Go, Johnny, Go!

This is the quintessential 50's rock and roll movie. With about 20 songs from performers such as Jimmy Clanton (the lead), Chuck Berry, Eddy Cochran, Jackie Wilson, Ritchie Valens and The Cadillacs and more, if you like 50's rock, then you will like the music in this one. This is definitely not a movie for plot or acting, but instead just plain musical fun.

Some of the best performances are Jump Children by the Flamingos and Please Mr. Johnson by the Cadillacs. Also, the rare clip of the legendary Ritchie Valens makes this movie well worthwhile. It's too bad he didn't perform one of his hits like Donna, La Bamba or Come On Let's Go, but instead wailed with Ooh, My Head! A lot of this movie is very campy and adds to its charm. Because of this and especially because of the music I'd rate this a 7+ on a scale of 10. Jimmy Clanton was a good choice for the lead. His voice and mannerisms bring back memories of a much more innocent era.

In what was to be his last movie, legendary 50s DJ Alan Freed(1921-1965), playing..er..legendary 50s DJ Alan Freed, once again presents a host of early rock and roll stars,hung together with a threadbare perfunctory plot(just as in "Rock Rock Rock","Rock around the clock" and "Don't knock the rock"). Shot at the Hal Roach studio in Culver City, Los Angeles (where Laurel and Hardy once romped)in January 1959,"Go Johnny go" is one of the most interesting and enjoyable of the early rock films. Chuck Berry features, not just as a performer but an actor as well, he's seen hanging out with Freed,accompanying him, it appears, wherever he goes! As was usual in Freed's cheap and cheerful films, the rock and roll stars on display are some of the best.The movie has the only big screen performance of Richie Valens,who died very shortly after he filmed this appearance,in the notorious 1959 plane crash,which also claimed Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. Another tragic rocker here is Eddie Cochran, a car accident victim about a year and a half after he made the film. The story, such as it is, concerns Freed's desire to make a star out of a talented nobody-this means we get a lot of crooning from lanky teen idol Jimmy Clanton, playing the aforesaid nobody(the "Johnny" of the title). I can never make up my mind about Clanton; he was competent actor,though he is certainly surrounded by his betters as performers in the line up here.

Look out for scene with Alan Freed jamming on drums along with Chuck Berry and his group on the marvelous "Little Queenie", Freed looks like he's having a ball. Sadly the good times were not to roll much longer for Freed as personal and career problems mounted. He became embroiled in the payola scandal, and was pursued relentlessly by the tax man.Dropped from his TV and radio shows, moving to the west coast to get work, his drinking was turning him into a serious and sick alcoholic, he died broke,killed by Uraemia in 1965.

Performers(alphabetical)- Chuck Berry-"Go Johnny go","Little Queenie" "Memphis Tennessee" The Cadillacs-"Jaywalker","Please Mr Johnson"(They may have been the poor man's Coasters,but they're great here,acting out their song stories on the stage in a club). Jo-Ann Campbell-"Momma can I go out?" Jimmy Clanton-"Angel face","It takes a long time","My love is true","Ship on a stormy sea" Eddie Cochran-"Teenage Heaven"(watch Eddie dance with his guitar!) The Flamingos-"Jump children"(a performance of breathtaking exuberance) Harvey Fuqua-"Don't be afraid to love me" Sandy Stewart-"Heavenly father","Playmate"(the last one a perky piece performed in a recording studio) Sandy Stewart/Jimmy Clanton-"Once again" Richie Valens-"Ooh my head""(performed for Freed and his pals and a tiny group of teens) Jackie Wilson-"You'd better know it"(Wilson,a reliable showstopper as always-and one of the coolest rockers ever.If you've seen stills or clips of Jackie performing in front of a silly coffee pot with a face backdrop,this is where it's from!)

For the folks my age who are into the nostalgic era of the first days of rock and roll Go Johnny Go. All the acts involved in this film got to do their stuff with hardly a plot to get in the way.

What plot there is involves Alan Freed doing a very good job of playing himself, disc jockey king of rock and roll. Freed puts himself out on a limb saying he will find a singer he will rename and manage. The name Freed picks out for his ersatz Elvis is Johnny Melody. This plot so reminded me of that classic Brady Bunch episode where Greg Brady is picked to be the new Johnny Bravo. Here though it's not just because Jimmy Clanton is the right fit for his stage costume.

Enter young Mr. Clanton who gets fired in his job as a theater usher for getting into the rock and roll jamboree show a little too much. It was on that night that he hears Alan Freed's boast to find a new singing star to be renamed Johnny Melody. In fact Freed is having some trouble making this idea from press agent Herb Vigran turn into reality.

Chuck Berry besides Clanton and Sandy Stewart is the only performer to have more than just a song in the film. He plays Freed's alter ego and very smoothly I might add. His is the best acted role in the film.

And of course Go Johnny Go has the appearance of a pair of soon to be legends. Ritchie Valens never saw his spot in this film, dying in that famous plane crash four months before this film was released. Eddie Cochran died a year after that in a car crash.

The music is fine although personally my taste goes back a decade or two in popular music. There's one person I know that loves this sort of stuff, he lives for the nostalgia concerts featuring the performances of the artists of this era. So to my former work colleague Myron Eskenazi this film and its review is dedicated to you.

No need to recap the wispy plot. Many of the names may be familiar from R&R's early period—Berry, Cochran Valens, Wilson— but their stylings are not. Looks to me as though the sounds were toned down to suit a white middle-class audience, whose adults tended to identify hard core R&R with juvenile delinquency. That's particularly the case with Chuck Berry who could do a driving beat with the best of them. Not here however. The producers have even added white bread Jimmy Clanton to headline, even though his crooning style better suits pre-R&R. The movie is clearly a commercial product, running a bit scared of the raucous style it's gently alluding to. For a much less compromised glimpse of those early years, catch The Girl Can't Help It (1956).

More Hollywood hooey sweetening the Rock n' Roll pie with honey drippings and vanilla leads to make all this "race record stuff" easy to swallow. Jimmy Clanton was better than Bobby Rydell, Fabian, and Frankie Avalon that didn't have a voice between them. But Clanton was by no means and equal to the talent that he was heading in this movie.

"I don't dig it, but I like it", says the old fogie and that just about sums it up for most of these types of white bread movies that were at least kind enough to put the real rockers and black singers in support. Hollywood never did get it and neither did anyone over 30 in the 50's.

That said, we do have these films to thank for a visual reference and time-capsule that otherwise would not exist. Thanx Alan Freed who is credited as one of the very first disc-jockeys to play real Rock n" Roll on his radio show "Moondawg", no matter their racial pedigree. That's the reason the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland (the home of Freed's station).

There is an attempt to overshadow the real stuff with a silly choir boy story and many songs that were at best mediocre Teeny-Bopper Pop, but the real stars are gleaming and cannot be covered by any of this pandering propaganda. We get in limited supply...Chuck Berry, Jackie Wilson, The Flamingos, The Cadillacs, Richie Valens, Eddie Cochran, and some others that are at least palatable.

But it shows its prejudice and the mainstreams preoccupation with suppressing this stuff, when the choir director says about RnR..."lets hope it is just a fad and will be gone by the time you grow up"...and then in the next few minutes dismisses him from the choir for singing a Pop tune while accompanied on the church organ. Most of his generation really thought that this was the Devil's music.