From The American Left History Blog Archives(2008) - On American Political Discourse - A MODEST PROPOSAL-RECRUIT, RUN INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANTS FOR THE 2014 ELECTIONS (Updated)

Markin comment:

In 2007-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not have a bad feel to it. Read on.

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1. FIGHT FOR THE IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. TROOPS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST NOW (OR BETTER YET, YESTERDAY)! U.S. HANDS OFF THE WORLD! VOTE NO ON THE WAR BUDGET!

The quagmire in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East (Palestine, Iran, Syria you name it is the fault line of American politics today. Every bourgeois politician has to have his or her feet put to the fire on this one. Not on some flimsy ‘sense of the Congress’ softball motion for withdrawal next, year, in two years, or (my favorite) when the situation is stable. Moreover, on the parliamentary level the only real vote that matters is the vote on the war budget. All the rest is fluff. Militants should make a point of trying to enter Congressional contests where there are so-called anti-war Democrats or Republicans (an oxymoron, I believe) running to make that programmatic contrast vivid.

But, one might argue, that would split the ‘progressive’ forces. Grow up, please! That argument has grown stale since it was first put forth in the ‘popular front’ days of the 1930’s. If you want to end the war fight for this no funding position on the war budget. Otherwise the same people (yah, those progressive Democrats) who unanimously voted for the last war budget get a free ride on the cheap. By rights this is our issue. Let us take it back.

2. FIGHT FOR A LIVING WAGE AND WORKING CONDITIONS-UNIVERSAL FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL.

It is a ‘no-brainer’ that no individual, much less families, can live on the minimum wage of $7/hr. (or proposed $10/hr). What planet do these politicians live on? We need an immediate fight for a living wage, full employment and decent working conditions. We need universal free health care for all. End of story. The organized labor movement must get off its knees and fight to organize Wal-Mart and the South. A boycott of Wal-Mart is not enough. A successful organizing drive will, like in the 1930’s, go a long ay to turning the conditions of labor around.

3. FIGHT THE ATTACKS ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT.

Down with the Death Penalty! Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants who make it here! Stop the Deportations! For the Separation of Church and State! Defend abortion rights! Down with ant-same sex marriage legislation! Full public funding of education! Stop the ‘war on drugs’, basically a war on blacks and minority youth-decriminalize drugs! Defend political prisoners! This list of demands hardly exhausts the “culture war” issues we defend. It is hard to believe that in the year 2013 over 200 years after the American Revolution and the French Revolution we are fighting desperately to preserve many of the same principles that militants fought for in those revolutions. But, so be it.

4. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS PARTY.

The Donkeys, Elephants and Greens have had their chance. Now is the time to fight for our own party and for the interests of our own class, the working class. Any campaigns by independent labor militants must highlight this point. And any campaigns can also become the nucleus of a workers party network until we get strong enough to form at least a small party. None of these other parties, and I mean none, are working in the interests of working people and their allies. The following great lesson of politic today must be hammered home. Break with the Democrats, Republicans and Greens!

5. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS AND XYZ GOVERNMENT.

THIS IS THE DEMAND THAT SEPARATES THE MILITANTS FROM THE FAINT-HEARTED REFORMISTS.

We need our own form of government. In the old days the bourgeois republic was a progressive form of government. Not so any more. That form of government ran out of steam about one hundred years ago. We need a Workers Republic. We need a government based on workers councils with a ministry (I do not dare say commissariat in case any stray anarchists are still reading this) responsible to it. Let us face it if we really want to get any of the good and necessary things listed above accomplished we are not going to get it with the current form of government.

Why the XYZ part? What does that mean? No, it is not part of an algebra lesson. What it reflects is that while society is made up mainly of workers (of one sort or another) there are other classes (and parts of classes) in society that we seek as allies and could benefit from a workers government. Examples- small independent contractors, intellectuals, the dwindling number of small farmers, and some professionals like dentists. Yah, I like the idea of a workers and dentists government. The point is you have got to fight for it.

