Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the classic acid rock group, The Byrds, performing Eight Miles High.
Eight miles high and when you touch down
You’ll find that it’s stranger than known
Signs in the street that say where you’re going
Are somewhere just being their own
Nowhere is there warmth to be found
Among those afraid of losing their ground
Rain gray town known for it’s sound
In places small faces unbound
Round the squares huddled in storms
Some laughing some just shapeless forms
Sidewalk scenes and black limousines
Some living some standing alone
DVD Review
The Beat Goes On: 1966, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
“Josh, are you coming with me to the Sea ‘n’ Surf Club over in Old Orchard Beach Friday night so we can dance and have some fun? They have got the Ramrods playing and I want to hear their cover of Eight Miles High again,” Lola LaBlanc whispered in Josh Breslin’s ear one Wednesday afternoon, one Olde Saco high school afternoon. Of course one Lola LaBlanc (French-Canadian, like Josh on his mother’s, and like half the town before the mills starting heading south), whom one Josh Breslin had more than a passing interest in, especially some variant of the whispered “have some fun” interest in, did not explain in any way how two, not twenty-one looking sixteen (almost seventeen, okay, but still young) teenagers, were going to get into the security conscious Sea ‘n’ Surf Club in order to have that fun.
Have fun without IDs, without connections, without anything except maybe Lola’s rather nice shape (and toothy smile). But there were a million Lola shapes around when you thought about it and the guys at the door probably had more, uh, “dates” (or promises of dates) than they could possible use. Nevertheless Josh said simply, “Yes”, and left it at that, at Lola that. Because when Lola wanted something, although heaven and hell might tumble to the ground, she was going to get it. So, Josh, no stranger to previous Lola “have fun,” figured to take the ride.
Of course in the year 1966 Lola wants, hell, any teenager ready to break out of the bounds of knee –jerk grind high school wants, included copping some dope to insure Friday night fun. The usual drill was that Lola would score some weed from some Portland connection (or maybe a Kittery across from the Portsmouth shipyard Navy sailor connection), they would get a little high and Lola would be ready to drive those guys at the front door of the club crazy, crazy enough to let her pass. Of course, the part Josh didn’t know (or want to know) was that whispered promise of a “date” to grease the way.
Moreover when Lola got dressed up to the nines, something tight and sexy, put on some misty ancient primordial drive fragrance and rubbed right up against a guy, well, that was Lola wants in a nutshell. But using her magic to get into see The Ramrods with all kinds of tight and sexy dressed to the nines competition from real twenty-one year old women with a little more experience in the wants satisfied department was going to be a different proposition.
Josh could never figure why, every once in a while, Lola came up to him and whispered in his ear, and forced him to say yes to anything she asked for. Maybe it was for old time’s sake since they had been middle school sweethearts and although it had not lasted long once both realized that this was not a match made in heaven (or what passes for middle school understanding of such a situation). But maybe it was just Lola trying to keep her hooks into small hokey town Olde Saco’s kind of first “hippie” to see what was what on that scene.
That is how it had had happened the first time they had gone to see The Ramrods in Old Orchard, had gotten high as kites on some weed Josh had scored in Boston one weekend (and grapevine Lola had heard about and whispered in his ear), they had bopped the dance, and afterward gone to “watch the submarine races” at the beach (a localism but you can figure it out, boy, girl, high, dope high, hot, and kind of loose, get it. And no submarines seen anywhere in the area since about 1942, get it).
Come Friday night and Josh picks up Lola in his father’s old Buick (no problem since Lola never was a car magnet girl). After doing the normal come in and get her, say hi to the folks, they finally got under way to Old Orchard. Along the way Lola casually stated, “Josh, I didn’t get weed for us tonight, tonight I have some good mescaline. I have never tried it but my sailor boy says it’s mild, mild compared to LSD, and is just great for grooving on music, especially for The Ramrods. I got a couple of extra tabs for the guys at the door. We are going to do it up before we go, okay?” Josh, feinting sophistication in matters of drugs said “Sure” although he had never tried anything more heavy than weed. Take the ride, he thought.
Like I said what Lola wants Lola gets and Josh and she take their tabs. Moreover the new trick, mescaline, got them into the club without any problems (although Josh thought he heard a date go with it but that was just Lola). About a half hour later Josh is “grooving” (and Lola too) as The Ramrods start their version of the yellow brick road magical mystery tour with a ripping set, featuring Eight Miles High. Josh (and as later described to him by Lola) is nothing but flash colors, strobe light visions, and distorted shapes.
Groovy. Too groovy to stay in the hot, hepped up club after a while. So like couples have done ten thousand times before in ten thousand locales they went down to the beach to cool off. Cool off watching submarine races (I don’t have to explain that again, right) but mostly giggling, and goofing. And that, my friends, is how one Josh Breslin and one Lola LaBlanc came of age in the 1960s psychedelic high night.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- When Harry Smith Ruled The Whole Wide World- Folk World That Is
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Memphis Jug Band performing in the Harry Smith 1920s night.
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
Back the 1960s folk revival minute my old friend, socialist propagandist and amateur folk revival archivist Peter Paul Markin, was a real piece of work. I will never forget the conversation on the subject of folk music, the early stuff, on one of the first nights after I had met him. (It was really a Pee-Pee monologue. By the way in those days he was known under the moniker of Be-Bop Benny so don’t let him know I am calling him Pee-Pee here.) I had just met him and the rest of the motley crew of Captain Crunch’s merry prankster yellow brick road bus at a park up on Russian Hill in San Francisco in the summer of love, 1967 version, after I had hitchhiked my way across the country from my Olde Saco, Maine hometown.
He, in a hail of bong fire (figure it out for yourselves what we were doing), started going on and on about this guy Harry Smith, kind of a screwy guy when all was said and done, who almost single-handedly created the better parts of the American Folk Songbook. I, just out of high school, just bumming around looking for some adventure, and mainly just getting away from squaresville Olde Saco, was just barely “on the bus” with Bob Dylan and his electric folk stuff so, at the time , and for a long time after this Pee-Pee’s raving was just so much air.
But one thing about Pee-Pee and his obsessions, he doesn’t give up easily. Every once in a while, usually after some bong fire hit, he would return to the subject in little snippets. Like did I realize that the Jim Kweskin Jug Band (I was crazy for Maria Muldaur) played a lot of stuff that the Memphis Jug Band played in the 1920s. Or that the real way to understand that old lonesome and distressing mountain music brought from the old country (the British Isles old country, just to keep things straight) and planted in Appalachia was to listen to Clarence Ashley or Buell Kazee render their versions of songs such as East Virginia. Or that guys like Uncle Dave Mason, and guys like that, worked the carny, vaudeville, back alley circuit honing their skills before live audiences. Or that non-electric juke joints, church Sunday, and plantation prisons were keys to understanding the way black music evolved into blues, jazz, hip-hop, rap and so on.
Basically old Pee-Pee spoon fed me in little doses (knowing my attention span for non- electric acid-etched rock was minimal in those days) the great expanse of the American folk songbook. As time went on that funny old guy with eclectic tastes, Harry Smith (and, additionally the Lomaxes, father and son, and the Seegers, father and sons, help fill it out), started to look no so eccentric. So when my time came to listen to Harry’s now famous Anthology of American Folk Music they had to practically pry me from the CD player before I wore it out playing the eighty-odd songs repeatedly. Ya, that old Pee-Pee was sure a real piece of work
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
Back the 1960s folk revival minute my old friend, socialist propagandist and amateur folk revival archivist Peter Paul Markin, was a real piece of work. I will never forget the conversation on the subject of folk music, the early stuff, on one of the first nights after I had met him. (It was really a Pee-Pee monologue. By the way in those days he was known under the moniker of Be-Bop Benny so don’t let him know I am calling him Pee-Pee here.) I had just met him and the rest of the motley crew of Captain Crunch’s merry prankster yellow brick road bus at a park up on Russian Hill in San Francisco in the summer of love, 1967 version, after I had hitchhiked my way across the country from my Olde Saco, Maine hometown.
He, in a hail of bong fire (figure it out for yourselves what we were doing), started going on and on about this guy Harry Smith, kind of a screwy guy when all was said and done, who almost single-handedly created the better parts of the American Folk Songbook. I, just out of high school, just bumming around looking for some adventure, and mainly just getting away from squaresville Olde Saco, was just barely “on the bus” with Bob Dylan and his electric folk stuff so, at the time , and for a long time after this Pee-Pee’s raving was just so much air.
But one thing about Pee-Pee and his obsessions, he doesn’t give up easily. Every once in a while, usually after some bong fire hit, he would return to the subject in little snippets. Like did I realize that the Jim Kweskin Jug Band (I was crazy for Maria Muldaur) played a lot of stuff that the Memphis Jug Band played in the 1920s. Or that the real way to understand that old lonesome and distressing mountain music brought from the old country (the British Isles old country, just to keep things straight) and planted in Appalachia was to listen to Clarence Ashley or Buell Kazee render their versions of songs such as East Virginia. Or that guys like Uncle Dave Mason, and guys like that, worked the carny, vaudeville, back alley circuit honing their skills before live audiences. Or that non-electric juke joints, church Sunday, and plantation prisons were keys to understanding the way black music evolved into blues, jazz, hip-hop, rap and so on.
Basically old Pee-Pee spoon fed me in little doses (knowing my attention span for non- electric acid-etched rock was minimal in those days) the great expanse of the American folk songbook. As time went on that funny old guy with eclectic tastes, Harry Smith (and, additionally the Lomaxes, father and son, and the Seegers, father and sons, help fill it out), started to look no so eccentric. So when my time came to listen to Harry’s now famous Anthology of American Folk Music they had to practically pry me from the CD player before I wore it out playing the eighty-odd songs repeatedly. Ya, that old Pee-Pee was sure a real piece of work
Friday, June 29, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin -Franny Leclerc’s War- “If I Didn’t Care”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Inkspots performing I’ll Get By.
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
She, Francine Lorraine Leclerc, Franny she to everybody in Old Saco, that is up in Maine, thank you, ever since she could remember, was in no hurry, a conscious no hurry, to get down to the War Ration Office to get her monthly sugar, flour, butter (really oleomargarine), and this and that before it closed on this first day of June, year two of our war, 1943. And the reason that Miss Leclerc was in no hurry was that hurry, or no hurry, she would have to wait in that seemingly endless line for half the afternoon for her goods, such as they were.
So moseying down the street around closing time was just as good as that eternal, infernal waiting, listening to Mrs. La Croix talking about how her Jimmy was saving the world single-handedly from the Japs, or, ditto, Mrs. Lévesque on her Jimmy on the European front. Secretly she wished that either, or both Jimmies, could do that herculean task but she knew, knew from her own Jimmy, Jimmy LeBlanc, in his every other day letters that there was no end to the war in sight. Even with everything rationed, or supposed to be.
But let us back up just a bit because there is more to Franny’s peevishness than meets the eye. See Franny was lonesome as hell, and she used that word without blushing to describe her condition to her shocked Jimmy’s Mrs. LeBlanc. Ya, she had the Jimmy (LeBlanc, reason for the last name usage to follow) blues bad for the almost year and a half that he had been gone. Naturally, no saving of the world Jimmy like a ton of LeBlancs and others with French surnames in town had enlisted about two days after Pearl Harbor just to do his “bit” as he said.
Here was Franny’s dilemma though. How was a pretty girl, very pretty if you asked half the breathing boys, hell, grown married men (and maybe some that didn’t breathe so good until a fresh breeze nineteen year old woman looking like Betty Grable and smelling, well, smelling of promises and gardens, edenic or not, came sashaying came pass on Main Street or on the boardwalk over at Old Orchard Beach) to stay true blue when she didn’t know if her boy was coming back, or if he would be wanting her to be waiting when he got back. She had heard stories from Papa Leclerc (her grandfather) about the last war and what it did to guys, guys who asked their girls to wait and then just took off when they hit New York and were never heard from after that. She knew her Jimmy though and when such thoughts passed her day she just keep thinking of their song, If I Didn’t Care.
Funny, she really hated the song, hated it from the very beginning before Jimmy left for boot camp and they decided they just needed a “their song” to keep up morale. Her morale. Truth is she didn’t want him to go, he had a good job down at MacAdams Textile Mill and if he had wanted to he could have been deferred as a war industry guy. But not Jimmy, Jimmy LeBlanc, and his need to do his “bit.” And truth too that is what she found, well, attractive about him although she still hated the song, hated it from the first. But she had promised Jimmy that when she got lonely, or tired, that she would play it. She did, hating it every time. And there were times she had to play it more than a properly waiting for her Jimmy girl should have had to.
And that is where the other Jimmies, LaCroix and Lévesque, came in. Saving the Pacific Rim or European civilization may have been their forte but neither boy (hell, they were only twenty) had enlisted right after Pearl but waited until they were drafted. And while they were patiently waiting they tried to steal, each in turn and separately, Miss Frances Leclerc’s affections away from Jimmy LaCroix. And both lads, given the times and the possibilities, used the same route to carry out their dastardly work. The Friday night dance night at the Surfside Club in Old Orchard Beach.
See Franny and Jimmy (Leblanc, just in case you drifted off) had agreed, or Jimmy had surrendered on the point, that bound to be lonely Franny, after a hard week’s work down at the Portsmouth Naval Yard (doing her own “bit” for the war effort) was entitled to let some steam off dancing the night away. Dancing to the be-bop music of the cover band, Jimmy Jacques and His Band, who played the Dorseys (Tommy and Jimmy), Artie Shaw, Glen Miller, and the rest of the big band gangs. Of course dancing in those days was cheek to cheek or close to it so naturally guys were lining up (and mainly getting turned down) to have a spin with Miss Leclerc (and that maddening sway perfume).
One late fall Friday night up stepped one James LaCroix, all handsome, a little drunk, and a little fresh but just enough fresh to spark the interest of a lonely pining away girl. Franny let him get to first base, but no further. That night she spent about half the left-over of the night playing If I Didn’t Care up in her room. And then one Friday night a couple of months later another handsome, eager, if somewhat shy Jimmy Lévesque got under her skin and took her for a whirl in his car (father’s car, complete with rationed gas) down to the lovers’ lane at Olde Saco Beach (down by the jetty all quiet and isolated except for an early lobster boat making ready for the day’s run) and got to second base with her, no further. She stopped counting the number of times she played “their song” that night and the next day.
So you can see why one Francine Lorraine Leclerc was in no rush, no rush at all, to get to that War Ration Office much before closing.
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
She, Francine Lorraine Leclerc, Franny she to everybody in Old Saco, that is up in Maine, thank you, ever since she could remember, was in no hurry, a conscious no hurry, to get down to the War Ration Office to get her monthly sugar, flour, butter (really oleomargarine), and this and that before it closed on this first day of June, year two of our war, 1943. And the reason that Miss Leclerc was in no hurry was that hurry, or no hurry, she would have to wait in that seemingly endless line for half the afternoon for her goods, such as they were.
So moseying down the street around closing time was just as good as that eternal, infernal waiting, listening to Mrs. La Croix talking about how her Jimmy was saving the world single-handedly from the Japs, or, ditto, Mrs. Lévesque on her Jimmy on the European front. Secretly she wished that either, or both Jimmies, could do that herculean task but she knew, knew from her own Jimmy, Jimmy LeBlanc, in his every other day letters that there was no end to the war in sight. Even with everything rationed, or supposed to be.
But let us back up just a bit because there is more to Franny’s peevishness than meets the eye. See Franny was lonesome as hell, and she used that word without blushing to describe her condition to her shocked Jimmy’s Mrs. LeBlanc. Ya, she had the Jimmy (LeBlanc, reason for the last name usage to follow) blues bad for the almost year and a half that he had been gone. Naturally, no saving of the world Jimmy like a ton of LeBlancs and others with French surnames in town had enlisted about two days after Pearl Harbor just to do his “bit” as he said.
Here was Franny’s dilemma though. How was a pretty girl, very pretty if you asked half the breathing boys, hell, grown married men (and maybe some that didn’t breathe so good until a fresh breeze nineteen year old woman looking like Betty Grable and smelling, well, smelling of promises and gardens, edenic or not, came sashaying came pass on Main Street or on the boardwalk over at Old Orchard Beach) to stay true blue when she didn’t know if her boy was coming back, or if he would be wanting her to be waiting when he got back. She had heard stories from Papa Leclerc (her grandfather) about the last war and what it did to guys, guys who asked their girls to wait and then just took off when they hit New York and were never heard from after that. She knew her Jimmy though and when such thoughts passed her day she just keep thinking of their song, If I Didn’t Care.
Funny, she really hated the song, hated it from the very beginning before Jimmy left for boot camp and they decided they just needed a “their song” to keep up morale. Her morale. Truth is she didn’t want him to go, he had a good job down at MacAdams Textile Mill and if he had wanted to he could have been deferred as a war industry guy. But not Jimmy, Jimmy LeBlanc, and his need to do his “bit.” And truth too that is what she found, well, attractive about him although she still hated the song, hated it from the first. But she had promised Jimmy that when she got lonely, or tired, that she would play it. She did, hating it every time. And there were times she had to play it more than a properly waiting for her Jimmy girl should have had to.
And that is where the other Jimmies, LaCroix and Lévesque, came in. Saving the Pacific Rim or European civilization may have been their forte but neither boy (hell, they were only twenty) had enlisted right after Pearl but waited until they were drafted. And while they were patiently waiting they tried to steal, each in turn and separately, Miss Frances Leclerc’s affections away from Jimmy LaCroix. And both lads, given the times and the possibilities, used the same route to carry out their dastardly work. The Friday night dance night at the Surfside Club in Old Orchard Beach.
See Franny and Jimmy (Leblanc, just in case you drifted off) had agreed, or Jimmy had surrendered on the point, that bound to be lonely Franny, after a hard week’s work down at the Portsmouth Naval Yard (doing her own “bit” for the war effort) was entitled to let some steam off dancing the night away. Dancing to the be-bop music of the cover band, Jimmy Jacques and His Band, who played the Dorseys (Tommy and Jimmy), Artie Shaw, Glen Miller, and the rest of the big band gangs. Of course dancing in those days was cheek to cheek or close to it so naturally guys were lining up (and mainly getting turned down) to have a spin with Miss Leclerc (and that maddening sway perfume).
One late fall Friday night up stepped one James LaCroix, all handsome, a little drunk, and a little fresh but just enough fresh to spark the interest of a lonely pining away girl. Franny let him get to first base, but no further. That night she spent about half the left-over of the night playing If I Didn’t Care up in her room. And then one Friday night a couple of months later another handsome, eager, if somewhat shy Jimmy Lévesque got under her skin and took her for a whirl in his car (father’s car, complete with rationed gas) down to the lovers’ lane at Olde Saco Beach (down by the jetty all quiet and isolated except for an early lobster boat making ready for the day’s run) and got to second base with her, no further. She stopped counting the number of times she played “their song” that night and the next day.
So you can see why one Francine Lorraine Leclerc was in no rush, no rush at all, to get to that War Ration Office much before closing.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Visions Of Jewell -With Bob Dylan’s “Visions Of Joanna” In Mind
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Dylan performing “Visions Of Johanna”
CD Review
Biograph, Bob Dylan, 3 CD set, Columbia Records, 1985
The other day my old socialist propagandist and gadfly 1960s folk revival commentator friend, Peter Paul Markin, regaled me with some stories about his early experiences following the musical ups and downs of the well-known singer-songwriter from that period, Bob Dylan. The strangest story revolved around Mr. Dylan’s performance at the 1965 Newport (R.I.) Folk Festival, then the premier showcase for virtually anything that could reasonably be called folk or roots music, and having the plug, literally (at least that is the way Pee-Pee told it, although there is a wealth of disputed oral testimony on the subject), pulled on him by one iconic folk legend singer-songwriter Pete Seeger. Why? Apparently the “big tent” of American roots music did not include what has now become known in library CD collections as rather tame folk-rock, or rock-folk. Stuff done with mad amped electric guitar (and other electric instruments) rather than pure traditional acoustic instruments. So much wind as far as I can tell.
