Sock hop

... hard rock of the time

... that Sock Hop inspired-

Yeah

... fucking bullshit, uh, I think that shit is garbage.

And my, my dad loves that stuff, and then he, but then his, the Stones are his favorite band.

Mm-hmm.

And that's a totally different type of genre than Sock Hop.

Mm-hmm.

I remember in junior high, back in the middle '60s, [clears throat] we had what was called sock hops.

Now, there's no guy wanting to go to the sock hop, but that's where the girls were.

So you went down to the gymnasium and you took your shoes off, and they played the music.

[clears throat] Now, I've been to sock hops all over the Midwest.

I remember one year in late seven- the late '60s, Johnny Dolan from WHB in Kansas City came up to Hamilton High School, named after J.C. Penney, and he had a sock hop, and we, I had to go with the cousins of mine, the girls.

I was the only guy and a bunch of girls.

It was pretty good.

[clears throat] And, uh, we took our shoes off and we had a sock hop.

I'm meeting up with Bill Blackwell, Bob Seger's longtime tour manager, whose career puts him at the center of Detroit's rock story.

Well, tell me about the first time you saw Bob Seger, the Sock Hop.

Well, 1969, I was a freshman at UD Jesuit in Detroit, and, you know, I saw the poster in the hallway, and, uh, I have to admit for, you know, I think it was $1.50, it was probably more about meeting girls from Macalata High School.

But, [laughs] got there, and I have to say, you know, Bob was rocking it out.

[laughs]

At a show now.

But anyhow, it was definitely, but, and again, when you, you know, you go back to the, you know, the sock hops or whatever, in reality as I said, you know, I, I have to be honest, you know, I went to that sock hop probably with the intent of meeting, meeting some girls.

For sure.

And then he would quickly change and run over to the to the gymnasium and play in the in the stage band.

For the sock hops, and for those of you who don't know what a sock hop is, it's back in the day when they had wooden floors for their gymnasiums, you couldn't wear your hard shoes on them.

So they would have school dances in the gymnasium and you couldn't wear your shoes.

So they were normally in socks and it got called a sock hop somewhere in the 1950s.

So he'd play music for the Sock Hops, and then end of high school happened, and he decided he was going to borrow a car and go to McNeese College and see if he could try out for the football team, which he did.

And at the end of the day, the coach put his arm around his neck and said, Billy, you've made the team.

You're going to be a backup running back for McNeese College in the fall, but I don't have a scholarship for you.