We're all about the history of rock & roll at BoomtownAmerica.com!

Every week, we present “ROCK REMEMBERED,” a deep dive into the hidden history of rock & roll, the stories behind the artists and songs that changed the world. Join host, “Boomtown Bill” Cross each Wednesday at 7 pm (Eastern) with an encore broadcast on Saturday at noon (Eastern).

Join us today as we conclude the long, strange trip that was "The True Story of Fleetwod Mac - Part 2!"

Those who subscribe to the “celebrity deaths happen in 3’s” can exhale. Following the sad news of the passing of Shelly Fabares and Dolly Parton, we can now add Tim Curry, who has passed away at the age of 80.

Curry is, of course, best known for originating the role of Dr. Frank N. Furter in both the stage and movie versions of The Rocky Horror Show. He was also well-known for playing the evil clown in Stephen King’s It and many other roles through a long, successful acting career. He was nominated for a Tony Award on three separate occasions, including his final role on Broadway, playing King Arthur in the Monty Python musical, Spamalot.

Curry was less well-known for his recording career, although he did release three albums.

We mourn the loss of all three of these gifted performers and hope that’s the last bad news we have to report for a while.

As we grow older, all of us experience some problems with memory. Don’t panic. It’s perfectly normal. We prefer to think that the data center we call our brains simply has so much more data to store than it did when we were in our twenties or thirties, that naturally, it takes a bit more time and effort to sort through all that stuff to find what we need.

One of the most common ways this manifests itself is when you get up to fetch some object or perform some task, arrive at what you know was your destination, but forget why you went there. Again, don’t panic. This happens to all of us. The cause is what memory experts call “the doorway effect.” In simple terms, when we walk into a new environment, our brains do something like a reboot, taking in all the new sights and sounds around us. That can cause us to temporarily forget what purpose we had in mind when we started out.

There are a couple of solutions to this problem, experts say. One is to keep repeating the task as you get up and move into a new room or location. The second is to return to the room or location you were in when you decided you needed to go someplace else. When you get there try to retrace as many of the thoughts and actions you had before you went on the move.

Most of all, try to relax. Stressing will only make it harder to remember.

With all of the CSI-style forensic cop shows on TV, it may be hard to remember that network television was once ruled by cowboys and two-fisted private eyes.

One of the first of the shamuses was Richard Diamond, Private Detective.

The show was one of the first on TV because it had been a long-running, successful radio series. The radio show was created by Blake Edwards, who was later to create TV detective Peter Gunn as well as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau of Pink Panther film fame.

 Diamond had been played on radio by Dick Powell, but when it made the jump to CBS television, Powell stepped behind the camera as Executive Producer. In his place a young David Janssen was cast, beginning what was a very long career as a television star (The Fugitive, O’Hara, U.S. Treasury, Harry O, etc.). 

One of the best remembered elements of the show was Diamond’s answering service. The woman who took his messages was only identified as “Sam” and we only saw close-ups of her mouth and most often, shots of her very attractive legs.

Supplying the voice and the gams was none other than Mary Tyler Moore who was just billing herself as Mary Moore in those days.

The first two seasons saw Diamond as a hard-boiled Manhattan detective in the Dashiell Hammett/Mickey Spillane tradition. However, for the 3^rd season (perhaps reflecting the sudden success of a new private eye series 77 Sunset Strip) Diamond moved out to Los Angeles and traded his shabby N.Y. office for an elegant bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills.

For its fourth and final season, the show jumped to NBC and the Hollywood glamour elements were toned down.

While the show was initially very successful in syndication, the fact that all four seasons were shot in black and white eventually led to its disappearance from the Vast Wasteland.

Two of the shows 77 episodes have since slipped into public domain. They can be found on many “dollar bin” collections of old TV shows, but the rest of the series has never been officially released on home video.

The Origin of the Jitterbug

Like a great deal of American popular culture of the 20^th Century, the jitterbug has its origins in black culture.

While the dance is quite frequently associated with the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, it actually got its start in the 1930’s. While the exact origins of the dance are lost to time, it’s believed to have evolved from the looser style of dancing that had begun in the Roaring 20’s.

The term “jitterbug” originally meant someone who had consumed too much alcohol. Gradually it came to mean someone who was a fan of swing music. Finally, it came to be associated with the style of dancing that was taking place at swing clubs.

The earliest reference to it in song is from a 1934 - Cab Calloway's tune, “Call of the Jitterbug.” Some also know that a song called “The Jitterbug” was written for the 1939 classic film Wizard of Oz. The song was recorded and shot, but was cut from the final film (although you still hear the Wicked Witch mention “a little bug she’s sent” ahead of the Flying Monkeys to take the fight out of Dorothy and her companions.) The footage has been lost to time, but a recording of the song still exists.

World War II help spread both American swing music and the jitterbug all over the globe.

It was still going strong when rock ‘n’ roll arrived on the scene in the mid-1950’s. It was easily adapted to the strong, fast beat of early rock hits and remained the teenager’s dance of choice until a little something called “The Twist” arrived on the scene in 1960.

But more about that later.