Needless to say such a story from back in the day, back in Pee-Pee day sounded bizarre to this writer who came by his Dylan aficionado-hood in the post-plug period (although when we when over the details again later the old arch-Stalinist fellow-traveler strong arm artist Seeger probably was capable of that kind of “soft” bureaucratic music hatchet job). That is those of us from the later edge of the generation of ‘68 who didn’t grow into Dylan singing Kumbaya or Chimes Of Freedom but rather the acid-etched period of the Blonde On Blonde album and stuff like Visions of Johanna. Just that few years made the different. Of course when Pee-Pee and I met on Captain Crunch’s merry prankster yellow brick road bus up on Russian Hill in San Francisco in the late summer of love, 1967 version, all such plugged, unplugged, distinctions were ancient archival history as we “dug” such beauties as Highway 61, the above-mentioned Blonde on Blonde, and Bringing It All Back Home without Seeger-ish interference. Just pass the pipe, please.
All this memory stuff though can be kind of tricky for an old man, old men, chattering in back porch Olde Saco face the ocean shoreline spots talking of this or that 1960s glory days memories, and unintended evocations. And evocation is really what drives this little screed. Evocations, or rather visions of Jewell, brought on by an untimely reference to Dylan’s own Visions of Johanna.
See that was our song, our summer of love, 1966 version, song. Jewell DeFarge and me, she of one thousand generations of French-Canadian American fragile beauty creation (okay, maybe I am a little high on the number but no instant beauty stuff). She of our hot Olde Saco High junior year getting ready to take on all comers to find our place in the sun, not the nasty Pee-Pee political place where you were doomed from the start, but starry night in heaven place. Hell, how can I explain it now to make sense? Maybe I will just take a step back describe it in light detail and be done with it, and done with visions too. Maybe.
Truth, in those days, those 1960s days, when I imagined girls (young women) I only thought of Botticelli Renaissance women like I saw down in Boston a bunch of times while hanging around Boston Common and you could hardly walk about ten feet before running in some young woman who a few centuries before would have been proud to model for old Botticelli. You know all airy, and thoughts of butterflies. Some loose garment, a sarong thing, going this way and that, long flowing angel hair, also going this way and that, no make-up but a twice-look beauty anyway, maybe some flowers in her hair, and at peace with herself. Or the look.
Enter Jewell DeFarge, all swirls, butterflies, and magic. And all secret eyes, secret blue eyes that spoke of transport, and less of desire, sexual desire, although that too was present, than elysian fields and midday walks. Strangely, well, maybe not so strangely, we met at the Olde Saco Beach one hot June day. She seeking shade and solitude, shade from the hot sun that would wreak havoc on that Botticelli skin, and solitude because she, like I, wanted to break-out of the common Olde Saco dream of finishing high school, getting some textile mill job or something like that, finding some guy to marriage and turning into our parents. She spoke of candles, burning incense, some reefer madnesses (we had both admitted to taking a few hits of anonymous offered reefer), and cloudless days. She spoke to me.
And so we spent our time together, our summer of love, our ocean swirl, our midday sun bonnet-protected walks, our solitude not speaking, our solitude speaking, and our break-out fever. And we spoke of cloud dreams, of ancient caves to live in, of some thatched peasant hut to live in, of simple seaside desires, and end of desire. But mainly we spoke in softness, in butterfly swirls, in sea spray mists, in cloudless cloudy skies, and, and, but enough. Let’s just call it visions of Jewell, and let’s just call it come September and she was gone, that Botticelli smile, that hair furious in the wind gone. And fifty years later the mystery behind that smile still haunts recalled dreams.
***********
Visions Of Johanna by Bob Dylan
Lyrics
Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind
In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane
Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here
The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall
How can I explain?
Oh, it’s so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze
I can’t find my knees”
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel
The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him
Sayin’, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”
But like Louise always says
“Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?”
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain
Copyright © 1966 by Dwarf Music; renewed 1994 by Dwarf Music
CD Review
Biograph, Bob Dylan, 3 CD set, Columbia Records, 1985
The other day my old socialist propagandist and gadfly 1960s folk revival commentator friend, Peter Paul Markin, regaled me with some stories about his early experiences following the musical ups and downs of the well-known singer-songwriter from that period, Bob Dylan. The strangest story revolved around Mr. Dylan’s performance at the 1965 Newport (R.I.) Folk Festival, then the premier showcase for virtually anything that could reasonably be called folk or roots music, and having the plug, literally (at least that is the way Pee-Pee told it, although there is a wealth of disputed oral testimony on the subject), pulled on him by one iconic folk legend singer-songwriter Pete Seeger. Why? Apparently the “big tent” of American roots music did not include what has now become known in library CD collections as rather tame folk-rock, or rock-folk. Stuff done with mad amped electric guitar (and other electric instruments) rather than pure traditional acoustic instruments. So much wind as far as I can tell.
Needless to say such a story from back in the day, back in Pee-Pee day sounded bizarre to this writer who came by his Dylan aficionado-hood in the post-plug period (although when we when over the details again later the old arch-Stalinist fellow-traveler strong arm artist Seeger probably was capable of that kind of “soft” bureaucratic music hatchet job). That is those of us from the later edge of the generation of ‘68 who didn’t grow into Dylan singing Kumbaya or Chimes Of Freedom but rather the acid-etched period of the Blonde On Blonde album and stuff like Visions of Johanna. Just that few years made the different. Of course when Pee-Pee and I met on Captain Crunch’s merry prankster yellow brick road bus up on Russian Hill in San Francisco in the late summer of love, 1967 version, all such plugged, unplugged, distinctions were ancient archival history as we “dug” such beauties as Highway 61, the above-mentioned Blonde on Blonde, and Bringing It All Back Home without Seeger-ish interference. Just pass the pipe, please.
All this memory stuff though can be kind of tricky for an old man, old men, chattering in back porch Olde Saco face the ocean shoreline spots talking of this or that 1960s glory days memories, and unintended evocations. And evocation is really what drives this little screed. Evocations, or rather visions of Jewell, brought on by an untimely reference to Dylan’s own Visions of Johanna.
See that was our song, our summer of love, 1966 version, song. Jewell DeFarge and me, she of one thousand generations of French-Canadian American fragile beauty creation (okay, maybe I am a little high on the number but no instant beauty stuff). She of our hot Olde Saco High junior year getting ready to take on all comers to find our place in the sun, not the nasty Pee-Pee political place where you were doomed from the start, but starry night in heaven place. Hell, how can I explain it now to make sense? Maybe I will just take a step back describe it in light detail and be done with it, and done with visions too. Maybe.
Truth, in those days, those 1960s days, when I imagined girls (young women) I only thought of Botticelli Renaissance women like I saw down in Boston a bunch of times while hanging around Boston Common and you could hardly walk about ten feet before running in some young woman who a few centuries before would have been proud to model for old Botticelli. You know all airy, and thoughts of butterflies. Some loose garment, a sarong thing, going this way and that, long flowing angel hair, also going this way and that, no make-up but a twice-look beauty anyway, maybe some flowers in her hair, and at peace with herself. Or the look.
Enter Jewell DeFarge, all swirls, butterflies, and magic. And all secret eyes, secret blue eyes that spoke of transport, and less of desire, sexual desire, although that too was present, than elysian fields and midday walks. Strangely, well, maybe not so strangely, we met at the Olde Saco Beach one hot June day. She seeking shade and solitude, shade from the hot sun that would wreak havoc on that Botticelli skin, and solitude because she, like I, wanted to break-out of the common Olde Saco dream of finishing high school, getting some textile mill job or something like that, finding some guy to marriage and turning into our parents. She spoke of candles, burning incense, some reefer madnesses (we had both admitted to taking a few hits of anonymous offered reefer), and cloudless days. She spoke to me.
And so we spent our time together, our summer of love, our ocean swirl, our midday sun bonnet-protected walks, our solitude not speaking, our solitude speaking, and our break-out fever. And we spoke of cloud dreams, of ancient caves to live in, of some thatched peasant hut to live in, of simple seaside desires, and end of desire. But mainly we spoke in softness, in butterfly swirls, in sea spray mists, in cloudless cloudy skies, and, and, but enough. Let’s just call it visions of Jewell, and let’s just call it come September and she was gone, that Botticelli smile, that hair furious in the wind gone. And fifty years later the mystery behind that smile still haunts recalled dreams.
***********
Visions Of Johanna by Bob Dylan
Lyrics
Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind
In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane
Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here
The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall
How can I explain?
Oh, it’s so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze
I can’t find my knees”
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel
The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him
Sayin’, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”
But like Louise always says
“Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?”
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain
Copyright © 1966 by Dwarf Music; renewed 1994 by Dwarf Music
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Songs to While Away The Time By- Bob Dylan’s (Via The Carter Family) “The Girl On The Greenbriar Shore”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Carter Family performing The Girl From The Greenbriar Shore.
Song lyrics to Girl On The Greenbriar Shore:
'Twas in the year of '92,
In the merry month of June,
I left my mother and a home so dear
For the girl I loved on the greenbriar shore
My mother dear, she came to me
And said 'Oh son, don't go, '
'Don't leave your mother and a home so dear
To trust a girl on the greenbriar shore '
But I was young and reckless too,
And I craved a reckless life
I left my mother with a broken heart
And I choosed that girl to be m' wife
Her hair was dark and curly too
And her loving eyes were blue;
Her cheeks were like the red red rose
The girl I loved on the greenbriar shore
The years rolled on and the months rolled by
She left me all alone
Now I remember what mother said
Never trust a girl on the greenbriar shore
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
My old friend Peter Paul Markin (always known as Pee-Pee and not that odd-ball Peter Paul thing like some old time yankee Brahmin was getting ready to crash on his damn Irish-driven head and he needed their two name protection) recently sent me some old Bob Dylan bootleg stuff (christ, who knows what numbers in the series. It will take eons to unravel all the out-takes, remakes, fakes, flakes, and just plain thefts that guy has in his storage vaults that will keep the dwindling number of aficionados going on and on for many years after his demise). That grab bag included his version (really a few changed words and hence prima facie evidence for that theft comment) of The Carter Family’s The Girl From The Greenbriar Shore (which they probably stole from some poor Saturday night hay barn gee down in the hills and hollas of Kentuck, or those environs).
Listening to the lyrics of that song though reminded me of my own green briar girl, my crazy head over heels, run away from home, run away from everything for, Dorothy Donnelly. Let me tell you about it if you have a minute, and maybe a tear. No, forget the tear I went into that thing with my eyes open, wide open. Just listen, okay.
I grew to young manhood up in Olde Saco, that’s in Maine, shoreline Maine, ocean-fronted Maine, down by the shore and everything is alright southern Maine around Portland. I also, for you that know (or knew) the demographics of that neck of the woods, grew to that young manhood despite the surname in a serious French- Canadian American (F.A.s, hereafter) household and neighborhood, you know, the people that made the textile and paper mills run up there before times got tough, real tough right after the war (World War II). Part of that francophone upbringing was an incredible devotion by my mother to the church, the Gallic Roman Catholic Church, for the unknowing. And he passed on that intense devotion on to her children, including me. But it also included, since I was the only boy and the presumptive man of the house if anything happened to my father, kind of coddled, ma coddled. Don’t leave your mother in the lurch sonny boy coddled. And plenty of my high school friends were too.
Part of that coddle was that I would not “leave the faith,” would not leave Olde Saco (really not leave Breslin home), and get this, not marry outside of the French-Canadian community (no heathen Irish or English especially) after I graduated from high school. Yes, mother, yes, mother dear.
Then I met Dorothy Donnelly, jesus, did I meet Dorothy Donnelly. The summer of my junior year in high school I was working a lifeguard job at Point Of Pines over at the far end of Olde Saco Beach where all the heathens gathered (Ma talk) for their summer of fun and frolic. (The F-A’s, local slang, especially those vacationing from Quebec gathered down near the pier, amusement park, bars, and shops.) Now my guard post, all authority and tan, all red swimsuit and safety pak, was down toward the jetty that swung out toward the Saco River where the lobster boats worked the inner seas. In a little cove, just a little sliver of land really, most of the younger girls (young women if you insist, but chicks, really in the terminology of the day), the younger heathen women hung out looking, well, girls, young women, or chicks, looking beautiful especially to one non-heathen F-A (in red trunks).
One day I spied this girl, this real fox, although from a distant she looked, well F-A, kind of slender, long brown hair, nice legs, and no bosom, ya, definitely F.A. What’s more she was looking at me, well, kind of, I found out later. I waved at her and she waved back and then I walked toward her. Oops, definitely not F.A., no way F.A. but still with everything else I just mentioned, except I forgot to say that hair was more reddish than brown, and I forgot to say that come hither smile she gave me every time I asked her a question. Irish, Irish to the core, no question.
Naturally any sixteen year old guy, F.A. attached to Ma or not, was going to work his magic on such a fox and see what happens. Of course all bug-eyed I did not pick up on the fact that she (1) was staying with an aunt because of some “vague” problems with her family back home in Marshfield down in Irish Riviera Massachusetts and (2), she had a “kind of ” boyfriend back home. So I plunged ahead and asked her for a date, she said yes, and we were off. Off to Seal Rock a couple of nights later in her aunt’s car. Now for the uninformed Seal Rock (not its real name) is named that because that is where every local “hot” couple went to “watch the submarine races,” a local term for, hell you know, doing it, the thing, sex, whatever that might turn into and “seal” the deed with names chiseled on the rock. (You know, by the way, as well as I do, or you should, there have been no submarine races off Seal Rock since about 1942 when somebody though they saw a German U-Boat offshore and all hell broke when it turned out to be some maiden voyage thing for some sub from the Bath Irons Works, chirst)
Well it didn’t take long to go crazy over Dorothy, about another week. And she seemed wild about me too, or gave that impression. One night, one deep Seal Rock night she said, flat out, “Let’s go over to New Hampshire and get married (sixteen, actually younger, I think was the legal age to get married then there).” I was so perfume-whipped, so long reddish hair whipped, so nice legs whipped, so, you know, whipped, that I said yes. Let me go home and get my stuff and we would be off. When I went to get my stuff Ma (really meme, okay) was there, looking furious.
Somehow she had received information for unnamed sources ( I still marvel at that ma grapevine the F.A. mothers, hell, maybe all mothers, had when errant sons and daughters were involved) that I was seen with a heathen girl (jesus I am embarrassed to even say that now) and what about it, and don’t lie. Well I didn’t, or rather just a little. I said Dorothy was half-French on her mother’s side like me. No soap, no dice, no go. Heathen. Then she gave a classic twenty minute, maybe longer, screed about heathens. Finally she was done, or just ran out of hot day steam. I left without saying anything about where I was going, or anything. Ya, it was one of those Ma days that you all know about.
I went out the door, got into the car, and we headed over to Dorothy’s aunt’s place. As we entered the aunt’s drive-way I saw another car parked there. Some 1959 great two-toned Chevy that every guy at school was drooling over. And in that car was a tall guy, maybe eighteen, maybe nineteen, who called Dorothy over to him. I noticed that he was holding Dorothy’s hand kind of tight, like he was trying to lead her somewhere. And she wasn’t really resisting so much as kind of pouting, girl not getting her way pouting. I went up to this tall guy and asked what the hell (I think I used that exact word) was he doing to my girl. He laughed, laughed out loud, "Your girl? Dorothy and I have been married for the past three months. That’s why her parents sent her up here to her aunt’s place. I’m bringing her home to set up house now that I am eighteen.” Bang went my brain. And with my mouth open, wide open they roared off in his car.
Just so you know I in my three marriages (counting the present one) I never married “in the faith,” I never married a girl from the F.A. community and I never married a girl from Olde Saco. And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t to spite Ma but to honor of Dorothy Donnelly. See every time I see that old worn out guard tower at Point of Pines or see those initials J.B. and D.D. carved inside a crude heart on the face of Seal Rock I think ruefully of that summer and her.
Song lyrics to Girl On The Greenbriar Shore:
'Twas in the year of '92,
In the merry month of June,
I left my mother and a home so dear
For the girl I loved on the greenbriar shore
My mother dear, she came to me
And said 'Oh son, don't go, '
'Don't leave your mother and a home so dear
To trust a girl on the greenbriar shore '
But I was young and reckless too,
And I craved a reckless life
I left my mother with a broken heart
And I choosed that girl to be m' wife
Her hair was dark and curly too
And her loving eyes were blue;
Her cheeks were like the red red rose
The girl I loved on the greenbriar shore
The years rolled on and the months rolled by
She left me all alone
Now I remember what mother said
Never trust a girl on the greenbriar shore
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
My old friend Peter Paul Markin (always known as Pee-Pee and not that odd-ball Peter Paul thing like some old time yankee Brahmin was getting ready to crash on his damn Irish-driven head and he needed their two name protection) recently sent me some old Bob Dylan bootleg stuff (christ, who knows what numbers in the series. It will take eons to unravel all the out-takes, remakes, fakes, flakes, and just plain thefts that guy has in his storage vaults that will keep the dwindling number of aficionados going on and on for many years after his demise). That grab bag included his version (really a few changed words and hence prima facie evidence for that theft comment) of The Carter Family’s The Girl From The Greenbriar Shore (which they probably stole from some poor Saturday night hay barn gee down in the hills and hollas of Kentuck, or those environs).
Listening to the lyrics of that song though reminded me of my own green briar girl, my crazy head over heels, run away from home, run away from everything for, Dorothy Donnelly. Let me tell you about it if you have a minute, and maybe a tear. No, forget the tear I went into that thing with my eyes open, wide open. Just listen, okay.
I grew to young manhood up in Olde Saco, that’s in Maine, shoreline Maine, ocean-fronted Maine, down by the shore and everything is alright southern Maine around Portland. I also, for you that know (or knew) the demographics of that neck of the woods, grew to that young manhood despite the surname in a serious French- Canadian American (F.A.s, hereafter) household and neighborhood, you know, the people that made the textile and paper mills run up there before times got tough, real tough right after the war (World War II). Part of that francophone upbringing was an incredible devotion by my mother to the church, the Gallic Roman Catholic Church, for the unknowing. And he passed on that intense devotion on to her children, including me. But it also included, since I was the only boy and the presumptive man of the house if anything happened to my father, kind of coddled, ma coddled. Don’t leave your mother in the lurch sonny boy coddled. And plenty of my high school friends were too.
Part of that coddle was that I would not “leave the faith,” would not leave Olde Saco (really not leave Breslin home), and get this, not marry outside of the French-Canadian community (no heathen Irish or English especially) after I graduated from high school. Yes, mother, yes, mother dear.
Then I met Dorothy Donnelly, jesus, did I meet Dorothy Donnelly. The summer of my junior year in high school I was working a lifeguard job at Point Of Pines over at the far end of Olde Saco Beach where all the heathens gathered (Ma talk) for their summer of fun and frolic. (The F-A’s, local slang, especially those vacationing from Quebec gathered down near the pier, amusement park, bars, and shops.) Now my guard post, all authority and tan, all red swimsuit and safety pak, was down toward the jetty that swung out toward the Saco River where the lobster boats worked the inner seas. In a little cove, just a little sliver of land really, most of the younger girls (young women if you insist, but chicks, really in the terminology of the day), the younger heathen women hung out looking, well, girls, young women, or chicks, looking beautiful especially to one non-heathen F-A (in red trunks).
One day I spied this girl, this real fox, although from a distant she looked, well F-A, kind of slender, long brown hair, nice legs, and no bosom, ya, definitely F.A. What’s more she was looking at me, well, kind of, I found out later. I waved at her and she waved back and then I walked toward her. Oops, definitely not F.A., no way F.A. but still with everything else I just mentioned, except I forgot to say that hair was more reddish than brown, and I forgot to say that come hither smile she gave me every time I asked her a question. Irish, Irish to the core, no question.
Naturally any sixteen year old guy, F.A. attached to Ma or not, was going to work his magic on such a fox and see what happens. Of course all bug-eyed I did not pick up on the fact that she (1) was staying with an aunt because of some “vague” problems with her family back home in Marshfield down in Irish Riviera Massachusetts and (2), she had a “kind of ” boyfriend back home. So I plunged ahead and asked her for a date, she said yes, and we were off. Off to Seal Rock a couple of nights later in her aunt’s car. Now for the uninformed Seal Rock (not its real name) is named that because that is where every local “hot” couple went to “watch the submarine races,” a local term for, hell you know, doing it, the thing, sex, whatever that might turn into and “seal” the deed with names chiseled on the rock. (You know, by the way, as well as I do, or you should, there have been no submarine races off Seal Rock since about 1942 when somebody though they saw a German U-Boat offshore and all hell broke when it turned out to be some maiden voyage thing for some sub from the Bath Irons Works, chirst)
Well it didn’t take long to go crazy over Dorothy, about another week. And she seemed wild about me too, or gave that impression. One night, one deep Seal Rock night she said, flat out, “Let’s go over to New Hampshire and get married (sixteen, actually younger, I think was the legal age to get married then there).” I was so perfume-whipped, so long reddish hair whipped, so nice legs whipped, so, you know, whipped, that I said yes. Let me go home and get my stuff and we would be off. When I went to get my stuff Ma (really meme, okay) was there, looking furious.
