JERSEY CITY BANS ROCK’N’ROLL
Bernard J. Berry [1902-1963] was Mayor of Jersey City from 1953-1957.
The year was 1956. Roosevelt Stadium at Droyer’s Point in Jersey City was a minor-league baseball park open since 1937. It was torn down in 1985 to make room for the Society Hill housing development. Before that, it hosted hundreds of great rock concerts by the likes of Alice Cooper, Rod Stewart, J. Geils Band, Kinks, Santana, Joe Cocker, Allman Brothers, ELP, Eagles, Yes, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Doobies, Kiss, Bob Seger and dozens more. On July 9, 1956, Bill Haley & The Comets were scheduled. They had placed nine songs in the Top 20 in 18 months. Yet promoter Paul Whiteman, under tremendous pressure, was forced to save the show by announcing to the expected 24,000+ that it would be an “all-listening/no-dancing program.” A local newspaper, The Jersey Journal, reported that “rock’n’roll hasn’t had a happy history in Hudson County. Several months ago, a rock’n’roll show at a Journal Square theater was called off because authorities feared the youngsters attending might commit several kinds of mayhem afterwards.”
Then came, three days before the Bill Haley show, the infamous press conference by Jersey City Mayor Bernie Berry and Commissioner Larry Whipple, that they were withdrawing permission to use the municipally-owned venue: “we want to avoid the riots reported to have resulted from rock’n’roll sessions in other communities.”
Jersey City wasn’t alone. Rock’n’roll concerts at the time were also banned in DC, Boston, Baltimore, Hartford, Atlanta, Houston, Newark, Burbank, San Antonio and Cleveland (where the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame was erected 40 years later). Promoter Whiteman was incensed. He blamed “intolerant parents,” going on to say, “the older folks look on anything new in music or dancing with skepticism…Look back when the Charleston was first performed. Or jazz. Anyone who enjoyed jazz was doing wrong? Now jazz is recognized as THE American music.” Even Duke Ellington weighed in on the matter, saying, “…as for producing any excessive sexual excitement, rock’n’roll is no more guilty than a lively country dance. The most sensual music is the waltz. I think Strauss wrote some of the sexiest music there is.”
Listen to the clip below. The intervening years have only made their comments—made in the pursuit of morality—rather hilarious. We discovered it on a boxed set put out by Rhino Records in 1999, Loud, Fast & Out Of Control: The Wild Sounds of ‘50s Rock.
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