Young, Foolish, Happy: Jill McKorkle on Beach Music

Fourth of July weekend means the summer is in full swing, and a weekend at the beaches of North Carolina wouldn't be complete without some beach music. Acclaimed authot Jill McKorkle writes about this quintessentially North Carolina genre and its influence on her young life.

The following article appeared in the Oxford American’s Southern Music Issue on North Carolina, released in November 2018. Issue available here.

YOUNG, FOOLISH, HAPPY

By: Jill McKorkle

Growing up in eastern North Carolina in the sixties and seventies, I was always aware of what people referred to as beach music—originally a branch of r&b that grew to overlap with both rock and soul. In fact, when I have wanted to pull up all the oldies I grew up hearing—the music I think of as soon as spring comes to the Carolinas—Pandora has taken me to Frankie Valli or the Beach Boys (some summery sounds but very different) or Motown artists like Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and the Temptations (other faves and getting much closer, but still not the same, despite some overlap in songs and artists). Finally, I put on the Tams, a band from Atlanta, Georgia, and one of my favorites, to hear a medley of their hits from “I’ve Been Hurt” and “You Lied to Your Daddy” to their popular anthem offering sage advice, “Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy,” and on into hits from other old familiars. That takes me right where I want to be. 

My hometown is just over an hour from Myrtle Beach, and so it was not unusual for people to make the pilgrimage to the Pad or the Spanish Galleon or Fat Harold’s on Ocean Drive to hear bands like the Embers, the Tams, Chairmen of the Board. I had heard the songs and the names of all the bands long before I was old enough to go. I have a vivid memory of a teenager in the neighborhood, her hair rolled on jumbo orange-juice cans while she danced around barefooted in pedal pushers and a cropped eyelet top, playing Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs’ “May I” over and over again. “May I” was a bouncing, flirty track, filled with doobie-doos and oohs—and then that falsetto inquiry: “May I have your love? / May I be your boy-o-oy?” The successive lines go “May I speak with you? / May I bring you joy?,” but for the longest time I was convinced of a more scandalous misreading, one that swapped speak for sleep—a thought that would be secured a year later, when the girl with the juice cans in her hair got married right out of high school, then promptly had a baby. 

Read the whole article here.