Obviously any campaign based on this program will be an exemplary propaganda campaign for the foreseeable future. But we have to start now. Continuing to support or not challenging the bourgeois parties does us no good now. That is for sure. While bourgeois electoral laws do not favor independent candidacies write-in campaigns are possible. ROLL UP YOUR SHEEVES! GET THOSE PETITIONS SIGNED! PRINT OUT THE LEAFLETS! PAINT THOSE BANNERS! GET READY TO SHAKE HANDS AND KISS BABIES

 

***Free The Cuban Five- Ahora!-In Defense Of The Cuban Revolution
 

The following is being passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee (2008). Please note the link to the National Committee to Free the Five below to find more information about the Cuban Five. As always here is a case where defense of the Cuban revolution begins concretely with the defense of the Five- Ahora!

http://freethefive.org/

The Cuban Five have now been incarcerated for almost ten years. Three Cuban citizens and two U.S. citizens who infiltrated and monitored violent anti-communist exile groups in Florida in order to stop terrorist attacks against Cuba, these men were arrested in 1998 under the Clinton administration on bogus charges of conspiracy to commit espionage and murder, as well as lesser charges like failing to register as agents of a foreign power. After being tried in Miami, a den of counterrevolutionary gusano (worm) activities, Gerardo Hernandez was sentenced to two life terms plus 15 years; Antonio Guerrero and Ram6n Labanino to life plus ten and 18 years, respectively; Fernando Gonzalez to 19 years; and Rene Gonzalez to 15 years. They are held in federal maximum security prisons, separated by hundreds of miles from loved ones, their lawyers and each other. As Marxists, we demand immediate freedom for the Cuban Five, whose heroic actions were in defense of the Cuban Revolution against U.S. imperialism and its counterrevolutionary agents.

From the CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, to the repeated attempts on Fidel Castro's life, to the ongoing starvation embargo, the U.S. imperialists, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, have never ceased in their drive to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. In 2002, Ana Belen Montes, a Defense Intelligence Agency officer, was sentenced to 25 years for passing military information to the Cuban government.

In their drive to restore capitalism in Cuba, the U.S. rulers have trained terrorists like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, who engineered the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner that killed 73 people. In the 1990s, as the Cuban government began to promote tourism, gusano groups launched a campaign of bombings that targeted hotels and airport buses in an attempt to cripple the economy. Posada has admitted to masterminding bombings of tourist spots in Havana in 1997 that killed an Italian businessman. We say: Send Posada and Bosch back to Cuba to be tried by their victims!

It was in the context of such terrorist activity that gusano activities were being monitored by the Cuban Five, three of whom were veterans of Cuba's military campaign in Angola that in the 1970s and '80s fought the U.S.-sponsored invasion by the South African apartheid regime. In June 1998, the Cuban government shared its intelligence on gusano terrorist activity with the FBI. In September of that year, the FBI arrested the Cubans instead of the CIA's "ex"-employees.

The government built its case on "conspiracy to commit espionage" charges, conspiracy charges being the hallmark of political witchhunts when the government has no evidence that an actual crime has been committed. Months after their arrest, "conspiracy to commit murder" was tacked on to the charges against Gerardo Hernandez in connection with the deaths of four pilots from the Brothers to the Rescue gusano outfit. The latter were shot down by the Cuban air force in 1996 after repeatedly and provocatively flying into Cuban airspace in a brazen challenge to the country's air defenses.

Held in Miami, the trial was engulfed in anti-communist hysteria and intimidation of anyone not toeing the gusano line on Cuba. The judge refused five defense requests for a change of venue. During jury selection, potential jurors asked to be excused, fearing the consequences of rendering an "unsatisfactory" verdict. The impaneled jurors' license plates appeared on nightly news broadcasts. The prosecution claimed that Guerrero, who worked as a janitor at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station in Key West, had endangered secret U.S. military plans by watching aircraft take off and land in training exercises. As Guerrero's lawyer pointed out, the information he gathered "could've been published in the Miami Herald." So inflamed was the atmosphere that the jury even convicted Hernandez of conspiracy murder charges that the prosecution itself had already concluded would be an "insurmountable hurdle" to prove!

In 2005, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta threw out the 2001 convictions and ordered a new trial in a new venue because of the "pervasive community prejudice" in Miami. The Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales appealed for a rehearing by the full court, which reinstated the convictions in August 2006. Last August, another three-judge panel heard oral arguments in the case that this time focused on the bogus murder and espionage charges and the gross prosecutorial misconduct.

The brutality these five men endure in prison is designed to break them and echoes the treatment of other class-war prisoners like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Before their trial even started, the Cuban Five spent 17 months in solitary. Between their convictions in June and their sentencing in December 2001, they spent 48 days in the hole. In 2003 as they worked on their first appeal, they were sent to solitary and denied communication with the outside world, even their lawyers.

Every family visit involves an arduous and arbitrary visa process. Sometimes a relative waits out the precious time they are allotted and never gets to see their loved one. Adriana Perez, wife of Gerardo Hernandez, has been repeatedly denied a visa. Olga Salanueva, wife of Rene Gonzalez, was deported on phony spy charges in 2000.