Somehow she had received information for unnamed sources ( I still marvel at that ma grapevine the F.A. mothers, hell, maybe all mothers, had when errant sons and daughters were involved) that I was seen with a heathen girl (jesus I am embarrassed to even say that now) and what about it, and don’t lie. Well I didn’t, or rather just a little. I said Dorothy was half-French on her mother’s side like me. No soap, no dice, no go. Heathen. Then she gave a classic twenty minute, maybe longer, screed about heathens. Finally she was done, or just ran out of hot day steam. I left without saying anything about where I was going, or anything. Ya, it was one of those Ma days that you all know about.
I went out the door, got into the car, and we headed over to Dorothy’s aunt’s place. As we entered the aunt’s drive-way I saw another car parked there. Some 1959 great two-toned Chevy that every guy at school was drooling over. And in that car was a tall guy, maybe eighteen, maybe nineteen, who called Dorothy over to him. I noticed that he was holding Dorothy’s hand kind of tight, like he was trying to lead her somewhere. And she wasn’t really resisting so much as kind of pouting, girl not getting her way pouting. I went up to this tall guy and asked what the hell (I think I used that exact word) was he doing to my girl. He laughed, laughed out loud, "Your girl? Dorothy and I have been married for the past three months. That’s why her parents sent her up here to her aunt’s place. I’m bringing her home to set up house now that I am eighteen.” Bang went my brain. And with my mouth open, wide open they roared off in his car.
Just so you know I in my three marriages (counting the present one) I never married “in the faith,” I never married a girl from the F.A. community and I never married a girl from Olde Saco. And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t to spite Ma but to honor of Dorothy Donnelly. See every time I see that old worn out guard tower at Point of Pines or see those initials J.B. and D.D. carved inside a crude heart on the face of Seal Rock I think ruefully of that summer and her.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Before Bo Diddley Put The Rock In Rock And Roll-Way Before- A CD Review (Of Sorts)
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Memphis Jug Band (with a special guest) performing their classic Kokomo.
CD Review
Before The Blues; The Early American Black Music Scene –Classic Recordings from the 1920s and 1930s, Volume Two, various artists, Yazoo Records, 1996
Recently in reviewing a Masters Of Blues compilation composes of many of the greats from the R&B era like Ruth Brown, Louis Jordan, and Lloyd Price, the era just before my generation of ‘68s childhood mid-1950s great rock and roll jail breakout I posed the question of who, or what Bo, Diddley (or your favorite for the honor) listening to before he put the rock in rock and roll. Today I take that same notion and step back one more generation to the great, mostly black, musical influences of the 1920s and 1930s. And pose that same question. Who did Big Joe Turner have his ear turned to when he put the rhythm into R&B.
This Jazz Age, this first serious generation of record buyers and radio listeners, was filled with all kind of wanna-bes searching for that right sound that would carry them to success. Needless to say the music had to reach down to those who could not afford concerts, musical halls or the Paul Whitman Band at the country club. So the music had to reach anyway it could (most interestingly in the primitive instruments, and great sound, of the various jug and sheik bands of the era) those hard-working five and one half sweat- shop workers, those hot Delta sun cotton plantation workers, and the others seeking refuge on a Saturday at the local juke joint, the local barn dance or the local lodge hall rented out for the occasion.
And the music had to touch that religious chord too, because sure as hell come Sunday morning, drunk or sober, there was payment due for Saturday night’s brawls, fist fights, deep sea diving, etc. Repent sinner. So the two strands had to mesh, barrelhouse and storefront church. And the selections here from Frank Stokes, Eck Robertson, the Memphis Jug Band. Charley Patton, Blind Willie Johnson give great examples of those two strands. And you can feel that first blush wave forming that would, after World War II, get electrified, get jumped up, and get R&Bed (ouch). Then, of course, comes you know what. And if you don’t just think Bo.
CD Review
Before The Blues; The Early American Black Music Scene –Classic Recordings from the 1920s and 1930s, Volume Two, various artists, Yazoo Records, 1996
Recently in reviewing a Masters Of Blues compilation composes of many of the greats from the R&B era like Ruth Brown, Louis Jordan, and Lloyd Price, the era just before my generation of ‘68s childhood mid-1950s great rock and roll jail breakout I posed the question of who, or what Bo, Diddley (or your favorite for the honor) listening to before he put the rock in rock and roll. Today I take that same notion and step back one more generation to the great, mostly black, musical influences of the 1920s and 1930s. And pose that same question. Who did Big Joe Turner have his ear turned to when he put the rhythm into R&B.
This Jazz Age, this first serious generation of record buyers and radio listeners, was filled with all kind of wanna-bes searching for that right sound that would carry them to success. Needless to say the music had to reach down to those who could not afford concerts, musical halls or the Paul Whitman Band at the country club. So the music had to reach anyway it could (most interestingly in the primitive instruments, and great sound, of the various jug and sheik bands of the era) those hard-working five and one half sweat- shop workers, those hot Delta sun cotton plantation workers, and the others seeking refuge on a Saturday at the local juke joint, the local barn dance or the local lodge hall rented out for the occasion.
And the music had to touch that religious chord too, because sure as hell come Sunday morning, drunk or sober, there was payment due for Saturday night’s brawls, fist fights, deep sea diving, etc. Repent sinner. So the two strands had to mesh, barrelhouse and storefront church. And the selections here from Frank Stokes, Eck Robertson, the Memphis Jug Band. Charley Patton, Blind Willie Johnson give great examples of those two strands. And you can feel that first blush wave forming that would, after World War II, get electrified, get jumped up, and get R&Bed (ouch). Then, of course, comes you know what. And if you don’t just think Bo.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The Endless Bob Dylan Bootleg Series - With “Boots Of Spanish Leather” In Mind
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Dylan performing his classic early lament, ‘Boots of Spanish Leather.”
CD Review
Bob Dylan: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964, The Bootleg Series –Volume 9, 2 CD set, Bob Dylan, Sony Records, 2010
I have often joked with other early 1960s folk revival minute Bob Dylan aficionados that, now past seventy, he continues on a never-ending concert tour that will only end, and maybe not then, when his voice that gave out decades ago (that fresh twenty-something gnarly voice anyway), leave him whispering, or some such thing. Apparently the same fate is in store for every known song that he has written, stolen (that’s okay in folk land), duded up, or changed a word here or there too. And copyrighted too. Well, okay Bob.
And like the never-ending concerts and song transcriptions it has become obvious that the Bob Dylan enterprise will keep endlessly releasing items in the bootleg series. So by the time it is over, in our grandchildren’s late adulthood by my current projections, we will have been subject to every creative cough, hum, retake, out-take ,remake, can’t fake, sour note, beautiful note, gussied up lyric, and breathtaking lyric too that he ever touched . For those with less than 1% resources this will mean going hungry, going on welfare, going to the streets, selling the children into indentured servitude, and whatever other demon demands an aficionado can place on others to get his or her “one last fix.”
Funny though this Volume 9 –Witmark Demos bootleg actually has some very good versions of his classics (without coughs, hums, etc.) like Boots Of Spanish Leather, and a reworking of some traditional tunes like Leaving of Liverpool (here called Farewell). And then there is some stuff that is of historic interest like Masters of War and his Ode to Emmett Till that are always welcome. And, of course, stuff that in cinema is called “better left on the cutting room floor.” Overall though this two CD set is one of the better bootlegs. So start hiring out the kids so you can get it for your now overflowing collection.
CD Review
Bob Dylan: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964, The Bootleg Series –Volume 9, 2 CD set, Bob Dylan, Sony Records, 2010
I have often joked with other early 1960s folk revival minute Bob Dylan aficionados that, now past seventy, he continues on a never-ending concert tour that will only end, and maybe not then, when his voice that gave out decades ago (that fresh twenty-something gnarly voice anyway), leave him whispering, or some such thing. Apparently the same fate is in store for every known song that he has written, stolen (that’s okay in folk land), duded up, or changed a word here or there too. And copyrighted too. Well, okay Bob.
And like the never-ending concerts and song transcriptions it has become obvious that the Bob Dylan enterprise will keep endlessly releasing items in the bootleg series. So by the time it is over, in our grandchildren’s late adulthood by my current projections, we will have been subject to every creative cough, hum, retake, out-take ,remake, can’t fake, sour note, beautiful note, gussied up lyric, and breathtaking lyric too that he ever touched . For those with less than 1% resources this will mean going hungry, going on welfare, going to the streets, selling the children into indentured servitude, and whatever other demon demands an aficionado can place on others to get his or her “one last fix.”
Funny though this Volume 9 –Witmark Demos bootleg actually has some very good versions of his classics (without coughs, hums, etc.) like Boots Of Spanish Leather, and a reworking of some traditional tunes like Leaving of Liverpool (here called Farewell). And then there is some stuff that is of historic interest like Masters of War and his Ode to Emmett Till that are always welcome. And, of course, stuff that in cinema is called “better left on the cutting room floor.” Overall though this two CD set is one of the better bootlegs. So start hiring out the kids so you can get it for your now overflowing collection.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Before Bo Diddley Put The Rock In Rock And Roll- A CD Review (Kind Of)
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Ruth Brown holding forth in the be-bop 1950s R&B night.
CD Review
The Blues Masters: The Essential Blues Collection: Volume 11-More Jump Blues, various artists including Ruth Brown, Rhino Records, 1993
Recently in reviewing (sort of, this kind of review is not my forte) a Norman Blake CD, Whiskey Before Breakfast, I noted that as a kid I was very averse to listening to that mountain music stuff since it was my father’s hillbilly Appalachia home of hills and hollows music (after all I was growing up in “big time” city boy Olde Saco up in Maine). The other kind of music around my 1950s growing up absurd house was “their” music, my parents coming through the great depression of the1930s and surviving (and she waiting, waiting on pins and needles for his safe return) music, jump, jitterbug, R&B,call it what you may.
Not exactly the rock and roll that I was enthralled with. No Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Jerry Lee and the like to stir the blood. But every once in a while I would catch some riff that sounded like it might get to rock, but then faded just short. And the album under review, The Blues Masters: More Jump Blues, is filled with just such work. Of course, a little later when I caught the blues bug in the early 1960s all this music, this quintessential R&B, made great sense in in combination with rockabilly as the genesis of rock and roll. But back then it was just my parents’ music. You know, square.
So when somebody, anybody, asks you the question-“Who put the rock in rock and roll?”- you can automatically answer Bo Diddley (or your favorite choice). But if asked who put the bug in old Bo’s ear then just tell them that the likes of Louis Jordan, Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner, LaVern Baker, Big Maybell (who I actually first heard in the early 1960s late at night listening to “The Big Bopper Blues Blast” out of some dark of mega-watt radio station in Chicago), Lloyd Price and Wynonie Harris and the others compiled on this CD and you can be smart, very smart.
CD Review
The Blues Masters: The Essential Blues Collection: Volume 11-More Jump Blues, various artists including Ruth Brown, Rhino Records, 1993
Recently in reviewing (sort of, this kind of review is not my forte) a Norman Blake CD, Whiskey Before Breakfast, I noted that as a kid I was very averse to listening to that mountain music stuff since it was my father’s hillbilly Appalachia home of hills and hollows music (after all I was growing up in “big time” city boy Olde Saco up in Maine). The other kind of music around my 1950s growing up absurd house was “their” music, my parents coming through the great depression of the1930s and surviving (and she waiting, waiting on pins and needles for his safe return) music, jump, jitterbug, R&B,call it what you may.
Not exactly the rock and roll that I was enthralled with. No Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Jerry Lee and the like to stir the blood. But every once in a while I would catch some riff that sounded like it might get to rock, but then faded just short. And the album under review, The Blues Masters: More Jump Blues, is filled with just such work. Of course, a little later when I caught the blues bug in the early 1960s all this music, this quintessential R&B, made great sense in in combination with rockabilly as the genesis of rock and roll. But back then it was just my parents’ music. You know, square.
So when somebody, anybody, asks you the question-“Who put the rock in rock and roll?”- you can automatically answer Bo Diddley (or your favorite choice). But if asked who put the bug in old Bo’s ear then just tell them that the likes of Louis Jordan, Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner, LaVern Baker, Big Maybell (who I actually first heard in the early 1960s late at night listening to “The Big Bopper Blues Blast” out of some dark of mega-watt radio station in Chicago), Lloyd Price and Wynonie Harris and the others compiled on this CD and you can be smart, very smart.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The Hills And Hollows Of “Home”- A CD Review (Of Sorts)
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Norman Blake performing.
CD Review
Norman Blake: Whiskey Before Breakfast, Norman Blake, Rounder Records, 1993
Norman Blake’s flat-picking style was an acquired taste, although not for the obvious reasons that you might thing that an ocean view yankee small city (Olde Saco up in Maine, for those who are interested) dweller might have hesitated over previously. I had heard Norman Blake’s music for years, from way back, from way back at least to the 1970s and the old Hillbilly At Harvard program aired on Saturday mornings where I, passively, learned about mountain, cowboy, and western music when I was, like my old friend, Peter Paul Markin in something he called his “country” minute.
And passive learning at that time was actually a step up, previously any time such music came on, or was performed at a concert that I was attending, or that some heathen faux hillbilly got all warm about and insisted I stopped dead in my tracks. Reason? Hell, the reason was simple enough, and requires no advanced degree in psychology to describe it. This stuff (Hank Williams, Doc Watson, Hazel Dickens, The Carter Family, including June and Johnny Cash, among others) was my father’s music.
My father from the hills and hollows (yes, I am perfectly aware that it is nothing but hollas but what is an old yankee reprobate to do) of Appalachia. Down where the wind sings through the mountains passes and all that stuff. The stuff of Saturday night barn dances complete with fiddle, banjo, flute, maybe, after a hard-scrabble week in the mines, or trying to get one last damn crop out of that worn-out barren ground. The stuff of sweet-talking some mountain maid out of her virtue, of white lightening whiskey too hard to put in a bottle but just right from some ball jar. No thank you.
Then, as if by magic, I grew up, kind of. On a trip down through those dear Appalachians Mountains with a sweet Ohio River woman that I took a fancy to a while back I started to hear that whining sing-song fiddle, the strum of that banjo, and could, I swear, smell that, rotgut whisky coming out of the ground of those hills and hollows (yes, still hollows), and the wind coming down through the passes. And I knew then I was home. And could listen to some flat-picking North Carolina (I think) guy, who knew and played with now revered June Carter and Johnny Cash, for hours when I am in the mood. Go figure.
CD Review
Norman Blake: Whiskey Before Breakfast, Norman Blake, Rounder Records, 1993
Norman Blake’s flat-picking style was an acquired taste, although not for the obvious reasons that you might thing that an ocean view yankee small city (Olde Saco up in Maine, for those who are interested) dweller might have hesitated over previously. I had heard Norman Blake’s music for years, from way back, from way back at least to the 1970s and the old Hillbilly At Harvard program aired on Saturday mornings where I, passively, learned about mountain, cowboy, and western music when I was, like my old friend, Peter Paul Markin in something he called his “country” minute.
And passive learning at that time was actually a step up, previously any time such music came on, or was performed at a concert that I was attending, or that some heathen faux hillbilly got all warm about and insisted I stopped dead in my tracks. Reason? Hell, the reason was simple enough, and requires no advanced degree in psychology to describe it. This stuff (Hank Williams, Doc Watson, Hazel Dickens, The Carter Family, including June and Johnny Cash, among others) was my father’s music.
My father from the hills and hollows (yes, I am perfectly aware that it is nothing but hollas but what is an old yankee reprobate to do) of Appalachia. Down where the wind sings through the mountains passes and all that stuff. The stuff of Saturday night barn dances complete with fiddle, banjo, flute, maybe, after a hard-scrabble week in the mines, or trying to get one last damn crop out of that worn-out barren ground. The stuff of sweet-talking some mountain maid out of her virtue, of white lightening whiskey too hard to put in a bottle but just right from some ball jar. No thank you.
Then, as if by magic, I grew up, kind of. On a trip down through those dear Appalachians Mountains with a sweet Ohio River woman that I took a fancy to a while back I started to hear that whining sing-song fiddle, the strum of that banjo, and could, I swear, smell that, rotgut whisky coming out of the ground of those hills and hollows (yes, still hollows), and the wind coming down through the passes. And I knew then I was home. And could listen to some flat-picking North Carolina (I think) guy, who knew and played with now revered June Carter and Johnny Cash, for hours when I am in the mood. Go figure.
Monday, June 25, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Did You Hear John Hurt?
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Mississippi John Hurt performing.
CD Review
The Best Of The Mississippi Blues, various artists, Fuel Records, 2000
I remember my reaction the first time my old friend met in the summer of love, 1967, Peter Paul Markin asked me if I had heard John Hurt. It was simply. Who? Or my answer was simply but the two hour (maybe more but I am giving old Pee-Pee the benefit of the doubt) explanation about the basics of the blues, country version, was anything but simple. As so that night that, maybe late August, 1967, summer of love night I got “religion.” Got it big time as Pee-Pee (then going under the moniker of Be-Bop Benny, by the way) rolled out record after record, all scratchy from abuse, or probably over- playing of Mississippi John Hurt stuff like Creole Belle, Spoonful, Albert and Frankie, his version of Stag-o-lee and so on. I was hooked.
See growing up in Olde Saco, away from the Pee-Pee folk-drenched Cambridge folk revival minute that featured “discovery” of all these roots Mississippi country from hunger blues players, my thing was maybe some Beatles, some serious Stones, and some vanilla pop stuff that would make you weep, guys like Bobby Darren or gals like Brenda Lee (and you had better have known her stuff if you wanted any chance at that last dance school dance she you had been eyeing all night). Goof stuff when it came right down to it singing about how some Johnny or Janie got away in the love game and life was not going to be the same, boohoo.
Put that up against the lyrics theses blues guys from hunger sang about, hard days under sweating suns on some cotton fields plantation trying to put something over on the captain (the boss man), some two-timing woman who ran off with your used-to-be best friend who you will surely cut if she ever comes back, some hard-drinking, hard –loving Saturday juke joint nights sweating out before early Sunday morning and revival, church version, cutting up some guy because he looked twice, hell, maybe only once at your best gal, the usual bust-up prison time for some Podunk crime, and best of all making that deal with the devil to get out from under that harping woman, that damn boss, that demon rotgut whiskey, and that eyeball looking guy.
So the next time that somebody asks you did you hear John Hurt you will know where to point him or her.
CD Review
The Best Of The Mississippi Blues, various artists, Fuel Records, 2000
I remember my reaction the first time my old friend met in the summer of love, 1967, Peter Paul Markin asked me if I had heard John Hurt. It was simply. Who? Or my answer was simply but the two hour (maybe more but I am giving old Pee-Pee the benefit of the doubt) explanation about the basics of the blues, country version, was anything but simple. As so that night that, maybe late August, 1967, summer of love night I got “religion.” Got it big time as Pee-Pee (then going under the moniker of Be-Bop Benny, by the way) rolled out record after record, all scratchy from abuse, or probably over- playing of Mississippi John Hurt stuff like Creole Belle, Spoonful, Albert and Frankie, his version of Stag-o-lee and so on. I was hooked.
See growing up in Olde Saco, away from the Pee-Pee folk-drenched Cambridge folk revival minute that featured “discovery” of all these roots Mississippi country from hunger blues players, my thing was maybe some Beatles, some serious Stones, and some vanilla pop stuff that would make you weep, guys like Bobby Darren or gals like Brenda Lee (and you had better have known her stuff if you wanted any chance at that last dance school dance she you had been eyeing all night). Goof stuff when it came right down to it singing about how some Johnny or Janie got away in the love game and life was not going to be the same, boohoo.
