Fancy and Free

 

14 year old Jean Rayner surrounded by young aspiring Teddy Boys on a bombsite, January 1955

Prologue:

The war is over

We don’t want

no trouble

Just wish to be fancy

and free

Bring on the bluebottles

I would dance

with any one.

We don’t want 

no trouble

You know where to find us

We’re as common as

milkweed thistle,

slick

As a cat’s whisker.

Fancy and Free

Buzz cut – Judy

What a beauty is she

All sass and frizz

And rolled up dungaree

Me,

I couldn’t stand

To part with my pride

Those wide jawed shears

 frankly denied

 their fulsome due.

So it's flaxen guard hairs

Sporting the dome

And black suede creepers

Jukin’ the beat

Saying no

To oleo

And to hell with

Monsieur Hippolyte

And his hoity  breed!

--As if you could bottle

The sun

Or can songs

That run sap deep--

Please watch Digging My Potatoes:

Skiffle bands, a precursor to rock and roll

A relatively obscure genre, skiffle might have been largely forgotten if not for its revival in the United Kingdom in the 1950s and the success of its main proponent, Lonnie Donegan. British skiffle grew out of the developing post-war British jazz scene. They played a variety of American folk and blues songs, particularly those derived from the recordings of Lead Belly, in a lively style that emulated American jug bands.

It has been estimated that in the late 1950s, there were 30,000–50,000 skiffle groups in Britain. A large number of British musicians began their careers playing skiffle in this period, and some became leading figures in their respective fields. These included leading Northern Irish musician Van Morrison and British blues pioneer Alexis Korner, as well as Ronnie Wood, Alex Harvey and Mick Jagger; folk musicians Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Ashley Hutchings; rock musicians Roger Daltrey, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Robin Trower and David Gilmour; and popular beat-music successes Graham Nash and Allan Clarke of The Hollies. Most notably, The Beatles evolved from John Lennon's skiffle group The Quarrymen.

(Wikipedia)

Susie Clevenger at Real Toads invites us to write a poem inspired by the Teddy Girls.

Teddy girls (also known as Judies) wore drape jackets, pencil skirts, hobble skirts, long plaits, rolled-up jeans, flat shoes, tailored jackets with velvet collars, straw boater hats, cameo brooches, espadrilles, coolie hats and long, elegant clutch bags.

They were young working-class women, often from Irish immigrant families who had settled in the poorer districts of London — Walthamstow, Poplar and North Kensington. They would typically leave school at the age of 14 or 15, and work in factories or offices. Teddy Girls spent much of their free time buying or making their trademark clothes. It was a head-turning style parodying the Edwardian era.

It was through this girl culture that the Teddy Girls expressed their new found financial independence and their disdain for postwar austerity.

At the time they were overshadowed by male counterparts known as the Teddy Boys who gained notoriety for some isolated violent clashes with rival gangs.

The Teddy Girls could have easily slid into obscurity had they not been immortalized by Ken Russell.  In 1955 Ken Russell was introduced to a Teddy Girl, Josie Buchan, she in turn introduced Russell to some of her friends. Russell photographed them, and also photographed another group of Teddy Girls near his home in Notting Hill. In June 1955 the photos were published in Picture Post magazine.

 His series, The Last of the Teddy Girls, featuring the striking 14-year-old Jean Rayner, is one of the first instances of British youth cultural exposure. Russell photographed teenagers doing the syncopated hand jive in the packed Cat's Whiskers coffee Bar in London's Soho: "There was no space to do anything else so they danced with their hands," he explained. "I used to join in – it was something anyone could do."

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/nov/28/ken-russell-photography

Bluebottle 

UK, an archaic derogatory term for policeman that may have derived from Cockney rhyming slang and from the action of police when responding to a serious incident, as "swarming like Bluebottles", or blowflies. ("Bottle" is an abbreviation of "bottle and glass", which is rhyming slang for "arse", as in the phrase; "lost your bottle", for having lost one's nerve).

Oleo

Emperor Napoleon III of France offered a prize to anyone who could make a satisfactory alternative for butter, suitable for use by the armed forces and the lower classes. French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès invented a substance he called oleomargarine, the name of which became shortened to the trade name "margarine".

Guard hair

 Fiber goats such as cashmere and angora are valued for their fine downy winter undercoat.. This undercoat grows as the day length shortens and is associated with an outer coat of coarse hair, which is present all the year and is called guard hair. Most common goat breeds, including dairy goats, grow this two-coated fleece.

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