In combatting the degenerate end-products of a decaying capitalism, the Cuban Five have performed a service not only in defense of Cuba but for working people throughout the hemisphere and around the world. Free the Cuban Five! Defend the Cuban Revolution

***Damn It- Free Leonard Peltier Now-He Must Not Die In Jail!

 

Click below to link to Leonard Peltier Defense Committee site.

http://www.leonardpeltier.net/

Commentary

This entry is passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee. I need add little except to say that this man, a natural leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), should never have spent a day in jail. Free him now.

"We, along with millions of others, do not believe that Leonard Peltier should have been incarcerated at all. We demand his unconditional release from prison."

***IMPORTANT MUMIA ABU JAMAL UPDATE-FREE MUMIA

 

 

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

 

Commentary

 

The legendary social commentator and stand up comic Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American ‘justice’ system himself, once reportedly said that in the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. The truth of that statement came home on Thursday March 27, 2008 as a panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals voted two to one to uphold Mumia’s conviction.

 

The only question left is that of resentencing- the death penalty or, perhaps worst, life in prison without parole. I have not yet read the decision but we are now a long way away from the possibility of a retrial-the narrow legal basis for even appealing in the legal system in the first place. Know this- in the end it will be in the streets and factories through the efforts of the international labor movement and other progressive forces that Mumia will be freed. That is the only way, have no illusions otherwise, whatever the next legal steps might be.

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***Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-The Doors' The End

 

Peter Paul Markin comment December 2013:

A while back, maybe a few years ago, I started a series presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By where I posted some songs that I thought would get us through the “dog days” of the struggle for our socialist future. Posted at a time when it was touch and go whether there would be some kind of uprising against the economic royalists (chastised under the popular sobriquet “the one-percent”) who had just dealt the world a blow to the head through their economic machinations. Subsequently while there were momentary uprisings the response from the American and world working classes has if anything entrenched those interest. So as the dog days continue I have resumed the series. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs selected; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this kind of formation would mean political death for any serious revolutionary upheaval and would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.

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WE WANT THE WORLD AND WE WANT IT NOW!

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

My old friend from the summer of love 1967 days, Peter Paul Markin, always used to make a point of answering, or rather arguing with anybody who tried to tell him back in the day that “music was the revolution.”  Meaning, of course that contrary to the proponents (including many mutual friends who acted out on that idea and got burned by the flame) that eight or ten Give Peace A Chance, Kumbaya, Woodstock songs would not do the trick, would not change this nasty, brutish, old short-life world into the garden, into some pre-lapsian Eden. Meaning that the gathering of youth nation unto itself out in places like Woodstock, Golden Gate Park, Monterrey, hell, the Boston Common, or even once word trickled down, Olde Saco Park, would not feed on itself and grow to such a critical mass that the enemies of good, kindness, and leave us alone would sulk off somewhere, defeated or at least defanged.

Many a night, many a dope-blistered night before some seawall ocean front Pacific Coast campfire I would listen to Markin blast forth against that stuff, against that silliness. As for me, I was too into the moment, too into finding weed, hemp, mary jane and some fetching women to share it with to get caught up in some nebulous ideological struggle. It was only later, after the music died, after rock and roll turned in on itself, turned into some exotic fad of the exiles on Main Street that I began to think through the implications of what Markin, and the guys on the other side, were arguing about.

Now it makes perfect sense that music or any mere cultural expression would be unable to carry enough weight to turn us back to the garden. Although I guess that I would err on the side of the angels and at least wish they could have carried the day against the monsters of the American imperium we confronted back in the day.                 

Thinking about what a big deal was made of such arguments recently (arguments carried deep into the night, deep in smoke dream nights, and sometimes as the blue –pink dawn came rising to smite our dreams) I thought back to my own musical appreciations. In my jaded youth I developed an ear for roots music, whether I was conscious of that fact or not. Perhaps it initially started as a reaction to my parents’ music, the music that got them through the Great Depression of the1930s and later waiting for other shoe to drop (either in Normandy or at home waiting in Olde Saco), and that became a habit, a wafting through the radio of my childhood home habit. You know who I mean Frank (Sinatra for the heathens), Harry James, the Andrews Sisters, Peggy Lee, Doris Day and the like. Or, maybe, and this is something that I have come closer to believing was the catalyst, my father’s very real roots in the Saturday night mountain barn dance, fiddles blazing, music of his growing up poor down in Appalachia.   

