Oh, where, oh, where can my baby be?
The Lord took her away from me She’s gone to heaven, so I got to be good. So, I can see my baby when I leave this world.
Last Kiss, Wayne Cochran
Marty McFly went back in time 30 years. If we were to go back 30 years today, we would arrive on the day my nephew was born: October 3, the date of this issue of the LON. If we went back another 30 years, we’d arrive on my old friend Jane’s birthday.
Our DeLorean is ready to go, but we won’t need 1.21 gigawatts of electricity. This time machine is powered by music.
We’ll let the machine pick the tune, and the tune will take us away.
Oh, I recognize this song! It’s “Last Kiss” as recorded by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers, and it’s a 45 playing on a phonograph about the size of a hatbox. And that’s mini-me in blue pajamas watching the black 45 spin on the phonograph. It’s my first single.
There are probably thousands of songs that use that “C-Am-F-G” chord progression in C major like Last Kiss, including “Stand by Me,” “In the Still of the Night” and “Lollipop” (I used to sing a version of Lollipop I made up called “Whineypot” to my son when he was acting surly; he hated it. It went like this: “Whineypot, whineypot, oh whiney, whiney pot, whiney pot.”) According to a VH1. In a recent article, Thomaston native Wayne Cochran says “Last Kiss” was inspired by a deadly crash that occurred on a treacherous stretch of Highway 341, which connects the Georgia towns of Culloden and Barnesville.
I’d wager the most dangerous section of that road in those days was its intersection with Georgia Hwy. 74 just outside of Culloden.
I know the road well. The first event I covered as a newspaper reporter was the now-defunct Culloden Highland Games, which took place in 1998.
Later, I attended a GDOT meeting in Culloden, where installing a roundabout to replace the inadequate and dangerous stop sign at the intersection was discussed. Long story short, it’s a roundabout now, and it’s a lot safer.
But the roundabout was installed many years too late to save 16-year-old Jennie Clark, who was killed in the crash that inspired “Last Kiss.”
Cochran says he heard about the tragedy from Jennie’s sister, Melinda Clark, who was the best friend of Cochran’s girlfriend.
According to H.G. Wells, who knew something about time machines, “if you rotate to the west you gain yesterdays, to the east you accumulate tomorrows.”
So, let’s rotate to the east just a smidgeon.
About a year after “Last Kiss” peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard charts, Jane was born.
I met her about 25 years later, and when I did, it was head over boots in love, baby, as singer John Pardi puts it. I was seriously afflicted.
One summer, Jane starred in a one-act play written by Sam Shepard called “Cowboy Mouth” at DeKalb College. She played Cavale opposite an art student who played Slim. Her performance was breathtaking.
At the play’s denouement, Slim starts strumming the old C-Am-F-G chord progression, and Cavale begins to recite a soliloquy about French poet Gerard de Nerval: He walked through the Boulevard Noir inhuman like a triangle. He had a pet lobster on a pink ribbon. He told them his dreams, his visions, all the great secrets to the end of the world. And he hung himself on my birthday.
The words and music hit me hard that evening.
That fall, some of us decided to go camping on Jane’s birthday. She failed to negotiate a curve properly and drove off a mountain road with her sister in the car. A pair of trees saved the vehicle from tumbling 3,000 feet down the mountain, and tragedy was averted. If you had seen those trees, you’d consider it a miracle as I do.
Two months later, we went camping again on MY birthday, and I introduced Jane’s sister to my best friend, Rick Clark.
It was love at first sight, and they got married a year or so later. Her name is now Jennie Clark.
With that revealed, it’s time to head back to the futur,e where we’ll find Rick and Jennie and their eight kids.
But we won’t see Jane. Death has confined her to the past. But we can still strum C-Am-F-G in 4/4 time.
Selah.