Yes, You Had Better Shake, Rattle And Roll That Thing-With Big Joe Turner In

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

 

In the old days, the old days when the songs were just starting to be weaned off of the old time religion gospel high heaven savior thing and come down in the mud and of hard drinking, hard lovin’, hard woman on your mind, yeah, the old birth of  the blues days, the blue being nothing but a good woman or man on your mind anyway, around the turn of the 20^th century and you can check this out if you want to and not take my word for it a black guy, a rascally black guy of no known home, a drifter, maybe a hobo for all I know, and who knows what else named Joe Turner would come around the share-cropper down South neighborhoods and steal whatever was not nailed down, including your woman which depending on how you were feeling might be a blessing and then leave and move on to the next settlement and go about his plundering ways. Oh sure like lots of blues and old country music as it got passed on in the oral traditions there were as many versions of the saga as there were singers everybody adding their own touch.

But for the most part the story line about old ne’er-do-well Joe Turner rang very similar over time. So Joe Turner got his grizzly self put into song out in the Saturday juke joints out in places like the Mississippi Delta where more legends were formed than you could shake a stick, got sanctified once old  when Willie’s liquor, white lightning home-made liquor got to working, and some guy, maybe not the best singer if you asked around but a guy who could put words together to tell a story, a blues story, and that guy with a scratch guitar would put some verses together and the crowd would egg him on. Make the tale taller as the night went until everybody petered out and that song was left for the next guy to embellish.

By most accounts old Joe was bad man, a very bad man, bad mojo man, just short of as bad as Mister’s plantation foremen where those juke joint listeners worked sunup to sundown six days a week or the enforcers of Mister James Crow’s laws seven days a week. Yeah, Joe was bad alright once he got his wanting habits on, although I have heard at least one recording from the Lomaxes who went all over the South in the 1930s and 1940s trying to record everything they could out in the back country where Joe Turner was something like a combination Santa Claus and Robin Hood. Hell, maybe he was and some guy who lost his woman to wily Joe just got sore and bad mouthed him. Stranger things have happened. In any case the Joe Turner, make that Big Joe, Turner I want to mention here as far as I know only stole the show when he got up on the bandstand and played the role of “godfather” of rock and roll.          

That is what I want to talk about, about how one song, and specifically the place of Big Joe and one song, Shake Rattle and Roll in the rock pantheon. No question Big Joe and his snapping beat has a place in the history of rhythm and blues which is one of the musical forbear strands of rock and roll. The question is whether Shake is also the first serious effort to define rock and roll. If you look at the YouTube version of Big Joe be-bopping away with his guitar player doing some flinty stuff and sax player searching for that high white note and Big Joe snapping away being  very suggestive about who and what should shake you can make a very strong case for that place. Add in that Bill Haley, Jerry Lee, and Elvis among others in the rock pantheon covered the song successfully and that would seem to clinch the matter.      

In 2004, the fiftieth anniversary of the debut of Shake by Big Joe, there had been considerable talk and writing again by some knowledgeable rock critics about whether Shake was the foundational song of rock. That controversy brought back to my mind the arguments that me and my corner boys who hung out in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner in Carver, a town about thirty miles south of Boston, had on some nothing better to do Friday nights during high school (meaning girl-less, dough-less or both). I was the primary guy who argued for Big Joe and Shake giving that be-bop guitar and that wailing sexy sax work as my reasoning while Jimmy Jenkins swore that Ike Turner’s frantic piano-driven and screeching sax Rocket 88 (done under an alias of the Delta Cats apparently for contract reasons a not uncommon practice when something good came up but you would not have been able to do it under the label you were contracted to) was the be-bop beginning and Sam Lowell, odd-ball Sam Lowell dug deep into his record collection, really his parent’s record collection which was filled mainly with folk music and the blues edge played off that to find Elmore James’ Look On Yonder Wall. And the other corner boys like our leader Frankie Riley lined up accordingly (nobody else came up with any others so it was those three).

Funny thing Frankie and most everybody else except I think Fritz Taylor who sided with Jimmy Jenkins sided with me and Big Joe. The funny part being that several years ago with the advent of YouTube I started to listen to the old stuff as it became available on-line and now I firmly believe that Ike’s Rocket 88 beats out Shake for the honor. As for the old time Joe Turner, done come and gone, well, he will have to wait in line . What do you think of that?

Down At Duke's Place-With Duke Ellington In Mind  

 

 

 

No, this will not be a screed about how back in the day, back in the 1950s when be-bop jazz was the cat’s meow, when cool was listening to the Monk trip up a note and work it out from there or Dizzy burping then hitting the high white note all those guys were struggling against the limits of the instruments, high as hell, to get to. Frankly I was too, way too young to appreciate such work and I only got the tail end, you know when Hollywood or the popular prints messed the whole be-bop jazz “beat” thing up and we got spoon-fed Maynard G. Krebs and ten thousand guys hanging around the Village on Saturday night in full beret from the outreaches of Tenafly, New Jersey and another ten thousand gals, all in black from head to toe, maybe black underwear too so something to imagine at least from Norwalk, Connecticut milling around as well. Square, square cubed. No, this will not be some screed going back further in the hard times of the Great Depression and the slogging through World War II when “it did not mean a thing, if you ain’t got that swing” when our parents, the parents of the kids who caught the end of be-bop “swang,” did dips and twirls to counts, dukes, earls, princes, marquises even leading big band splashes to wash that generation clean. Come on now that was our parents and I wasn’t even born so no way I can “screed” about that. And, no, no, big time no, this will not be about some solitary figure in some dank, dusty, smoke-filled café, the booze flowing, the dope in the back alleys inflaming the night while some guy, probably a sexy sax player, blows some eternal high white note out against some bay, maybe Frisco Bay, and I was hooked, hooked for life on the be-bop jazz scene.

