Buzz over to Topsail to learn about ‘Operation Bumblebee’

We don’t have to travel far from Carteret County (N.C.) to begin to discover “the hidden history” of North Carolina – 50 “fascinating tidbits” that light up the editors of Our State magazine.

One of those little-known pearls that was featured in Our State’s April 2024 issue is “Operation Bumblebee.” That was the code name assigned to the U.S. Navy’s secret guided missile testing program that operated on Topsail Island after World War II from 1946-48.

Topsail Island is about a 70-mile drive from Morehead City (around Jacksonville and down toward Wilmington on U.S. Route 17).

 

To set the stage, Topsail Island was just an uninhabited “spit of sand,” albeit 26 miles long, in the Atlantic Ocean off the mainland from Onslow and Pender counties in late 1940, when the U.S. Army began construction of Camp Davis Army Air Field at Holly Ridge.

At the time, the clock was ticking leading up to the United States’ involvement in World War II. The Camp Davis project – to build a state-of-the-art anti-aircraft artillery training facility – was a major $16.8 million investment.

Troops started arriving in April 1941, and the base was fully operational by June. At its peak, more than 20,000 officers and soldiers were stationed at Camp Davis.

 

The Army took possession of the nearby barren spit (Topsail Island), which was only about five miles away from the camp. A site known as Sears Landing (within present-day Surf City) served as an anti-aircraft firing target point for Camp Davis troops.

Eventually, all Camp Davis operations were transferred to the Army’s Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, in September 1944, and the base at Holly Ridge was closed.

In June 1946, the Navy began moving about 500 individuals onto Topsail Island and established U.S. Naval Ordnance Testing Facility to conduct test firings of ramjet-powered missiles. “Operation Bumblebee” was a highly classified effort to develop guided surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) to be used to defend U.S. warships at sea.

The project on Topsail Island involved scientists from the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Silver Spring, Md., and the Kellex Corporation, a civilian contractor, based in Jersey City, N.J. It was a unique partnership initiated by the federal government to mobilize scientific resources to address wartime challenges.

Merle Tuve was the director of the APL during “Operation Bumblebee.”

Within months, teams had constructed an assembly building, a launching platform, a control tower, eight 35-foot observation towers to photograph, track and study the flights of the rockets, as well as dormitories, a mess hall and a bombproof shelter. A pontoon bridge was built across the small sounds and channels that are part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

The mission was to develop a jet-powered missile that could destroy an air target up to 20 miles away. The program was named “Operation Bumblebee” on a lark, “since the seemingly impossible aerodynamic challenges that the scientists faced resembled those of a bumblebee in flight,” one historian remarked.

“Although deemed aerodynamically unable to fly, the bumblebee does not know this and flies anyway.” The operation at Topsail Island led to the maturing of supersonic aircraft and shipboard missile design in the mid-20th century.

 

An estimated 200 experimental rockets were assembled and launched over the course of 18 months. The tests provided an impetus to the development of jet aircraft engine technology and insights into rocketry incorporated later in the space program.

 

When the Navy pulled out of Topsail Island, officials took all records but left the structures intact. Fortunately, the assembly building has been preserved as a Topsail Island community events center and museum. We’ll go there next.

Carolina beach music beat ‘is for lovers’

Carolina beach music has been described as “falling-in-love” music, and many of the popular tunes dealt with teenage summer romance.

At least, that’s the way the late Steve Hardy viewed it. Clearly, Hardy knew a thing or two about beach music. His legendary radio show, “Steve Hardy’s Original Beach Party,” broadcast from Greenville, N.C., first went on the air in 1974.

 

Hardy, who grew up in the small town of Maury in Greene County, N.C., called it quits in 2019, ending a 45-year run on the beach. Suffering from dementia, Hardy died in 2020 at age 73.

Author Rosecrans Baldwin was a big fan. He had the opportunity to interview Hardy on the subject of beach music in 2012 for Our State magazine. Hardy told him: “A lot of the lyrics have to do with girls and boys falling in love.”

To illustrate, Hardy started singing the 1963 hit “So Much in Love” by The Tymes:

As we stroll along together / Holding hands, walking all alone / So in love are we two, that we don’t know what to do / So in love (so in love) in a world all our own (so in love)

 

The song was co-written by lead vocalist George Williams, who had joined The Tymes in 1960. (The group had originated in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1956 as the Latineers.) “So Much in Love” reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and peaked at #44 on the Hot R&B singles chart.

