During the days of the “hot rod menace” in the early 1950s there was lots of hysteria in the streets about wild kids flying around in out of control cars and causing mayhem. Wally Parks organized the NHRA as a way to start to gather these kids and make things safer as well as to clean up the image of hot rodding as a whole. It took a while for that to happen and before it did, various forms of media got in on the act of perpetuating the image of hot rodders as out of control huns that were causing the downfall of western civilization. Movies like Hot Rods to Hell and Drag Strip Riot played into the negative image and songs like this one called Chicken by a trio known as The Cheers in 1955 were also doing the same thing.
You may hear this song and think that it sounds familiar and you’ll be right. Chicken is set to the same backing music as Black Demin Trousers and Motorcycle Boots the other song of note that the band had. That one profiled a biker and painted a similarly stark and negative image. In Chicken the group sings about the game most of us played on bikes as kids. The concept is simple, two cars drive headlong at each other and the first to flinch loses. The bad news is that if no one flinches, you need a squeegie to get the remains of everyone off of the pavement. Such was the cautionary tale of this song.
PRESS PLAY BELOW TO HEAR THE CHEERS PERFORM THEIR 1955 HIT CHICKEN – PLAYING INTO THE PUBLIC’S FEARS OF HOT RODDERS IN THAT AGE AND TIME!