No, it never even came close to starting out like that, never even dreamed such scenes. Unlike rock and roll, the classic kind that was produced in my 1950s growing up time and which I have had a life-long devotion to or folk music which I came of age, political and social age to later in the early 1960s, jazz was a late, a very late acquisition to my understanding of the American songbook. Oh sure I would hear a phrase, a few bing, bang, bong  notes blowing out the window, out the door, sitting in some bar over drinks with some hot date, maybe hear it as backdrop in some Harvard Square bookstore when I went looking for books (and, once somebody hipped me to the scene, looking for bright young women who also were in the bookstore looking for books, and bright young men but that scene is best left for another time), or at some party when the host tired of playing old-time folk music and decided to kick out the jams and let the jazz boys wreak their havoc. But jazz was, and to a great extent still is, a side bar of my musical tastes.          

About a decade ago, a little more, I got seriously into jazz for a while. The reason: the centennial of the birth of Duke Ellington being celebrated when I was listening to some radio show which was commemorating that fact and I heard a few faint bars which required me to both turn up the volume and to listen to the rest of the one hour tribute. The show played a lot of Duke’s stuff from the early 1940s when he had Ben Webster, Harry Carney, and Johnny Hodges on board. The stuff blew me away and as is my wont when I get my enthusiasms up, when something blows me away, I grabbed everything by the Duke and his various groupings and marveled at how very good his work was, how his tonal poems reached deep, deep down and caught something in me that responded in kind. Especially when those sexy saxs, when Johnny or Cootie blew me away when they let it all hang out.

Funny though I thought at the time that I hadn’t picked up on this sound, this reaching for the soul, for the essence of the matter, before since there are very definitely elements of the blues in Brother Duke’s work. And I have been nothing but a stone blown blues freak since the early 1960s when I first heard Howlin’ Wolf hold forth practically eating that harmonica of his on Little Red Rooster and Smokestack Lightnin’. Moreover I had always been a Billie Holiday fan although I never drew the connection to the jazz in the background since it usually was muted to let her rip with that throaty sultry voice, the voice that chased the blues, my blues,  away.

So, yes, count me among the guys who are searching for the guys who are searching for the great big cloud puff high white note, guys who have been searching for a long time as the notes waft out into the deep blue sea night. Count me too among Duke’s boys, down at Duke’s place where he eternally searched for that elusive high white note.             

 

Railroad Shorty Catches The Westbound Train-With Townes Van Zandt Brazos River Song In Mind 

Tacoma Tommy and Platte River Knobby, as the men closest to him in a world where close associations were as fleeting as rolling up your bedroll and heading out in the early morning burn off fog, laid old Railroad Shorty out along the Brazos about a mile from their old railroad jungle camp along the old Texas & Western tracks just where the river bends which provided clear running water for the camp and provided old Shorty with a fine view resting place, a place he always talked about so that is where he would lay now for eternity. The boys laid him out as best they could, put a little half-ass cross made of small twigs gathered from the spreading oak tree which would give Shorty some shelter over the shallow grave they had dug for him for they were unskilled at such endeavors and moreover were as hungover as tow skunks, maybe dug enough to keep the scavengers away maybe not, just in case he was a Christian and wanted it that way. Funny in the hobo, tramp, bum worlds and there were very serious distinctions recognized by all among those three classes of brethren (ironic even down in the fellahin world such populations would divide just like regular society) except when some soup line missionary workers, usually the blessed damn Sallies (Salvation Army), wanted you to repent along with your soup, no man spoke much about his religion so old Shorty could have been a Mohammedan or an atheist for all anybody knew. As far as they knew while Shorty may have been on the con with the merciful Sallies to get a few bucks or a bed for a week or so when he was sick he never bought into that old time religion stuff, never did like Sky-lo King did and join the bastards without a murmur banging some silly drum around Christmas time pan-handling the gentle folk for dough for the missions.

All Tommy and Knobby knew was that morning when they tried to awaken Shorty as they usually did since he would usually be up until all hours, quiet like, sipping that old Tokay he loved when he had some change, he had not responded, had caught the freight train west like a lot of travelling men before him. Guys like Big Bill, Lefty, Arfy Darfy, Frankie Machine, Prince Love, Black River Sam and a hundred other monikers some used over and over again, some used by different men and used for a purpose for it was far better to be some anonymous Cactus Mack than use your given name in case some surly ex-wife, some crazed repo-man or some rat-bait sheriff was looking for you heard you were headed west. Usually a guy would thinking he would only be on the bum for a few weeks, maybe a month, would  use his given name but all it took was one close call by some vengeful ex-wife who had hired a private detective to run you down, or even hear of such exploits to wise up and get a respectable moniker.

