“It’s on the roof/100 proof’”
The girls were all of 15 that winter, the winter before the summer of love. Maybe we were starting to smoke some pot, mostly we got the older kids on Fordham Road to buy us quarts of beer, and we’d go, our little pack, up to Poe Park, drink and play the radio. Top 40 radio. FM-rock was around the bend.
So we heard everything: pop, rock, soul. Motown and Stax. British bands, garage bands. Sinatra, even. The girls would sing along to “I’ve Been Lonely Too Long” by The Rascals, and “Let’s Spend The Night Together,” and “Mustang Sally.” Jane, and Sherry, and Jamie, and Meg, in their peacoats and bell-bottoms and Frye boots.
And this came on: “Oh Yeah!” by the Joe Cuba Sextet, a blast of boogaloo that got those 15 year old girls cah-rayzee. ‘You’re looking good/You’re looking fine!,’ and this wicked Latin rhythm, and the squeals, and shouts of “Oh Yeah!,” like the record was cut at some wild party, and it’s not like Jane and Jamie weren’t already cute as hell, but when they started chanting “It’s on the roof…,” it was too much.
WABC and WMCA played those records by Joe Cuba: “Bang Bang,” “Sock It To Me,” and “Oh Yeah!” Like they had played “El Watusi” by Ray Barretto, and “Watermelon Man” by Mongo Santamaria. It was part of the NYC sound. Martin Scorsese used “El Watusi” in a key scene in his first feature, “Who’s That Knocking On My Door?,” and you knew that he was listening to the same Top 40 stations we were, where The Stones and The Rascals lived alongside Wilson Pickett and Joe Cuba.
When I heard that Joe Cuba died, I thought about the days in January ’67, going to Spinning Disc on Friday night to see what records had come out that week, listening to ‘MCA, drinking Rheingold or Ballantine out of those big bottles we’d pass around, and watching the girls doing their adorable version of the boogaloo.