The Tymes’ “Ms Grace,” written by John and Johanna Hall, was released in 1974 and instantly embraced by the Carolina beach music community. The tune is #2 on the “All Time Beach Music Top 100” chart created by the deejays at 94.9 The Surf, a radio station in North Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, Ms. Grace / Satin and perfume and lace / The minute I saw your face / I knew that I loved you

Being “young and in love” described Maurice Williams, who was a 15-year-old, growing up in Lancaster, S.C., in 1953.

Charles Morris of The Financial Times, based in London, England, said that Maurice tried unsuccessfully to persuade his date “to stay out and break her parents’ 10 p.m. curfew. The next day the musically talented youngster wrote a song about it, titled ‘Stay,’ which has provided him with a lifelong financial bonanza.”

“Like a flood, the words just came to me,” Williams said.

Stay, ah just a little bit longer…./ Tell me that you’re going to / Now your Daddy don’t mind / And your Mommy don’t mind / If we have another dance, yeah / Just one more, one more time

 

“Stay” was released by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs in 1960, and the recording remains the shortest single ever to reach the top of the American record charts, at 1 minute 36 seconds.

Many groups covered “Stay,” but the inclusion of the original version on the soundtrack of the film “Dirty Dancing” in 1987 introduced Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs to a new, younger audience.

 

“Stay” ranks #24 on The Surf’s top-100 beach music chart, and another Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs favorite tune, “May I,” recorded in 1965, is included at #30.

Williams’ group was originally known as the Gladiolas but adopted the name Zodiacs in 1960 after bass player Albert Hill took a shine to a new automobile – a British-made Ford model named “Zodiac” (an upscale version of the “Zephyr”) with two-tone paintwork, leather trim, whitewall tires and other bells and whistles.

The Platters and The Drifters topped beach music hit parade

Carolina beach music spun off from R&B (rhythm & blues) soul music in the late 1940s and gained traction into the 1950s. Each year, it seemed that more and more songs recorded by African-American artists reached out to touch the toes of white teenagers.

 

The Platters and The Drifters were two groups that drew a lot of attention on the dance circuit.

The Platters formed in Los Angeles in 1952. The four original group members were Herb Reed, Alex Hodge, Cornell Gunter and Joe Jefferson. They reportedly named themselves while watching a turntable spin a vinyl record, which was known informally as a platter. The addition of female vocalist Zola Taylor in 1954 was a bit of a milestone.

 

The Platters had 40 singles that charted on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1955 and 1967, including four #1 hits that came during the early years – “The Great Pretender,” “My Prayer,” “Twilight Time” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

The Platters is best remembered in Carolina beach music circles, however, for three songs from 1966-67 that rank highly on the “All Time Beach Music Top 100” list compiled by deejays at 94.9 The Surf, a beach music radio station in North Myrtle Beach, S.C. These tunes are: “With This Ring” (#20), “Washed Ashore” (#64) and “I Love You 1,000 Times” (#76).

 

The Drifters began in 1953 in New York City and over time, became “the least stable of the great vocal groups,” according to Rolling Stone magazine, with a revolving door of vocalists coming and going. Clyde McPhatter, a native of Durham, N.C., is central to the story.

 

The McPhatter family relocated to New York City in the mid-1940s, and Clyde was still in high school when he was recruited to become the lead tenor with Billy Ward and his Dominoes in 1950.

“Sixty Minute Man,” written by Billy Ward and Rose Marks, was released by The Dominoes in 1951 as an R&B “novelty song.” Today, after more than 70 years, the song continues to be one of the standards of Carolina beach music, ranking #9 on The Surf’s all-time chart.

After recording several more songs with The Dominoes, including “Have Mercy Baby,” McPhatter left the group in 1953. He was promptly snagged by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records.

The group of back-up singers assembled took the name “Drifters” from a term found in a “bird book” used to described migratory birds that are blown off course during storms and found in areas “where they are not commonly observed.”

Ertegun and Wexler shuffled the lineup a time or two, before settling on Bill Pinckney, Gerhart Thrasher, Andrew Thrasher and Jimmy Oliver as the complementary members behind McPhatter. Early hits for The Drifters in 1953-54 were: “Money Honey,” “Such a Night,” “Honey Love” and “What’cha Gonna Do.”

In 1954, McPhatter was drafted into the Army and assigned to Special Services in the continental United States, which allowed him to continue recording. After his tour of duty, he left the group and launched a solo career.

 

The Drifters went on to become one of the most successful Carolina beach music groups, actively performing between 1960 and 1979. Five of The Drifters’ songs are in The Surf’s top-100 list. They are:

“Under the Boardwalk” (#5), “You’re More Than a Number in My Little Red Book” (#15), “I’ve Got Sand in My Shoes” (#27), “Up on the Roof” (#44) and “Kissing in the Back Row of the Movies” (#100). Various lead singers were Johnny Moore, Ben E. King and Rudy Lewis.

