1958
LEROY * JACK SCOTT * LONDON 8626 * UK
The B side of Jack Scott's first British release, this must have gone down a storm with the Teddy Boys, as it addresses the subject of a rebel who is always getting himself in shtuk with the law. At the time of its release there had been in America, and was still raging in the British Isles, a sustained and persistent fuss by the bourgeoisie and the old in mind, about young people doing what they wanted to do; I. e. dress differently, dance, have sex and generally behave differently to those who disliked them. Of course there's nothing old, or new in that situation, but that particular circumstance was characterised by the introduction of the terms, 'teenage' and 'juvenile delinquent', two concepts that were indivisible in the minds of many who devoured the salacious and puerile popular media, for whom the 'folk devils' and the 'moral panic' of juvenile delinquents, were created. In Britain the juvenile delinquents never quite caught on with the public - not for want of trying by those intellectuals and propagandists who would have liked to ride that particular American gravy train - but instead 'Teddy' Boys and Girls (so called as a shortening of the word Edwardian to 'Teddy', Edwardian being a reference to the style of dress) had to suffice.
See also: Goodbye Baby * The way I Walk