Looking back on 1952
 

Norman Petty begins to claim Fame

Clovis' own Norman Petty began playing piano when he was 5, and as a young teenager organized his first group, “The Torchy Swingsters”. To improve their performance, he recorded their shows for play-back practice, thus beginning his real interest in recording.

Returning from military service in 1946, Norman resumed a job as staff announcer for KICA Radio in Clovis, NM. However, music wasn’t his only love, his high school sweetheart, Violet Brady, was home from college and their romance turned into a summer wedding on June 20th, 1948.

In December of 1948, he recruited his bride to play piano & Jack Vaughn on guitar. The trio, called The Three Musical Tones became the Norman Petty Trio. They soon landed a recording contract with ABC-Paramount Records and were voted Most Promising Group of 1954 by Cashbox magazine.

By 1956, their major hit “Mood Indigo” had sold half a million copies and enabled Norman to expand the studio to how it is today. In 1957, their song “Almost Paradise” hit #18 & Norman won his first BMI writers award.

By 1956, a frustrated Buddy Holly first came by the studio. Buddy Knox, Roy Orbison, The Fireballs, String-A-Longs, and countless others helped make Norman Petty one of the first independent producers of rock & roll, and one of its most successful.

Norman & Vi played on several of Buddy’s recordings, with Norman also receiving co-writing credit for many of Buddy & The Crickets’ hits. He managed the group until the early 60s; The Crickets were signed to Liberty Records, and Norman got busy with The Fireballs & String-A-Longs, who recorded the smash hit “Wheels”, and earned another BMI Writers Award for Norman.

Norman continued recording all styles of groups throughout the 60s & 70s, all with an unmistakable sound of its own. He was working on a new Buddy overdub project when he succumbed to leukemia in 1984 at age 57. Coincidentally, Jack Vaughn, guitarist of the Petty Trio, died the same year. Vi Petty passed away in March, 1992. Since that time, The Roses, Peggy Sue Gerron, Gary & Ramona Tollett, and The Fireballs helped keep the flame alive with their participation and organizing of the Norm & Vi Petty Clovis Music Festival until 2000. Since organizer Robert Linville of The Roses passed
away the Festival has been discontinued.
 

"It's Howdy Doody time!"

Ho Say Kids! This is your good buddy Howdy Doody! Join me now as we explore how the Howdy Doody Show came to be and forever influenced children's television. Each of our shows started with the same great intro, you've grown to love. Say it with me....

"Say kids, What time is it?"

"It's Howdy Doody time!"

Those simple, dynamic words introduced a new mass communications medium and molded a generation. The "Baby Boomers" had a voice. That voice was my very best friend's: radio performer and musician "Buffalo Bob" Smith.

I am his trusty sidekick, a twenty-seven inch marionette. You can call me Howdy.
 

World's first passenger jet plane

She was a bit star-crossed from the beginning, this strange new aircraft. A precocious lady, she had made her maiden flight on April 27, 1949, a flight lasting just 31 minutes. She could carry only 36 passengers over a maximum distance of 2,600 miles.

Now at last on May 2, 1952, British Overseas Airways Corporation begins the first scheduled passenger jet service ever. The plane, a De Havilland Comet, has begun to fly regular passengers at an unheard of speed of 490 miles per hour.
Compared to the propeller driven passenger planes of the day, the Comet appears somewhat surreal. Her profile is reminiscent of a dolphin with wings. Without propellers, the roar of conventional airplanes is gone, replaced by an otherworldly scream. In flight she is quiet and smooth. At 39,000 feet she can fly above most weather, which has always buffeted passengers in other planes. Success seems assured. However, as often happens to pioneers, things do not go altogether smoothly. On October 26, the first crash happens. Although there is no loss of life, the plane is a total write-off.

This and later more serious mishaps ultimately seal the fate of the Comet. Technically a tour de force, it becomes for De Havilland, a commercial disaster. Airline passengers go back to propeller driven craft. After several years of detailed investigations, a redesigned Comet was begun but by then it was too late. The delay allows the two American giants, Douglas and Boeing to introduce the DC-8 and B707 respectively. Sadly, the De Havilland Comet, the "little airplane that could" had been eclipsed. But in May 1952, she soars like an eagle… the first of her generation.
 

Meanwhile...

The Korean conflict grinds on through all of 1952 with no end in sight. The population of the U.S. is now 157,552,740. In 1952, women can expect to reach the age of nearly 73 years while men can expect to live to an average of more than 66 years. The median salary is $3,100. and a loaf of bread costs 19 cents. A pound of butter goes for 78 cents, a dozen eggs, 57 cents and a quart of milk costs 23 cents.
 

Hit Parade

In 1952 'You Belong to Me' with Jo Stafford tops the charts. Also high on the Hit Parade 'Glow-Worm' with the Mills Brothers, 'Wheel of Fortune' with Kay Starr and 'Half As Much' with Rosemary Clooney. Other popular songs include 'Kiss of Fire' with Georgia Gibb, 'I'm Yours' with Don Cornell, 'Wish You Were Here' with Eddie Fisher and 'Tell Me Why' with The Four Aces. In addition, the radio is playing 'Delicado' with Percy Faith, 'Blue Tango' with Leroy Anderson and 'Cry' and 'The Little White Cloud that Cried' with Johnnie Ray. Pee Wee King complains about ' Slow Poke', Doris Day explains that 'A Guy is a Guy' and Vera Lynn wishes everyone ' Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart'. The prolific Eddie Fisher also sings about a 'Lady of Spain', and wants you to know he can be there 'Any Time'. Finally, Doris Day and Frankie Laine team up for a silly little ditty called 'Sugarbush'.
 

