I was 12 YEARS OLD and was learning to play the guitar to accompany myself when I sang. Three years later, I was an opening act for RICKY NELSON at the "Santa Clara County Fair" in San Jose, CA. Those were great days for me. I can't believe how so much time has passed.
1958, 9 yrs old in St Paul MN 🥶...the schools,churches,beach,stores,campgrounds,state fair,& the streets were all quite safe,11 in a blue collar 🏠,🍀🍀for America in those times...
Two years before the world was graced with my presence lol 😆 But I do remember the 7th voyage of Sinbad from reruns, and of course, the Chipmunk Christmas song is still a classic! 👍👍👍👍👍
Before my time, but I know I would have loved being in that time. So much I know from it. So much I love from it. Today blows. I would have loved there being no internet or cable TV. Just AM radio. Most cars/trucks having manual transmissions. Soda pop in glass bottles. Comic books for a dime. Going to the drive-in to see a movie. So much more to love. Thanks for another trip Fred. Every one of them is worth the price of admission. Well, you know what I mean (I think???).
Well, I was 4 in 1958 so I wasn't doing a whole lot to keep the free world free. I did manage to scrawl my name and phone number on an entry to win tickets to see Jerry Lewis (no Dean) in a show held in our city's Coliseum (AKA the Cow Barn). I won. My grandparents said, "If Dean isn't performing, we don't want to go." My parents weren't thrilled but they wanted to congratulate me on knowing my name and phone number. So, the 3 of us drove over to the Coliseum where our seats were on the floor, first row. Jerry wandered out and walked around singing his off-key rendition of "That Old Black Magic". He followed that with some jokes doing his famous cackle laugh. My mother and father and many other audience members did not approve of the "augmented" jokes. [I had seen Jerry doing his schtick on TV variety shows and the jokes were indeed different.] He then clowned around with the conductor and did a couple of upbeat songs. The audience was restless. People were tapping their toes and I heard "When's the intermission?" being whispered. Jerry took a break and the audience did a break-out to their cars, carrying their coats with them. My mom reviewed the program, making sure that Deano was definitely NOT going to make an appearance. Over half of the audience, including the 3 of us, did not return for the second half. The next year (1959) I was 5🎉 and decided to try my luck with that year's raffle. I won again. The prize was something called a Dutch oven. We brought it home and put it in the kitchen where it sat unused for 30 years until my parents died and a nice lady came to the "estate sale" and asked me if I would sell it to her for $10.00 because she had always wanted one to make special dinners for her family. I told her "Please take it to your home and enjoy it - complements of my family."
Fred, you did it again. This is a great presentation. Thank You! At the end, I was reminded of “The Witch Doctor” - “ooh eeh-ooh a-a. Ting tang - Walla Walla bing bang”.
I was born in May '57, so all this is 'new' to me. A very good overview of what was happening this month in 1958. The only mistake was the '58 Chevy commercial starting at 3:15. The '59 Chevy would have been advertised this month, having already been out since that October. THIS ad would have run in December 1957.
I turned 13 in 1958. A very impressionable time for a teen boy... and wow, was I impressed by everything. Brings back some great - and a few not so great - memories. (When you have two older brothers, stuff happens!)
The peak of my parents’ teen years. If you wanted to experience the classic 1950s that most picture in their heads, then you needed to be born in 1941 as my parents were. They really hit it on the money! (As for Ray Harryhausen- I was obsessed with him as a kid. He was one of several inspirations for me when I was growing up … what a genius he was!)
Thanks Fred I was 7 years old in 1958 and already a rock-n-roll fan I drove my father crazy playing my 45 of shake rattle n roll over an over until my dad made me stop love your videos
You need to assemble all of these Chronologically. Each video is a visual, auditory, and participatory reflection of the historical growth of American Popular Culture. They are segmented history lessons. Each one shows "our" unique-timely American(ism) and how we amplified culture(s) here and globally.
Benjamin, by chronologically do you mean the video itself or the America We Knew series? To do the former, it would be too difficult and time consuming, would probably hurt the flow of the video and wouldn't be as much fun for me. As for the latter, of course if you've been watching you know I started with Feb. of '74 and have been posting each month chronologically (presently on June '76). Then I started to backtrack, posting various months as "specials." But thanks for referring to the videos as being a reflection of the historical growth of American pop culture, which is exactly what I intended and hoped to achieve.
@@FredFlix Benjamin's proposal sounds reasonable if you were to create a RU-vid playlist ordered by the era of each video. So a playlist for 1958 would start with your video for the earliest date you did in 1958, etc. You have so much content now that you could easily create one playlist for every year. It would be work but it wouldn't require editing every video. Just create a play list for each year and drop the videos for that year into it in order.
Great nostalgia trip, Fred! '58 looked like a great year. I have 7th Voyage, along with several other Harryhausen titles. Great stuff. Love the Paul Frees narration for Monster on the Campus.
Monster on the Campus!!!!!!!! I was minus 13 months in 1958, but saw this over here in Australia when I was 8 or 9 in the late 60's - downloaded it a couple of years back and am gonna kick back one wintery night and have a blast watching this silly, but childhood memory, movie. Again Frederick, loving your work - I actually can appreciate the amount of work in gathering, sorting, editing and fine-tuning each video you post - stellar work!
Wonderful video! All a person has to do is compare this video with one of your videos from the 60s or 70s to see how much our nation and culture changed. Your videos are not only entertaining but have great educational value in teaching people how our country changed and evolved pre-Kennedy to post-Kennedy (or "Camelot" as some say:)! Your videos are actually great teaching tools! Thank you! 😀
OK, Simon? OK! The very month and year my baby sister was born. I still don't know how to tell her I love her, but we're both still here. I'm pretty sure that any ad for 1958 model cars would have been aired in the autumn of 1957. Just sayin'. Those monster movies were the bread and butter of my weekend afternoon TV and Saturday matinee movies in the '60s. I'm still watching some of these TV shows on MeTV, but without the weird old commercials. Now we have weirder new commercials.
The monsters from The 7th Voyage of Simbad remind me those of Jason and the Argonauts. 🤔 Those comic books at 12:12 must have been at home. They look so familiar. Lestoil! Ha! ... and of course, Colgate with Gardol. Not bad for a four and a half year old. 💜🤟
I would love to travel to the 50s for a short visit like Michael J Fox in Back to the Future - Colgate having toothpaste in a can similar to ones for shaving cream seems like a precursor to the Colgate pump they would come out with in the mid 80s
The Teddy Bears only had that one hit record, but two of their members went on to varying degrees of fame. Lead singer Annette Kleinbard later changed her name to Carol Connors and wrote or co-wrote some big hits, including "Hey Little Cobra" by The Rip Chords, and Bill Conti's "Theme from Rocky (Gonna Fly Now)". The guy on the left, of course, is Phil Spector, who needs no introduction whatsoever.
I find the late '50s and the early '60s interesting. Goody-two-shoes girls and sexy bad girls. Ricky Nelson and Elvis. Wholesome films and horror films. The cold war was in full swing, and I think that horror movies were, in a sense, playing on the fear of the Dirty Commies coming to take over America.
The first thing I thought of the was '58 Chevy, mainly because of the perfect example in American Graffiti. That would've been a spectacular time to be around in America. I missed it by a few years.
