Clay Cole
Sh-Boom! The Explosion of Rock 'N' Roll, 1953-1968
(Morgan James)

For those who had the misfortune not to grow up in New York City in the '60s, Clay Cole hosted a local Saturday night TV show which had tri-state teens returning to their black and white sets like kidney patients to dialysis.

In those lip-synching, freewheeling days, there were no precedents, so Cole made up the rules as he went along, including hosting the Rolling Stones in their first-ever American performance. In order to ratchet up interest in the Stones' appearance, Cole devised "The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones" hour, where a Beatles' live video feed (a new technology) came in from a sister station in Chicago. Cole booked comics and slapstick schtick with recording artists years before Saturday Night Live was born.

Proceeding chronologically from his childhood, Cole tells his story in well-written, dense prose, but the book is a difficult read. Anyone with a hint of celebrity seems to have crossed Cole's path, resulting in more names than nouns per page (the index runs 23 pages of names, hefty for a 288-page book). One after another, individuals enter relentlessly, overwhelming the storyline; the impression is that most paragraphs started out as stand-alone incidents on index cards which were then simply arranged sequentially. That said, Cole must have used a lot of index cards, because the incidents, facts and music come hot and heavy, and they ring true. Sh-Boom! provides a banquet of information, just don't try to devour it all at once.—Suzanne Cadgene