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Do You Wanna Dance?1996 Oil on linen 52.0" x 70.0" Private collection This painting is about my teenage years in the 1950's - cars, 78's & 45's, soda fountain jukeboxes, the radio, and my friends. In 1953, my mother drove me to Waco, Texas, to a record store, where the 78's I wanted to buy were in the "Race Music" section: Big Joe Turner, Ruth Brown, The Clovers, Lavern Baker. I played those records until the holes in the middle became irregular and they sounded slightly warped, and then I playing them some more. My parents would take all the furniture, except the record player, out of the living room, and my friends and I would dance for hours. We traded records and wrote in autograph books and really were "bobby-soxers". We listened late at night to WLAC from Nashville and drove all over town listening to AM stations from Dallas and Fort Worth. We learned to do the Bop and the Jitterbug. In 1956 my Mother took six little girls to see Elvis at the Heart of Texas Coliseum in Waco. We screamed and yelled and went nuts. Mother says to this day she's never laughed so hard. I saw Sonny Boy Williamson and Jimmy Reed on New Years Eve of 1959. I'm still a music addict and go see live music whenever possible. I made a cassette tape of 50's music to go along with this painting. |