Jerry Blavat (–2023)

Originally published on Read Handed.

You Only Rock Once: My Life in Music by Jerry Blavat targets a very specific audience. Philadelphians who grew up in the fifties, sixties, and seventies will undoubtedly love this book. People who work in radio or are interested in working in radio will find it interesting. Unfortunately, I don't fall into either of those categories and I feel quite ambivalent toward Blavat's autobiography.

Jerry Blavat is a Philadelphia icon - a radio disc-jockey who became famous in the fifties and sixties for his record hops, television shows, and other music-related projects. He was close friends with Sammy Davis, Jr., Dick Clark, Chubby Checkers, and other legends.

The stories Blavat shares in his autobiography are part tell-all, part name-dropping, and mostly entertaining. Later in his life, he runs into quite a few legal problems, but of course, none of them are really "his fault". He shares that he won't divorce the wife from who he's been separated for thirty years because he wants to be a good Catholic, yet apparently has no problem with adultery and committing himself to another woman outside of marriage. These kind of inconsistencies run through the narrative of Blavat's life and distance the reader from the main character, Blavat himself.

The copy I read was an advance uncorrected proof, so I will make no mention of editorial errors that were likely corrected in the final version, but I do have to comment on the amateur quality of the writing itself. It reads as if Blavat were telling the stories orally, which many people will not mind. For me, though, it took me out of the narrative when Blavat would stop and reiterate some back story or explain minor details that I thought had no bearing on the overall point of the story. Over-telling is a common problem in autobiographies and especially memoirs. Because authors are recounting true events, they tend to disclose insignificant details (such as the name of the doctor or other person that only shows up once in the whole book) that only clutter the objective of the story for the reader. In fiction, these details would be immediately cut, but in memoir, authors tend to hang on to them because "that's what actually happened".

On that note, I didn't think it was necessary for Blavat to recount his experiences with almost every sexual partner he ever had. I read a review of this book on Amazon that said "He tells some romantic tales that I hope are with people who are now deceased, because otherwise he should have been more discreet." I definitely agree with that. Blavat does kiss and tell.

Despite the weaknesses, I read the entire book and was only bored a few times throughout it - and that's going in with no knowledge of Blavat at all. The book would likely have been more appealing to me if I fit into one of those two categories I mentioned earlier, or if I grew up hearing newspaper accounts of Blavat and wanted to hear his side of the story. Most of the stories are entertaining and probably worth telling. I just wish they had been told in a way that would do them justice.… (més)