The origin of that roots music first centered on the blues, country and city with the likes of Son House , Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James, then early rock and roll, you know the rockabillies and R&B crowd, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck, Roy, Big Joe and Ike, and later, with the folk revival of the early 1960’s, folk music, especially the protest to high heaven sort, Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, Joan Baez, etc. As I said I have often wondered about the source of this interest.

I am, and have always been a city boy, and an Eastern city boy at that. Meaning rootless or not meaningfully or consciously rooted in any of the niches mentioned above. Nevertheless, over time I have come to appreciate many more forms of roots music than in my youth. Cajun, Tex-Mex, old time dust bowl ballads a la Woody Guthrie, cowboy stuff with the likes of Bob Wills and Milton Brown, Carter Family-etched mountain music (paying final conscious tribute to the mountain DNA in my bone) and so on.

And all those genres are easily classified as roots music but I recall one time driving Markin crazy, driving him to closet me with the “music is the revolution” heads when I mentioned in passing that the Doors, then in their high holy mantra shamanic phase epitomized roots music. That hurt, a momentary hurt then, but thinking about it more recently Markin was totally off base in his remarks.

The Doors are roots music? Well, yes, in the sense that one of the branches of rock and roll derived from early rhythm and blues and in the special case of Jim Morrison, leader of the Doors, the attempt to musically explore the shamanic elements in the Western American Native- American culture that drove the beat of many of his trance-like songs like The End. More than one rock critic, professional rock critic, has argued that on their good nights when the dope and booze were flowing, Morrison was in high trance, and they were fired up the Doors were the best rock and roll band ever created. Those critics will get no argument here, and it is not a far stretch to classify their efforts as in the great American roots tradition.  I argued then and will argue here almost fifty years later when that original statement of mine was more prophetic the Doors put together all the stuff rock critics in one hundred years will be dusting off when they want to examine what it was like when men (and women, think Bonnie Raitt, Wanda Jackson, et. al) played rock and roll for keeps.

So where does Jim Morrison fit in an icon of the 1960s if he was not some new age latter day cultural Lenin/Trotsky. Jim was part of the trinity – Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix who lived fast, lived way too fast, and died young. The slogan of the day (or hour) - Drugs, sex, and rock and roll. And we liked that idea however you wanted to mix it up. Then.

Their deaths were part of the price we felt we had to pay if we were going to be free. And be creative. Even the most political among us, including Markin in his higher moments, felt those cultural winds blowing across the continent and counted those who espoused this alternative vision as part of the chosen. The righteous headed to the “promise land.” Unfortunately those who believed that we could have a far-reaching positive cultural change via music or “dropping out” without a huge societal political change proved to be wrong long ago. But, these were still our people.

Know this as well if you are keeping score. Whatever excesses were committed by the generation of ’68, and there were many, were mainly made out of ignorance and foolishness. Our opponents, exemplified by one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal, spent every day of their lives as a matter of conscious, deliberate policy raining hell down on the peoples of the world, the minorities in this country, and anyone else who got in their way. Forty plus years of “cultural wars” in revenge by his protégés, hangers-on and their descendants has been a heavy price to pay for our youthful errors. And Markin will surely endorse this sentiment. Enough.

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-Pete Seeger's Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

 

A YouTube clip to give some flavor to this subject.

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin, Private Investigator – The Wind 

 

As readers know Tyrone Fallon, the son of the late famous Southern California private operative, Michael Philip Marlin (Tyrone used his mother’s maiden name for obvious reasons), and private eye in his own right told my old friend Peter Paul Markin’s friend Joshua Lawrence Breslin some stories that his illustrious father told him. Here’s one such story although not about himself but about an operative for the largest detective agency on the West Coast, John “Stubs” Lane. (Stubs nick-named for a habit picked while sitting alone endlessly in cold cars driving cold coffee and picking out cigarette stubs from the ashtray after the deck ran out). Marlin let Stubs tell it in his own voice and I will do so here.      

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

 

Sure I have been around the block, around the block of life, but also around the block of seeing stuff that is sometimes better left unremembered if not creating some vague sense of unease about my fellow man. Yeah, I am a detective, an operative if you don’t want an argument. No, not the kind that you have heard about that snoops around smashing perfectly innocent bushes looking into bedroom windows or stealthily stands outside the hallway door of illicit hotel rooms listening for that sound, the sound, coming from within that would have meant a big payday in some divorce case (and no, not like some shamuses I know, I would not have lingered to hear the thrashing and grunts, no need to hear groans since I would have known the silky sheets were being messed up).  And I am also not the kind that chases down some missing person who wants to stay missing, missing from some overbearing husband or wife looking to even some score and willing to pay three, at most day’s wages and expenses to find the tramp or deadbeat. Although in the beginning when I was just learning my trade I had done my share of those cases, more than my share.

