WORDS BY BILL DAHL
Rock and roll exploded on the big screen in 1956 and ’57, one hastily conceived movie after another exploiting the new musical trend for all it was worth and then some.Rock Around The Clock, Don’t Knock The Rock, Rock Rock Rock! – every one of them scattered irresistible clips of pioneering artists into generally inane plotlines. But one of those now-historic flicks was an altogether different piece of work, written with grace and style and filmed in gorgeous colour: The Girl Can’t Help It. Of all the legends-to-be gracing the movie’s incredible musical cast, none was quite as unknown at the time he filmed his part as Eddie Cochran.
Eddie hadn’t even signed with Liberty Records yet when he cut the song that he mimed in the movie. Written by a staffer at Sylvester Cross’ American Music, Nelda Bingo, under the alias of Ned Fairchild, Twenty Flight Rock detailed the travails forced upon a lad so eager to see his girl that he overcomes a broken down elevator by scaling 20 lofty flights of stairs to reach her apartment.