Sunday Morning Vault: Ed Byrnes & Connie Stevens--Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb) (1959)

     As most parents who have had children who have gone through adolescence and are in adulthood, we have already attempted to explain (at least once) about some pop culture event that occurred when we were children. In today's IMAX world, it's almost impossible to explain adequately the awe and wonder of the time we watched Neil Armstrong take that first step on to the lunar surface. So if that's difficult....try explaining why one would wear platform shoes and bell bottom jeans, or that gas in 1977 was less than 80 cents a gallon....or that we (at least in St. Louis) had 6 TV stations and that our remote control consisted of my Dad say, "Get up and the turn the channel to....".
     I guess I'm mentioning all of this to attempt to explain this song. Ed Byrnes was an actor who played in the ABC series, "77 Sunset Strip". On the pilot episode he played a continual hair combing serial killer. The end of the show has him being arrested and sent off to prison to be executed. However, there was huge feedback about the character and, sensing how popular he was, ABC brought him back the next episode. "Kookie" was a character that many could identify with: windbreaker jacket, hair greased up and piled high on his head, and a language that was a cross between Jack Kerouac and James Dean (...think Fonzie from "Happy Days"). He became one of the first TV teen idols.
     The show ran from 1958-1964, and this duet with Connie Stevens was recorded early-on in the "Kookie" phenomenon. It reached #4 on the Billboard singles chart in late spring of 1959...