All they knew as well was that the only proper burial for a hobo and Shorty qualified in spade for that title since in the doomed fellahin kingdom a hobo like Shorty not afraid to work if necessary, if only for a bottle, even if he wasn’t making a profession out of what he was doing like “pearl diving” was ahead of tramps who avoided work and bum who under no conditions would do such labor was royalty and that distinctions carried weight even in camps where tramps and bums could hang for a while, was to get the body away from the railroad jungle and buried before the police or some authority came snooping around asking who he was, did he have family, did he leave anything of value behind like hobos had some treasure trove to be distributed upon taking that forlorn west-bound train. All that noise, all that law for a simple unadorned vagrant burial in some town’s potter’s field. Both men agreed no thank you Shorty was better off against the banks of the Brazos, the banks of any river, down in any arroyo, under any railroad bridge if it came to that than to be in some numbered no man ‘s graveyard.   

Their hot sweaty work done Tommy opened up a pint bottle of old rotgut whisky, Old Tom, Old Tom that has probably killed more men than the plague, certainly more denizens of the jungle camps, Shorty’s only valuable possession at the end, and took a swig for Shorty and then passed it to Knobby who did the same. As they started to reminisce for a moment about Shorty Knobby asked Tommy how old he thought Shorty had been, roughly anyway. Tommy answered that he figured about fifty but you could never tell with hobos because the weather, the booze, the irregular and usually awful food, even the Sally fare depended on what some local grocery store had thrown away and these mercy-benders were no cooks whatever else they could do in life, and the living conditions aged a man quickly out on the road. Tommy asked Knobby how old he thought he was. Knobby said sixty and Tommy answered with a blush beneath his wind-burned, tanned, wind-burned again face and said forty-five. That ended that line of inquiry and as they took another swig each for Shorty they talked about the deceased and how he was always a straight-up guy.  

Tommy could remember that first time he set eyes on Shorty out in the Gallup, New Mexico railroad jungle out along the Southern Pacific tracks outside of town a few years back as Shorty welcomed him with a fresh swig of Ripple wine, all Shorty had at the time. See Shorty was one of the original founders, you might say, of that camp at that site (there was an older site near Kingman in Arizona but the local sheriff and his boys busted that up one night just for the shear hell of it and the local citizenry stood by and applauded as they “threw the bums out of town”). So Tommy and Shorty went back a ways, a pretty long time as far as travelling men goes, and when Shorty and some Tex-Mex named Diablo Fuego had words and Shorty decided if he wanted to avoid a shiv some dark, moonless night he had better head out, head east this time to the Brazos Tommy had grabbed his knapsack and bedroll and headed out with him (that knapsack or rucksack and a bedroll with ground cover all a travelling man had  to call home. Everybody, well except maybe Diablo but what can you expect of a Tex-Mex, had a good word for Shorty since if he had dough, had food, had hustled an extra package of cigarettes, and most importantly, if he had booze, he shared. (That was the rationale the boys used for taking Shorty’s Old Tom to themselves rather than burying perfectly good whisky with Shorty which was an old tradition among certain Western hobos.)  

You might hear from some guys from the cities, college kids, folksingers or troubadours, guys who spent maybe a forlorn couple of days doing research or something talk about the camaraderie of the road, the “honor among the brethren, among thieves” maybe says it best but don’t bet on it, don’t leave a bedroll, a swig of Thunderbird wine, hell, even a cigarette butt around without keeping two, maybe three, eyes on those items or that will be the last you see of them. But Shorty was a master hobo, held a high degree in that railroad kingdom. Just then Knobby though he heard some car coming up the road so they hit the road back to camp and left Railroad Shorty, name unknown, age unknown, place of origin unknown along the sweet Brazos never to cross that river, the Trinity, the Pecos, the Colorado, the Platte and a hundred other rivers no more. RIP, Shorty, RIP.       

A Fine Romance, Circa 1945- With Billie Holiday In Mind    

 

 

 

 

Over in the darken corner a couple, she a very bleached blonde, naturally so or not only she and God know (perhaps the hairdresser as well but what with the war shortages with the chemicals necessary for artificially very bleached blonde hair going into Europe rather than say frisky brunettes probably just God), mascaraed blue eyes and a fair dusting of powders and whatnots that make a gal alluring to the opposite sex, long slinky gown although not of recent purchase since like the hair ingredients the materials for such glamour-enhancement long ago went ashore at Normandy), and silver dancing slippers of recent purchase since she had a friend  who had a friend who worked on Seventh Avenue and that was that was talking to her companion of the evening. His description was ease itself beyond the short high side walls haircut that meant he was still in one or another branches of the military service, just then clean-shaven although he was one of those men bedeviled by the need to shave twice daily, regulation cologne which made a guy alluring to the opposite sex, regulation brown eyes, and a fairly-well beribboned Army uniform to take the mystery out of which branch he belonged to and which made clear that he had seen action in some theater in Europe.      

 

In front of the young couple who from a quick glance and the manner of their gestures had not known each other long but on the other hand these gestures did not exhibit the tell-tale symptoms of a first date, the timid talk, the off-hand laughter and the occasional blush when in the newness of the situation one party makes a social blunder had well-used glasses of red wine accompanied by some wine correct meat dishes. Probably the Beef Alsace for which the Club Martin up in high 49^th Street  New York City was famous for far and wide but in the darkness which they craved just those tender moments nondescript from afar. Beside the menu of the day was far removed from what they were talking about, what interested them that evening.

