Press On: So, where were you born?
I have had this thought in my mind that where a person is born could have a major influence on their life. So, I went looking for information on the subject. There really doesn”t seem to be a wealth of research on the issue. I did find an article about a study from the U.K. that suggests that babies born in cities such as Glasgow, in Scotland, have a lower life expectancy than in cities in Southeast England. The study”s conclusion was that life expectancy is greater in places of higher income and less unemployment and lower in locations of less wealth and larger unemployment.
This makes sense, but I expected research on topics such as how your place of birth can influence your choice of vocation, choice of religion, choice of recreation, choice of spouse and many other possible important life decisions.
Perhaps my perception is just not accurate. Maybe, for most people, birthplace makes very little difference in their life. It might sound odd, but what made me think about this subject in the first place all revolves around the Beach Boys.
So, what do you think of when you hear or say the name of this long-surviving band from the 1960s? If you are like most people, your mind probably projects the image of a surfer in the tube of a wave, hot rod cars on the beach with sun-bleached hair blowing in the wind and plenty of suntanned California girls, if you are a guy, and well-muscled surfers and beach volleyballers, if you are a woman.
The point is that the Beach Boys helped create an image and that image was totally Californian. It”s amazing, because that impression has lasted nearly 50 years, so far, and doesn”t appear to be waning.
Now, my question is would this have happened if William “Buddy” Wilson had decided to stay on at his father”s plumbing business in Hutchinson, Kansas, instead of moving to Southern California during the third migration wave in the 1920s?
Buddy and Edith Wilson were the grandparents of three of the founding members of the Beach Boys; Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson. Murry and Audree Wilson, their parents, were firmly entrenched in Southern California in the 1940s, when the boys were being born. Two things were prevalent for the three brothers from the very beginning; they were close to the beach and there was constantly music at home. Supposedly, father Murry started playing his Hammond organ close by Brian”s crib as soon as he was brought home from the hospital. He wrote and played his own songs to the children. Eventually, they started joining in the singing and playing music, too.
If the nucleus of the Beach Boys; Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson had been born in Hutchinson, Kansas, a town I lived in for six years during the 1980s, what would the brothers have named their band and what kind of songs would they have written while living in the Great Midwest? There are no beaches, just miles and miles of “amber waves of grain.”
There were other “surf music” bands and musicians besides the Beach Boys, such as the Surfaris, the Ventures and Dick Dale, so the Southern California image would have been created without the Beach Boys, but what would the Wilson brothers have done differently? Place of birth may not have a huge influence on everyone, but I firmly believe that it does for some people.
Gary Dickson is the editor and publisher of the Record-Bee. Contact him at gdickson@record-bee.com or 263-5636, ext. 24.
