In the spring of 1948, my father, who had starred in football and basketball at what's now Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, graduated. His Ouachita education had been interrupted by two years of service during World War II as a bombardier on a B-17, but he had decided as a freshman that he wanted to coach and teach following graduation. He had grown up poor at Benton during the Great Depression and viewed work in the public schools as a solid source of income.
During the summer, he was offered the job as head coach of several sports at Newport High School. My father had never lived in east Arkansas, but my mother had been raised downstream along the White River at Des Arc and was anxious to return to the area. Newport was a hopping place, known for its ardent football fans and lively social scene. The Ben Franklin five-and-dime store downtown was run by a fellow named Sam Walton, who would leave for Bentonville only because he lost his lease.
In a well-researched book titled We Wanna Boogie: The Rockabilly Roots of Sonny Burgess and the Pacers, Marvin Schwartz writes knowingly of that time and place.
"On the western edge of Jackson County, the White and Black River converge, forming the main channel that flows past Newport," Schwartz writes. "Here, surface eddies hide the deeper current of the widening river, and the navigable channel is bordered by sandy shoals and shallow wetlands. Here, as well, the river is more prone to flooding than in the upstream hills. For a river must now and again overflow its banks, or it becomes predictable and tame, drained of its vitality and spark, no more than an irrigation channel, no longer a living force of nature. And similar to the people who live along its banks, whose history is defined as much by truth as by legend, as much by fact as by self-promotion, the river must be allowed its breadth and scope, its inherent need for expansion."
Schwartz, who describes himself as a "New York native and an Arkansan by choice," understands this state's history and culture better than most native Arkansans. We Wanna Boogie focuses on Sonny Burgess and the Pacers, members of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame who recorded on the Sun label out of Memphis in the 1950s while performing on the road with the likes of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Rockabilly pioneer Ronnie Hawkins, who was born in 1935 at Huntsville, once said: "When Sonny Burgess skipped across the stage, everyone rocked. They played some of that great old-time rock and roll. Sonny Burgess was one of the best rock and roll entertainers in the South in all the 1950s."
We Wanna Boogie is about more than music. Schwartz deftly describes the changes beginning to roil the Arkansas Delta during the postwar years as the widespread mechanization of agriculture caused counties across east Arkansas to lose population. Jackson County had a population of 26,426 in the 1940 census. By the 2010 census, the population had decreased to 17,997. World War II had brought hundreds of people to Newport as the federal government spent $13 million building the Newport Air Field. Even though the base closed and was deeded to the city in 1947, Newport was still doing well economically when my parents lived there in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
"While other towns in the Arkansas Delta were failing and people were moving away, Newport celebrated its good fortune," Schwartz writes. "Its displays of power and privilege were similar to Hot Springs' in the 1920s when that central Arkansas resort town was favored by gamblers and gangsters from New York. But unlike Hot Springs, where Al Capone and Babe Ruth took their baths, Newport offered no natural springs of hot water to restore the corporeal frames of the debauched and indulgent. When the celebrations ended, the river town provided no such cleansing baptism to purify the soul or a compromised liver, and Newport's gamblers and entertainers took their pleasures elsewhere. Newport's high-water marks, its clandestine betting rooms and boisterous nightclubs, have become the detritus of bygone days."
The original Silver Moon at Newport burned in 1987. The King of Clubs at Swifton burned in 2010. The memories, however, remain. My father, who died in 2011 at age 86, delighted in telling stories of how hard he worked to keep his teenage athletes out of the area's famous roadhouses. Gov. Mike Beebe, who was born at tiny Amagon in Jackson County and graduated from high school at Newport, writes in his foreword to the book: "The spectrum of musical talent that came through northeast Arkansas is still difficult to fully fathom. You had larger-than-life personalities like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. You had Al Bruno, who moved to Newport so he could play guitar with Conway Twitty and went on to have a legendary musical career. And then you had Sonny Burgess and the Pacers. They took the sound they helped craft--and have continued to use to capture the spirit of the time--to generation after generation, decade after decade."
The Silver Moon was the largest club in Arkansas with a seating capacity of 800. It wasn't just the Sun Records stars that graced its stages. Bob Wills, Louis Armstrong and the Dorsey brothers all performed there. Rockabilly and rock 'n' roll might not have been born at Newport, but this place along the White River certainly nurtured those musical genres. In We Wanna Boogie, Schwartz finally gives this fascinating piece of Arkansas history its due.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas' Independent Colleges and Universities. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 10/22/2014