On the Big Screen

The Academy Award for best picture in 1952 goes to Cecil B. DeMille's 'The Greatest Show on Earth'. The movie stars Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde and Charlton Heston. The odds on favorite movie of the year is the delightful musical 'Singin' in the Rain'. Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor sing and dance their way into the hearts of the movie going public. Also featured are Debbie Reynolds and Jean Hagen.

Other popular movies of the year include Sir Walter Scott's 'Ivanhoe' with Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Fontaine, 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro' starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward, 'High Noon' with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, 'Viva Zapata with Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn and 'The Quiet Man' with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara.
 

Meanwhile on Television

A number of shows are launched in 1952. Among them are 'Our Miss Brooks'. Like the Radio show that preceded it, the show features Eve Arden in the title role. In addition the daytime "soap opera" 'The Guiding Light' begins, what will prove to be a very long run, in 1952. Other television debuts include the forgettable 'Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet' featuring the Nelson family, 'The Buick Circus Hour', 'Gangbusters', and the award winning World War II documentary series, 'Victory at Sea'. A number of shows are carried from previous years. Among them are 'I Love Lucy', 'Dragnet' and 'Arthur Godfrey'.
 

Turn the Page

Books of 1952 include 'The Old Man and the Sea' written by Ernest Hemmingway, 'East of Eden' by John Steinbeck, 'Bridge on the River Kwai' by Pierre Boule, 'The Second Sex' by Simone de Beauvoir, 'The Illustrated Man' by science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, 'Reach for the Sky' by Paul Brickhill and 'The Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison.
 

In Other News...

Early in the year on February 6, England's King George VI dies at age 56. George, shy and unassuming as a boy with a pronounced stammer, only became king by accident when his flamboyant older brother Edward VIII gave up the throne in the midst of controversy. A heavy smoker, he succumbs to lung cancer. His daughter is crowned Queen Elizabeth II.

On July 26 the world learns of another tragic death. The popular and vivacious radio and film actress, Eva Perón dies of ovarian cancer. Evita as she is popularly known, is the wife Argentine president Juan Perón. She is only 33. She was the heroine of the country's millions of descamisados, the shirtless ones.
Also on July 26, King Farouk abdicates the throne of Egypt.Farouk, who had become known as the Playboy King because of widespread corruption, is ousted by a group which includes Gamal Abdul Nasser.

On a totally unrelated note, October 1952 sees the launch of an irreverent humor magazine called simply, MAD. It introduces Alfred E. Neuman to an unsuspecting public.

Meanwhile World War II hero, General Dwight David Eisenhower is nominated by the Republican party as their candidate for President. He is ultimately elected in a landslide along with his Vice-presidential running mate Richard Milhous Nixon. Nixon had almost blown it earlier, when he was accused of accepting personal gifts during the campaign. On September 23, in his so-called "Checkers Speech", he manages to silence his critics.

In 1952 Dr. Jonas Salk innoculates the first volunteers, including himself, his wife, and their three sons, with his newly developed polio vaccine. It is the beginning of a controversy that refuses to go away. Salk is subsequently credited with saving millions of youngsters from the ravages of infantile paralysis.

On March 8, American surgeon, John Heynsham Gibbon, uses his newly invented heart-lung machine to keep alive a 41-year-old patient by the name of Peter During. Optimistically called an artificial heart, it foreshadows ever more daring heart surgery to come.

On November 25, British troops round up thousands of Kikuyu tribesmen in a fruitless effort to combat the emergence of an independence movement in the African territory of Kenya. Spearheaded by a "secret society" that goes by the name "Mau Mau" it marks the beginning of the end for European domination over the "dark" continent.

"Smog", a combination of fog and smoke, becomes a recognized threat in 1952. In December, a dense killer smog in London, England, causes the eventual death of at least 2000 people from respiratory failure. Earlier, in August, also in England more than nine inches of rain falls in a single day in the area of Devon. 36 people in the village of Lynmouth are killed by the resulting flash floods.

In 1952 the American public is introduced to the diary kept by a young Jewish girl who had spent the last years of her short life hiding with her family from the Nazis in a cramped attic in Amsterdam. The family was eventually discovered and the girl and most of her family were murdered in a concentration camp. The "Diary of Anne Frank" relates the poignant story of life through the eyes of a young girl.

Finally, America discovers a new form of popular music. The insistent rhythms cause young people to "rock" and sway to the music much to the dismay of their parents. A disk jockey by the name of Albert James Freed is hosting a show on station WJW in Cleveland, Ohio. The show features a kind of music called rhythm & blues. Freed who calls himself "Moondog", plays mostly R & B.

Freed, who had noticed the effect the music had on his listeners begins to refer to it as Rock and Roll. In a short time, the name sticks. Meanwhile, most mainstream radio stations are scandalized and will have nothing to do with what they see to as pagan and blasphemous music.
 

1952! Looking back, it was a very good year.

Information compliments of:  About Senior Living &

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