Put that up against the lyrics theses blues guys from hunger sang about, hard days under sweating suns on some cotton fields plantation trying to put something over on the captain (the boss man), some two-timing woman who ran off with your used-to-be best friend who you will surely cut if she ever comes back, some hard-drinking, hard –loving Saturday juke joint nights sweating out before early Sunday morning and revival, church version, cutting up some guy because he looked twice, hell, maybe only once at your best gal, the usual bust-up prison time for some Podunk crime, and best of all making that deal with the devil to get out from under that harping woman, that damn boss, that demon rotgut whiskey, and that eyeball looking guy.
So the next time that somebody asks you did you hear John Hurt you will know where to point him or her.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Songs to While Away The Time By- Big Joe Williams Has Got The Blues “Baby Please Don’t Go”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Big Joe Williams (out of the million guys who have covered the song, or pleaded) performing Baby Please Don’t Go.
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
You know now that I am “officially” retired from the public prints I have plenty of time to write a little about things other than the latest war (or wars), the latest governmental abridgement of our civil rights, the latest poor boy kid framed up for something, or the latest environmental disaster brought to us courtesy of some anonymous thing “too big to fail.” Now I have time to write about things less pressing on the daily world calendar, things like old timey flames, coming to young manhood up in Olde Saco (that’s in Maine, folks), teenage boyhood worries about fitting in, not fitting or to use a generational term, my generation “be cool.” That’s what I have on my plate today-girls, long lost flame girls. And what they could do to a guy, could do to a guy six ways to Sunday, and still have him grinning, asking for more.
What got me jumped up on this subject was the other night I was talking, lazily half-joking, half-spinning wheels talking with my old friend, Peter Paul Markin (always known as Pee-Pee and not that odd-ball Peter Paul thing like some old time yankee Brahmin getting ready to crash on his damn Irish-driven head) and he brought up some story about how he had snagged a date with some high school chick (read: term of art, term of love art, in the be-bop 1960s teen night to use Pee-Pee’s term for a young woman, me I called them frails) based solely on his ability to intelligently talk about every known Bob Dylan song and lyric of the day. Jesus, who was that poor frail?
That story though later got me to thinking about Loretta, Loretta D’Amboise, from my old neighborhood up in Olde Saco back in that same 1960s day. Yes, Loretta was something else. Now while Pee-Pee and I were talking that night he mentioned, and I agreed, that lately we had been spending a hell of a lot of time talking about old time flames, our so-called conquests of said flames, and our, ah, ah, ultimate defeat at their hands. Call it old age with time of our hands, call it male vanity, once removed, call it evoking that one last chance for immortality, hell, call it acting like, ah, dirty old men, but there you have it. Pee-Pee’s Dylan date honey was wrapped up by some archaic Bob Dylan swish but Loretta, ancient mist Loretta, would never come within ten miles of that scene. She was strictly a jazzy blues breeze, just my type then.
Although Loretta had lived in the old neighborhood all through school (we had graduated together from Olde Saco High School in 1967) other than about sixteen million leers, unsuccessful leers, on my part she had not given me a tumble not even close. See she was full French-Canadian (F.A.) like most other people in Olde Saco who came down from Canada way back when to work the textile and paper mills. Unlike me, who was strictly half and half, and that difference I found out from later talk mattered in her family, and to her preference for be-bop F.A. guys (with fast cars, some dough, and a willingness to spent that dough on her).
So Loretta and I never met up until one night after I had gotten back home from summer of love San Francisco in late 1968 and I had run into her at Jimmy Jack’s Blues Club (don’t let the Jimmy Jack’s name fool you, the owner’s name was really Jean Jacques Dubois) over on Atlantic Avenue right across from Olde Saco Beach. Ran into her alone sitting all by herself at the bar putting coins into the jukebox and playing Big Joe Williams’ Baby Please Don’t Go about six times. Six times that I counted.
I’ll tell you the why in a minute but let me tell you first that she called me over, not a big hello, long time, no see, what have you been up to, come on over but a hey, I didn’t know you likes the blues, Josh, come on over. And well yes I did like the blues all the way back to the times in early high school when I would be up in my room around midnight and get The Big Bopper Blues Blast from some mega-station in Chicago on my transistor radio. So, of course, I used this arcane knowledge to make my big Loretta move. Naturally I tossed out Muddy’s, Howlin’ Wolf’s, Elmore James’, and about twelve other electric blues guys names to show I was for real. And just as naturally I knew that Big Joe Williams was performing this Baby Please Don’t Go number on his six, five, eleven or whatever number strings he used string guitar. That tidbit impressed her.
What I wanted to know, and if you have been paying attention you would too, was why she was sitting very alone in Jimmy Jack’s on that late summer Saturday night. Well, you know the old story, male or female, young or old. Her boyfriend, Jean-Paul LaCroix, a name I couldn’t place in the town’s scheme of things, but who worked in the MacAdams Textile Mills, made “good money,” had a “boss” 1964 Mustang, didn’t mind spending said “good money” on her and who also did not mind sitting a few nights a week in Jimmy Jack’s feeding the jukebox had dumped her. Dumped her for some red-headed low-down Irish girl from Kittery down the coast. Hence her solace in Big Joe’s song (and a sipped glass of white wine).
Needless to say I expressed my condolences but I also thought to myself that this Jean-Paul jerk had a screw loose. There are lots of reasons for a guy (or a gal for that matter) to dump a guy, who knows, the reasons are legion. But to dump Loretta D’Amboise, no way, no sane way. Like I said a screw loose. Now Loretta was not drop-dead beautiful, most F.A. girls aren’t. She was slender, long-brown hair and blue eyes, a decent shape, very nice legs and not afraid to show them, no real bosom like most F.A. girls. Nice, but not beautiful. But that isn’t what counted because she had this great smile and that look, that look that come hither fresh ocean breeze look, like a guy, a leering guy, young or old, would day dream, night dream, day-night dream, night-day dream about all day, every day.
And so, for a few weeks, that look held me in thrall, no, transfixed. But even from our first date (at Jimmy Jack’s the next week, me feeding the jukebox and her looking, well looking) I sensed she was elsewhere, probably Jean-Paul elsewhere, because those nickels, dimes and quarters I was feeding the machine kept coming up quite a bit on Baby Please Don’t Go and it was not me she was pleaded with to stay. So one night we decided, or maybe she decided and I agreed, that we would just be kiss-of-death friends.
A few weeks later I noticed, as I was sitting in Jimmy Jack’s Diner (ya, that Jimmy Jack, he owned the diner too), Loretta sitting very happy up on the front seat of a 1964 Mustang. So I put a nickel in the jukebox and played Baby Please Don’t Go for what might have been. And now almost fifty years later I am just now putting it on the old CD player. For what might have been.
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
You know now that I am “officially” retired from the public prints I have plenty of time to write a little about things other than the latest war (or wars), the latest governmental abridgement of our civil rights, the latest poor boy kid framed up for something, or the latest environmental disaster brought to us courtesy of some anonymous thing “too big to fail.” Now I have time to write about things less pressing on the daily world calendar, things like old timey flames, coming to young manhood up in Olde Saco (that’s in Maine, folks), teenage boyhood worries about fitting in, not fitting or to use a generational term, my generation “be cool.” That’s what I have on my plate today-girls, long lost flame girls. And what they could do to a guy, could do to a guy six ways to Sunday, and still have him grinning, asking for more.
What got me jumped up on this subject was the other night I was talking, lazily half-joking, half-spinning wheels talking with my old friend, Peter Paul Markin (always known as Pee-Pee and not that odd-ball Peter Paul thing like some old time yankee Brahmin getting ready to crash on his damn Irish-driven head) and he brought up some story about how he had snagged a date with some high school chick (read: term of art, term of love art, in the be-bop 1960s teen night to use Pee-Pee’s term for a young woman, me I called them frails) based solely on his ability to intelligently talk about every known Bob Dylan song and lyric of the day. Jesus, who was that poor frail?
That story though later got me to thinking about Loretta, Loretta D’Amboise, from my old neighborhood up in Olde Saco back in that same 1960s day. Yes, Loretta was something else. Now while Pee-Pee and I were talking that night he mentioned, and I agreed, that lately we had been spending a hell of a lot of time talking about old time flames, our so-called conquests of said flames, and our, ah, ah, ultimate defeat at their hands. Call it old age with time of our hands, call it male vanity, once removed, call it evoking that one last chance for immortality, hell, call it acting like, ah, dirty old men, but there you have it. Pee-Pee’s Dylan date honey was wrapped up by some archaic Bob Dylan swish but Loretta, ancient mist Loretta, would never come within ten miles of that scene. She was strictly a jazzy blues breeze, just my type then.
Although Loretta had lived in the old neighborhood all through school (we had graduated together from Olde Saco High School in 1967) other than about sixteen million leers, unsuccessful leers, on my part she had not given me a tumble not even close. See she was full French-Canadian (F.A.) like most other people in Olde Saco who came down from Canada way back when to work the textile and paper mills. Unlike me, who was strictly half and half, and that difference I found out from later talk mattered in her family, and to her preference for be-bop F.A. guys (with fast cars, some dough, and a willingness to spent that dough on her).
So Loretta and I never met up until one night after I had gotten back home from summer of love San Francisco in late 1968 and I had run into her at Jimmy Jack’s Blues Club (don’t let the Jimmy Jack’s name fool you, the owner’s name was really Jean Jacques Dubois) over on Atlantic Avenue right across from Olde Saco Beach. Ran into her alone sitting all by herself at the bar putting coins into the jukebox and playing Big Joe Williams’ Baby Please Don’t Go about six times. Six times that I counted.
I’ll tell you the why in a minute but let me tell you first that she called me over, not a big hello, long time, no see, what have you been up to, come on over but a hey, I didn’t know you likes the blues, Josh, come on over. And well yes I did like the blues all the way back to the times in early high school when I would be up in my room around midnight and get The Big Bopper Blues Blast from some mega-station in Chicago on my transistor radio. So, of course, I used this arcane knowledge to make my big Loretta move. Naturally I tossed out Muddy’s, Howlin’ Wolf’s, Elmore James’, and about twelve other electric blues guys names to show I was for real. And just as naturally I knew that Big Joe Williams was performing this Baby Please Don’t Go number on his six, five, eleven or whatever number strings he used string guitar. That tidbit impressed her.
What I wanted to know, and if you have been paying attention you would too, was why she was sitting very alone in Jimmy Jack’s on that late summer Saturday night. Well, you know the old story, male or female, young or old. Her boyfriend, Jean-Paul LaCroix, a name I couldn’t place in the town’s scheme of things, but who worked in the MacAdams Textile Mills, made “good money,” had a “boss” 1964 Mustang, didn’t mind spending said “good money” on her and who also did not mind sitting a few nights a week in Jimmy Jack’s feeding the jukebox had dumped her. Dumped her for some red-headed low-down Irish girl from Kittery down the coast. Hence her solace in Big Joe’s song (and a sipped glass of white wine).
Needless to say I expressed my condolences but I also thought to myself that this Jean-Paul jerk had a screw loose. There are lots of reasons for a guy (or a gal for that matter) to dump a guy, who knows, the reasons are legion. But to dump Loretta D’Amboise, no way, no sane way. Like I said a screw loose. Now Loretta was not drop-dead beautiful, most F.A. girls aren’t. She was slender, long-brown hair and blue eyes, a decent shape, very nice legs and not afraid to show them, no real bosom like most F.A. girls. Nice, but not beautiful. But that isn’t what counted because she had this great smile and that look, that look that come hither fresh ocean breeze look, like a guy, a leering guy, young or old, would day dream, night dream, day-night dream, night-day dream about all day, every day.
And so, for a few weeks, that look held me in thrall, no, transfixed. But even from our first date (at Jimmy Jack’s the next week, me feeding the jukebox and her looking, well looking) I sensed she was elsewhere, probably Jean-Paul elsewhere, because those nickels, dimes and quarters I was feeding the machine kept coming up quite a bit on Baby Please Don’t Go and it was not me she was pleaded with to stay. So one night we decided, or maybe she decided and I agreed, that we would just be kiss-of-death friends.
A few weeks later I noticed, as I was sitting in Jimmy Jack’s Diner (ya, that Jimmy Jack, he owned the diner too), Loretta sitting very happy up on the front seat of a 1964 Mustang. So I put a nickel in the jukebox and played Baby Please Don’t Go for what might have been. And now almost fifty years later I am just now putting it on the old CD player. For what might have been.
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- A Tale To Sit Around The Soda Fountain By-Frankie Goes Wild
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Angels performing Cry Baby Cry.
Peter Paul Markin comment:
Recently I did, as part of a rock 'n' roll be-bop night record review, a little vignette about soda fountain life in the early 1960s, featuring my boyhood best friend, Frankie Riley, Frankie from our down at the heels and not going to get better as America deindustrialized no more shipyard busy working class neighborhood. Frankie of one thousand stories, Frankie of one thousand treacheries, about twenty-three of them directed toward me, and Frankie of a one thousand kindnesses, including about ninety-eight directed toward me and hence the longevity of our friendship. Somehow it did not seem right to leave Frankie hanging around that old review soda fountain and rather than leave him to that fate I have decided to rewrite the story with the commercial CD review tag removed, although lots of the old story will filter through here anyway:
See, it really is a truism by now, by 2010 teen-age now, that every “teenage nation” generation since they started to place teenage-hood as a distinct phase of life between childhood and young adulthood over a century, maybe two centuries, ago has developed its own tribal rituals and institutions. Today’s teens seem to have cornered food courts at the mall, video arcades and the ubiquitous Internet screen connections through various look-at techno-gadgets although, frankly, I am not fully current on all their mores, customs and tribal language. And moreover would trend very lightly, very lightly indeed, on that sacred ground.
What I am familiar with, very familiar with, is the teen institutions of my generation, the generation of ’68, that came of teen age in the early 1960s. Our places of rendezvous were the corners in front of mom and pop variety stores in the days before franchise 7/11 convenience stores came to dominate the quick stop one item shopping market, if we could squeeze room around the drifters, grifters and midnight sifters who frequented those holy sites and worried about "turf" and our being within ten miles of it; the ever present heaven-sent smell pizza parlor (hold the onions on that slice, please, always hold the onions, in case I get lucky with that certain she tonight) with its jump jukebox where coin was king and we deposited more than a few nickels, dimes and quarters to hear our favorites of the day or minute; for some of the dweebs, or if you wanted to get away with a “cheap” date, or thought you were doing somebody a favor to take his sister out, but only as a last resort, favor that is, the bowling alley; the open air drive-in restaurants complete with "hot" car hops who filled the night air with their cold sex, their faraway cold tip-driven sex, for more “expensive” dates (meaning take your eyes off the damn car hops, or else); and, for serious business, meaning serious girl and boy watching, the soda fountain, especially in car-less teen times. And not, in my case, just any soda fountain but the soda fountain at the local individually-owned and operated drug store (Doc’s Drug Store, for real, that was the name) that used the soda fountain to draw people (read, kids: what would we need prescription drugs for, those were for old people, we were invincible) into the store.
As part of that record review mentioned earlier I noted that the cover of the CD had an almost Edward Hooper Nighthawks At The Diner-like illustration of just such a classic soda fountain, complete with three whimsical teen-age frills (read girls, if you are not from my old working class neighborhood, beaten down, or not) all sipping their straws out of one, can you believe it, one cone-shaped paper cup while a faux Fabian-type looks on. Ah, be still my heart.
Needless to say this scene could have been from any town USA then, complete with its own jukebox setup (although not every drug store had them, ours didn’t although the local rock radio station was blasting away as we tapped out the beat at all hours), the booths with the vinyl-covered summer sweat-inducing seats and Formica top tables (dolled up with paper place settings, condiments, etc., just like home right), the soda fountain granite (maybe faux granite) counter, complete with swivel around stools that gave the odd boy or two (read: me and my corner boys, or rather, Frankie and his corner boys, including me) a better vantage point to watch the traffic come into the store (read: girls), and a Drink Coca-Cola-inscribed full length mirror just in case you missed a beat.
Said counter also complete with glassed-encased pie (or donut) cases; the various utensils for making frappes (that's a New England thing, look it up), milkshakes, banana splits, ice cream floats, and cherry-flavored Cokes; a small grille for hamburgers, hot dogs and fries (or the odd boy grilled cheese sandwich with bacon); and, well, of course, a soda jerk (usually a guy) to whip up the orders. Oh, did I say anything about girl and boy watching? Ya, I did. What do you think we were all there for? The ice cream and soda? Come on. Does it really take an hour, an hour and a half, or even two hours to drink a Pepsi even in teen-land?
But enough said about the décor because the mere mention of the term “soda jerk” brings to mind a Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood story, Frankie of a thousand stories and Frankie who was the king hill skirt-chaser (read: girl), and my best friend in middle school (a.k.a. junior high) and high school. I already "hipped" you to the “his treacheries” and “kindnesses.” Ya, that Frankie, or rather this time Frankie’s sister, although now that I think of it she is really the "stooge" in this thing.
Now when we were juniors in high school in the early 1960s, Frankie (as king of the hill) and I (as his lord chamberlain) , mainly held court at the local pizza parlor, a pizza parlor which was in the pecking order of town teen social life way above the soda fountain rookie camp teen life scene. That soda foundation stuff was for kids and dweebs, unless, of course, things were tough at the pizza joint (meaning girl-free) and we meandered up the street to Doc’s Drug Store soda fountain to check out the action there.
Of course, before we graduated to the “bigs” pizza parlor, which I will tell you about some other time because it plays no part in this heart-rendering tale, the old soda fountain side of that drug store (the other side had aisles of over-the-counter drugs and sundries, a couple of permanently in use enclosed telephone booths for those (read: teens) who had not telephone at home(like me much of the time) or didn’t want their business exposed on the “two-party” home line, and your regulation pharmacy area for the good legal doctor's note drug stuff) was just fine. And it did no harm, no harm at all, in those days to strike up friendships , or at least stay on the good side of the soda jerks so you could get an extra scoop of ice cream or a free refill on your Coke. See, the soda jerk was usually the guy (and like I said before it was always guys, girls would probably be too distracted by every high energy teen guy, including dweeb-types, trying to be “cool”) who connected the dots about who was who and what was what in the local scene (I do not have to tell you at this late point the focal point of that scene, right?). Moreover, later, after we found out about life a bit more (read: sex) the soda jerk acted as a “shill” for Doc for those teens looking for their first liquor (for medical purposes, of course) or, keep this quiet, okay, condoms. But the thing was, younger or older, that the soda jerk also had some cache with the girls, I guess it must have been the uniform. Wow! Personally I wouldn’t have been caught dead with that silly flap cap they wore.
So one night we are dried up (read: no girls) at the pizza parlor and decided, as usual, to meander up the street to Doc’s. We had heard earlier in the day that Doc had a new jerk on and we wanted to check him out anyway. As we entered who do we see but Frankie’s sister, Lorrie, Frankie’s fourteen year old sister, Lorrie, talking up a storm, all dewy-eyed, over this new jerk, who must have been about eighteen. And more than that this “cradle-robber” had his arm around, or kind of around, Lorrie. Old Frankie saw red, no double red, if not more, hell and back red.
I can hear the yawns already, especially from every guy who had a goofy, off-hand younger sister just starting to feel her oats (or for that matter every gal who had such a younger brother, or any other such combinations). See, though, and maybe it’s hard to explain if you didn’t live in those misbegotten times, Frankie was a guy who had more girls lined up that he could ever meet and be able to keep himself in one piece, although he had only one serious frail (read: girl again, okay) that kept his interest over time (Joanne that I told you about before when I did a thing on Roy "The Boy" Orbison). So Frankie was no stranger to the old male boy (and adult too, as we found out later) double standard of the age about boys being able to do whatever they wanted to but girls had to be true-blue or whatever color it was, but no messing around, especially in regard to his sister. But there you have it, and he was seeing that old red that meant no good, for somebody.
Now this sister, Lorrie, when I first meant her back in the days when I first met Frankie in middle school was nothing but a...sister, a Frankie, king of the hill, sister but still just a sister. Meaning I really never paid much attention to her. But this night I could see, dewy-eyed or not, that she has turned into not a bad looker, especially with that form-filling cashmere sweater all the girls were wearing those days and that I swear they were wearing so that guys would notice that form-filling part. And I could see that, while she took away from her "cool" in my eyes by the ubiquitous chewing of gum that made her seem about ten years old, that guys could go for her, eighteen or not, soda jerks or not. As to the soda jerk, Steve was his name as I found out later, who was not a bad looking guy and old Lorrie didn't need glasses to see that. He seemed like a lot of guys, a lot of Frankie and me guys, ready to chat up any skirt that would listen to him for two minutes, maybe less.