 

See our soldier boy, let’s call him Adam Jordan which is actually his name so there need be nothing mysterious or nefarious about it, and his date, let’s call her Brenda Dubois for that is her name although she would not like that information broadcast widely since she is under-age, under-age for nightclubbing if not for other activities had just a few minutes before stepped outside into a back room of the Club, the band’s dressing area, and shared a joint, marijuana, with Nick Janeway, the famous trumpeter, who was working at the Club now that he had been discharged from the Army, discharged with a fairly be-ribboned uniform which meant that he too had seen serious action in one of the European theaters of combat although this evening he was wearing the standard tuxedo of the house band at the Club Martin. As anyone may have guessed Nick and Adam had served together in Europe and this night Nick had gotten Adam and Brenda in as his guests for the evening’s entertainment.            

 

This was hardly the first time that Nick and Adam had “flamed” up (their personal term so the hick other soldiers who were still drinking sodas or Army beer would not catch on) for they had endured the travails of the slugfest battles of Europe by being well-doped up when the action cooled off (and not when in battle as those medals on their respective uniforms can attest too). This night however was Brenda’s first time and while she was thrilled and afraid at the same time when Adam had broached the question she wanted to be a good sport so inhaled deeply, too deeply, the mandatory few drags, had the equally mandatory fits of coughing which accompany the smoke for the beginner and was just beginning to get a decent buzz off of the stuff.

 

She thought to herself, beside the million flashing silly thoughts,   that Adam was a cool guy, knew some cool guys and maybe they would get along after all. She had not been sure the first few dates after Adam had picked her up at a USO dance over in Times Square when she had gone with a girlfriend in order to support the guys who were coming off the transport ships by the thousands now that the war in Europe was over that they would get along since he was so worldly and she was just a very bleached blonde from Brooklyn. He had laughed during dinner at that remark and asked her if she wanted to go back to Nick’s hangout and blow another joint. Loosened up she agreed and they sat with Nick until it was time for him to perform.        

 

Brenda and Adam navigated their way back to their darkened corner and were talking loosely with spurts of giggles on Brenda’s part when Nick and his fellow band members mounted the small elevated stage several tables away and began their intros. While Brenda and Adam were lighting each other’s cigarettes (tobacco of course) the house lights dimmed even further and a black woman, maybe thirty or so with a big flower, some kind of orchid in her pulled back black hair, and a gown with matching slippers that certainly had been recently purchased as Brenda had seen a copy in one like it in one of the recent issues of a women’s magazine and began singing A Fine Romance in a sultry, sexy, sassy, voice that would make the angels weep for their inadequacies. Brenda thus fortified looked over at Adam who was watching and nodding to Nick as he played and thought, a fine romance, a fine romance indeed.          

There Is A Wall In Washington …..With The Brothers Under The Bridge In Mind

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Ralph Morris shed a tear that day, that hot sweaty humid even for Washington July day, an average Vietnam sweat day back in the day which he still wondered how he had survived, since he a Northern climes boy would perspire even lifting a few bags of groceries as a kid and learned the magic of deodorants early on, shed a tear down at the black granite (he could not say even now, out loud, out loud in public anyway Vietnam War Memorial so “black granite”). Shed more than one tear for his lost comrades, his fallen fellow soldiers, from those now receding but not forgotten years. Every time he went to Washington which over the previous few years had been mainly to protest something, the endless wars, the degradation of the environment, or the struggle for marriage equality he made sure that he paid his respects whatever the psychic drama he would feel for some time after. That last reason, the marriage equality one, the reason he was here this time, by the way, ironic proving some things can change in this wicked old world since he would often think with a flush of red about the days when he and his corner boys who hung around Miller’s Diner in the Tappan section of Troy, New York would mercilessly fag/dyke bait anybody who seemed the least bit homosexual (“light on their feet” a common expression for guys in those days). Did a couple of nasty things too to such people. Jesus. Every time though whatever the reason that he was in the nation’s capital for Ralph would force himself to go to the far end of the National Mall to shed his tears, and remember.   

Remember Jimmy Jasper from across the street, Van Dorn Street, in Troy, a good guy whom he had hung around in those Miller Diner’s days who, aside for his leadership of the fag/dyke baiting antics was a straight-shooter, would have your back in any situation and could back it up with plenty of two hundred and twenty pounds of pure heft and power, nothing fatty about him. Nothing fatty about his stance in the world either, a seriously patriotic kid, at least in those days when red-baiting anybody who said anything left of Ghenis Khan was suspected by him of being a “commie dupe” and subject to abuse only slightly less than fags and dykes, who when the word went out in 1965 for volunteers to stop the “red menace” in Vietnam was gung-ho, enlisted specifically as an infantryman figuring to get his share of kills and glory.

Ralph wasn’t sure, since he had lost contact with Jimmy after he went into the service and Ralph had drifted into his father’s high skill electrical business, whether he had changed his mind “in country,” probably not he was that kind of guy. Jimmy was one of the first guys from around Albany who took the hit, took it early in the war when such casualties were seen as part of the price of righteous battle, took some awful death from the reports that came back home down in the Mekong Delta where “Charlie” ruled both day and night. Charlie the name given to the Viet Cong enemy first with derision by the American soldiers when the build-up in that country looked like a cakewalk and later with some begrudging respect when it turned out he was willing to fight like hell for his land. In other parts of the country he, Charlie, ruled only at night, mostly. Something the Americans could never break for any length of time and all the wasted Jimmys could not change that. Yeah a tear for old Jimmy, and a trembling hand too.

