Readers will likely remember my last column that had a short review of Buster Brown Shoes. Ordinarily I have tried to avoid continuing a topic into my very next column, but several folks wondered about some of the names of styles of shoes that I mentioned at the end so…

Yes, I had a pair of white bucks that at the time had taken some fast talking to convince my parents that I needed — you know, keeping up with the Joneses syndrome or trying to be with the “in” group or trying to be “with it.” It turns out that the white bucks were a bit of a pain in that it meant that I also had to have a little hard-packed bag with a white chalky substance which I used to dab on the shoes releasing the powder to cover dirt spots. My white bucks had the requisite red rubber soles and heels rather than the more conservative black rubber soles and heels. The little chalk-powder bag also meant having a pocket of my pants reserved for its storage and reaching in that pocket meant having the white chalk on my hands, which then had to be wiped or washed off. Heaven forbid that I would wipe the white chalk on my blue Levi’s — this was before the bleached, pre-washed, hole-ridden Levi’s were in vogue where the white chalk probably wouldn’t have been noticed.

White buck shoes invariably brings to mind pop singer Pat Boone (born: Charles Eugene Boone). He was quite famous in the 1950s. In the late 1950s the Billboard magazine — a media magazine that covered the music industry — had 38 hits listed in the top 40 hits during those years. He was, for a while, second only to Elvis Presley and ahead of Ricky Nelson and The Platters. He also appeared in at least 18 Hollywood films, notably “April Love.” In the listing for top performers from 1955-1995, Boone was ranked as No. 9 of the top 100. He has sold over 45 million records.

Boone also hosted 115 episodes of “The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom” on television (1957-1950). Besides being a singer, he is a composer, actor, writer, motivational speaker and spokesman. One final trivia note: He claims to be a direct lineage descendant of Daniel Boone.

jtr

Elvis Presley is also famous for some footwear, namely blue suede shoes. And yes, I had a pair of those as well. Mine were the dark blue kind that didn’t have the problem of white bucks in that they didn’t show up the dirt scuffing. However, when wearing my blue suedes, I also carried a small stiff brush that was used to brush the suede that did show some scuffing now and then. The soles of my blue suedes were leather, making the shoe less comfortable than the bucks, but also letting them be worn for some of those slower dances where rubber soles would impede gliding on the floor. (Personal note: I have never been great at dancing of any kind, but I went to a few during my college years. However, at the time, sock hops were more popular than the waxed-ballroom-floor-type dancing.)

“Blue Suede Shoes” was written by Carl Perkins in 1955. Supposedly Johnny Cash had asked Perkins to write about blue suede shoes as a fellow military man with whom Cash served had called his military airman’s shoes, “blue suede shoes.” At first nothing came of that, but when Perkins was playing a dance, he heard a dancer warn those around him not to step on his suede shoes. Perkins worked on the song hoping to fit it in with a nursery rhyme like, “Little Jack Horner” or “Itsy, bitsy spider.” Thus the phrase in the song, “One for the money, two for the show, …” that was sometimes used informally to start a race. (Also the ditty: One to make ready; two to prepare; good luck to the rider; and away goes the mare.) Perkins had gone to bed, but when the inspiration hit, he got up, grabbed his guitar, and quickly wrote the words down on a brown paper bag, spelling suede: Swade. One more bit of trivia about Elvis who recorded the song after Perkins’s recording: The B side of the Elvis record was, “Tutti, Frutti.” Now I hope some of the readers of this column will go through the day singing bits of either “Blue Suede Shoes” or “Tutti, Frutti.”

jtr

Of the other shoes I mentioned in the last column, Brothel Creepers were asked mentioned. Sorry I don’t know an official derivation of the name and will leave that up to your imagination, but the Creeper part may have come because these shoes were distinguished by having crepe soles and heels and at least some had tops of suede and even blue suede.

Oxfords generally referred to shoes where the eyelets were under the vamp whereas Derbys had the eyelets above the vamp. Brogues are generally low heeled shoes and the tops had perforations (brogues) such as the wing tips that were considered to be more formal type shoe wear. Loafers were generally shoes that had no shoestrings and had an extra piece of leather across the top that had some space into which a coin would fit securely, thus sometimes called penny loafers. Some claim in the days when public phones used just a nickel or dime, the loafer might yield that nickel or dime to make an emergency call — though I don’t ever remember seeing a nickel coin in a loafer. And finally for this treatise, there was the clodhopper — a very sturdy work shoe that also was known for making clunky noises on the floor. Yes I had a pair of clodhoppers. Sometimes a clodhopper referred in a derogatory fashion to an unsophisticated person in manner and dress from the boondocks. And that is enough about shoes.

Until next time: Oh, Fiddlesticks!