What I do, and have done for the last twenty years or so. is to try to come in, paid well by private parties to do so, and find out why somebody is embezzling the company, why the books don’t match up, why some guy committed a felony of some sort against my client, and sometimes why somebody got killed, got murdered doing something and the client is tired of being stone-walled by the cops. Yeah, the cops, the public cops do okay most of the time if the whole thing is laid out for them like a guy shoots another guy and runs to the stationhouse to turn himself in pronto. That is they solve the case if they are not busy cadging coffee and crullers, shaking down the café owner, or giving some poor sap who just blew into town the third degree for half the crimes committed over the past six years just because he vaguely looks like some ill-gotten description of the guy who actually did it. For the more complicated stuff. the stuff that doesn’t make sense fast, they fumble the ball and let it die in some cold file. Me, I go at it tooth and nail. Go at it like in the Meyers case, a case of murder straight out.

It did not start out that way. It started out as a case of trying to find who in the company, the Meyers Company, was leaking information, sensitive information, about some formulas the company was developing to make heat-resistant shields for aircraft. Old man Meyers whatever else he was, was a master at designing and engineering all kinds of aircraft parts, was known world-wide as the prime mover of the new technology as it came on line. In short any invention done with his imprimatur was assured plenty of backing, plenty of free-spending capital from all kinds of sources. Still the airline industry was cut-throat, was filled with young guys, and young upstart companies trying to squeeze the top dog out. So Meyers and company was a prime target for those who wanted to break into the industry and those who were looking for short-cuts to the top. Like a lot of industries the competition to grab the first patent or copyright to anything like that was worth millions, millions in government business or private business later when things were regulated. So old man Meyers, or rather his right hand man Jenness, called me in to see what was happening right under their noses.   

Now, take it from me who has had a ton of experience uncovering these things, when information, important information, gets leaked it is either a disgruntled, slighted employee nursing some grudge, some private hurt or some wayward word said against him or her, or a guy who is deep in hock, probably over some dame and her wanting habits, and would sell out his own mother to get out from under. Especially if a wanting habits dame is involved. She wants a place of her own for them to meet at, maybe a car, trips, clothes or else she will spill all to the wife (there is always a wife otherwise most guys could handle the single overhead but that double expenses is a killer for all but the very rich guy) So the first place I looked was through the employee records. See who got fired, better see who got demoted or sidestepped, even better who got some disciplinary against him and that sore has festered. Nothing.

Then I nosed around the place, it wasn’t large, most high tech places aren’t depending more on brainpower than horsepower, maybe a couple of hundred employees, to see who knew about anybody who had been spending big dough, or complaining about not enough dough, or grousing about his honey. Pay dirt.   

 

Or almost pay dirt. One of the engineers, a young guy from Cal Tech, was always fretting about the wanting habits of his girlfriend, some wannabe starlet that he had picked up in some gin mill on Hollywood Boulevard and had gone nuts  over like some guys will, although not always in Hollywood. From a photograph of her she looked like she would put some tech guy through the hoops without working up a sweat. Nibble on his ear and he would spring for a condo and extras, no problem. But here is the hell of it before I could nail this guy down somebody shot him in a back alley behind the Hi-Lo Club over in El Segundo, shot him dead with two right where it hurts the most. The girlfriend did not know anything, know anything but grousing about how she always go the short end of the stick with guys, good guys or bad. The cops, sensing that this was way over their heads did their usual ho-hum felony robbery theory and let it slide. Me I had to double back on the thing. Something, didn’t make sense. A guy, a normal guy, with dough in his pocket when searched, got scratched for no reason just when I was honing in on him. Something stunk to high heaven since the Hi-Lo Club was strictly for the trade and snubbed-nosed guys. 

 

And that is where the whole thing came together for me. I sent the engineer’s photo around to a few guys who I had worked with before and one fingered a guy who had been talking to Jimmy Sams, Jimmy the Handle, a known professional hit man and all around guy to stay away from unless you could take the gaff. That guy was none other than my client’s right-hand man Jenness. Seemed that Jenness, that long time subordinate of old man Meyers, had been nursing a grudge against the old man for not letting him take over day to day operations of the plants, plants which he had been instrumental in developing into serious profit centers which the old man flitted with his foolish inventions or paid more attention to his family. Moreover Jenness had a secret honey, unknown to his wife secret, over in Malibu who was churning up expenses faster than he could steal the secrets. The engineer ran into the couple one day at the Santa Monica Pier and put two and two together. He became expendable, very expendable since the woman Jenness was with was definitely not his wife whom the engineer had met at Christmas party one year before. This honey was working both sides, grabbing dough for expenses and a little extra to keep quiet about Jenness’s very real marital status. He moreover was strung out on her so he took the gaff. They hung Jenness, hung him high up in the Q a while back. The gal who caused it all walked away and married a stockbroker from New York, and never even attended the trail.   Watch out for those strange Pacific winds if you are ever out this way, and remember what happened to poor Jenness when you are here, okay.

