When Headaches Are Not A Laughing Matter
by Bryce Martin


I have never had a headache in my life, except from my own doing, and from a rare head cold.

From my own doing would include the time I cracked helmets with an opposing football player in a high school game. That one did not last long. The two of us repeated the exercise on the next play and my headache went away.

I do not know why I have never had a headache. Since I do not have them, I do not think about them much, not until someone else brings up the subject. Moreover, someone does quite often; often enough that the misfortune of having your head ache seems quite common, except for those like me.

My cousin Jimmy and I share a common bond. We are the same age. That carries more weight than one might think. It means we experienced the same songs, the same movies, the same fads and flops. We can talk about things and share interests and understanding that someone just a year younger or older might be out of step with. There are, of course, some my age who are mostly clueless. You tend to gravitate to your own kind.

Jimmy is up on some music I scarcely know, and vice versa. That is because radio stations might play some songs heavily in certain areas and little or not at all in others. You could love it in Trona and never hear it in Galena. By the same token, he had never heard “China Town” by Max Brown, “Darlin’, Darlin’, Darlin’” by Jimmy Thurman, or “Ain’t Love Grand’ by Ron and Joe and the Crew. That is because they were regional hits by locals in my area and never reached the West Coast.

Jimmy raved over“Buzz, Buzz, Buzz” by the Hollywood Flames. It is an older song that I heard maybe two or three times. He also likes “Oh, Julie” by the Crescendos. I barely remember. I had never heard either one played enough to gain a familiarity.

We mostly played records in his room in 1958 when I visited. We both liked Jan and Arnie’s “Jennie Lee,” the Monotones’ “Book of Love,” and all by Little Richard.

I suspect Little Richard you would not want to listen to if you had just a smidgen of a headache.

Here we were years later digging out the old vinyl. I was working fulltime and Jimmy was working the summer while attending college in Sacramento.

I do not know about Jimmy but by now, I had been drunk on several occasions. I often felt bad physically and emotionally the next day from the drinking -- still, though, no headache.

He produced and album and said, “You’ve got to listen to this.”

It was Inside Shelley Berman. The selection was the one where he is talking aloud, the morning after with a hangover. The part Jimmy repeated, after he raised the recording arm and placed it on its stand, was where Berman drops an Alka-Seltzer in a glass of water and says, “Oh, my God – don’t fizz.”

I recalled the skit, even remembered seeing Berman perform it on television, but I never thought it was funny. I guess you had to have experienced a headache to appreciate the humor in it.

Wanda Jackson, Kansas 1963
by Bryce Martin


I drove in the direction of the small town of Arma, nine miles north of Pittsburg, to see the greatest singer on the planet perform. You paid at the door. Wanda Jackson, I had trouble believing, was on stage at the Blue Moon ballroom. She wore a strapless cocktail dress and looked stunning. Her voice was impossible to describe, accented with trills and lilts, smooth and clear when need be, growly, mean, impudent, and nimbly naughty at intervals. She was wild and raw, her lyrics often wonderfully bizarre and delivered in a frenetic rhapsody of rock and roll the equal of any man. Then she would deliver a soothing country ballad, in as soft and artful a voice as you would imagine from an angel.

There was a closed-off wraparound balcony that some of the boys had sneaked up the stairs to find. They wanted to peer down and get a better view of Wanda’s cleavage.

I walked outside when the show bid finale and stood in the gravel driveway. Wanda, with dark hair and eyes, came out and entered a waiting Cadillac. A man assisted her entry and closed her door for her. Someone whispered that it was her husband. She smiled politely, and rather sadly, I thought, acknowledging those nearest her who waved and shouted with a delicate raised hand as a goodbye gesture.

The Cadillac soon disappeared in the dark and the distance and produced a final crunch of gravel before smoothing out on the asphalt. Wanda Jackson. Here. In this place. In my universe. Tonight.

Wow. She was 25-years-old, too, a grown-up prom queen.

Before the summer ended, I came this way again. Another ballroom, the Trianon, sat off the highway in Croweburg, two miles east of Arma. A local band played some decent rock ‘n’ roll. I went once and once was plenty. I don’t pay a cover charge for just anything.

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