Fact #54843
When:
Short story:
Bobby Lowell, widely regarded as Nebraska's first rock'n'roll singer, is born in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.
Full article:
Bobby Lowell : I was born May 11, 1937, the day after Mothers' Day. The war was just starting to get into full swing and my father joined the Army Air Force as an officer. In 1943 he was shot down over Germany.
At that time the government stopped all pay until they knew whether a person was either dead, or a prisoner. My dad was missing for 18 months which meant no check for mom during that time. After about six months with no money coming in, things were getting bad at home and to make it even worse mom got real sick, little brother Stan was just over two years old, and mom's mother, Grandma Dean was doing all the house work, taking care of all of us including mom, and took on a night job scrubbing floors in a bank. Grandma was already in her late 40's which in those days was considered old - so at seven I, already big for my age, went downtown in the late evenings to sell newspapers, on the streets and bar rooms of Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.
In those days you had to hustle to sell papers as there were a lot of seven and eight year olds doing the same thing, however, most of them were black. I got along real good with them because the grade school I had started at was about half black students, and I had known most of them for a couple of years - back during the time, of World War II, when poor was poor and colour didn't matter much because we were all in the same boat just trying to stay alive and hope for the best.
By the age of eight years old, I had seen some of the black kids doing a ham bone slapping, harmonica playing song and dance on the streets at night and people would give them some spare change - I liked the spare change part and gave it a try, well the dance part didn't work at all as a matter of fact he made a fool of myself, but the singing worked. I did songs like Paper Doll, Buffalo Gal, Sioux City Sue, Bye Bye Blackbird and Sonny Boy and was taking home the change in 1943 and 1944.
Tweet this Fact
At that time the government stopped all pay until they knew whether a person was either dead, or a prisoner. My dad was missing for 18 months which meant no check for mom during that time. After about six months with no money coming in, things were getting bad at home and to make it even worse mom got real sick, little brother Stan was just over two years old, and mom's mother, Grandma Dean was doing all the house work, taking care of all of us including mom, and took on a night job scrubbing floors in a bank. Grandma was already in her late 40's which in those days was considered old - so at seven I, already big for my age, went downtown in the late evenings to sell newspapers, on the streets and bar rooms of Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.
In those days you had to hustle to sell papers as there were a lot of seven and eight year olds doing the same thing, however, most of them were black. I got along real good with them because the grade school I had started at was about half black students, and I had known most of them for a couple of years - back during the time, of World War II, when poor was poor and colour didn't matter much because we were all in the same boat just trying to stay alive and hope for the best.
By the age of eight years old, I had seen some of the black kids doing a ham bone slapping, harmonica playing song and dance on the streets at night and people would give them some spare change - I liked the spare change part and gave it a try, well the dance part didn't work at all as a matter of fact he made a fool of myself, but the singing worked. I did songs like Paper Doll, Buffalo Gal, Sioux City Sue, Bye Bye Blackbird and Sonny Boy and was taking home the change in 1943 and 1944.