Haywood County, N.C., entices visitors to ‘make memories’

It’s always fun to flip through the pages of the monthly Our State magazine and “mentally visit” the various communities across North Carolina. For the full effect, though, you need to read the advertisements, too.

One from the March 2024 edition particularly caught my eye – a tourism ad for Haywood County. The headline reads: “Haywood you like to make some mountain memories?” Now, that’s clever.

The text is rather brief: “Make your way to the Smoky Mountains of Haywood County, where you’ll find a harmonious blend of recreation in our five mountain towns, all set against a backdrop of breathtaking beauty. Make time for moments you’ll never forget.”

The dominant photograph shows a happy, young family in a small lush-green clearing gazing off in awe at the wavy mountaintops in the distance. Mom, dad and the kids are dressed is casual, summer attire. It’s obviously warm on this day. 

Here comes the family up the trail to get into position for the photograph used in the Haywood ad.

The ad includes an arrow that underlines the words “Hay Now” and points to: “Plan your Getaway at VisitNCSmokies.com.”

 

I clicked there…and learned the five towns are Waynesville, Maggie Valley, Canton, Clyde and Lake Junaluska. Haywood County is “right in the middle of the North Carolina Smoky Mountains” and near the southern terminus of the Blue Ridge Parkway…just one county west of Buncombe.

The catchy “Hay Now” campaign was created by Crawford Strategy, an agency headquartered in Greenville, S.C.

 

Pigeon River go-with-the-flow floaters near Canton in Haywood County

One of the agency executives said: “In 2017, the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority (TDA) ‘Hay Now’ campaign made its way into the vocabulary of the marketplace and the local community.”

After a two-year break, because of the COVID pandemic, the TDA expressed strong consensus that “Hay Now” should resume. “The challenge was to take the new campaign to an even higher level – with a fresh take on the destination’s easygoing, whimsical and fun personality,” the advertising spokesperson said.

The Crawford agency responded with its “quirky ‘Haywood you…?’ theme” that was launched in spring 2022 and is still going strong.

“‘Haywood you…?’ creates a memorable invitation to join in on a variety of travel experiences” in all four seasons, prompted by a talking elk.

Here’s a collection of some of the messages, gleaned from a Crawford PowerPoint presentation. (You just keep repeating “Haywood you.”)

“Haywood you like to peep these leaves?” / “…like to be one of the cool kids?” (and go snow skiing) / “…like to flow with the snow?” (and go snow tubing) / “…like to winter wonderfully?” / “… like to get hoppy?” / …like to hit the trail? / …like some fiddles with your vittles? / …like to horse around? / “…like to see what’s in store?” / “… like to make a splash?” / “…like to get really high…at 6,000 feet?”

 

Best of all, the new campaign is working, based on an article written by Cory Vaillancourt that appeared in the March 27 issue of the Smoky Mountain News, a weekly newspaper based in Waynesville.

 Vaillancourt said the “regional approach” to tourism promotion is “designed to keep the money flowing into western North Carolina’s tourism-based economy.”

 Based on the research, Haywood County’s TDA Executive Director Corrina Ruffieux said visitors are “playing in Canton, staying in Maggie (Valley) and shopping and dining in Waynesville.”

 Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers said it’s wise to look at the larger picture, “as a rising tide lifts all ships.”

The goal, Smathers said, is to provide an experience where people can come to Haywood County not as a side trip or just to be passing through or because they got lost, but because “this is where they’re going.”

Carolina beach music grew out of Seabreeze ‘jump joints’

Just for fun, Malcolm Ray “Chicken” Hicks and “Big George” Lineberry used to slip away from Carolina Beach and travel across Myrtle Grove Sound in New Hanover County, N.C., to visit the nearby community of Seabreeze, where they’d pick up some moonshine as well as some dancing tips.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Hicks and Lineberry were “living it up” as Carolina Beach beach bums, they were attracted to the aura emitted from 31 “jump joints” that operated in Seabreeze, a coastal African-American resort community.

“The music of Seabreeze exploded with the sounds of swing, soul and rhythm and blues (R&B),” commented journalist Jennifer Bower of Winston-Salem, N.C. “Feet pounded and shuffled across wooden dance floors.” Seabreeze became known as a “black music mecca.”