Remember Tyrone Young and Sammy Preston, a couple of black kids from Harlem in his own unit up in the bloody Central Highlands. A couple of kids, kids who did not know each other back on the block around 125^th Street but who had been tight right through Basic and Advanced Infantry Training and wound up in the same unit as Ralph had. A couple of kids who saved his “white ass” (their term) a couple of time before they got waylaid on a patrol when they were all out on patrol in the “boonies,” where Tyrone and Sammy were on the point and the unit, at company strength for this action, was overrun by a battalion-sized DNV unit which had run in their unit by accident (at least that was the story from HQ when the Captain tried to explain why they were surprised and why guys like Tyrone and Sammy, just kids, “bought it” that day). Ralph always thought it was funny that Tyrone and Sammy pulled point whoever the Captain was. His unit had had three in the eighteen months he was “in country,” that last six months an extension to get out a few months early if he was still alive and that was the sole reason since by then he had become, quietly, very quietly, anti-war. He, like every guy, including Tyrone and Sammy, did not want to pull point duty since there was a greater danger of booby-traps and sniper action. It took a long while to figure out that blacks were pulling that duty a lot more than white guys and there was a racial component to that situation.

Funny, maybe ironic, since lately Ralph had become through his association with Veterans For Peace a supporter of the booming Black Lives Matter movement a thing that in his youth in the early 1960s when all hell was breaking loose in the Civil Rights movement, North and South, would have been impossible, totally impossible since he had spent those years standing side by side with his father, Ralph Morris, Senior to keep blacks from moving into the Tappan section of Troy. It took ten thousand nightly conversations with Tyrone and Sammy who had some sympathies with the Black Panthers although they were really just a couple of street kids to shake his white racist attitudes a little (and their black separatist attitudes and fear and distrust of whitey, him). It took that couple of “saving his white ass” situations though to get him straight that they were his brothers and not just some woe begotten street brothers back home in the “real” world. So a couple of tears and a trembling hand touching their names on that black granite.  

Remember Jed Caldwell, a white guy from Maine, another guy who “saved his ass” once (Jeff’s term but not with “white” in front of ass this time though). Jed loved motorcycles (as did it seemed every guy he or I ran into from up there), had a real passion for them not so much in the Hell’s Angel gang bang kickass sense but for the sheer joy of riding out in the misty Route One nights along the secluded (then) areas around Mechanicsville above Bar Harbor with this exotic Norton, a British bike Ralph understood. Just a poor tough kid, probably the toughest guy in the unit, from rural Maine. Here’s the kick though Jed’s passion wound up costing him his life when you think about it. Or maybe Jeff was just a “doomed” guy like Sammy always used to say, would say “doomed n----r” except white. See that bike cost plenty, plenty of money which he did not have since he was a son of a lobsterman, a father whom he hadn’t then seen in years. So Jed took to robbing stores, variety stores, gas stations, a couple of small banks which you could do then up in rural Maine Ralph guessed. Did it boldly from what he said like some small-time John Dellinger until he finally got caught. Got caught at a First National Bank heist solo, his only method of work, and at seventeen in 1966 got the “choice.” The judge choice-three to five for armed robbery in county or “go into the service.” Since Jeff said he wasn’t built for prisons and places like that he took the latter offer. Yeah shed a tear and another trembling hand on black granite for Jeff.              

Remember also a few years back hearing a song by his “Arky Angel,” Iris Dement whose Wall In Washington always evoked strong emotions in him when he heard the lyrics. The gist of those lyrics, lyrics written in the 1990s long after the conflict was over about those who had been left behind to take their hands and “trace” the name of their fallen loved one on that damn black granite, a bereft father himself a veteran of the big one, World War II and filled with that same gnawing red scare Cold War pride who had sent his son off without a doubt in what was supposed to be a fight to the finish against the bad guys in the world; a waiting girlfriend no longer to be wed married now with kids and happy but down for the museum tour and feeling a little of what might have been; a fretful mother who got that long lonesome knock at the door the military vehicle waiting on the curb and forever after a gold star in the window; and, a son conceived in a hot night of passion before his father shipped out who had never, and would never, know his father. Strong stuff.         

That “tracing” business something that he had constantly witnessed at the “black granite” with all kinds of grieving left behinds putting shaky hands to the wall and etching like the effort to trace the sacred name would bring the fallen back. Ralph said he could never bring himself to do that “tracing” for it was hard enough for his to press a kiss to the fallen he went to remember. Just brought up too many sad memories of guys who were as alive as he was then and now sat in some lonely graveyard in the towns and cities across America. So shed a tear for the fallen, and for his inability to trace those names too.    

