D. Weeks’s love affair with Panama City began in 1949. “I knew the routine. Take Highway 31 out of Birmingham, turn right on Highway 331 in Montgomery and go as far as you could, which was Highway 98 in Florida, and turn left.” Some years later he would hitchhike with some of his fraternity brothers: “We were picked up about 2 a.m. by an already full car that included Dinky Harris another Viking fraternity brother. We did finally arrive and got right out near the Hang Out. After a lot of searching we found a lady that would let us sleep on the floor of her living room. Her cottages were all full and she felt sorry for us.” Bad Betty: “Boy, back in the 1950s Panama City Beach was the New York of all high school kids. On Fridays we would load up and take off, heading to the beach. All the guys were wound up and would stay wound up the whole time they were there. Running along the beach, trying to make out with the girls, drinking a beer, going to the Hang Out and just having a blast. The sororities were all there trying to outdo each other. Dixie Debs were always around and flirting with everyone’s guys … The music was great, laughing and talking and meeting new folks. Sitting on the beach listening to the music.”5
Music and dancing were central to the Panama City vacation. You listened to it on the radio as you drove down. Sarah Bradford Wear: “Seems we kept it on Duke Rumore until we got close to Montgomery, then the dial on the radio would get a workout … looking for our finger-snapping, hand-clapping, and singalong favorites until we could get our luggage to the motel door.” The Newspaper Boy: “We listened to WSGN for as long as we could, switching to WVOK and its 50,000 watts until it signed off at sunset … We went through all of the small towns and tried hard to find a radio station playing good music. South of Montgomery we picked up a Tennessee station with a black deejay playing ‘So Tough’ by the Original Casuals.” And when you got there, rock music was everywhere: from live bands at the Old Hickory restaurant and the Old Dutch Tavern, and from numerous jukeboxes at the popular Hang Out or at Aultman’s or at Little Birmingham, a liquor store and gift shop: “The music was great, laughing and talking and meeting new folks. Sitting on the beach and listening to the music.” But most important, the music was there to dance to, and the place to dance or just be seen was the Hang Out, a large, open pavilion right on the beach, with music blasting from several jukeboxes. Here you did the Bop or just watched from behind the wooden railing that enclosed the concrete dance floor. Don Campbell: “The Hang Out was the place to see and be seen on the beach, usually all night and all of the day. Some didn’t have to get out of bed; they slept on the beach. The dancing started early at the Hang Out, with the jukebox playing the newest 45s continuously [six plays for twenty-five cents]. The music had to be loud to drown out the scratching of the sand between the dancer’s shoes and the dance floor … The guys would spot who the best dancers were and who looked best in a bathing suit or a pair of white short-shorts with a golden tan. Many of the girls danced with a set of large curlers in their hair so they would look good that night.” The Newspaper Boy: “The records on the Hang Out jukeboxes included songs we would always associate with PC [Panama City] and the Hang Out: ‘Hully Gully’ by the Olympics, ‘You’re So Fine’ by the Falcons were great 1959 dance songs, and ‘Searchin’/Youngblood’ by the Coasters, ‘Honky Tonk’ by Bill Doggett, ‘The Stroll’ by the Diamonds, and ‘That’ll Be the Day” by Buddy Holly and the Crickets. We didn’t spend much time on the beach because the music from the Hang Out drew us to it. The Hang Out was a concrete-floored open-air pavilion with a high gabled roof and a wooden railing around it with four jukeboxes.” Henry Lovoy: “I was ten years old when I learned to Panama City bop, which was the dance. If you knew how to bop you could dance with the older women [sixteen and older] … I went to the Hang Out every night and bopped to the great rock ’n’ roll music … At the Hang Out, at eleven o’clock, the big cop [Tom] would lock up the jukebox. Then we would go to a little place to dance called Aultman’s, but then for only an hour, since it was late by then.” Sarah Bradford Wear: “Of course we’d have to comb our hair again for the umpteenth time, freshen our drugstore lipstick and … carry our shoes to the concrete dance floor at the Hang Out that was still open and going strong. I was a good dancer too, one of the best … at least I thought. I’ll bet everybody thought the same thing about their own smooth moving. I’d rather bop than eat, and I did, lots of times … We seemed to draw approval from the crowds gathered around us just about every time I’d get on the dance floor. That made it official: I had to perform my own ‘stuff’ … I guess I could say that Panama City is not where I was born, but it’s where I started living.”6
Teenagers maintained their Birmingham high school affiliations on Panama City Beach. Walter Norris went down with a group from Ensley High School: “We did run into some luck that first night there. We met a group of girls from Shades Valley High School who paid for a full week in a cottage … but to a person they were so sunburned that they were going home after four days … I made friends with a girl who was with a group from Woodlawn High School … soon her friends had met the other boys in our group and we were all just having a ball enjoying the beach … The girls from Woodlawn outnumbered us guys eight to four, so we were in teenagers’ heaven!”
For Birmingham’s garage bands, playing at Panama City was the closest thing to heaven. It was that potent combination of the music, the sand, the beer (ninety-nine cents for a six-pack of Old Milwaukee), and the girls (“we had a one-track mind … girls, girls, girls”). There was also money to be made, and also valuable publicity for the band. John Wyker of the Rubber Band: “Back in those days, and probably even today, the best place for a band to be seen was at a club at the beach. Every summer, kids would come to Panama City where they would be exposed to bands that they usually fell in love with. This would lead to wintertime gigs all over the South. I did my best sellin’ jobs to my fellow band members, painting a picture of all the fun we’d have and all the girls we’d get, but mainly all the money we could make that next winter by bookin’ parties and lead-outs for top dollar.”7
In the 1950s most of the music in Panama City was provided by a jukebox, but as the garage band movement took over high school entertainment, the beach clubs and bars began to adopt live music and hire guitar bands. Some bands like the Swinging Medallions, the Rubber Band, and King David and the Slaves established their reputations at Panama City Beach. “Back then [1960] the Old Dutch was a jumping place. Always crowded with a large supply of pretty girls. We got in line to get inside. I happened to know the guard at the door, as I remembered him from the summer before. He was an ex-marine, well built, and his face looked like it had caught fire and someone tried to put it out with a track shoe … Back in those days no one checked your age. If the door bouncer thought you were old enough, you got in. If not, he told you to hit the road … The place was jammed … A band was playing and the noise was unbelievable. We could hardly hear our own voice … We were in hog heaven” (“KB” from Samson, Alabama).
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