From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-When Bob Dylan Ruled The Folk Minute, Circa 1962

“Hey, Peter Paul, help me out tonight will you? Jenny’s cousin Joslyn is in town. Lynette promised her she could come with us to the Oleo Coffeehouse tonight for the start of the summer local talent concert series and she needs a date. She is supposed to be nice, she is from New York City, a senior at New York University, and she knows all about the folk scene there and about all the latest folk singers and poems and stuff,”Jeff Murphy quick- talked (the only way that he knew how to talk ever since that day one of Freshman year three years ago where they had met in the bookstore line and it turned out they were both going to be in same Western Civilization survey class whether it was trying to hard press Peter Paul into writing a term paper for him or, as now, a simple Lynette-inspired favor) over the phone to his friend Peter Paul Markin. Peter Paul was intrigued by this prospect both because she was an older woman , a senior, (as it turned out just a few months older given the vagaries of time and place when one started elementary school) and because he had over the previous several months gotten caught up in the emerging folk wave then splashing through young America in the year 1962 so he said sure.

Peter Paul, as was his way in those days around girls (and around his more intellectual friends) dug into his pile of folk music, folk records and folk newsletters in order to be able to carry on a civil conversation, or what he considered a civil conversation, with Joslyn that night. He was especially worried that he know every arcane fact in the folk world to impress a New York City girl who had actually been to Mecca, the Village, been to the clubs like the Gaslight, walked the nervous neon streets like McDougall, and had imbibed his idea of folk chic. Funny, he thought to himself, as he poured through a copy of Arise and Sing to make sure he knew the words to Tom Doulas (no, not that faux folk Tom Dooley that the vanilla Kingston Trio sang on televised hootenannies for the great unwashed , the real version out of the back roads of Tennessee about that murderous night, and his fate) a year or so before he used to laugh at what he called “beats,” guys with beards, bad hair, bad breathe, baggy pants and brown flannel shirts when he took his midnight swings through Harvard Square who had their guitars out singing serious protest songs, goof car car car songs, and some mountain hollows stuff , traditional they called it, long black guitar case in front in case anybody accidently drop some change in. And “beat” girls too, long hair, very long hair that looked like they had ironed it (they had) , colorful dresses (short) showing dimpled bare legs, some very well-turned , sandals, and , oh, angelic voices like in some stardust memory, although he never laughed at them, the girls, or thought of laughing at them, on the off chance that one might smile his way.

He had been strictly a rock and roll man, digging that be-bopping sound like a lot of 1950s growing up kids, guys especially, after being forced fed on mother and father Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page and Perry Como vanilla stuff. Raw rockabilly Sun Record magic by hard luck blue suede shoes shod Carl Perkins, flaming piano man Jerry Lee Lewis flailing away on High School Confidential on the back of some off-hand truck and driving every girl within fifteen miles wild, and with wild thoughts too, bopping, bopping away the night before kissing his cousin, Roy the Boy going down the road running scare, scared as hell, and why shouldn’t he when some girlfriend’s ex came back to carry her away, Buddy Holly looking for Peggy Sue, Mary Lou, Betty Sue, or someone to while away the night with, Chuck Berry carrying on with every sweet little sixteen in sight, and getting away with it until he started messing with Mister’s women in that 1950s segregated night, and, of course, Elvis, the king, the king before he became the king and was hungry, girl hungry, money hungry, respect hungry just like every Peter Paul Markin who spent hours working on that snarl, that hip movement, that max daddy hiccup in his voice.

Or maybe, a little, be-bop blues as they filtered out of Mister Lee’s Blues Hour from Chicago caught on the radio on late Sunday nights when the wind was right and the station was amped up. Rolling right over Big Joe,yah, Big Joe Turner talking, talking kind of salaciously (but what knew he of salacious then, he just dug the beat, the big man’s negro streets beat) about some shaking smooth brown woman, and maybe having a little luck with that fresh talk, who knows, Muddy Waters, man-child, man-child in the promise land, the nineteen year old honey promise land, playing Hootchie Gootchie Man, for real, the howl, Howlin’ Wolf , sweating like a pig, a big old pig, harmonica half way up his throat asking how many more years, asking about some damn little red rooster getting all the hens wild, Elmore James, max daddy guitarist , crying to high heaven about the sky crying, and about his fantastic cover of old boy Robert Johnson’s Dust My Broom, and bad boy, tina-less Ike Turner jamming those keys on Rocket 88 as close to rock as you could get and not be white to make a young kid’s head whirl (and they did).

One Sunday Peter Paul was trying to get that Chicago station (always a fickle proposition on his transistor radio especially when sea winds were up) when he heard this gravelly-voiced guy singing something out of some old mountain hollows or something like that, a song called Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies. The guy singing it, who he later found out was Dave Von Ronk from Brooklyn, sounded like some latter day Jehovah calling his flock home (sheep or people, or both). Peter Paul was hooked and listened to the rest of the show. He didn’t remember all the names of the songs or performers, maybe a little Tom Rush doing a cover of Bukka White ‘s Panama Limited, Eric Von Schmidt doing Joshua’s Gone Barbados, an Alice Stuart cover of the Carter Family’s Gold Watch And Chain, Josh White’s One Meatball , stuff like that, but the next day he went to Charlie’s Records over in Kenmore Square and picked up what that shop considered folk, some Leadbelly, Burl Ives, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie stuff and he was double-hooked.