Remember, always, always remember Kenny Morris, his younger brother Kenny, who had actually joined before him (theirs a patriotic family just like all the others back then, maybe questioning the government’s actions but not challenging them), had served with distinction in Vietnam (unlike him who was just lucky and had guys who saved his ass, white or otherwise) and got out alive like him. Got back to the “real” world in one piece for a while. Did okay for a couple of years, then the other shoe fell. Something snapped, some horror Kenny had witnessed or had taken part in the war got to him. It started when Kenny began setting fire alarms off at first overlooked by the family (and the justice system which had a skewed sense of how to honor service). Then the midnight walks naked going down Tappan Street. Eventually VA help, with drugs and therapy which kept his demons away, for a while. Then when that in the end failed institutionalization for a while. Kenny was eventually released when the trend was to get guys out of mental institutions. By then he was a shell of his old self, and Ralph having his own difficulties adjusting, a little family weary in any case, could not save a brother that had gone away from him. Then one night, a damn cold night out in the foothills of the Adirondacks he jumped off the Mohawk River Bridge. Gone. So yeah shed a tear for Kenny too. Yeah, there is no wall in Washington for Kenny, for Ralph to place his trembling hand upon ….but maybe there should be.      

 

Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart-With Blues Queen Janis Joplin In Mind  

 

It was never stated in so many words by anybody Sam Lowell knew, never given some academic jargon mumbo-jumbo like it was when the sociologist, social historians and cultural anthropologists got their hands on the work long after the high tide of the 1960s had ebbed, had turned into a remnant rear-guard action by the ragged stragglers who would just not let go but they had lived under a certain sign, a certain way to navigate the world and seek out kindred. Perhaps being young and carefree Sam’s “youth nation” could not articulate the thing that way, maybe too afraid to speak of it out loud fearing to unleash some demons that they could not control. (Let’s call the phenomenon “youth nation” a term that today’s youth nation generation can relate to better since the advent of the great social media blast has elements of that older camaraderie rather than the more restrictive “hippie” or counter-culture generation since when the deal went down the numbers of hippies, the hip, did not have enough of a critical mass to keep everything going against the counter-offensive by those who were in charge yet many, many more of the young took snippets of what was offered, while not testing the limits of bourgeois society [Sam’s words for what was bothering him at the time]).

Those, like Sam who had initially gotten caught up in the doings (dope, politics, life-styles, a new ethos) by the late Peter Paul Markin, one of the corner boys from around Jimmy Jack’s Diner in growing up town Carver and an early Janis Joplin fan having seen her out in Monterrey on one of his hitchhiking trips to Big Sur when that place mattered in the youth nation configuration and who despite his many contradictions had a preternatural bead on what was coming down, who had been washed clean by the fresh new breeze that came through the country in the early 1960s lived under the sign of “live fast, die young and make a good run at it.” Some later cynics, or maybe the too candid made the third part “and make a good corpse” but that was when all hope that the “newer world” was upon us had faded like a tissue in the wind. A time too when the overwrought pile up of corpses from overdoses, crashed cars, suicides, and just plain “from hunger” wanting habits like Markin’s being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the deal went down, went down badly made that part of the mantra more explicable.

Nobody said it all in so many word, although Sam and the surviving corner boys hinted at that very idea, that living fast idea, one night after the definite word had come up from down in Sonora in late 1976 that Markin had cashed his check when they gathered at Jimmy Jack’s to mull things over and Frankie Riley, who had called Markin “the Scribe” in the old days had said some guys are “dead men on leave” and nobody contradicted him. But mostly nobody could articulate it that that way, maybe too afraid to speak of it out loud fearing to unleash some demons that could not be controlled lived under that certain sign in sullen wonder. To be old, old being over thirty to youthful twenty something eyes who saw the getting ahead career, wife and family in some leafy suburb drinking elegant wines writing on the wall, reflecting the phrase of the time taking direct aim at parents “don’t trust anybody over thirty,” meant “square,” a residue expression for the tail end of the “beat” generation which whether Sam and the guys knew it or not was their launching pad as they  came of age in that 1960s red scare Cold War night. That was Markin’s time really, the time of sensing the breeze not the mud of the breeze itself.  Meant too, meant as a signal far greater than Markin’s reach that if one did not imbibe in whatever one desired by the time they did get to thirty it would be too late, way too late.     

So Sam, Markin, Frankie, all the guys who stayed around long enough who had not been inducted into the service or to have married their high school sweethearts pursued their  outrageous appetites moved from the traditional working class neighborhood fashion dress statement , winter flannel /summer plaid shirt, chinos, black winter or summer, loafers or engineer boots (saved for rumbles, or threats of rumbles when turf was an issue way before dope smoothed such silliness out) and hair (boys’ regular Lenny the barber called it without  a whiff of irony) and liquor addictions (cheap rotgut wines, smoother Southern Comfort once the cheap wines lost allure, low-shelf whiskeys when some town wino would buy for underage them) to the new ones of the era (new at least to young mostly white eyes not familiar with old-time Billie Holiday New York café jazz needles and “beat” Village high tea time) with the emerging hip “drugstore” of every imaginable medication to salve the soul. Tried every kind of living arrangement as long as it drifted toward the communal (even on church-friendly floors and bedraggled Volkwagen bus campsites) and every kind of love, including the love that could not speak its name (this well before GLBTQ times). Tried every way to take dead aim at old bourgeois society and turn it upside down. Wanted to, desperately wanted to, listen to new music that reflected the new drug-induced karma that matched the chemicals spinning in their brains. No more rock and roll music, or any music, from Bobby Vee/Rydell/Darin, Fabian, Brenda Lee, Leslie Gore, Patsy Cline, that our parents might like, might even tolerate. Everything had be acid- etched.          