And see, as well, it is not like Frankie really had some old-fashioned medieval sense of honor, or some Catholic, which we and half the freaking town were then, or were trying to get away from then, hang-up about sex, teen-age or otherwise. So it was not that he was really protective of her as much as he was insulted (so he told me later) by some new “jerk” trying to make moves to become "king of the hill" by “courting” Frankie’s, Francis X. Riley’s sister. See that's the way that he operated, and for all I know maybe had to operate, to stay king. Maybe he read about it someplace, like in Machiavelli’s The Prince (Frankie and I were crazy for that kind of book in those days, Christ we even read Marx’s Communist Manifesto just to be “cool”), and figured he had to do things that way.
And Frankie, old wiry, slender, quick-fisted, and not bad–looking but no Steve McQueen, wrapping the girls up with his pseudo-beat patter Frankie was tough. Tougher than he looked (with his black chinos, flannel shirt, work boot and midnight sunglass regulation faux beat look). So naturally new boy “jerk” takes umbrage (nice word, right?) when Frankie starts to move “sis” away from him. Well the long and short of it was that Frankie and “jerk” started to beef a little but it is all over quickly and here is why. Frankie took an ice cream cone, a triple scoop, triple-flavored ice cream cone no less, that was sitting on the counter in a cup in front of a girl customer (a cute girl who I wound up checking out seriously later) and bops, no be-bops, no be-bop bops one soda jerk, new or not, with it.
Now if you have ever seen an eighteen year old guy, in uniform, I don’t care if it is only a soda jerk’s uniform, wearing about three kinds of ice cream (no, not what you think, some harlequin strawberry, vanilla, chocolate combo but frozen pudding, cherry vanilla, and mocha almond, hey, I really will have to check that girl out) on that uniform you know, you have to know that this guy’s persona non grata with the girls and “cool” guys in town forevermore.
Or so you would think. Frankie went out of town for a few days to do something on family business (not related) after this incident and one night near the edge of town as I was walking with that young girl customer whose ice cream Frankie scooped (I bought her another one that incident night, that same triple combo mentioned above, thank god I had a little cash on me, and that is why I was walking with her right then, thank you) when I saw one Lorrie, one very foxy cashmere sweater-wearing Lorrie, sitting, sitting like the Queen of Sheba, in Mr. Soda Jerk’s boss cherry red with full-chrome accessories 1959 Chevy listening to Cry Baby Cry by The Angels as “mood” music on the background car radio that I could faintly hear. Just don’t tell Frankie, okay.
Peter Paul Markin comment:
Recently I did, as part of a rock 'n' roll be-bop night record review, a little vignette about soda fountain life in the early 1960s, featuring my boyhood best friend, Frankie Riley, Frankie from our down at the heels and not going to get better as America deindustrialized no more shipyard busy working class neighborhood. Frankie of one thousand stories, Frankie of one thousand treacheries, about twenty-three of them directed toward me, and Frankie of a one thousand kindnesses, including about ninety-eight directed toward me and hence the longevity of our friendship. Somehow it did not seem right to leave Frankie hanging around that old review soda fountain and rather than leave him to that fate I have decided to rewrite the story with the commercial CD review tag removed, although lots of the old story will filter through here anyway:
See, it really is a truism by now, by 2010 teen-age now, that every “teenage nation” generation since they started to place teenage-hood as a distinct phase of life between childhood and young adulthood over a century, maybe two centuries, ago has developed its own tribal rituals and institutions. Today’s teens seem to have cornered food courts at the mall, video arcades and the ubiquitous Internet screen connections through various look-at techno-gadgets although, frankly, I am not fully current on all their mores, customs and tribal language. And moreover would trend very lightly, very lightly indeed, on that sacred ground.
What I am familiar with, very familiar with, is the teen institutions of my generation, the generation of ’68, that came of teen age in the early 1960s. Our places of rendezvous were the corners in front of mom and pop variety stores in the days before franchise 7/11 convenience stores came to dominate the quick stop one item shopping market, if we could squeeze room around the drifters, grifters and midnight sifters who frequented those holy sites and worried about "turf" and our being within ten miles of it; the ever present heaven-sent smell pizza parlor (hold the onions on that slice, please, always hold the onions, in case I get lucky with that certain she tonight) with its jump jukebox where coin was king and we deposited more than a few nickels, dimes and quarters to hear our favorites of the day or minute; for some of the dweebs, or if you wanted to get away with a “cheap” date, or thought you were doing somebody a favor to take his sister out, but only as a last resort, favor that is, the bowling alley; the open air drive-in restaurants complete with "hot" car hops who filled the night air with their cold sex, their faraway cold tip-driven sex, for more “expensive” dates (meaning take your eyes off the damn car hops, or else); and, for serious business, meaning serious girl and boy watching, the soda fountain, especially in car-less teen times. And not, in my case, just any soda fountain but the soda fountain at the local individually-owned and operated drug store (Doc’s Drug Store, for real, that was the name) that used the soda fountain to draw people (read, kids: what would we need prescription drugs for, those were for old people, we were invincible) into the store.
As part of that record review mentioned earlier I noted that the cover of the CD had an almost Edward Hooper Nighthawks At The Diner-like illustration of just such a classic soda fountain, complete with three whimsical teen-age frills (read girls, if you are not from my old working class neighborhood, beaten down, or not) all sipping their straws out of one, can you believe it, one cone-shaped paper cup while a faux Fabian-type looks on. Ah, be still my heart.
Needless to say this scene could have been from any town USA then, complete with its own jukebox setup (although not every drug store had them, ours didn’t although the local rock radio station was blasting away as we tapped out the beat at all hours), the booths with the vinyl-covered summer sweat-inducing seats and Formica top tables (dolled up with paper place settings, condiments, etc., just like home right), the soda fountain granite (maybe faux granite) counter, complete with swivel around stools that gave the odd boy or two (read: me and my corner boys, or rather, Frankie and his corner boys, including me) a better vantage point to watch the traffic come into the store (read: girls), and a Drink Coca-Cola-inscribed full length mirror just in case you missed a beat.
Said counter also complete with glassed-encased pie (or donut) cases; the various utensils for making frappes (that's a New England thing, look it up), milkshakes, banana splits, ice cream floats, and cherry-flavored Cokes; a small grille for hamburgers, hot dogs and fries (or the odd boy grilled cheese sandwich with bacon); and, well, of course, a soda jerk (usually a guy) to whip up the orders. Oh, did I say anything about girl and boy watching? Ya, I did. What do you think we were all there for? The ice cream and soda? Come on. Does it really take an hour, an hour and a half, or even two hours to drink a Pepsi even in teen-land?
But enough said about the décor because the mere mention of the term “soda jerk” brings to mind a Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood story, Frankie of a thousand stories and Frankie who was the king hill skirt-chaser (read: girl), and my best friend in middle school (a.k.a. junior high) and high school. I already "hipped" you to the “his treacheries” and “kindnesses.” Ya, that Frankie, or rather this time Frankie’s sister, although now that I think of it she is really the "stooge" in this thing.
Now when we were juniors in high school in the early 1960s, Frankie (as king of the hill) and I (as his lord chamberlain) , mainly held court at the local pizza parlor, a pizza parlor which was in the pecking order of town teen social life way above the soda fountain rookie camp teen life scene. That soda foundation stuff was for kids and dweebs, unless, of course, things were tough at the pizza joint (meaning girl-free) and we meandered up the street to Doc’s Drug Store soda fountain to check out the action there.
Of course, before we graduated to the “bigs” pizza parlor, which I will tell you about some other time because it plays no part in this heart-rendering tale, the old soda fountain side of that drug store (the other side had aisles of over-the-counter drugs and sundries, a couple of permanently in use enclosed telephone booths for those (read: teens) who had not telephone at home(like me much of the time) or didn’t want their business exposed on the “two-party” home line, and your regulation pharmacy area for the good legal doctor's note drug stuff) was just fine. And it did no harm, no harm at all, in those days to strike up friendships , or at least stay on the good side of the soda jerks so you could get an extra scoop of ice cream or a free refill on your Coke. See, the soda jerk was usually the guy (and like I said before it was always guys, girls would probably be too distracted by every high energy teen guy, including dweeb-types, trying to be “cool”) who connected the dots about who was who and what was what in the local scene (I do not have to tell you at this late point the focal point of that scene, right?). Moreover, later, after we found out about life a bit more (read: sex) the soda jerk acted as a “shill” for Doc for those teens looking for their first liquor (for medical purposes, of course) or, keep this quiet, okay, condoms. But the thing was, younger or older, that the soda jerk also had some cache with the girls, I guess it must have been the uniform. Wow! Personally I wouldn’t have been caught dead with that silly flap cap they wore.
So one night we are dried up (read: no girls) at the pizza parlor and decided, as usual, to meander up the street to Doc’s. We had heard earlier in the day that Doc had a new jerk on and we wanted to check him out anyway. As we entered who do we see but Frankie’s sister, Lorrie, Frankie’s fourteen year old sister, Lorrie, talking up a storm, all dewy-eyed, over this new jerk, who must have been about eighteen. And more than that this “cradle-robber” had his arm around, or kind of around, Lorrie. Old Frankie saw red, no double red, if not more, hell and back red.
I can hear the yawns already, especially from every guy who had a goofy, off-hand younger sister just starting to feel her oats (or for that matter every gal who had such a younger brother, or any other such combinations). See, though, and maybe it’s hard to explain if you didn’t live in those misbegotten times, Frankie was a guy who had more girls lined up that he could ever meet and be able to keep himself in one piece, although he had only one serious frail (read: girl again, okay) that kept his interest over time (Joanne that I told you about before when I did a thing on Roy "The Boy" Orbison). So Frankie was no stranger to the old male boy (and adult too, as we found out later) double standard of the age about boys being able to do whatever they wanted to but girls had to be true-blue or whatever color it was, but no messing around, especially in regard to his sister. But there you have it, and he was seeing that old red that meant no good, for somebody.
Now this sister, Lorrie, when I first meant her back in the days when I first met Frankie in middle school was nothing but a...sister, a Frankie, king of the hill, sister but still just a sister. Meaning I really never paid much attention to her. But this night I could see, dewy-eyed or not, that she has turned into not a bad looker, especially with that form-filling cashmere sweater all the girls were wearing those days and that I swear they were wearing so that guys would notice that form-filling part. And I could see that, while she took away from her "cool" in my eyes by the ubiquitous chewing of gum that made her seem about ten years old, that guys could go for her, eighteen or not, soda jerks or not. As to the soda jerk, Steve was his name as I found out later, who was not a bad looking guy and old Lorrie didn't need glasses to see that. He seemed like a lot of guys, a lot of Frankie and me guys, ready to chat up any skirt that would listen to him for two minutes, maybe less.
And see, as well, it is not like Frankie really had some old-fashioned medieval sense of honor, or some Catholic, which we and half the freaking town were then, or were trying to get away from then, hang-up about sex, teen-age or otherwise. So it was not that he was really protective of her as much as he was insulted (so he told me later) by some new “jerk” trying to make moves to become "king of the hill" by “courting” Frankie’s, Francis X. Riley’s sister. See that's the way that he operated, and for all I know maybe had to operate, to stay king. Maybe he read about it someplace, like in Machiavelli’s The Prince (Frankie and I were crazy for that kind of book in those days, Christ we even read Marx’s Communist Manifesto just to be “cool”), and figured he had to do things that way.
And Frankie, old wiry, slender, quick-fisted, and not bad–looking but no Steve McQueen, wrapping the girls up with his pseudo-beat patter Frankie was tough. Tougher than he looked (with his black chinos, flannel shirt, work boot and midnight sunglass regulation faux beat look). So naturally new boy “jerk” takes umbrage (nice word, right?) when Frankie starts to move “sis” away from him. Well the long and short of it was that Frankie and “jerk” started to beef a little but it is all over quickly and here is why. Frankie took an ice cream cone, a triple scoop, triple-flavored ice cream cone no less, that was sitting on the counter in a cup in front of a girl customer (a cute girl who I wound up checking out seriously later) and bops, no be-bops, no be-bop bops one soda jerk, new or not, with it.
Now if you have ever seen an eighteen year old guy, in uniform, I don’t care if it is only a soda jerk’s uniform, wearing about three kinds of ice cream (no, not what you think, some harlequin strawberry, vanilla, chocolate combo but frozen pudding, cherry vanilla, and mocha almond, hey, I really will have to check that girl out) on that uniform you know, you have to know that this guy’s persona non grata with the girls and “cool” guys in town forevermore.
Or so you would think. Frankie went out of town for a few days to do something on family business (not related) after this incident and one night near the edge of town as I was walking with that young girl customer whose ice cream Frankie scooped (I bought her another one that incident night, that same triple combo mentioned above, thank god I had a little cash on me, and that is why I was walking with her right then, thank you) when I saw one Lorrie, one very foxy cashmere sweater-wearing Lorrie, sitting, sitting like the Queen of Sheba, in Mr. Soda Jerk’s boss cherry red with full-chrome accessories 1959 Chevy listening to Cry Baby Cry by The Angels as “mood” music on the background car radio that I could faintly hear. Just don’t tell Frankie, okay.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop Night- In the Beginning Of Rock- Bop- Once Again, From the Vaults Of Sun Records
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Carl Perkins performing Boppin' The Blues.
CD Review
The Sun Gods, 3-CD set, Dressed To Kill Records, 1999
One of the purposes of this space is to review various cultural trends that drove American popular culture in the 20th century. More specifically drove those trends in the post-World War II, the lifetimes of many of today’s baby boomers. A seminal point, musically at least, was the breakout of the mid-1950s fueled by a strange and sometimes contradictory mix of black-based rhythm and blues, Arkie, Okie, Appalachian “hillbilly” rock-a-billy and plain old jazz and vanilla show tune Tin Pan Alley. The mix of course we now know as rock ‘n’ roll, sadly for this aging reviewer now called the age of classic rock 'n' roll. No sadly that it does not exist except in CDs such as the one under review, The Sun Gods, but that frenetic fury to change the musical direction of popular culture seems to have lost steam along the aging process. But take heart. While we have all probably slowed down a step or seven we will always have Sun Records CD memories to carry us.
And there is no question, no question at all that, pound for pound, the music that came out of Sam Phillips’ Memphis-based Sun Records for about a decade in the 1950s was central to the mix that created rock 'n' roll. Think Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck Berry to name just three of the more famous singers to come out of that label. And as this CD demonstrates beyond doubt, highlighted by the work of Sonny Burgess and Warren Smith here, also a whole tribe of lesser lights, one- hit Johnnies and Janies, and those who never made it that formed the background milieu that drove the others forward and created this musical chemistry that can boggle the mind. If you want to find, in one spot, a CD set that rediscovers the roots of rock ‘n’ roll, especially the contributions from the rock-a-billy side well here you are.
I have highlighted some of the tracks on each disc.
Disc One: Carl Perkins performing Roll Over Beethoven, a song made famous by Chuck Berry (and that I went crazy over when I first heard it as a kid) which I think that he may actually do better than Chuck, if you can believe that. There are several Elvis interviews recorded here as part of the promotion of his records and/or concerts in the early days. I would say, thank god, that he had that great musical talent, that look and those hips swaying in the sex-fantasy driven night because off these innocuous, bland interviews he would have starved otherwise. Still these are good to hear from a time before the king became “the King.”
Disc Two: Red Hot by Billy Lee Riley, a rock-a-billy hard-driving classic that expresses just what the break-out was all about; We Wanna Boogie by Sonny Burgess (a definitely underrated force), Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache by Warren Smith (Bob Dylan covered this one in a tribute album); and, Crazy Women by Gene Simmons. This is one of those CDs that you have to listen to all the way through to get a real feel for this music, and you should.
Disc Three: Rock Boppin’ Baby by Edwin Brice; Let’s Bop by Jack Earls; Thinkin’ Of Me by Mickey Gilley; Rockhouse by Harold Jenkins; and, You Don’t Care by, Narvel Felts. Yes, I know, you probably have never heard of any of them. But if you listen to this CD you will see where Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck got their stuff from. And you know, successful or as failures, as I have mentioned before in reviewing Sun Record material, all these guys (and a few gals) all sound like they are happy to be rocking and rolling rather than whatever else they were slated to do in life.
CD Review
The Sun Gods, 3-CD set, Dressed To Kill Records, 1999
One of the purposes of this space is to review various cultural trends that drove American popular culture in the 20th century. More specifically drove those trends in the post-World War II, the lifetimes of many of today’s baby boomers. A seminal point, musically at least, was the breakout of the mid-1950s fueled by a strange and sometimes contradictory mix of black-based rhythm and blues, Arkie, Okie, Appalachian “hillbilly” rock-a-billy and plain old jazz and vanilla show tune Tin Pan Alley. The mix of course we now know as rock ‘n’ roll, sadly for this aging reviewer now called the age of classic rock 'n' roll. No sadly that it does not exist except in CDs such as the one under review, The Sun Gods, but that frenetic fury to change the musical direction of popular culture seems to have lost steam along the aging process. But take heart. While we have all probably slowed down a step or seven we will always have Sun Records CD memories to carry us.
And there is no question, no question at all that, pound for pound, the music that came out of Sam Phillips’ Memphis-based Sun Records for about a decade in the 1950s was central to the mix that created rock 'n' roll. Think Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck Berry to name just three of the more famous singers to come out of that label. And as this CD demonstrates beyond doubt, highlighted by the work of Sonny Burgess and Warren Smith here, also a whole tribe of lesser lights, one- hit Johnnies and Janies, and those who never made it that formed the background milieu that drove the others forward and created this musical chemistry that can boggle the mind. If you want to find, in one spot, a CD set that rediscovers the roots of rock ‘n’ roll, especially the contributions from the rock-a-billy side well here you are.
I have highlighted some of the tracks on each disc.
Disc One: Carl Perkins performing Roll Over Beethoven, a song made famous by Chuck Berry (and that I went crazy over when I first heard it as a kid) which I think that he may actually do better than Chuck, if you can believe that. There are several Elvis interviews recorded here as part of the promotion of his records and/or concerts in the early days. I would say, thank god, that he had that great musical talent, that look and those hips swaying in the sex-fantasy driven night because off these innocuous, bland interviews he would have starved otherwise. Still these are good to hear from a time before the king became “the King.”
Disc Two: Red Hot by Billy Lee Riley, a rock-a-billy hard-driving classic that expresses just what the break-out was all about; We Wanna Boogie by Sonny Burgess (a definitely underrated force), Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache by Warren Smith (Bob Dylan covered this one in a tribute album); and, Crazy Women by Gene Simmons. This is one of those CDs that you have to listen to all the way through to get a real feel for this music, and you should.
Disc Three: Rock Boppin’ Baby by Edwin Brice; Let’s Bop by Jack Earls; Thinkin’ Of Me by Mickey Gilley; Rockhouse by Harold Jenkins; and, You Don’t Care by, Narvel Felts. Yes, I know, you probably have never heard of any of them. But if you listen to this CD you will see where Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck got their stuff from. And you know, successful or as failures, as I have mentioned before in reviewing Sun Record material, all these guys (and a few gals) all sound like they are happy to be rocking and rolling rather than whatever else they were slated to do in life.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Songs To Sit At The Soda Fountain By- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Angels performing Cry Baby Cry.
Every “teenage nation” generation since they started to place teenage-hood as a distinct phase of life between childhood and young adulthood over a century ago has developed its own tribal rituals and institutions. Today’s teens seem to have cornered food courts at the mall, video arcades, and the ubiquitous Internet screen text mad connections through various look-at techno-gadgets although, frankly, I am not fully current on all their mores, customs and tribal language. No way. Old geezers form a line to the rear, way in the rear.