 

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle And Roll

 

… he could hardly wait until the weekend, wait to hear the new sounds coming out of the south, rhythm and blues stuff, rockabilly stuff, that he could hear on his transistor radio up in his room coming on clear nights out of WJKA in Chicago, stuff called rock and roll. It didn’t come in clear every week but when it did he would start snapping his fingers to the beat, the swinging beat that “spoke” to him somehow. He could explain it but it made hin feel good when he was down, was confused about life, okay, okay, about girls, school, and that getting ahead in the world that his parents, his mother especially kept harping on. Make him think that maybe he would be a musician and play that stuff, play and make all the girls wet (yeah, he knew all that part about girls, about how this music was making them get warm, warm in all the right places according to George his older brother who knew all about girls. Make that new girl of his, Susie, warm too. He hoped.

Funny how they met, or not really met but started out, started out in school of all places, in class. Jesus. In Current Events one week it was his turn to make a presentation and he chose to talk about that radio station in Chicago and about the sounds he heard that made him want to jump out of his skin. He couldn’t exactly explain why when Mr. Merritt asked about why he felt that way except to say that it made him feel good, made him less angry, less confused. After class Susie had come up to him and practically begged him to tell he his feelings because she said when she heard Big Joe Turner coming all snapping fingers on the radio on Shake, Rattle and Roll, she felt funny inside. (He knew what kind of funny but he knew, knew because George had told him him, not to say that to girls.) That had started it since he walked her home a few times and he found that she was easy to talk to. So before he knew it he had asked her to go see the Ready Rollers at the Surf Ballroom down in Olde Saco who were playing the new sounds. He didn’t know what would happen but he hoped that she would get that funny feeling inside when they danced, he sure hoped so…      
 
********
Get out from that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans
Get out from that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans
Well, roll my breakfast 'cause I'm a hungry man
[Chorus:]
I said Shake, rattle and roll
I said Shake, rattle and roll
I said Shake, rattle and roll
I said Shake, rattle and roll
Well, you never do nothin' to save your doggone soul
Wearin' those dresses, your hair done up so nice
Wearin' those dresses, your hair done up so nice
You look so warm, but your heart is cold as ice
[Chorus]
I'm like a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a sea-food store
I'm like a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a sea-food store
I can look at you, tell you don't love me no more
I believe you're doin' me wrong and now I know
I believe you're doin' me wrong and now I know
The more I work, the faster my money goes
[Chorus]
Shake, Rattle And Roll  

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle And Roll

 

…she was not exactly sure why she felt that way, felt warm in what all the girls in the before school “lav” called their “sweet spot” (some of the rougher girls called it other things which she did not find out until later, much later, guys called it) whenever she heard the local radio station or the kids at Doc Drugstore on the juke-box endlessly playing Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle, and Roll but she did. Someone, Betty, she thought, said it was just her coming into “her time,” although she did not know what to make of that idea since she had that same feeling before and after she came into her time. Betty had said she did not mean that, that thing every girl had, but the time when everything was confused and when a teenager did, or did not, know which way to jump. All she knew was that the old songs on the jukebox or radio, the ones that she loved to listen to last year, Frank, Bing, Patti, Rosemary, did not make her feel that way anymore. Didn’t make her feel that she wanted to jump out of her skin.

