ROY BROWN - GOOD ROCKIN' TONIGHT

I heard the news/There's good rockin' tonight!

It was a song of things to come. It opened with a Judgement Day blast of horns and the reassuring catch phrase of radio newsman Gabriel Heater—"There's good news tonight!"—twisted by a wailin' blues singer to snout the dawn of a wild new age.

When Roy Brown came back to his hometown with the clothes on his back, air-conditioned shoes and a song written on a paper bag in May 194...