What I am familiar with, very familiar with, is the teen institutions of my generation, the generation of ’68, that came of teen age in the early 1960s. Our places of rendezvous were the corners in front of mom and pop variety stores in the days before franchise 7/11 came to dominate the quick stop one item shopping market; the ever present pizza parlor with its jump jukebox where we deposited more than a few nickels, dimes and quarters; for some of the dweebs (or if you wanted to get away with a “cheap” date, but only as a last resort ) the bowling alley; the open air drive-in restaurants complete with car hops for more “expensive” dates; and, for serious business, meaning serious girl and boy watching, the soda fountain. And not, in my case, just any soda fountain but the soda fountain at the local individually- owned drug store , Doc’s (no CVS, Osco madness with quick pitch in and out), that used the fountain to draw people (read, kids: what would we need prescription drugs for, those are for old people, we were invincible) into the store.
That last scene is what will drive this sketch, and for a simple reason. My mind just now has an illustration before it of just such a classic soda fountain, complete with whimsical teen-age frills (read girls, if you are not from my old working class neighborhood) all sipping their straws out of one, can you believe it, one paper cup while a faux beat -type looks on. Ah, be still my heart.
Needless to say this scene, complete with its own jukebox setup (although not every drug store had them, ours didn’t), the booths with the red vinyl-covered seats and Formica top tables (with paper place settings, condiments, etc., right), the soda fountain granite (maybe faux granite) counter, complete with swivel around stools that gave the odd boy or two (read: me and my boys) a better vantage point to watch the traffic come in the store (read: girls). Said counter also complete with glassed-encased pie (or donut) cases; the various utensils for making frappes (that a New England thing, look it up on “Wikipedia”), milkshakes, and cherry-flavored Cokes; a small grille for hamburgers, hot dogs and fries (or the odd boy grilled cheese sandwich with bacon); and, well a soda jerk (usually a guy) to whip up the orders. Oh, did I say girl and boy watching? Ya, I did. Still, what do you think we were all there for? The ice cream and soda? Come on. Does it really take an hour or an hour and a half to drink a Pepsi even in slo-mo 1960s (or now) teen-land?
Enough said about the décor because the mere mention of the term “soda jerk” brings to mind a Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood story, Frankie of a thousand stories and Frankie who was the king hill skirt-chaser (read: girl), and my best friend in middle school (a.k.a. junior high) and high school. Ya, that Frankie, or rather this time Frankie’s sister. Now when we were juniors in high school we mainly held court at the local pizza parlor which in the pecking order was way above the soda fountain. That was for kids, unless, of course, things were tough at the pizza joint (meaning girl-free) and we meandered up the street to Doc’s drug store soda fountain to check out the action there.
Of course, before we graduated to the “bigs” the old soda fountain was just fine. And it did no harm, no harm at all, to strike up friendships , or at least stay on the good side of the soda jerks so you could get an extra scoop of ice cream or a free refill on your Coke. Whatever. See, the soda jerk was usually the guy (and like I said before it was always guys, girls would probably be too distracted by every high energy teen guy, including dweeb-types, trying to be “cool”). But the thing is that the soda jerk also had some cache with the girls, I guess it must have been the uniform. Wow! Personally I wouldn’t have been caught dead wit that flap- cap they wore.
So one night we were dried up (read: no girls) at the pizza parlor and decided, as usual, to meander up the street to Doc’s. We had heard earlier in the day that Doc had a new jerk on and we wanted to check him out anyway. As we entered who do we see but Frankie’s sister, Lorrie, Frankie’s fourteen year old sister, talking up a storm all dewy-eyed over this new jerk, who must have been about eighteen. And this “cradle-robber” had his arm around, or kind of around, Lorrie. Old Frankie saw red, no double red, if not more.
See, Frankie was a guy who had more girls lined up that he could ever meet and be able to keep himself in one piece, although he has only one serious frail (read: girl again okay) that kept his interest over time (Joanne that I told you about before). So Frankie was no stranger to the old male double standard of the age, especially in regard to his sister. Not that he was really protective of her as much as he was insulted (so he told me later) by some new “jerk” trying to make moves to become king of the hill by “courting” Frankie’s sister.
And Frankie, old wiry, slender, quick-fisted Frankie was tough. Tougher than he looked. So naturally new boy “jerk” takes umbrage (nice word, right?) when Frankie starts to move “sis” away with him. Well the long and short of it was that Frankie and “jerk” started to beef a little but it is all over quickly and here is why. Frankie took an ice cream cone, a triple scoop, triple-flavored ice cream cone no less, that was sitting in a cup in front of a young girl customer ( a cute girl who I wound up checking out seriously later) and bopped, no be-bopped, no be-bop bopped one soda jerk, new or not, with it. Now if you have ever seen an eighteen year old guy, in uniform, with hat on, I don’t care if it is only a soda jerk’s uniform wearing about three kinds of ice cream on that uniform you know, you have to know that this guy’s persona non grata with the girls and “cool” guys in town forevermore.
Or so you would think. Frankie went out of town for a few days to do something on family business after this incident and one night near the edge of town as I was walking with that young girl customer whose ice cream Frankie scooped (I bought her another one, thank god I had a little cash on me, and that is why I was walking with her just then, thank you) when I saw one Lorrie sitting, sitting like the Queen of Sheba, in Mr. Soda Jerk’s 1959 boss cherry red Chevy listening to Cry Baby Cry by The Angels as “mood” music on the background car radio that I could faintly hear. Just don’t tell Frankie, okay.
Every “teenage nation” generation since they started to place teenage-hood as a distinct phase of life between childhood and young adulthood over a century ago has developed its own tribal rituals and institutions. Today’s teens seem to have cornered food courts at the mall, video arcades, and the ubiquitous Internet screen text mad connections through various look-at techno-gadgets although, frankly, I am not fully current on all their mores, customs and tribal language. No way. Old geezers form a line to the rear, way in the rear.
What I am familiar with, very familiar with, is the teen institutions of my generation, the generation of ’68, that came of teen age in the early 1960s. Our places of rendezvous were the corners in front of mom and pop variety stores in the days before franchise 7/11 came to dominate the quick stop one item shopping market; the ever present pizza parlor with its jump jukebox where we deposited more than a few nickels, dimes and quarters; for some of the dweebs (or if you wanted to get away with a “cheap” date, but only as a last resort ) the bowling alley; the open air drive-in restaurants complete with car hops for more “expensive” dates; and, for serious business, meaning serious girl and boy watching, the soda fountain. And not, in my case, just any soda fountain but the soda fountain at the local individually- owned drug store , Doc’s (no CVS, Osco madness with quick pitch in and out), that used the fountain to draw people (read, kids: what would we need prescription drugs for, those are for old people, we were invincible) into the store.
That last scene is what will drive this sketch, and for a simple reason. My mind just now has an illustration before it of just such a classic soda fountain, complete with whimsical teen-age frills (read girls, if you are not from my old working class neighborhood) all sipping their straws out of one, can you believe it, one paper cup while a faux beat -type looks on. Ah, be still my heart.
Needless to say this scene, complete with its own jukebox setup (although not every drug store had them, ours didn’t), the booths with the red vinyl-covered seats and Formica top tables (with paper place settings, condiments, etc., right), the soda fountain granite (maybe faux granite) counter, complete with swivel around stools that gave the odd boy or two (read: me and my boys) a better vantage point to watch the traffic come in the store (read: girls). Said counter also complete with glassed-encased pie (or donut) cases; the various utensils for making frappes (that a New England thing, look it up on “Wikipedia”), milkshakes, and cherry-flavored Cokes; a small grille for hamburgers, hot dogs and fries (or the odd boy grilled cheese sandwich with bacon); and, well a soda jerk (usually a guy) to whip up the orders. Oh, did I say girl and boy watching? Ya, I did. Still, what do you think we were all there for? The ice cream and soda? Come on. Does it really take an hour or an hour and a half to drink a Pepsi even in slo-mo 1960s (or now) teen-land?
Enough said about the décor because the mere mention of the term “soda jerk” brings to mind a Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood story, Frankie of a thousand stories and Frankie who was the king hill skirt-chaser (read: girl), and my best friend in middle school (a.k.a. junior high) and high school. Ya, that Frankie, or rather this time Frankie’s sister. Now when we were juniors in high school we mainly held court at the local pizza parlor which in the pecking order was way above the soda fountain. That was for kids, unless, of course, things were tough at the pizza joint (meaning girl-free) and we meandered up the street to Doc’s drug store soda fountain to check out the action there.
Of course, before we graduated to the “bigs” the old soda fountain was just fine. And it did no harm, no harm at all, to strike up friendships , or at least stay on the good side of the soda jerks so you could get an extra scoop of ice cream or a free refill on your Coke. Whatever. See, the soda jerk was usually the guy (and like I said before it was always guys, girls would probably be too distracted by every high energy teen guy, including dweeb-types, trying to be “cool”). But the thing is that the soda jerk also had some cache with the girls, I guess it must have been the uniform. Wow! Personally I wouldn’t have been caught dead wit that flap- cap they wore.
So one night we were dried up (read: no girls) at the pizza parlor and decided, as usual, to meander up the street to Doc’s. We had heard earlier in the day that Doc had a new jerk on and we wanted to check him out anyway. As we entered who do we see but Frankie’s sister, Lorrie, Frankie’s fourteen year old sister, talking up a storm all dewy-eyed over this new jerk, who must have been about eighteen. And this “cradle-robber” had his arm around, or kind of around, Lorrie. Old Frankie saw red, no double red, if not more.
See, Frankie was a guy who had more girls lined up that he could ever meet and be able to keep himself in one piece, although he has only one serious frail (read: girl again okay) that kept his interest over time (Joanne that I told you about before). So Frankie was no stranger to the old male double standard of the age, especially in regard to his sister. Not that he was really protective of her as much as he was insulted (so he told me later) by some new “jerk” trying to make moves to become king of the hill by “courting” Frankie’s sister.
And Frankie, old wiry, slender, quick-fisted Frankie was tough. Tougher than he looked. So naturally new boy “jerk” takes umbrage (nice word, right?) when Frankie starts to move “sis” away with him. Well the long and short of it was that Frankie and “jerk” started to beef a little but it is all over quickly and here is why. Frankie took an ice cream cone, a triple scoop, triple-flavored ice cream cone no less, that was sitting in a cup in front of a young girl customer ( a cute girl who I wound up checking out seriously later) and bopped, no be-bopped, no be-bop bopped one soda jerk, new or not, with it. Now if you have ever seen an eighteen year old guy, in uniform, with hat on, I don’t care if it is only a soda jerk’s uniform wearing about three kinds of ice cream on that uniform you know, you have to know that this guy’s persona non grata with the girls and “cool” guys in town forevermore.
Or so you would think. Frankie went out of town for a few days to do something on family business after this incident and one night near the edge of town as I was walking with that young girl customer whose ice cream Frankie scooped (I bought her another one, thank god I had a little cash on me, and that is why I was walking with her just then, thank you) when I saw one Lorrie sitting, sitting like the Queen of Sheba, in Mr. Soda Jerk’s 1959 boss cherry red Chevy listening to Cry Baby Cry by The Angels as “mood” music on the background car radio that I could faintly hear. Just don’t tell Frankie, okay.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Singing The Cole Porter Blues-“The Very Thought Of You”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the late legendary singer Etta James performing this Cole Porter classic, The Very Thought Of You.
Torch Songs, various artists, 2 CD set, Capitol Records, 2004
Some days are just Cole Porter days. No not a “Love for Sale” day kind of saucy and salacious, portending of adventures or dreams of adventures, like he could do with a two-termed turn of phrase, No today, well actually since today’s brood has turned in night, tonight is a low-down blues day. So, like I have done on more occasions than I care to confess to, I headed off to Jack’s Jazz Joint over in the Camelot House across the street from Hoby’s in Harvard Square. (Harvard Square for the three people in the world who are geographically-disadvantaged is in blues-etched Cambridge which is in Massachusetts. None of that information enters into the story, not at all, but with the blues you could be in Timbuktu for all the locale mattered). Jack’s, my favorite shucking the blues watering spot. Ya, good old Jack’s.
Okay, you have probably figured it out by now anyway. All day (and night) blues, a tumble down smoky jazz- joint filled with more torch singer blues memories than one could shake a stick at, and some booze can only mean one thing- a dame (oops, Cambridge, woman). It also takes no rocket science either to figure out it was my very own Joyell, companion of a thousand love battles, big and small, and of nine hundred and ninety-nine armed truces that has me blue, blue all over… And that is the problem- the watering hole to be solved problem. This latest battle is without a current truce and it has been a week now.
Naturally, for the first day or so, it was all good-bye and good riddance but the past six days well, they have been hard. And that is also where the problem lies. Neither of us has had a good track record on giving in, letting bygones be by gone, and move on. In short everything takes on the character of a civil war and just now I am like the Confederates in early 1865- on my last legs.
And the dispute, the substance of the dispute? Who knows? Do you love me more than the whole wide world? Why don’t you get a better job? Why were you practically drooling over Lorraine at that party last night? Why didn’t you put the laundry away? Jesus, who knows at this point, although a week probably has eliminated the laundry battle as the reason for the fight.
Ah, there’s Jack’s. I wonder who is on the floor tonight. The sign said Rita Radley, a torch singer. Don’t know the name but Jacks’ is a showcase for lots of up and coming talent. Hope she can sing these blues away. As I took my seat (my usual seat when these love battles run their course) at the bar in front of Tommy’s station and ordered my first whiskey neat (I stopped throwing in a beer chaser when I started making enough dough to drink good whiskey, good enough not to be need a chaser and get a better buzz too.) I notice that Rita (recognized from the photo out front) was getting ready to hold forth.
Now this Rita was nothing but a frail (oops, again Cambridge, gal), a thin gal but with a shape, wearing an evening gown that had guys, including me, thinking about this and that and that line to work on her, and with that tussle of Irish red hair that I knew from primordial times meant Irish (and eight million tussles, novena beads and catechism tussles, for some slight lip kiss and slapped cop feel, jesus never again). I’ve had enough Irish redheads to last a lifetime (Joyell is brunette, my hair color of choice the past few times out, except that slight pass at blonde Lorraine of some battle past). But I also know, eight hundred years of English tyranny know, Easter 1916 know, struggle in the north now know, that some of these , ah, gals can sing the blues with the best of the black singers of the past like blessed Billie (Holiday), like blessed Dinah (Washington), like blessed Nina (Simone).
And as Rita gives her intro and starts up on her first song I know that eight hundred years, that 1916, that struggle in the north now sorrow drives her voice, drives her voice to that place where those aforementioned black singers live. That life’s sorrow place. For that one moment I am at peace, at peace with myself. And the next minute, after she is done, I call out to the bar-tender, “Tommy, one more here and one for the torch.” She gives me a smile, a professional kudos smile, and moves on to her next song. That next song, “The Very Thought Of You," really brings down the house, shades of Billie, shades of Etta James. But also shades of Joyell when she tears into “the mere idea of you” line of the song. And so, respectfully waiting until she finished her number, I head to the telephone out in the lobby. Thanks, Rita.
Torch Songs, various artists, 2 CD set, Capitol Records, 2004
Some days are just Cole Porter days. No not a “Love for Sale” day kind of saucy and salacious, portending of adventures or dreams of adventures, like he could do with a two-termed turn of phrase, No today, well actually since today’s brood has turned in night, tonight is a low-down blues day. So, like I have done on more occasions than I care to confess to, I headed off to Jack’s Jazz Joint over in the Camelot House across the street from Hoby’s in Harvard Square. (Harvard Square for the three people in the world who are geographically-disadvantaged is in blues-etched Cambridge which is in Massachusetts. None of that information enters into the story, not at all, but with the blues you could be in Timbuktu for all the locale mattered). Jack’s, my favorite shucking the blues watering spot. Ya, good old Jack’s.
Okay, you have probably figured it out by now anyway. All day (and night) blues, a tumble down smoky jazz- joint filled with more torch singer blues memories than one could shake a stick at, and some booze can only mean one thing- a dame (oops, Cambridge, woman). It also takes no rocket science either to figure out it was my very own Joyell, companion of a thousand love battles, big and small, and of nine hundred and ninety-nine armed truces that has me blue, blue all over… And that is the problem- the watering hole to be solved problem. This latest battle is without a current truce and it has been a week now.
Naturally, for the first day or so, it was all good-bye and good riddance but the past six days well, they have been hard. And that is also where the problem lies. Neither of us has had a good track record on giving in, letting bygones be by gone, and move on. In short everything takes on the character of a civil war and just now I am like the Confederates in early 1865- on my last legs.
And the dispute, the substance of the dispute? Who knows? Do you love me more than the whole wide world? Why don’t you get a better job? Why were you practically drooling over Lorraine at that party last night? Why didn’t you put the laundry away? Jesus, who knows at this point, although a week probably has eliminated the laundry battle as the reason for the fight.
Ah, there’s Jack’s. I wonder who is on the floor tonight. The sign said Rita Radley, a torch singer. Don’t know the name but Jacks’ is a showcase for lots of up and coming talent. Hope she can sing these blues away. As I took my seat (my usual seat when these love battles run their course) at the bar in front of Tommy’s station and ordered my first whiskey neat (I stopped throwing in a beer chaser when I started making enough dough to drink good whiskey, good enough not to be need a chaser and get a better buzz too.) I notice that Rita (recognized from the photo out front) was getting ready to hold forth.
Now this Rita was nothing but a frail (oops, again Cambridge, gal), a thin gal but with a shape, wearing an evening gown that had guys, including me, thinking about this and that and that line to work on her, and with that tussle of Irish red hair that I knew from primordial times meant Irish (and eight million tussles, novena beads and catechism tussles, for some slight lip kiss and slapped cop feel, jesus never again). I’ve had enough Irish redheads to last a lifetime (Joyell is brunette, my hair color of choice the past few times out, except that slight pass at blonde Lorraine of some battle past). But I also know, eight hundred years of English tyranny know, Easter 1916 know, struggle in the north now know, that some of these , ah, gals can sing the blues with the best of the black singers of the past like blessed Billie (Holiday), like blessed Dinah (Washington), like blessed Nina (Simone).
And as Rita gives her intro and starts up on her first song I know that eight hundred years, that 1916, that struggle in the north now sorrow drives her voice, drives her voice to that place where those aforementioned black singers live. That life’s sorrow place. For that one moment I am at peace, at peace with myself. And the next minute, after she is done, I call out to the bar-tender, “Tommy, one more here and one for the torch.” She gives me a smile, a professional kudos smile, and moves on to her next song. That next song, “The Very Thought Of You," really brings down the house, shades of Billie, shades of Etta James. But also shades of Joyell when she tears into “the mere idea of you” line of the song. And so, respectfully waiting until she finished her number, I head to the telephone out in the lobby. Thanks, Rita.
Where Were You On May 10, 1963? - Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963- A CD Review (Of Sorts)
Click on the headline to link to a review of “Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis University 1963” so I can move on to the more “pressing” issue of answering the question posed in the above headline>
CD Review
Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963, Bob Dylan, Sony Music, 2011
“Where were you on May 10, 1963?” bellowed a voice from the crowded back of the room of the conference, another one of those “save the world” gatherings that I was attending recently.
“Well, who is asking and why?” I replied, turning around to see who posed that odd-ball question.
Jesus, of course it was my compadre, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, the old- time radical journalist who has fouled up the left-wing and radical public prints of this country for the past forty years (until he recently, praise be, retired), a man who I met back in the summer of love, 1967 version. And a man who has asked me more silly questions like the one above than I can ever come close to recalling. So my answer to his question is a simple “I don’t’ know.”
Except old Josh (everybody calls him Josh, not that nonsensical Joshua Lawrence Breslin breeze publication by-line thing , except in that very brief summer of love night when he went, un-self-consciously, under the name The Prince of Love. But that is a story for another day.) had some ulterior motive, knowing my history, knowing where I was raised, knowing that I was just enough older than him to have been somewhere other than at home in 1963, and knowing that I had immersed myself in that Harvard Square-etched 1960s folk revival minute.
Of course he did have his motive, having recently purchased a copy of the elusive, rare, Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963, and so he wanted the ‘skinny’ on my doings or not doings at the time. Needless to say he did not want, after him and then I listened to the thing later, to know what I thought of the CD. Frankly the material in the album recorded live in some fiendish college gym cum folk club was done in other early Dylan studio- produced albums much better at the time. No, what he wanted to know is why I was, or was not, at the concert (or really at the Brandeis Folk Festival) that weekend.