That date night he went with Jeff, Lynette and Joslyn over to the Oleo and had a good time, as they drank bitter (bitter to his plebeian taste) expresso coffee and some light pastries while listening to some local guy, a guy with a beard, bad hair, bad breathe, baggy pants and brown flannel shirt who had his guitars out(and mandolin) singing serious protest songs, goof car car car songs, and some mountain hollows stuff , traditional he called it, his long black guitar case in front of him, opened, in case anybody accidently drop some change in (in the coffeehouses the rule usually was you paid the cover, and for the eats and drinks, anything for the performer was discretionary, the guy that night was worth two bucks, and Joslyn threw in a buck of her own).

Although Joslyn was indeed as nice as advertised (long hair, very long hair that looked like she had ironed it (she had, as he later found out), peasant blouse with scarf around her neck, colorful dress (short) showing bare legs, very well-turned , de riguer sandals, and , oh, an angelic voice as she sang along with the performer (hence the sing-along folk tradition encouraged ) like in some Peter Paul stardust memory, she had a problem, a Peter Paul eyes problem. Or maybe better put Peter Paul had the problem. She was way too knowledgeable about the folk scene for Peter Paul. At one point he was sitting there in silence as she went on and on about the Village. Mostly what she said was that a new wave was coming, we, meaning them, the kids then, were ready to bust out and make a newer world and folk music would be the cement that united everything. Powerful stuff.

She said that a young guy, a young guy hanging around the bars and coffeehouses, places like Geddes Folk City, was writing up a storm, a storm to make a storm. She asked Peter Paul if he had heard Bob Dylan’s latest Blowin’ In The Windthat was becoming a national anthem for the youth who wanted to change the world and change it now. Peter Paul blushed, blushed crimson red or redder maybe. He had never heard of Bob Dylan. That night after the show asking off–handedly how long she was in town (the whole summer as it turned out since she was going to be working as a research assistant in some Harvard library system program) he decided against asking her out again (partially because he was sure that she would turn him down, after not knowing every arcane fact about folk music, and the faux pas on the Dylan thing) and let it go at that as the foursome parted company in front of the Oleo and he headed to catch the Red Line to Park Street. Next day though he was at Charlie’s Record Store. End of story, end of Joslyn story.

Well, not quite. As it turned out Joslyn didn’t understand why Peter Paul had been so quiet after the Dylan remarks and kind of cool when they had split up (not knowing then what a mad man know every fact in front of him, the arcaner the better, when he was “on” something and had been that way since junior high school over in North Adamsville when he hung around with Frankie Larkin who made that kind of knowledge trick into an art form, and had a girl hanging off every arm so it stuck). And she mentioned that mere fact to her cousin Jenny who mentioned it to Lynnette who you know damn well mentioned it to one Jeffrey Murphy, who to keep the peace, the Lynette peace, mentioned it to Peter Paul. Peter Paul just shrugged it off though informing Jeff (who knew of Peter Paul madnesses and had successfully used that knowledge to cadge more than one free written term paper when he had been hard pressed to submit one) that he didn’t think he and Joslyn were a fit. Jeff conveyed that information back down the pipeline.

A few days later Joslyn called Peter Paul on the telephone, and asked him pretty please (his version) if he could help her with a project that she was stymied on. She had heard (from Lynette via Jeff as he found out later) that he knew something about blues music, and about the rhythm and blues, and she wondered if Big Joe Turner’s version of Shake, Rattle and Roll was really the start of rock and roll or what. That started a two hour phone conversation about rock, about the blues, and about how Mr. Bob Dylan used the latter to work his talking blues magic. Of course it was a no-brainer that Mr. Big Joe Turner ‘s version was the max daddy foundation stone of rock and roll. And along the way during that conversation as the arcane facts piled up on each other Joslyn would keep saying “really, I didn’t know that.” Oh, and not so subtly kept asking if he had any time to help her further on her project. Yah, he said, yah, he had all summer. And he did, and they did .

P.S. Peter Paul and Joslyn would, after their summer tryst, meet again a number of times over the next several years, dated sometimes, lived together a couple of times, and each time she got the chance Joslyn would “remind” Peter Paul of that first Oleo coffeehouse date and his lack of knowledge of Bob Dylan then. And he would mention that “trick” telephone call she pulled (she, in fact, knew almost as much about the blues when she called as he did, as he found out later). Their meetings would many times coincide with one or the other’s being in New York or Boston together trying to fight that desperate fight for the “newer world,” that “the times they are a-changin’,”that “blowin’ in the wind” world that both had been touched by in those simpler 1962 folk and love times that were in serious danger of being burned up into bitter ashes, and bitter dreams.

Later in the decade when things got dicey with LBJ’s mad escalation of the war in Vietnam, murder in the streets, riots in the streets, assassinations, the spewing forth of every sort of degradation , and Peter Paul’s reluctant drafting in the American Army he lost contact with Joslyn after she went underground with the Weathermen in the late 1960s to try one last chance to create her version of that newer world she had talked about that first date night. That was the last he heard of her.