Tommy might have had a better handle on it, have had a better sense of what turbulence was going on inside her when he told the whole class in Current Events that there were some new songs coming out of the radio, some stuff from down south, some negro sound from down in Memphis somewhere, some white hillbilly sound from that same town, that he would listen to late at night on WJKA from Chicago when the air was just right. Sounds that made him want to jump right out of his skin. (She never dared to ask whether it made him feel warm in his “sweet spot” since she didn’t know much then about whether boys had sweet spots, or got warm). When he said that, said it was about the music, she knew that she was not alone, not alone in feeling that a fresh breeze was coming over the land, although she, confused as she would not have articulated it that way (that would come later). And so she asked Tommy about it after class and agreed to let him walk her home after school. One thing led to another as they found that they ahd so much in common, and they had their first date, first date to go to the Surf Ballroom down in Olde Saco and listen to some guys, a band,  play the new music. She wondered to herself (she could not speak of such things to Tommy) whether she would feel warm again in her sweet spot when they danced, she hoped so…          

*******
Shake , Rattle and Roll

Get out from that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans
Get out from that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans
Well, roll my breakfast 'cause I'm a hungry man
[Chorus:]
I said Shake, rattle and roll
I said Shake, rattle and roll
I said Shake, rattle and roll
I said Shake, rattle and roll
Well, you never do nothin' to save your doggone soul
Wearin' those dresses, your hair done up so nice
Wearin' those dresses, your hair done up so nice
You look so warm, but your heart is cold as ice
[Chorus]
I'm like a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a sea-food store
I'm like a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a sea-food store
I can look at you, tell you don't love me no more
I believe you're doin' me wrong and now I know
I believe you're doin' me wrong and now I know
The more I work, the faster my money goes
[Chorus]
Shake, Rattle And Roll

***Poet’s Corner- Langston Hughes 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

February is Black History Month

One-Easy Boogle 

… he spied her across the room the minute he came in the door, eyed her up and down, and then down and up, and while he was too much of a gentleman to lick his chops that is almost instinctively what he thought to do when he saw a honey that attracted him. He also knew if she had seen him in such a foolish pose he would be sleeping alone that night or with some cheap pick-up floozy ready to roll over for a guy with some dough, some good liquor and reefer, and a line of patter to get her out of her panties (not hard when it came to floozy time he knew, knew only too well). There she was not some much beautiful as fetching, and fetching in the long haul was usually preferable. Yes, one look at her, one once-over (really twice over) told him that she was built for the long haul, told him too that he needed to be cool, cool enough to stay a little aloof while she was up at the stand in front of that band singing, singing All Of Me like some god-struck angel face. So now that he had stopped looking up and down he had to start to figure out what he needed to do when intermission time came.

He knew for instance, that she would require scotch, high-shelf scotch, to soothe those tender vocal cords like some magic elixir. He liked to speculate on the brand; here it seemed to require Haig &Haig Royal Bonded to aid his cause. (He was right when he asked the waitress what she was drinking when he sent a drink over to her table at intermission, and plenty of it too, judging by the way she drank the drink in front of her between songs). He thought about whether she would want to be complimented on her clothes.(She did, talking for a little too long about it until he moved the subject on to her music, that blues jazz mix that she had down pat, very pat). Or whether telling her that she had a fine body (nice shoulders, slim waist, etc.), nice legs, nice well-turned ankles, nice hair, nice, fill in the blank, or any combination of nices, would get him any place. (It did, as she gave him even more meaningful looks as they talked, only be stopped by the call for the next set from Sammy, the combo leader). And of whether he should ask right then whether she wanted a nightcap with him elsewhere later or ask her ask her at the end of the evening. (End of the evening, a wise choice since she kept giving him meaningful little smiles to keep the mood up throughout that last performance.)

Preliminaries over he once again listened to that angel-voice, listened to her phrasing, listened for the pause between the phrasing, and then that slight little snarl of the upper lip as she went into her own blues-drenched version of Rock Me Baby, and looking right at him, right directly at him, when she sang long drawn out phrasing sang, “rock me all night long.”(He did, and she did too.)

… and hence this be-bop poem in celebration

Easy Boogie

Down in the bass

That steady beat

Walking walking walking

Like marching feet.

Down in the bass

They easy roll,

Rolling like I like it

In my soul.

Riffs, smears, breaks.

Hey, Lawdy Mama!

Do you hear what I said?

Easy like I rock it

In my bed!

 

 

 

 

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Elmore James’ Look On Yonder Wall

 

…who knows when he first began to notice the difference, notice that the music, his parents’ music, the stuff, as they constantly told him, that got them through the “Depression and the war,” grated on his ears. Noticed that he had had enough of Nat King Cole, the Inkpots, Bing Crosby and the like. Had become tired unto death of the cutesy Andrews Sisters and their antics bugle boy, rum and coca-cola, under the apple tree music, tired of Frank, Frankie and Den, tired of Benny, Tony, and very tired of swing, the big band sound and even blessed be-bop, be-bop jazz. Maybe it was because he was showing serious signs of growing pains, of juts being a pain his parents called him, and just wanted to be by himself up in his room and let the world pass by until his growing pains passed by.

