Okay, okay. I have to admit that for about two weeks I was totally smitten with the youthful Pat Boone when he first appeared on the Arthur Godfrey Show. In our sweeter version of teen superlative he was "cute" (cf. today's "hot").
I have to admit he had a good sense of rhythm and butchered "Ain't That a Shame" and "Tutti Frutti" a lot less than some of the pop crooners who tried it and failed. He was the cleaned-up alternative to Elvis even our mothers liked. But down in my home town, this "Birmingham Bertha" was trying to learn to dance the "bop," mostly to the rhythm & blues coming out of black radio stations--"Little Mama" and "Shake, Rattle, & Roll," and yes, "Long Tall Sally," and "Tutti Frutti" by Little Richard. That was great dance music and in retrospect, was in the jazz tradition.
But Pat was only a brief fling. I soon discovered 1920s and 1930s jazz and still have the records I bought then--but not a single Pat Boone platter. Not even an MP3 download. After all, his love letters were written in the sand.