 

Lineberry had a day job, working for the amusements company that serviced the jukeboxes (also known as “piccolos”) in all the watering holes throughout the region (both white and black). Early on, Lineberry had one playlist for the jukeboxes in white venues and another one for the black establishments, said author Kathryn Hedgepath of Myrtle Beach, S.C.

“As a businessman, Lineberry’s goal was to maximize income by putting the most popular records in the most jukeboxes,” she added. “When local white teenagers requested to hear the music that was on the jukeboxes in the black venues, he started putting those records in the white venues, too.”

 

The catalyst for this “musical and cultural cross-pollination” was Hicks, who assumed responsibility for selecting the R&B tunes, based mainly on their danceability. Some of his favorite artists from that era were:

Joe Liggins & The Honeydrippers, Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five, Lionel Hampton, Wynonie Harris, Big Joe Turner, Lula Reed, Clifford Curry, B. B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Junior Parker, Jimmy McCracklin, Clyde McPhatter, Bull Moose Jackson and LaVern Baker.

Bull Moose Jackson 

Tom Poland of Columbia, S.C., said: “Chicken Hicks was an exceptional dancer.” (He got his nickname because of his long, skinny, rubbery legs.)

He and Lineberry “changed the music whites listened to, helping bring blacks’ ‘bop’ sound to whites, and that, in part, would give rise to the ‘beach music’ sound,” Poland wrote.

Marion Carter, co-founder of Ripete Records, a beach music distribution outlet located near Bishopville, S.C., shared: “This was the devil’s music. White teenagers like myself were relegated to ‘sneaking around’ to hear the music.”

“We’d listen to WLAC (a 50,000-watt AM “superstation” in Nashville, Tenn., which blasted out R&B tunes every evening) in the car or hide a portable radio under our pillow,” Carter said. “What I have found as I’ve grown up and talked to people is there were tens of thousands of us all doing the very same thing in order to hear this music.”

“The shag dance has come to the forefront, so anything that has the correct beat (with a six-count, eight-step pattern) passes as a beach song,” Carter said. “As far as what is a pure beach song…you know it when you hear it. If you’re around it enough, you know what the feeling is. You feel it in your soul.”

The community of Seabreeze was destroyed in 1954 by Hurricane Hazel, a Category 4 storm that caused widespread coastal devastation. Seabreeze never fully recovered, but locals cling to the memories.

Bower said she was advised: “Put your ear to the ground, and you’ll no doubt hear that heavy bass beat still reverberating in the sand.”

The white-colored shaggin’ loafers worn by Chicken Hicks are exhibited at the Cape Fear Museum of History and Science in Wilmington.

This mural is part of the street scene in Carolina Beach, N.C.

‘Carolina beach music’ emerges from ‘doo-wop’ sound

Early “doo-wop” songs from the 1950s featured a jazzed-up R&B (rhythm and blues) beat. The tunes were both fun to sing along with and dance to.

Shuffle your feet as your brain plays tunes that are among the greatest hits from The Clovers, such as “One Mint Julep,” “Nip Sip,” “Don’t Play That Song” and “Devil Or Angel.”

 

The Clovers came out of Washington, D.C., to become the most successful “doo-wop” vocal group of the 1950s. The Clovers had 21 R&B chart records during the decade, far more than any other group, according to Jay Warner, a noted music historian.

 

“That alone would have secured a place in music history,” he said, “but The Clovers also became one of the first R&B groups to cross the bridge to rock’n’roll.”

That occurred in 1959 when The Clovers recorded their biggest hit tune – “Love Potion No. 9,” written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It scored a “double-double,” peaking at #23 on both the R&B and pop charts.

 

In the minds of Carolina beach music fans, however, The Clovers “is a lock” for the “forever beach” hall of fame.

It’s hard to separate the sound of beach music from the fancy footwork associated with shag dancing. They just go together. Two North Carolinians are featured prominently as pioneers in the beach music scene.

They are: Malcolm Ray “Chicken” Hicks of Durham and “Big George” Lineberry of Greensboro. They weren’t singers or musicians. They were dancers.

As teenagers in the early 1940s, they had taken up dancing to music that had a “different beat,” performed by African-American musicians and vocalists who had begun to penetrate urban markets.

Hicks said that the all-black swing music bands used to play twice a month at the Durham Armory, “and if at all possible, I was there. I watched the dancers and began to copy their style.” He became friends with the best dancers, and they taught him all the moves – from the “shortie George” and the “camel walk” to the “pivot.”

 

Hicks refined his dance moves around the jukebox at Skinny’s Shoeshine Parlor in Durham. In 1943, Hicks relocated to Carolina Beach in New Hanover County, below Wilmington. Summer at Carolina Beach “was like a state fair 24 hours a day, you could just about dance around the clock,” Hicks said. “There were eight ‘jump joints’ with a jukebox and dance floor and free admission, open-air and oceanfront. With all of this, what more would you want?”

