Kilty Larkin’s

Before rock and roll burst onto the scene, pop music was more sedate and one of its leading exponents was Patti Page. She began as a country music singer and crossed over into pop, with country-tinged records that were very popular with the public. Page was born into a poor, farming family in 1927 in Claremore, Oklahoma. Her vocal talent and good looks were to carry her away into stardom. She was Clara Ann Fowler before she assumed her stage name.

Patti Page’s break came when she was picked to sing on a local radio show, broadcast from Tulsa. The bandleader and manager, Jack Rael listened to one of her sessions and invited her to join the band he managed, the Jimmy Joy Band. Rael later became her personal manager and supervised her solo career. The first single was released in 1948, called Confess and it reached the Top 20 chart position. The follow up, With My Eyes Wide Open I’m Dreaming was a million seller.

Even more success followed when All My Love came out. It was adapted from the orchestral piece Bolero, composed by Maurice Ravel and was the first number one hit for Patti Page in 1950. Later in the same year, she had the biggest hit of her career when she recorded The Tennessee Waltz.

The face of pop music changed of course as the 1960s revolution of groups took hold. Patti Page had a loyal fan base however and remained a much sought after live performer. The last pop hit occurred in 1965 with the theme song from the movie starring Bette Davis, Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Her last ever chart position was in the country charts in 1982, with the song My Man Friday, which reached number 80.

Despite her advancing years, she continues to give live performances for her fans. Patti Page has been an astute businesswoman too and started her own record label in the 1990s. She was given a special Grammy Award in 1998 for her contribution to music as the Best Traditional Pop Singer.

Patti Page has been married twice, the first time in 1956 until her divorce in 1972. Her second marriage took place in 1990. She helps her present partner to run a successful maple syrup products company. A CD release is scheduled for 2007 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Oklahoma becoming a state. Patti Page is one of the contributors to the compilation, along with other Okie artists such as Jimmy Webb and Garth Brooks. The proceeds will go towards a local charity.

My friend still has a Britney Spears poster in his bedroom. In this poster, she is wearing a cap, doing a semi-wink at her viewer, has a crop top on to expose or reveal her naval piercing, and is quite voluptuous for the rails that usually top the fashion and celebrity charts.

The Britney Spears poster stays on my mind for a number of reasons. First, for probably the first two years of her stunning shoot to pop-stardom, I had no idea who she was, despite being really into pop culture for my own interests and for those at the time of my students, who when they took a composition or critical thinking or other class with me got everything from Teletubbies shows to Madonna concerts to films like Trainspotting and Little Big Man. That is, I stayed up on current celebrities, shows, film, music, and other media to incorporate it into the classroom where we would analyze, deconstruct, or somehow connect literature and rhetoric.

Working with one student who is a brilliant writer, I would come to collaborate on plays and other works with him. And, because of him, I would come to know of this dynamo, this mini-diva, through my first Britney Spears poster and through his obsessive allusions to Britney Spears as the be-all and end-all of performers.

Next, becoming close friends with another student a couple of years later (another brilliant writer who is now finishing her graduate work to become a teacher), I found myself face-to-face with another Britney Spears poster. This time, rather than having a penchant for her music/on-stage performances (which I now see as wonderfully engaging events to watch, by the way), this student saw Brit as the epitome of health. She didn’t appear to diet, gorge and puke, or starve herself by living on hi-test caffeine and cigarettes. My friend was a beauty herself, but was often fixated on being "too fat" (and wasn’t), so the Britney Spears poster reminded her that women with curves were acceptable - even gorgeous and sought-after.

So when I now visit my new friend, who is gay but has Britney Spears posters on his walls (as beards for his unknowing father) and who idolizes her for her pop value, I think, I re-visit the positive images in my head and likely in the head of thousands of young females - who may just grow up emulating someone healthier and more real than the boob-job queens or the coat hangers whose claim to fame is how exaggerated their rib cages are when they walk down a runway or gyrate on a stage.

Now Britney Spears is a mom and in the news more for her celebrity, but if she never returns to the sexy little musical pin-up girl, she may very well be remembered by her Britney Spears posters, pictures and desktop wallpaper. Britney Spears may very well be our generation’s Marilyn Monroe.