To placate him (or, heaven forbid, to keep him out of sign and therefore out of mind) they, his usually clueless parents, had gone to the local Radio Shack store and bought him a transistor radio to listen to music up in his room rather than lie around the living room all night changing the dials looking for some other stations on the old family Emerson radio which had formed the center piece of the room before the television had displaced it. This transistor radio was a new gizmo, small and battery-powered, which allowed the average teenager to put the thing up to his or her ear and listen to whatever he or she wanted to listen to away from prying eyes. Hail, hail.

And that little technological feat saved his life, or at least help save it. The saving part was his finding out of the blue on one late Saturday night Buster Brim’s Blues Bonanza out of WRKO in Chicago. Apparently, although he was ignorant of the scientific aspects of the procedure, the late night air combined with the closing down of certain dawn to dusk radio stations left the airwaves clear at times to let him receive that long distance infusion. He immediately sensed that the music emanating from that show had a totally different beat from his parents’ music, a beat he would later find came out of some old-time primordial place when we all were born, out of some Africa cradle of civilization. Then though all he knew was that the beat spoke to his angst, spoke to his alienation from about twelve different things, spoke to that growing pains thing. Made him, well happy, when he snapped his fingers to some such beat. What he was unsure of, and what he also did not found out about until later, was whether this would last or was just a passing fancy life those Andrews Sisters his parents were always yakking about. What he didn’t know really was that he was present at the birth of rock and roll. Geez, and all he was doing was snapping his fingers until they were sore to Elmore James’ Look On Yonder Wall…                 

Songwriters: ELMORE ELMO JAMES, MARSHALL SEHORN

 

Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman, baby, yon' come your man

Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman and, uhh, baby, yon' come your man

You hurried up and went to the wall,
and you know it was tough, uhh
I don't know how many men you's killed,
but, I know you done killed enough for two

Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman, now baby, yon' come your man
Ooh yeah

I love you baby, but you just can't treat me right,
spend all my money and walk the streets all night
But, look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman, and baby, yon' come your man

 

 Out In The Jukebox Saturday Night 

 

 

Recently I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a Time-Life classic rock series that goes under the general title The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered) hanging from the lips, Coke, big- sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor jukebox coin devouring, playing some “hot” song for the nth time that night, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. Of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae, natch. And the same for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing.

Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “ inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working- class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them). Moreover, I clued you in, and keep this quiet, about sex, or rather I should say doin’ the do in case the kids are around, and about the local “custom” (for any anthropologists present) of ocean-waved Atlantic “watching the submarine races.”

Whee! That’s maybe enough memory lane stuff for a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid messenger feels the need to go back indoors again and take a little different look at that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days. Bowling alleys, drugstores (drugstores with soda fountains- why else would healthy, young, sex-charged high school students go to such an old-timer-got-to-get medicine-for-the-arthritis place. Why indeed, although there are secrets in such places that I will tell you about some other time when I’m not jazzed up to go be-bop juke-boxing around the town.), pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and so on. Basically any place where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.

A lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted your attention as they came in the door. The cover artwork on one compilation showed dreamy girls waiting for their platters (records, okay) to work their way up the mechanism that took them from the stack and laid them out on the player. There is your chance, boy, grab it. Just hanging around the machine with some cashmere-sweatered, beehive-haired (or bobbed, kind of), well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days) chatting idly was worth at least a date (or, more often, a telephone number to call). Not after nine at night though or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boyfriend. Lucky guy, maybe.

But here is where the real skill came in. Just hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day waiting on a twist (slang for girl in our old working- class neighborhood) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking to her friends as she made those selections. Usually the first couple were easy, some old boy friend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next. Then you made your move-“Have you heard Only You. NO! Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you right up. Or some such line. Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and Roller, let’s say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking to … for just a minute, I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc., etc. Oh, jukebox you baby. And guess what. On that self-same jukebox you were very, very likely to hear some of the songs on the compilation on this CD: Here are the stick outs (and a few that worked some of that “magic” mentioned above on tough nights):

Oh Julie, The Crescendos (a great one if you knew, or thought you knew, or wanted to believe that girl at the jukebox’s name was Julie); Lavender Blue, Sammy Turner (good talk song especially on the word play); Sweet Little Rock and Roller, Chuck Berry (discussed above, and worthy of consideration if your tastes ran to those heart-breaking little rock and rollers. I will tell you about the ONE time it came in handy sometime); You Were Mine, The Fireflies; Susie Darlin’, Robin Luke (ditto the Julie thing above); Only You, The Platters (keep this one a secret, okay, unless you really are a sensitive guy).