Good night, Tab

Perhaps you had to be there, at that time, at the right age. I was a teenager in the 1950s and Tab Hunter was a big freaking deal. Looking back on it now, I don’t really understand why except perhaps that time became known as "The Era of the Teen Idols." I can’t say I ever sought ought a movie simply because Tab Hunter was in it -- the only Hunter movie I remember going to see was Damn Yankees and that had nothing to do with Tab Hunter. In fact, at one point Hunter really made me mad. He recorded this song called Young Love, a cover version of a tune done much, much better by country singer Sonny James. But Sonny James wasn’t a household name. He wasn’t a teen throb. So Tab Hunter’s awful version of this song climbed to No. 1 on the charts. James’ far superior recording of the same tune did OK, but to this day I blame Tab Hunter for stealing the glory from Sonny James. Still, Hunter’s death last night seems like another nail in the coffin of a time I do hold dear, a simpler time, certainly a more innocent time. It was, however, a far more sexually repressive time — I joke now that the only person who really had any fun during the 1950s was Dwight Eisenhower. But there you have it. That was Tab’s time.