Sam had pegged it exactly right one night not long ago when he and some of the old gang who went through the 1960s experience were preparing for a Carver High class reunion when he told the gathering that “we sought to ‘live free,’ to break from convention and we expected out musical heroes (actually all of our heroes which in retrospect seemed of a piece with the outrageous appetites of the time) to partake of our newly established ethos, to lead the way. (That bit of wisdom despite the fact, to his occasional regret whenever he thought about what he could have done to “save” Markin, he had eased out of the “hippie” life-style in the early 1970s and snuck back into law school and that career track while Markin had held out to his visions for much longer.) They had expected their heroes like their slightly older brothers and sisters who went wild over brooding Marlon Brando, sulky James Dean, and moody Elvis to live high off the edge. And so they did, so anyway did what became the holy trinity come concert night, come party time, Jim (Morrison), Jimi (Hendricks), and Janis (Joplin). They lived hard, lived out there on the edge subject to their own doubts, subject like the rest of us to those rat ass things that formed our childhoods and would not let go and they needed release just like us. So Jim twirled the whirling dervish shamanic dance, Jimi fired up his grinding guitar and Janis, little Janis with the big raspy voice sang like some old-time barrelhouse blues mama reincarnate. Sang like the ghost of Big Mama Thornton had her back, like Bessie Smith was holding her place in the devil-is-going-to-get you blues pantheon. Gave us down-hearted blues to fill the heavens, gave us, well, gave us whatever she had to give with every little beat of her heart. Yeah, and they, she lived fast, and died, died way too young not matter what our ethos stated. Markin would have understood that, understood it in aces.      

Railroad Shorty Catches The Westbound Train-With Townes Van Zandt Brazos River Song In Mind 

Tacoma Tommy and Platte River Knobby laid old Railroad Shorty out along the Brazos about a mile above the river from their old railroad jungle camp. Laid him out as best they could, put a little half-ass cross made of small twigs over the shallow grave they had dug for him, maybe enough to keep the scavengers away maybe not, just in case he was a Christian and wanted it that way. Funny in the hobo, tramp, bum world except when some soup line missionary workers, usually the blessed damn Sallies (Salvation Army), wanted you to repent along with your soup, no man spoke much about his religion so old Shorty could have been a Mohammedan or an atheist for all anybody knew.

All Tommy and Knobby knew was that morning when they tried to awaken Shorty he had not responded, had caught the freight train west like a lot of travelling men before him. All they knew as well was that the only proper burial for a hobo and Shorty qualified in spade for that title was to get the body away from the railroad jungle and buried before the police or some authority came snooping around asking who he was, did he have family, did he leave anything behind all that noise for a vagrant burial in some town’s potter’s field. Both men agreed no thank you Shorty was better off against the banks of the Brazos, the banks of any river, down in any arroyo, under any railroad bridge if it came to that.  

Their hot sweaty work done Tommy opened up a pint bottle of old rotgut whisky, Shorty’s only valuable possession at the end, and took a swig for Shorty and then passed it to Knobby who did the same. As they started to reminisce for a moment about Shorty Knobby asked Tommy how old he thought Shorty had been, roughly anyway. Tommy answered that he figured about fifty but you could never tell with hobos because the weather, the booze, the irregular and usually awful food, and the living conditions aged a man quickly out on the road. Tommy asked Knobby how old he thought he was. Knobby said sixty and Tommy answered with a blush beneath his wind-burned, tanned, wind-burned again face and said forty-five. That ended that line of inquiry and as they took another swig each for Shorty they talked about the deceased and how he was always a straight-up guy.  

 Tommy could remember that first time he set eyes on Shorty out in the Gallup, New Mexico railroad jungle out along the Southern Pacific tracks outside of town as Shorty welcomed him with a fresh swig of Ripple wine, all Shorty had at the time. See Shorty was one of the original founders, you might say, of that camp at that site (there was an older site near Kingman in Arizona but the local sheriff and his boys busted that up one night just for the shear hell of it and the local citizenry stood by and applauded as they “threw the bums out of town”). So Tommy and Shorty went back a ways, a pretty long time as far as travelling men goes, and everybody had a good word for Shorty since if he had dough, had food, had hustled an extra package of cigarettes, and most importantly, if he had booze, he shared.

You might hear from some guys from the cities, college kids, folksingers or troubadours, guys who spent maybe a forlorn couple of days doing research or something talk about the camaraderie of the road, the “honor among the brethren, among thieves” maybe says it best but don’t bet on it, don’t leave a bedroll, a swig of Thunderbird wine, hell, even a cigarette butt around without keeping two, maybe three, eyes on those items or that will be the last you see of them. But Shorty was a master hobo, held a high degree in that railroad kingdom. Just then Knobby though he heard some car coming up the road so they hit the road back to camp and left Railroad Shorty, name unknown, age unknown, place of origin unknown along the sweet Brazos never to cross that river, the Trinity, the Pecos, the Colorado, the Platte and a hundred other rivers no more. RIP, Shorty, RIP.       

