "rockabilly" distinguishes the music and the style as it appeared in the 50s from what came after. Rockabilly/rock n' roll = Think Link Wray not Lincoln Park.


Guys like Chet Atkins and Frank Sinatra hated the new style. Music of the 1950s in America was jazz.

The current popular use of the term "rockabilly" arose with the revival of the style, which never really diminished in England, in the 1980s. Bands like the Stay Cats and the Rockats revived the style and infused it with punk rock energy and volume. Much of the culture emerged from the rockabilly music festivals in England in the 70s and 80s and migrated to Europe and the States. People were fanatical about the music style and that passion carries over into clothes, furniture cars, tattoos and what amounts to what some call a lifestyle. They don't say rockabilly rules for nothing. It always smolders in the background with shows, festivals, and touring band keeping the flame and occasionally it rears its head to gain the attention of the mainstream press and fashion industry.

This is rockabillys current "big thing" to crossover into the mainstream. He's been on Leno and Lettermen a few times.

[Jetboy]

57. Spot on especially regarding England's role in keeping it alive and also

on JD McPherson who I saw a couple of years back. He played a great show and also backed such legends as the Clovers and the Collins Kids.

I don't know whether or not Chet Atkins hated rock-n-roll but I do know that he played on Heartbreak Hotel and several Everly Brothers songs.

There are sure to be more artists getting into rockabilly for the simple reason of demand. Soon we won't be able to see Jerry Lee and Little Richard retired from performing last year so somebody will pick up the slack. California's scene has thrived for decades. It won't be the next big thing but it for sure ain't going away.

[Jetboy]

56. People go crazy for authentic 1950s items whether they are clothes, cars, furniture

or whatever. It doesn't really matter what real rockabillies like Eddie Cochran owned back then but rather what you are lucky enough to acquire today.

I work at an auction house so everything I own has been acquired on the cheap. It does suck to have to sell my coolest stuff to make ends meet though.

I love the fifties nostalgia from the late 60s and 70s. IMO Sha Na Na was the best band at Woodstock. Great live act in the early 70s.

Sha Na Na were bringing back the 50s just a few years after they were over! It's amazing how much music had changed in that short time. It was like they were bringing back ragtime it was so out of fashion.

One thing that was mentioned in the article is how the old items still work. My blender, coffee percolator, can opener, toaster and many other items I own are from the early 60s or earlier and they still work great. Rockabilly people are about the greenest around cuz the stuff doesn't get thrown away.

[Bluenorthwest]

70. In this era, you have rights I do not have. You promote public figures who oppose

my equality.
None so blind as those who will not see.
You have a great day!

[Cleita]

72. What public figures? I promote no one.

I do defend when the truth is not told and broad brush accusations are made from your hatred. If you want some real and public homophobic attacks from every political sector and every religion, you will love the fifties. I have a name if you want to look it up, Rock Hudson. It's true you would not have the rights you have today. I today don't have rights you do because I have pagan beliefs. Go see the attacks any of us get when we discuss what others like to accuse us of, magical thinking right here on DU.

[TwilightGardener]

15. Like being back in my Grandma's house--she had that chrome table!

Only her table and chairs were candy-apple red.

[MADem]

44. My grandma's house had VICTORIAN furniture....

We still have a lot of that stuff!

We did have a chrome dinette like the one in the picture, though--to include the crumbs under it, no doubt....it was the only "modern" piece of furniture in our home.

[postulater]

19. Retro? Hell, my kitchen is still from the fifties.

My refrigerator hangs on the wall horizontally above the counter like the rest of the cabinets. The stove is the original. The ovens we had to replace last year as they no longer make replacement coils for them.

We just call it old.

[grasswire]

20. so THAT's who is hoarding all the mid-century furniture!

Dealers can't keep enough of it in stock -- it flies off the shelf.

[cyberswede]

23. That mid-century modern furniture is too cool!

*jealous*

[NaturalHigh]

24. Interesting concept...

but I don't think I'll go there. I'm more into Kurt Cobain than Elvis Presley.

[MannyGoldstein]

27. I could finally listen to all Sleepy, all the time!

[jollyreaper2112]

34. I prefer psychobilly

Psychobilly is rockabilly with measures of punk and metal thrown in.

Creepshow, the Garden. Good stuff.

[liberal_at_heart]

36. I kind of like the style of clothes, furniture, and cars from back then but no way in hell

would I want to live like they did back then. How did all the women act happy all the time is what I want to know? No one can be happy all the time I don't care what decade you lived in. Alcohol maybe?

[Cleita]

39. Not alcohol maybe. Alcohol yes.

Every single one of my mothers friends and my own friends' mothers had that pitcher of martinis ready when their fathers came home from work and it was really more for them than the hubby. Cocktail parties were very popular too for the same reason. It gave them an excuse to be buzzed.

[Ken Burch]

49. A lot of them were on "uppers", too.

The "Mother's Little Helper" thing started in the Fifties, IIRC.

Having twelve cups of old-style coffee each morning helped, too.

[tammywammy]

42. I love midcentury modern styling.

I have a 50s dining table like the one pictured, but red chairs. Midcentury style sofa, chairs, etc. My house was built in the 50s and I have original kitchen cabinets, original bathtub & bathroom tile, etc. I'm just emphasizing the character of the house. Plus even if you don't have authentic midcentury furniture, there's enough new made in that style.

I do not have a 50s tv, but I have a midcentury style console that my flat screen sits on top of. I'd really like to get a midcentury style front door with the three little windows. I've found a place out of Austin that makes them, but they're pricey. I'll have to wait a while to get it.

[sweetloukillbot]

55. Agreed - I love Mid-Century design

My wife has a keen eye for mid-century design - although we tend more towards Mad Men (we were collecting before Mad Men though!) and space-age stuff - starburst clocks and the like. We've got a gorgeous hi-fi that unfortunately doesn't have a working turntable. It's a great looking piece and one day I'll haul it down to the repair shop. I have to say my Eames chair is the most comfortable thing I've ever sat in.

[defacto7]

59. How camp...

n/t

[Demo_Chris]

63. If they are having fun, good. They aren't hurting anyone. nt

[zabet]

66. I had my whole house done in this style.

But when my husband passed away, the house was too big and empty. I sent 3 tractor trailer loads of this style furniture to an auction house. It is evidently very popular because I got far far more out of it than I paid for it at the time I got it.
I had the identical chrome and aqua colored kitchen table and chairs shown above. Also a rare 9 foot teak Adrian Pearsall sofa with matching chairs...I kept 1 of the chairs and the old record cabinet (still have LPs) and a few misc items.
The auctioneer later told me that when he advertised all I had with photos.....he had many people trying to buy my items before sell day. He also said other than rare coin sales, my sale had drawn one of the biggest and most competitive crowds of buyers he has ever had.
My items sold for so much, I actually called when I received my check in the mail.......because I thought they had added an extra couple of zeros on the amount.
I accumulated my midcentury modern furnishings when I was in the antique business. Lots of it out there for very very reasonable prices if you know the right places. On site estate auctions are good, small town auction houses and yard sales are great places to get 50's items cheap. You won't get buys in larger urban areas and I always shot for estate sales where the people had lived for years and years and years in the same house. My 9 foot sofa which sold for $2300.....I purchased at an estate sale....it was in a shed/barn wrapped in plastic with original barkcloth....I bought it for $50.

[Raine]

67. I really love that style! nt

[Kingofalldems]

69. I like that kitchen table and chairs.