By the late 1940s, Hicks had hooked up with Jim Hanna, owner of the Tijuana Inn in Carolina Beach, and shared a “business plan.” It was pretty simple: Stock the jukebox with hottest new R&B tunes.

Hicks knew the “jukebox changer.” He was Big George Lineberry, who installed records on the coin-operated machines for a local amusements company and was the mechanic who performed jukebox maintenance and repairs. Lineberry was known as a “jukebox whisperer” who could cure many “ailments” by simply injecting a “double shot” of R&B records.

Hicks boasted that he and Lineberry “got rid of Glenn Miller” in all the jukeboxes” between Carolina Beach and Myrtle Beach, S.C.

 

With great fanfare, Lineberry made it a point to “test” each new record installation with a personal spin on the dance floor, selecting one of the female tourists in town as his dance partner.

Meanwhile, Hicks continued to “perform R&B research” by making regular visits to sample the music being played on the “piccolos” (jukeboxes) in 31 African-American jump joints just a half-mile away in the community of Seabreeze.

‘Doo-wop’ music is a winding trail from then to now

Happy 90th anniversary in 2024 to The Delta Rhythm Boys, a recording group formed in 1934 at Langston (Okla.) University, the only HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in Oklahoma.

The quintet enjoyed much success in the entertainment industry and was a trailblazer in what became known as “doo-wop” music harmony.

 

The Delta Rhythm Boys’ 1945 recording “Just A-Sittin’ And A-Rockin’” is regarded as the first pop music song in which the background vocalists repeatedly uttered a “nonsense string of syllables” that sounded like “doo doo doo doo-wop.”

The tune was composed by the legendary Billy Strayhorn, with lyrics by Lee Gaines, who sang bass with the group.

The term “doo-wop” was coined much later – in the 1960s on the West Coast – to categorize a “movement” that had influenced a lot of popular artists beginning in the 1950s and moving forward.

Not every song of this ilk contained “doo-wops”…some had “ rama lama ding dongs” or “bop shoo bop shoo bops” or “dip da dip da dips” or “shoo doop shoo be doos” and so forth.

But following down the “doo-wop” trail a little farther, we arrive in 1951 when The Striders (a quartet that included three Strider brothers from Columbus, Ohio) crooned “doo doo da doo doo” behind Savannah Churchill on “When You Came Back to Me,” written by David Highsmith.

 

The first “hit record” that specifically used the term “doo wop” came through loud and clear in 1955 with The Turbans’ recording of “When You Dance,” written by bass vocalist Andrew “Chet” Jones. The single reached #3 on the R&B (rhythm and blues) chart as well as #33 on the pop chart. “When You Dance” was the only hit tune for The Turbans, who unraveled after that.

 

Perhaps “doo-wop” music, when interpreted as an offshoot “music genre” from R&B, began in 1953, with the release of “Gee” by The Crows. That song totally changed the music world, according to Bruce Eder, a respected music industry journalist.

 

The Crows formed in 1951 as a quartet from the New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. They were discovered while performing “amateur night” at the historic Apollo Theater. Initially, the group backed up singer-pianist Viola Watkins.

 

She and William Davis, who sang baritone with The Crows, wrote “Gee” with the syllable “doo” being repeated over and over in a unique cadence.

“Gee” became the first “doo-wop” release to sell more than 1 million records. The tune peaked at #2 on the R&B chart and #14 on the pop chart. Jay Warner, who has written volumes on the history of rock’n’roll, credits “Gee” as the first R&B song to cross the bridge to rock’n’roll.

In the end, The Crows dissolved, crashing as another “one-hit wonder” in the annals of pop music.

The “doo-wop” banner was picked up by other groups, such as The Clovers. Reflecting on the early history of “doo-wop,” Jeff Prugh, a columnist at the Los Angeles Times, wrote (in 1993) that The Clovers had the magic touch.

 

The Clovers had formed in Washington, D.C., in 1946, as a group of high school boys from Armstrong High School. In 1951, Max Silverman, owner of the Waxie Maxie’s chain of retail record stores in the D.C. area, convinced Atlantic Records to take a chance on The Clovers.

The group was taken under the wing of one of the record company co-owners, Ahmet Ertegun, who was the son of Munir Ertegun, the Turkish ambassador to the United States from 1934-44. Ahmet Ertegun (shown below) personally wrote many of the early R&B hits for The Clovers.