Well, number one, I was not just at that faux beat checked flannel shirt, black chino, chuck taylor sneaker (with genuine logo, thank you) midnight sunglasses high school moment familiar with the local folk scene beyond Back Bay and Harvard Square. Number two I had not the faintest notion where Brandeis was, or the city where it was located, Waltham, although it was only about seven or eight miles from Harvard Square. And as part of number two I had no way, no way in hell, to get there if I had known since being strictly from hunger over on the North Adamsville side of town I had no wheels, no prospects of getting wheels, and just then was in a dispute with Frankie Larkin, the one guy I knew who had wheels. And number three, well, let me explain number separately, okay?
Josh-jogged memory reveals that I knew exactly where I was on May 10, 1963 (or that weekend anyway). I was sitting at the Joy Street Coffee House on Beacon Hill in Boston (another budding, if less well-known, folk revival hang-out spot). And I was sitting with one, Diana Dubois, a fellow junior classmate of mine at North Adamsville High School trying to “convince” her that this new guy, Bob Dylan, was worth listening to if she wanted to get an idea of how we could get out of our fix. That fix being, we both agreed,
that we were growing up in a world that we had not created, had not been asked about, and had no apparent way of changing. Enter Bob Dylan (and others but everybody, including me, called him our muse).
See Diana and I had a "Problems in Democracy" class together and I, naturally, was all over the current events of the day and stuff like that. Sincerely, no question, but mainly acting “smart” to impress the girls, and to impress one Diana Dubois, in particular. And I did, did at least get her attention, after about two weeks of talks and walks and, finally, finally a date. Of course a no dough guy could go pretty far with a cheapo coffee house date. A little carfare from Podunk to Boston, a couple of bucks for coffee and cakes (she had tea, mint tea, I believe, but don’t quote me on that my memory is NOT that good). And a fist full of coins to play the jukebox at Joy Street. See the other beauty of the place, unlike the Harvard Square clubs was there was no “live” entertainment so there was no cover charge. Just a jukebox, juiced up with nothing but folky stuff. And the king pin max daddy of the box was one Bob Dylan with almost all his stuff on the playlist.
Naturally that playlist included “Masters Of War” that I played a few times for Diana, giving my interpretation as the lines flowed by. See, just then I was in the throes of a high anti-war dudgeon. No, not Vietnam like you might think, that was nothing on my radar except maybe we had to stop the commies, but nothing very deep. What was deep (and impressed the hell of Diana) was my opposition to nuclear weapons, especially as just a few months before we were on the edge, the deep edge, with the Russians. From there I worked my “magic” going on endlessly about the John Birch Society and its threat to democratic practices that Dylan lampooned in “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” and then on to “Bob Dylan’s Dream.” I made her laugh like crazy when I parodied his voice on that one.
Now to the big moment. There was more calculation that I let on before about why I invited Diana out to this coffeehouse. See what I was really angling for was a date the next week-end to the North Adamsville High Spring Swing (name going back to some hokey, then hokey, Benny Goodman thing, when the school first opened I heard). It was a big junior bash and I had heard through my grapevine (finely-tuned to such intelligence, after all what was high school except to learn these social arts) that Diana was not dated up. So I asked her, and she said, she said, well, after this big build-up you know it was yes.
So you might as well say that Bob Dylan got me that date with Diana (and some more too but that is not part of this story). And so how do I know where I was on May 10, 1963? Well that Spring Swing was held on May 17, 1963. I have saved the ticket up in the attic. Do the math. Thanks, Bob.
CD Review
Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963, Bob Dylan, Sony Music, 2011
“Where were you on May 10, 1963?” bellowed a voice from the crowded back of the room of the conference, another one of those “save the world” gatherings that I was attending recently.
“Well, who is asking and why?” I replied, turning around to see who posed that odd-ball question.
Jesus, of course it was my compadre, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, the old- time radical journalist who has fouled up the left-wing and radical public prints of this country for the past forty years (until he recently, praise be, retired), a man who I met back in the summer of love, 1967 version. And a man who has asked me more silly questions like the one above than I can ever come close to recalling. So my answer to his question is a simple “I don’t’ know.”
Except old Josh (everybody calls him Josh, not that nonsensical Joshua Lawrence Breslin breeze publication by-line thing , except in that very brief summer of love night when he went, un-self-consciously, under the name The Prince of Love. But that is a story for another day.) had some ulterior motive, knowing my history, knowing where I was raised, knowing that I was just enough older than him to have been somewhere other than at home in 1963, and knowing that I had immersed myself in that Harvard Square-etched 1960s folk revival minute.
Of course he did have his motive, having recently purchased a copy of the elusive, rare, Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963, and so he wanted the ‘skinny’ on my doings or not doings at the time. Needless to say he did not want, after him and then I listened to the thing later, to know what I thought of the CD. Frankly the material in the album recorded live in some fiendish college gym cum folk club was done in other early Dylan studio- produced albums much better at the time. No, what he wanted to know is why I was, or was not, at the concert (or really at the Brandeis Folk Festival) that weekend.
Well, number one, I was not just at that faux beat checked flannel shirt, black chino, chuck taylor sneaker (with genuine logo, thank you) midnight sunglasses high school moment familiar with the local folk scene beyond Back Bay and Harvard Square. Number two I had not the faintest notion where Brandeis was, or the city where it was located, Waltham, although it was only about seven or eight miles from Harvard Square. And as part of number two I had no way, no way in hell, to get there if I had known since being strictly from hunger over on the North Adamsville side of town I had no wheels, no prospects of getting wheels, and just then was in a dispute with Frankie Larkin, the one guy I knew who had wheels. And number three, well, let me explain number separately, okay?
Josh-jogged memory reveals that I knew exactly where I was on May 10, 1963 (or that weekend anyway). I was sitting at the Joy Street Coffee House on Beacon Hill in Boston (another budding, if less well-known, folk revival hang-out spot). And I was sitting with one, Diana Dubois, a fellow junior classmate of mine at North Adamsville High School trying to “convince” her that this new guy, Bob Dylan, was worth listening to if she wanted to get an idea of how we could get out of our fix. That fix being, we both agreed,
that we were growing up in a world that we had not created, had not been asked about, and had no apparent way of changing. Enter Bob Dylan (and others but everybody, including me, called him our muse).
See Diana and I had a "Problems in Democracy" class together and I, naturally, was all over the current events of the day and stuff like that. Sincerely, no question, but mainly acting “smart” to impress the girls, and to impress one Diana Dubois, in particular. And I did, did at least get her attention, after about two weeks of talks and walks and, finally, finally a date. Of course a no dough guy could go pretty far with a cheapo coffee house date. A little carfare from Podunk to Boston, a couple of bucks for coffee and cakes (she had tea, mint tea, I believe, but don’t quote me on that my memory is NOT that good). And a fist full of coins to play the jukebox at Joy Street. See the other beauty of the place, unlike the Harvard Square clubs was there was no “live” entertainment so there was no cover charge. Just a jukebox, juiced up with nothing but folky stuff. And the king pin max daddy of the box was one Bob Dylan with almost all his stuff on the playlist.
Naturally that playlist included “Masters Of War” that I played a few times for Diana, giving my interpretation as the lines flowed by. See, just then I was in the throes of a high anti-war dudgeon. No, not Vietnam like you might think, that was nothing on my radar except maybe we had to stop the commies, but nothing very deep. What was deep (and impressed the hell of Diana) was my opposition to nuclear weapons, especially as just a few months before we were on the edge, the deep edge, with the Russians. From there I worked my “magic” going on endlessly about the John Birch Society and its threat to democratic practices that Dylan lampooned in “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” and then on to “Bob Dylan’s Dream.” I made her laugh like crazy when I parodied his voice on that one.
Now to the big moment. There was more calculation that I let on before about why I invited Diana out to this coffeehouse. See what I was really angling for was a date the next week-end to the North Adamsville High Spring Swing (name going back to some hokey, then hokey, Benny Goodman thing, when the school first opened I heard). It was a big junior bash and I had heard through my grapevine (finely-tuned to such intelligence, after all what was high school except to learn these social arts) that Diana was not dated up. So I asked her, and she said, she said, well, after this big build-up you know it was yes.
So you might as well say that Bob Dylan got me that date with Diana (and some more too but that is not part of this story). And so how do I know where I was on May 10, 1963? Well that Spring Swing was held on May 17, 1963. I have saved the ticket up in the attic. Do the math. Thanks, Bob.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Out In Red Scare Cold War Night- Edward R. Murrow’s “ Good Night, And Good Luck”
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Edward R. Murrow –featured “Good Night, And Good Luck.”
DVD Review
Good Night, And Good Luck, starring David Strathairn, George Clooney, Robert Downey, Jr. and Senator Joseph McCarthy, the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Warner, 2005
For those who lived in that death red scare cold war 1950s night, or who came of television age then the events depicted in this very well-done black and white documentary-like film, “Good Night, And Good Luck” (the signature sign-off line of Edward R. Murrow on his radio and television shows), should be very familiar. And a cause for reflection for those who howled with the wolves (the McCarthy, Nixon, Robert Welch wolves) calling for the blood of every, well, every speaker against that death night. For those who came after this should be a cautionary tale very appropriate for addressing the madnesses of the political and media howling wolves today.
The story line here is pretty straight-forward, the 1953-54 struggle of Edward R. Murrow, a well-respected and honest radio and television journalist, and the rabid anti-communist monger, the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, including actual footage of his speeches and remarks. In that red scare cold war night few reporters, fewer liberals, and even fewer average American citizens were ready to take on the howling beasts who, mainly for their own political purposes, were ready to destroy infinite numbers of lives in order to “stop the red menace” from creeping through the door. As it turned out there were a handful of actual reds (or past reds, mainly) who may have been in the government. For that few these wolves were ready to bring the whole frail democratic experience on the American continent (what Lincoln called “the last, best hope”) toppling down.
Some guys, too few guys (or gals), like Murrow (and Fred Friendly played by George Clooney) stood up in their funny way (their cloud puff dreams of an informed, educated citizenry plugged into the world via technological promise of the global village of television seem rather ironic now) to their day’s monsters. And while we, Brother Murrow and I, may have been a million miles away from each other in age, in political and cultural sensibilities, and lifestyle I am always happy to salute a kindred spirit, an honest man seeking the truth. And I encourage all to see this film.
DVD Review
Good Night, And Good Luck, starring David Strathairn, George Clooney, Robert Downey, Jr. and Senator Joseph McCarthy, the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Warner, 2005
For those who lived in that death red scare cold war 1950s night, or who came of television age then the events depicted in this very well-done black and white documentary-like film, “Good Night, And Good Luck” (the signature sign-off line of Edward R. Murrow on his radio and television shows), should be very familiar. And a cause for reflection for those who howled with the wolves (the McCarthy, Nixon, Robert Welch wolves) calling for the blood of every, well, every speaker against that death night. For those who came after this should be a cautionary tale very appropriate for addressing the madnesses of the political and media howling wolves today.
The story line here is pretty straight-forward, the 1953-54 struggle of Edward R. Murrow, a well-respected and honest radio and television journalist, and the rabid anti-communist monger, the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, including actual footage of his speeches and remarks. In that red scare cold war night few reporters, fewer liberals, and even fewer average American citizens were ready to take on the howling beasts who, mainly for their own political purposes, were ready to destroy infinite numbers of lives in order to “stop the red menace” from creeping through the door. As it turned out there were a handful of actual reds (or past reds, mainly) who may have been in the government. For that few these wolves were ready to bring the whole frail democratic experience on the American continent (what Lincoln called “the last, best hope”) toppling down.
Some guys, too few guys (or gals), like Murrow (and Fred Friendly played by George Clooney) stood up in their funny way (their cloud puff dreams of an informed, educated citizenry plugged into the world via technological promise of the global village of television seem rather ironic now) to their day’s monsters. And while we, Brother Murrow and I, may have been a million miles away from each other in age, in political and cultural sensibilities, and lifestyle I am always happy to salute a kindred spirit, an honest man seeking the truth. And I encourage all to see this film.
Hold ‘Em Or Fold ‘Em –Steve McQueen’s “The Cincinnati Kid – A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film “The Cincinnati Kid.”
DVD Review
The Cincinnati Kid, starring Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Karl Malden, M-G-M, 1965
Okay, okay five card stud a game that reality television has gone ga-ga over(not Lady Ga-Ga I don’t think) is not my game, not even close, but the film under review, The Cincinnati Kid, made me realize that at least in a dramatic presentation it has possibilities. Especially when everybody’s 1960s cool hand, cool man Steve McQueen decides to take the table stakes. And one cannot discount, if there is any truth to the story line here, that the very appealing (1960s appealing anyway) eye-candy that drifts around where there is easy money to be found like Melba (played by Ann-Margaret) and Christian (played by Tuesday Weld) makes me think that maybe I should take up the game.
Oops, that is mistake number one brother. See what a man (or woman) needs to play poker, or any game of chance, is undivided concentration, some dough, some serious dough, and some more serious dough for the rough spots, and nerves of steel. Some fluff with come hither looks (Melba) and talk of white picket fences (Christian) is strictly off the books. Well, kind of, remember even “The Kid” has to have something to shoot for beside the dough. Someone to help him spend it, although the dough ain’t nothing, nothing except acknowledgement that he is king of the five card stud hill.
And that grail, that holy, holy grail is what drives The Kid. That and the Great Depression gnawing hunger that drove many kids, and oldsters too, to grab for the brass ring anyway they could. See old Lance (played by Edward G. Robinson last seen in this space slapping dames and old geezers around, although not for long, as old- time “Chi” town mobster on the lam Johnny Rico in Humphrey Bogart’s Key Largo) has been king of the hill since Hector was a pup, if not before. The Kid has been working his way up the ladder, cooling his heels, waiting for just the right time with just the right amount of dough to stake his claim. Of course left by itself one great pie-in the-sky winner take all poker game could not sustain a full-length film. So some sidebar stuff with those come hither and white picket fence dames, some lesser games as warm-up, and some attempts by Shooter (played by Karl Malden), his mentor, to “fix” things his way and some this and that keep the thing moving until the big finale-winner take all game (and maybe an extra prize with the dames). So is The Kid strictly from hunger or is he getting ready to be fitted for a new walking cane? Well, see the movie.
DVD Review
The Cincinnati Kid, starring Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Karl Malden, M-G-M, 1965
Okay, okay five card stud a game that reality television has gone ga-ga over(not Lady Ga-Ga I don’t think) is not my game, not even close, but the film under review, The Cincinnati Kid, made me realize that at least in a dramatic presentation it has possibilities. Especially when everybody’s 1960s cool hand, cool man Steve McQueen decides to take the table stakes. And one cannot discount, if there is any truth to the story line here, that the very appealing (1960s appealing anyway) eye-candy that drifts around where there is easy money to be found like Melba (played by Ann-Margaret) and Christian (played by Tuesday Weld) makes me think that maybe I should take up the game.
Oops, that is mistake number one brother. See what a man (or woman) needs to play poker, or any game of chance, is undivided concentration, some dough, some serious dough, and some more serious dough for the rough spots, and nerves of steel. Some fluff with come hither looks (Melba) and talk of white picket fences (Christian) is strictly off the books. Well, kind of, remember even “The Kid” has to have something to shoot for beside the dough. Someone to help him spend it, although the dough ain’t nothing, nothing except acknowledgement that he is king of the five card stud hill.
And that grail, that holy, holy grail is what drives The Kid. That and the Great Depression gnawing hunger that drove many kids, and oldsters too, to grab for the brass ring anyway they could. See old Lance (played by Edward G. Robinson last seen in this space slapping dames and old geezers around, although not for long, as old- time “Chi” town mobster on the lam Johnny Rico in Humphrey Bogart’s Key Largo) has been king of the hill since Hector was a pup, if not before. The Kid has been working his way up the ladder, cooling his heels, waiting for just the right time with just the right amount of dough to stake his claim. Of course left by itself one great pie-in the-sky winner take all poker game could not sustain a full-length film. So some sidebar stuff with those come hither and white picket fence dames, some lesser games as warm-up, and some attempts by Shooter (played by Karl Malden), his mentor, to “fix” things his way and some this and that keep the thing moving until the big finale-winner take all game (and maybe an extra prize with the dames). So is The Kid strictly from hunger or is he getting ready to be fitted for a new walking cane? Well, see the movie.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Time Of Laura’s Time- Magical Realism 101
Scene: A smoky sunless nameless, or rather legion, bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home down in sad sack Kentucky long gone daddy left years before and gladly times. Order another deadened drink, high- end beer these days, gone are rotgut whiskey (or high blend when in the chips) accompanied by that self-same beer, slightly benny-addled. Then, like some misbegotten scene out of Rick’s Café, in walks a vision. A million times in walks a vision, in a million walk in bars, some frail, naturally, but in white linen this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night stands, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches searching for meaningful shells, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Yes, that seems about right, right against the inflation -beggared times right, and mean street break-down right. And then this tale:
Walking down the narrow stairs leading to the admission window booth at Johnny Fleet’s in good old Harvard Square on this cold Columbus Day 1978 night, jesus 1978 is almost gone already, I was suddenly depressed by this thought-how many times lately had I walked down these very stairs looking, looking for what, looking, as Tom Waits says in his song, for the heart of Saturday night, looking recently every night from Monday to Sunday and not just Saturday. Looking, not hard looking, not right now hard looking anyway after my last nitwit affair, but looking for a man who at least has a job, doesn’t have another girlfriend or ten, and who wants to settle down a little, settle down with me a little. Yes, if you really need to know, want to know, I’ve got those late twenties getting just a touch worried old maid blues.
My parents, my straight-arrow, god-fearing, Methodist god-fearing and that is a fierce fearing, hard-working, lost in some 1950s dreamland parents, my mother really, my father just keeps his own counsel between shots of whiskey and trying to read the latest seed catalogues that keep him and his business alive through the haze, keeps badgering me about finding a nice young man. Yes, easy for you to say you don’t know the nitwits who are out there and they ain’t Rickey Nelson dream jukebox guys, Mother. And then she starts on the coming home, coming home to cranky Mechanicsville (that’s in upstate New York, near Albany, if you don’t believe me) and finding some farmer-grown boy from high school and X, Y, and Z, farmer boys all, still asks about me. No thanks, jesus, that is why I fled to Boston right after college in 1972 (and fled to a far-away, and a no living at home college too but don’t tell her that) and not just because I wanted to get my social worker master’s degree like I told them. And so here I am, a few years later, walking down these skinny stairs again, sigh, yet again.
Johnny’s (nobody calls it Johnny Fleet’s except for one-time people or tourists) isn’t a bad place to hang your hat, as my father always likes to say, when he finds that one or two places in the universe outside of the farm where he feels comfortable enough to stay more than ten minutes before getting the “I’ve got to go water the greenhouse plants” or something itch (read: drink itch). Not a bad place for a woman, a twenty–eight year old woman with college degrees and some aims in life beyond some one-night stand every now and again. Or not a bad place for a pair of women, if my friend and roommate, Priscilla, decides she is man-hungry enough to make the trip to Harvard Square from the wilds of Watertown, and can stand the heavy smoke, mainly cigarette smoke as far as I know, but after a few drinks who knows, that fills the air before the night is half over.
Tonight Priscilla is with me because she has a “crush” on Albie St John, the lead singer for the featured local rock group, The Haystraws. And the last time she was here he was giving her that look like he was game for something although he is known around the Square as strictly a “for fun” guy. And that is okay with Priscilla because she has some guy back home some guy from upstate New York where she is from near Utica, some fresh from the farm guy who she has known since about third grade, who will marry her if and when she says the word.
Here is the funny thing though alone, or like tonight with Priscilla, this funky old bar is the only place around where a woman can find a guy who is the least bit presentable to the folks back home, wherever back home is. I’ve met a couple of decent guys in here, although like I said before, things didn’t work out for some reason because they were one-night stand guys or already loaded down with girlfriends and I am in no mood to take a ticket, stuff like that. So you can see what desperate straits I am in still trying to meet that right guy, or something close, without a lot of overhead. My standards may be a little high for the times but I’m chipping away at them by the day.