Mister James Dandy To The Rescue-With LaVern Baker In Mind

 

 

Mister James Dandy To The Rescue-With LaVern Baker In Mind

No question a lot of the classic works of rock and roll, say from the mid-1950s until the end of that decade were driven by those twangy guitars (hopefully provided by the genius of Les Paul and other pioneers working in their little garages in places like Nowhere, Texas trying to get more hyp out of that damn acoustic guitar, knowing, knowing like we all know now that whatever musical jail-break breeze was blowing was going to need plenty of electricity before it was through), those big blast sexy saxs blowing out to high heaven (think about that sax player who backed up Bill Halley on something like See You Later, Alligator and almost inhaled that sax driving that be-bopping first touch of rock coming out of about six musical traditions), and big brush back beat drums. Driven mainly by guys, hungry guys, guys with huge wanting habits trying to run away from the farms and small towns trying to break free from that life of farmer’s son or small store hardware clerk. Guys like Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Jerry Lee, Warren, Carl and a lot more. But in that mix, maybe somewhat neglected, intentionally or not, maybe there was no room for lilting voices when the music got all sweaty and from jump street, were female performers like Wanda Jackson (who really could have held her own with the big boys and had a fetching look to boot), Ruth Brown and the Queen of the popping fingers, Miss LaVern Baker.         

Strangely the rise of the “girl” singers in rock and roll, usually in groups, did not really get a jump until toward the end of the 1950s decade but I would argue that LaVern Baker is the “godmother” who set the latter grouping up with her sweet life rhythm which had us all snapping our fingers. It is no secret that a lot of young guys then, a lot of guys like me with two left feet, almost instinctively overcame our shyness, overcame our desire not to be made fools of ourselves when something like LaVern Baker’s Jim Dandy popped out of the school dance DJs hands and on to that creaky old record player in that sullen gymnasium which passed for a dance floor come Friday night keep the kids off the streets time. Or come last dance chance time and having broken the ice, and hopefully no ankles or toes of that eyed partner (as for possible damage imposed on yourself, well, we all, guys anyway, learned early on around our streets that it is a dangerous world and that is that), you closed out the evening with her soulful version of Lonnie Johnson’s Tomorrow Night. There is still a lot to be written about the women of early rock and roll but Miss Baker is definitely in the mix.     

[Another thing that could use some addressing is the fate of those artists who had center stage for a minute and then faded from mass view when the next best thing came along but who continued to perform out in the back streets, out in the bandstand bowling alleys, out in the motel lounges, out in the road houses. In the mid-1990s long after her heyday 1950s I heard LaVern Baker in a jazz bar in Cambridge. She had just gotten out of “rehab” for a knee or hip replacement, I forget which, and performed in a wheelchair, performed a lot of her old stuff and the highlight of the performance was a rousing version of Jim Dandy. Still working, still popping. I know my youthful memory fingers were popping that night.    

   

 

 

Under My Thumb -A Minute With The Rolling Stones, circa 1964

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Who knows when you get a beat in your head, a musical beat that stays with you forever, or at least until a more powerful beat comes along. At one time that position was held by the Five Satins doing In The Still Of The Night, a doo wop-ish classic from the 1950s which had repeating lines of doo-wop, doo-wop, doo-wop unto infinity (or the end of the song) with a powerful drumbeat and raging sax soloing every few bars. It had the additional staying power of being tied into my very first teen age party, so-called petting parties which were the place where the first few rushed, awkward, and haphazard attempts to kiss a girl (or boy for girl) occurred. Tied as well to my first puppy love, Thea Wallace, whom I was smitten with in sixth grade and who had invited me to that party knowing full well that I was smitten by her having heard it through the infallible teenage grapevine that would for pure information put the damn CIA and the creepy NSA to shame for what the boy-girl love social order was in my growing up town of Carver at any given moment. So yes I got (or gave) my first, what did I call it above, rushed, awkward, and haphazard kiss from Thea. And we had our moment, a short one even in the whirling dervish world of teenage “affairs.” But here is the real cement, the really tragic cement for why that Five Satins beat stayed for so long. See that record was playing at the very moment when we kissed. And was the song in my head when I was mooning around walking past her house hoping against hope for a sight of her for a while after she ditched me (for some budding baseball player from what I heard). So, yeah, that beat died hard.      

But life, and some eternal need for a beat in the head goes on, and as the fifties and Thea faded (although not totally vanquished as this remembrance proves) I gathered another beat in my head once the Stones swam on to the American shores as part of the British invasion. (While it is not relevant to the sketch yes I favored the “from hunger” street fighting stance of the Stones, my high school corner boys too, except Jimmy Jenkins who was all twisted up by the Beatles, spoke to “from hunger”  to working class boys on this side of the ocean). This time their song Under My Thumb drove me crazy. Naturally it had to do with a girl, well by then a young woman, and had nothing to do with silly stuff like mooning over some misbegotten girl who ditched me or whining about some rushed, awkward, haphazard kiss since I had figured out that deal by then, or at least I acted like I had. No this one had to do with my first marriage, my fatally misdirected marriage to Olivia Simpson, whom I had met just after high school down at the Surf Ballroom in Hull about twenty miles from home on the water where on Friday and Saturday nights the Rockin’ Ramrods who did a lot of Stones covers played Under My Thumb and I asked her to dance (they also played bluesy stuff too like Muddy Waters not a happenstance connection as I found out later since the Stones worshipped Muddy and went to Chess Records, Muddy’s label, in Chicago just to hang with him when they were on tour one time). That song acted as some unholy mantra for a couple of years later we got married and everything went downhill from there (except the merciful, merciful for both parties by then, divorce). Here’s the hook though, the beat reason, that first dance night Olivia jokingly said, at least I thought it was a joke when she laughed her laugh, that she would have me under her thumb before long. Jesus