The Weirdest Song I Ever Heard

Question. What’s the craziest, wildest, strangest, or weirdest song you’ve ever heard?

The daddy has a couple of nominees. In “Nobody loves me but my mother," the great blues guitarist B. B. King sang a tune that would be a great subject for a psychology student's dissertation:

“Nobody loves me but my mother/
And she could be jiving too/
No. Nobody loves me but my mother/
And she could be jiving too/
Now you see why I act so funny, baby/
When you do the things you do/"

Then there was this weird guy with the weird name “Screaming Jay Hawkins” who did a bizarre show-stopper called “I put a spell on you.” Dressed like a magician from the far East, complete with turban and gown, he would wiggle his fingers, gaze into the frightened eyes of an attractive, petite young woman in the audience and shout: “I put a spell on you/because/ you’re mine!”

But the weirdest song the daddy ever heard was “Pledging my love" By Johnny Ace. On the surface, it was just another love song, another juvenile ballad written to help boy-crazy/girl-crazy, cell-raging teenagers dance and make out in cars on dark hills on the outskirts of town after a milkshake, burger and fries.

“Pledging my love” is yet another teeny bopper tune bespeaking the need for closeness during a period of constant physical change and emotional uncertainty, during a time when kids year for something real, for something true, something for them and them alone. But two things make this song different and stranger than fiction ever could be.

First, “Pledging my love” is not just a ballad. It’s a very slow ballad—so slow that the musicians playing behind Ace sound tired and detached. Ace sounds tired too…and disturbingly sad. The music seems to transcend puppy love and descend into time-stopping, unearthly despair, the depth of which no parent would want their teenage son or daughter to reach. It’s bad enough that they’re sneaking out of the house to go to dark parts of the city to do who-knows-what. But to think of them listening to a haunting song about undying love by a singer and a back-up group that sounds almost dead is eerie and scary as hell. But there’s more.

“Pledging my love” was released about two weeks before Johnny Ace died. How did he die? Playing Russian roulette between sets in the back room of an auditorium in Houston, Texas. Why such a successful R&B singer was playing this deadly games is not clear. What is clear is that his death sent a shock wave through teenage America; and they rushed to record shops to buy the recording, a song whose words, coupled with its sad tone, took on an even sadder, more unearthly, and more prophetic meaning after his death. The say kids played his record and hung even closer to each other and made out even more. Maybe it was make out or
suicide.

It’s as if Ace was interrupting teenage make out sessions in shadowy places all over the country to say, “Listen: I know you’re kind of busy right now. But I’m going to kill myself and I just thought I'd come and say goodbye. But remember:

I’ll always love you/
For the rest of my days/
I’ll never part from you/
And your loving ways/"

Johnny Ace died on December 25, 1954. He was 25 years old. He had recorded only 21 songs. The daddy read somewhere that "Pledging my love" was the first so-called "rock & roll" song. Why? Because it was the first crossover hit, that is, where a song by a black person was purchased by whites all across the country. Before "Pledging my love," black music was confined to black audiences in bars, theaters and auditoriums. It was called "the chitlin circuit." But the purchase of this record opened the door for a broader acceptance of black music-- regardless of who was singing or playing it. America was finally ready for an Elvis Presley, a Chuck Berry or black "girl groups" like The Supremes.

Listen to “Pledging my love.” Then go upstairs, hug your children tightly goodnight. If they've moved away, phone them again and say, “I love you.”

What's the weirdest song you ever heard?