Moreover, this place, this Johnny’s is the only place around that has the kind of music I like, a little country although not Grand Ole Opry country stuff like my parents go for, you know George Jones or Aunt Bee, or someone. And is a little bit folkie, kind of left-handed folkie, more like local favorite Eric Andersen folk rock, and a little old time let it rip 1950s rock and roll, like The Haystraws cover. You know, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, those guys, that I never knew anything about when I was a kid since I never got past Rickey Nelson and Bobby Darin, darn him, out in the farm field sticks. Upstate New York, like I said, not far out of Albany but it might as well have been a million miles away with me picking my sting beans, tomatoes, and whatever else pa grew to keep us from hunger’s door.
Not for me this trendy disco stuff, not my style at all, no way, although I love to dance and even took belly dancing lessons although I am not voluptuous, more just left of skinny if I say it but really voluptuous Priscilla calls me just skinny. Also my kind of guy would never, never wear an open shirt and some chainy medallion around his neck. Jesus, no way. Plus, a big plus, Johnny’s has a jukebox for intermissions filled with all kinds of odd-ball songs, real country, stuff, late 1950s rock and roll (the Rickey Nelson/Bobby Vee/Bobby Darin stuff) that nobody but me probably ever heard of unless, of course, you were from Mechanicsville, or a place like that.
After going through mandatory license check and admission fee stuff, saying “hi” to the waitresses that I know now by name, and Priscilla does too, and the regular bartenders as we pass by we find our seats, kind of “reserved” seats for us where we can sit and not be hassled by guys, or be hassled if something interesting comes along. I have been in kind of a dry spell, outside the occasional minute affair if one could really call some of the “affairs” even that, for about six months now. Ever since I started to work, work doing social work, my profession, if you need to know. That’s what I am trained to do anyway although when I first came to town a few years ago I was, as one beau back then said, “serving them off the arm” in a spaghetti joint over the other side of Cambridge. Strictly a family fare menu and plenty of college guys including a few who I wound up dating, low on funds doing the cheap Saturday night date circuit. All in all a “no tips” situation anyway you cut it, although plenty of guff, a lot of come-ons, and extra helpings of “get me this and get me that.”
Before that, out in Rochester in college, and later after a short stop at hometown Mechanicsville it was nothing but wanna-be cowboy losers, an occasional low-rent dope dealer, some wanna-be musicians, farmer brown farmers, and married guys looking for a little something on a cold night. Ya, I know, I asked for it but a girl gets cold and lonely too. Not just guys, not these days anyway. But I am still pitching, although very low-key. That is my public style (some say, say right to my face, prim but that’s only to fend off the losers).
“Laura, what are you having, tonight honey?’ asked my “regular” waitress, Lannie, and then asked Priscilla the same. “Two Rusty Nails,” we replied. Tonight, from a quick glance around the room even though it is a Columbus Day holiday night, looks like it is going to be a hard-drinking night from the feel of it. That means on my budget and my capacity about three drinks, max. About the same for Priscilla unless she is real man-hungry. But that is just between us, okay. Lannie, as is her habit, knowing that we are good tippers (the bonds of waitress sisterhood as Priscilla has also “served them off the arm”) brought the drinks right away. And so we settled in get ready to listen to The Haystraws coming up in a while for their first set. Or rather I did the settling in. Priscilla was looking, looking hard at Albie, and he was looking right back. I guess I will be driving home alone tonight.
As I settled in I noticed that some guy was playing the jukebox like crazy. Like crazy for real. He kept playing about three old timey LaVern Baker songs, Jim Dandy of course, and See See Rider but also about six times in a row her Tomorrow Night. I was kind of glad when the band, like I said, these really good rockers, The Haystraws, began their first set. And so the evening was off, good, bad, or indifferent.
About half way through the set I noticed this jukebox guy kept kind of looking at me, kind of “checking” me out without being rude about it. You know those little half-looks and then look away kind of like kid hide-and-seek and back again. Now I have around long enough to know that I am not bad to look at even if I am a little skinny and I take time to get ready when I go out, especially lately, and although times have been tough lately I am easy to get to know but this guy kind of put me on my guard a little. He was about thirty, neatly bearded which I like and okay for looks, I have been with worst. But what I couldn’t figure out, and it bothered me a little even when I tried to avoid his peeks (as he “avoided” mine) is why he was in this place.
Johnny’s, despite its locale in the heart of Harvard Square, is kind of an oasis for country girls like me, or half-country girls like Priscilla (from upstate New York too, Utica, in case you forgot) and guys the same way although once in a while a Harvard guy from the sticks comes around (or a guy who says he goes to Harvard. I have met some who made the claim who I don’t think could spell the name of the college, I swear). This guy looked like Harvard Square was his home turf and if he found himself five feet from a well-lighted street, a library, or a bookstore he would freak out big time. He might have been an old folkie, maybe early Dylan or Dave Von Ronk that nasal hard to understand kind of stuff, he had that feel, or maybe a bluesy kind of guy, Muddy Waters maybe, but he was strictly a city boy and was just cruising this joint.
But here is where this jukebox joe story gets interesting. At intermission Priscilla had to run to the ladies’ room and on the way this guy, Allan Jackman, as I found out later when he introduced himself to me, stopped her and said that her brunette friend looked very nice in her white linen pants and blouse. He then said to her that he would like to meet me. Priscilla, a veteran of the Laura wars (and I of hers), had the snappy answer ready, “Go introduce yourself, yourself.” And he did start to come over but I kind of turned away to avoid him just in case he had escaped from somewhere (ya, like I said before my luck has been running a little rough lately so I am a little gun-shy). Still he worked his way over.
And this is the very first thing that Allan ever said to me. “I noticed that you kind of perked up when I played LaVern Baker’s Tomorrow Night. Have you been disappointed when things didn’t work out after that first night of promise too, like in the song?” Not an original line, but close. I answered almost automatically, “Yes.” Then he introduced himself and just kind of stood there not trying to sit down or anything like that waiting for me to make the next move. Then Priscilla came back and said she had run into Albie St. John and he wanted to “talk” to her before the band came back for a second set (she said with a certain twist like she was doing him this big favor and not like she was practically drooling at the idea. Like I said I am definitely driving home alone today.). She left and Allan was still standing there, a little ill at ease from his look. Befuddled by his soft non-threatening demeanor , and soft manners, I was not sure if I wanted him to sit down or not but then I said what the hell, he seems nice enough and at least he was not drunk.
So he sat down, and gently, actually very gently, shook my hand and said “thank you” for letting me let him sit at the table. In the flush of reaction to that gentle handshake, I swear no man had ever taken my hand in such a manly manner without guile or gimme something before, I relaxed a little and asked him, not an origin question but I was curious, what brought him to Johnny’s. He started to tell me about his country minute, about finding out about the wild boys of country music, about Hank Williams (I winched, that was my father’s music) about this guy Townes Van Zandt and so on.
And then he said he was looking for me. I winched again. Not another crazy. No, not me exactly, but me as a person who he sensed had been kind of beaten down in the love game lately like he had. He said he saw that look in my face, in my eyes, when he kind of half-checked me out at the jukebox. (I made him laugh when I said we were kid-hide-and-seeking earlier). I said I thought he had fully “checked me out” but he would only confess to the half. We both laughed at that one.
And after that opening, strange to say, because being a country girl, and being brought up in a Methodist-etched household to keep my thoughts to myself, or else, or else Dad would have a fit, I started to talk to him about my troubles lately. And he listened and kept asking more questions, not in-your- face questions, but questions like he was really interested in the answers and not as some fiendish experiment to take advantage of a simple girl. And then I asked him a few things and before we knew it the evening’s entertainment was over and Lannie kept telling us that we had to go. I still had some doubts about this guy, this city boy and his city ways, and his fierce piercing blue eyes that could be true or truly devilish.
As we got up to leave he asked, kind of sheepishly with a little stutter, asked, for my telephone number. No “my place or your place, honey,” or “let’s go down the Charles and have some fun,” or “I brought you six drinks (we had each bought our own) and so I expect something more” or any of that usual end of the night stuff that I have become somewhat inured to. He simply, softly, said he wanted it because he wanted to call me up tomorrow night. We kind of laughed at that seeing the way we met, before we met. I hesitated just a minute and he, sensing my dilemma, started to turn to leave. A guy who knows how to take no for an answer, or the possibility of no, without recrimination or fuss. Wait a minute, Laura. Before he took two steps I blurted out my number. And then put it on a cocktail napkin for him. As I passed the glass wet napkin to him he said he would call about seven if that was okay. I said yes. And then he shook my hand, shook it even more gently than when he introduced himself, if that was possible. I flushed again as he headed to the door. Something in that handshake said you had better not let this one get away. Something that said you had better be near the phone at 7:00 PM tomorrow night waiting for his call. And I will be.
Walking down the narrow stairs leading to the admission window booth at Johnny Fleet’s in good old Harvard Square on this cold Columbus Day 1978 night, jesus 1978 is almost gone already, I was suddenly depressed by this thought-how many times lately had I walked down these very stairs looking, looking for what, looking, as Tom Waits says in his song, for the heart of Saturday night, looking recently every night from Monday to Sunday and not just Saturday. Looking, not hard looking, not right now hard looking anyway after my last nitwit affair, but looking for a man who at least has a job, doesn’t have another girlfriend or ten, and who wants to settle down a little, settle down with me a little. Yes, if you really need to know, want to know, I’ve got those late twenties getting just a touch worried old maid blues.
My parents, my straight-arrow, god-fearing, Methodist god-fearing and that is a fierce fearing, hard-working, lost in some 1950s dreamland parents, my mother really, my father just keeps his own counsel between shots of whiskey and trying to read the latest seed catalogues that keep him and his business alive through the haze, keeps badgering me about finding a nice young man. Yes, easy for you to say you don’t know the nitwits who are out there and they ain’t Rickey Nelson dream jukebox guys, Mother. And then she starts on the coming home, coming home to cranky Mechanicsville (that’s in upstate New York, near Albany, if you don’t believe me) and finding some farmer-grown boy from high school and X, Y, and Z, farmer boys all, still asks about me. No thanks, jesus, that is why I fled to Boston right after college in 1972 (and fled to a far-away, and a no living at home college too but don’t tell her that) and not just because I wanted to get my social worker master’s degree like I told them. And so here I am, a few years later, walking down these skinny stairs again, sigh, yet again.
Johnny’s (nobody calls it Johnny Fleet’s except for one-time people or tourists) isn’t a bad place to hang your hat, as my father always likes to say, when he finds that one or two places in the universe outside of the farm where he feels comfortable enough to stay more than ten minutes before getting the “I’ve got to go water the greenhouse plants” or something itch (read: drink itch). Not a bad place for a woman, a twenty–eight year old woman with college degrees and some aims in life beyond some one-night stand every now and again. Or not a bad place for a pair of women, if my friend and roommate, Priscilla, decides she is man-hungry enough to make the trip to Harvard Square from the wilds of Watertown, and can stand the heavy smoke, mainly cigarette smoke as far as I know, but after a few drinks who knows, that fills the air before the night is half over.
Tonight Priscilla is with me because she has a “crush” on Albie St John, the lead singer for the featured local rock group, The Haystraws. And the last time she was here he was giving her that look like he was game for something although he is known around the Square as strictly a “for fun” guy. And that is okay with Priscilla because she has some guy back home some guy from upstate New York where she is from near Utica, some fresh from the farm guy who she has known since about third grade, who will marry her if and when she says the word.
Here is the funny thing though alone, or like tonight with Priscilla, this funky old bar is the only place around where a woman can find a guy who is the least bit presentable to the folks back home, wherever back home is. I’ve met a couple of decent guys in here, although like I said before, things didn’t work out for some reason because they were one-night stand guys or already loaded down with girlfriends and I am in no mood to take a ticket, stuff like that. So you can see what desperate straits I am in still trying to meet that right guy, or something close, without a lot of overhead. My standards may be a little high for the times but I’m chipping away at them by the day.
Moreover, this place, this Johnny’s is the only place around that has the kind of music I like, a little country although not Grand Ole Opry country stuff like my parents go for, you know George Jones or Aunt Bee, or someone. And is a little bit folkie, kind of left-handed folkie, more like local favorite Eric Andersen folk rock, and a little old time let it rip 1950s rock and roll, like The Haystraws cover. You know, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, those guys, that I never knew anything about when I was a kid since I never got past Rickey Nelson and Bobby Darin, darn him, out in the farm field sticks. Upstate New York, like I said, not far out of Albany but it might as well have been a million miles away with me picking my sting beans, tomatoes, and whatever else pa grew to keep us from hunger’s door.
Not for me this trendy disco stuff, not my style at all, no way, although I love to dance and even took belly dancing lessons although I am not voluptuous, more just left of skinny if I say it but really voluptuous Priscilla calls me just skinny. Also my kind of guy would never, never wear an open shirt and some chainy medallion around his neck. Jesus, no way. Plus, a big plus, Johnny’s has a jukebox for intermissions filled with all kinds of odd-ball songs, real country, stuff, late 1950s rock and roll (the Rickey Nelson/Bobby Vee/Bobby Darin stuff) that nobody but me probably ever heard of unless, of course, you were from Mechanicsville, or a place like that.
After going through mandatory license check and admission fee stuff, saying “hi” to the waitresses that I know now by name, and Priscilla does too, and the regular bartenders as we pass by we find our seats, kind of “reserved” seats for us where we can sit and not be hassled by guys, or be hassled if something interesting comes along. I have been in kind of a dry spell, outside the occasional minute affair if one could really call some of the “affairs” even that, for about six months now. Ever since I started to work, work doing social work, my profession, if you need to know. That’s what I am trained to do anyway although when I first came to town a few years ago I was, as one beau back then said, “serving them off the arm” in a spaghetti joint over the other side of Cambridge. Strictly a family fare menu and plenty of college guys including a few who I wound up dating, low on funds doing the cheap Saturday night date circuit. All in all a “no tips” situation anyway you cut it, although plenty of guff, a lot of come-ons, and extra helpings of “get me this and get me that.”
Before that, out in Rochester in college, and later after a short stop at hometown Mechanicsville it was nothing but wanna-be cowboy losers, an occasional low-rent dope dealer, some wanna-be musicians, farmer brown farmers, and married guys looking for a little something on a cold night. Ya, I know, I asked for it but a girl gets cold and lonely too. Not just guys, not these days anyway. But I am still pitching, although very low-key. That is my public style (some say, say right to my face, prim but that’s only to fend off the losers).
“Laura, what are you having, tonight honey?’ asked my “regular” waitress, Lannie, and then asked Priscilla the same. “Two Rusty Nails,” we replied. Tonight, from a quick glance around the room even though it is a Columbus Day holiday night, looks like it is going to be a hard-drinking night from the feel of it. That means on my budget and my capacity about three drinks, max. About the same for Priscilla unless she is real man-hungry. But that is just between us, okay. Lannie, as is her habit, knowing that we are good tippers (the bonds of waitress sisterhood as Priscilla has also “served them off the arm”) brought the drinks right away. And so we settled in get ready to listen to The Haystraws coming up in a while for their first set. Or rather I did the settling in. Priscilla was looking, looking hard at Albie, and he was looking right back. I guess I will be driving home alone tonight.
As I settled in I noticed that some guy was playing the jukebox like crazy. Like crazy for real. He kept playing about three old timey LaVern Baker songs, Jim Dandy of course, and See See Rider but also about six times in a row her Tomorrow Night. I was kind of glad when the band, like I said, these really good rockers, The Haystraws, began their first set. And so the evening was off, good, bad, or indifferent.
About half way through the set I noticed this jukebox guy kept kind of looking at me, kind of “checking” me out without being rude about it. You know those little half-looks and then look away kind of like kid hide-and-seek and back again. Now I have around long enough to know that I am not bad to look at even if I am a little skinny and I take time to get ready when I go out, especially lately, and although times have been tough lately I am easy to get to know but this guy kind of put me on my guard a little. He was about thirty, neatly bearded which I like and okay for looks, I have been with worst. But what I couldn’t figure out, and it bothered me a little even when I tried to avoid his peeks (as he “avoided” mine) is why he was in this place.
Johnny’s, despite its locale in the heart of Harvard Square, is kind of an oasis for country girls like me, or half-country girls like Priscilla (from upstate New York too, Utica, in case you forgot) and guys the same way although once in a while a Harvard guy from the sticks comes around (or a guy who says he goes to Harvard. I have met some who made the claim who I don’t think could spell the name of the college, I swear). This guy looked like Harvard Square was his home turf and if he found himself five feet from a well-lighted street, a library, or a bookstore he would freak out big time. He might have been an old folkie, maybe early Dylan or Dave Von Ronk that nasal hard to understand kind of stuff, he had that feel, or maybe a bluesy kind of guy, Muddy Waters maybe, but he was strictly a city boy and was just cruising this joint.
But here is where this jukebox joe story gets interesting. At intermission Priscilla had to run to the ladies’ room and on the way this guy, Allan Jackman, as I found out later when he introduced himself to me, stopped her and said that her brunette friend looked very nice in her white linen pants and blouse. He then said to her that he would like to meet me. Priscilla, a veteran of the Laura wars (and I of hers), had the snappy answer ready, “Go introduce yourself, yourself.” And he did start to come over but I kind of turned away to avoid him just in case he had escaped from somewhere (ya, like I said before my luck has been running a little rough lately so I am a little gun-shy). Still he worked his way over.
And this is the very first thing that Allan ever said to me. “I noticed that you kind of perked up when I played LaVern Baker’s Tomorrow Night. Have you been disappointed when things didn’t work out after that first night of promise too, like in the song?” Not an original line, but close. I answered almost automatically, “Yes.” Then he introduced himself and just kind of stood there not trying to sit down or anything like that waiting for me to make the next move. Then Priscilla came back and said she had run into Albie St. John and he wanted to “talk” to her before the band came back for a second set (she said with a certain twist like she was doing him this big favor and not like she was practically drooling at the idea. Like I said I am definitely driving home alone today.). She left and Allan was still standing there, a little ill at ease from his look. Befuddled by his soft non-threatening demeanor , and soft manners, I was not sure if I wanted him to sit down or not but then I said what the hell, he seems nice enough and at least he was not drunk.
So he sat down, and gently, actually very gently, shook my hand and said “thank you” for letting me let him sit at the table. In the flush of reaction to that gentle handshake, I swear no man had ever taken my hand in such a manly manner without guile or gimme something before, I relaxed a little and asked him, not an origin question but I was curious, what brought him to Johnny’s. He started to tell me about his country minute, about finding out about the wild boys of country music, about Hank Williams (I winched, that was my father’s music) about this guy Townes Van Zandt and so on.
And then he said he was looking for me. I winched again. Not another crazy. No, not me exactly, but me as a person who he sensed had been kind of beaten down in the love game lately like he had. He said he saw that look in my face, in my eyes, when he kind of half-checked me out at the jukebox. (I made him laugh when I said we were kid-hide-and-seeking earlier). I said I thought he had fully “checked me out” but he would only confess to the half. We both laughed at that one.
And after that opening, strange to say, because being a country girl, and being brought up in a Methodist-etched household to keep my thoughts to myself, or else, or else Dad would have a fit, I started to talk to him about my troubles lately. And he listened and kept asking more questions, not in-your- face questions, but questions like he was really interested in the answers and not as some fiendish experiment to take advantage of a simple girl. And then I asked him a few things and before we knew it the evening’s entertainment was over and Lannie kept telling us that we had to go. I still had some doubts about this guy, this city boy and his city ways, and his fierce piercing blue eyes that could be true or truly devilish.
As we got up to leave he asked, kind of sheepishly with a little stutter, asked, for my telephone number. No “my place or your place, honey,” or “let’s go down the Charles and have some fun,” or “I brought you six drinks (we had each bought our own) and so I expect something more” or any of that usual end of the night stuff that I have become somewhat inured to. He simply, softly, said he wanted it because he wanted to call me up tomorrow night. We kind of laughed at that seeing the way we met, before we met. I hesitated just a minute and he, sensing my dilemma, started to turn to leave. A guy who knows how to take no for an answer, or the possibility of no, without recrimination or fuss. Wait a minute, Laura. Before he took two steps I blurted out my number. And then put it on a cocktail napkin for him. As I passed the glass wet napkin to him he said he would call about seven if that was okay. I said yes. And then he shook my hand, shook it even more gently than when he introduced himself, if that was possible. I flushed again as he headed to the door. Something in that handshake said you had better not let this one get away. Something that said you had better be near the phone at 7:00 PM tomorrow night waiting for his call. And I will be.
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