Shake Him Till He Rattles/It's Cold Out There by Malcolm Braly

Shake Him Till He Rattles/It's Cold Out There by Malcolm Braly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Stark House continues to republish Gold Medal paperbacks in two-in-one volumes. With Malcolm Braly's Shake Him Till He Rattles and It's Cold Out There they've picked two of the best titles from the mid-1960s.

Shake Him Till He Rattles (1963) is a quintessentially beat novel which owes a lot to a previous Gold Medal PBO, North Beach Girl (1960) by John Trinian (Zekial Marko). It uses as a backdrop the coffee house and jazz club scene of North Beach and includes a lot of the same themes, particularly lesbian relationships. But Shake Him turns out to be a whole lot more than just an etching of the whole milieu, it questions the whole beat existence and suggests that it might be as much as a dead-end treadmill as its counterpoint "square" existence.

It's Cold Out There (1966) follows the first few months of character J.D. Bing's freedom following a long incarceration. He begins to realize that in the free world a lot of people live in prisons of their own making.

If you are a fan of Gold Medal PBOs from the 50s and 60s, this volume is a must. You might also want to check out some of the other volumes available from Stark House Press.

View all my reviews

The Daddy-o Manifest-o

If you believe the golden days of the space-age bachelor lifestyle peaked sometime in the early sixties, you, my friend, have found a haven on the net in Dig-it, Daddy-o. This blog is about the pop culture of the 1950s and 60s and the styles they inspire today. Although we will focus on that time period we could wander further back in time or write about subjects as late as the late 70s.

Although we will be writing on subjects more of interest to the American male, we don't want to dissuade distaff and alien readers, but we are here for readers that understand the social context of the period we survey and appreciate it despite the fact that it wasn't always politically correct by today's standards.

To wit, here's a quick laundry list of our favorite subjects in no particular order: hardboiled crime fiction, cool jazz, exotica, tropicalia, bossa nova, Gold Medal Paperbacks, Frank, Sammy, Dean, cigars, vintage motorcycles, James Bond, guns, pin-ups, black velvet paintings, pop-art, op-art, Tretchikoff, Hitchcock, Carson, Hefner, Playboy, Julie London, Tormé, Mancini, Waylon, Willie, New York City, Vegas, beatniks, bullfighting, Kerouac, Capote, martinis, rye whisky, Paris, country music, Hawaiian shirts, guayaberas, Bardot, French new wave, Roger Corman, James Dean, Rio de Janeiro, Goldwater, Mad Men, the cold war and the space race. You get the idea.

You won't find music downloads here. Just reviews of the latest re-releases of music and of books about and from the 50s and 60s. Although we will occasionally have links to pulp fiction that can be downloaded and read on your ebook reader.

Our official launch date is July 1, 2011