*A Norman Mailer Novel As History- Pentagon 1967-"Armies Of The Night"

Click on the headline to link to a "The New York Times" obituary for American writer Norman Mailer article, dated November 10, 2007.

BOOK REVIEW

Armies Of The Night, Norman Mailer, Harper books, New York 2002

The original review of the late Norman Mailer’s "Armies of the Night" was posted just prior to the 2007 anti- Iraq War demonstration noted below. I have recently reread his book (May 2008) and have revised and expanded that review but have let that 2007 preface stand.

On March 17, 2007 various anti-Iraq War forces will converge on the Pentagon to oppose that war and to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the original protest of that symbol of American imperialism during the Vietnam War (and `levitation' of the building according to some sources then, such as the late Abbie Hoffman). Whether such a celebration is called for under the circumstances of the Iraq anti-war movement's continuing failure to stop this war is a separate question to be left to another day. Today it is nevertheless fitting that Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night, about those several days forty years ago, should be reviewed with this upcoming event in mind.


In this novel as history (or history as novel depending what part you are reading at a given time) Norman Mailer tries, successfully for the most part, to use this literary trope as a means for closely investigating the action that he is witnessing (and taking part in). As I have mentioned elsewhere in other reviews of Mailer’s books he will eventually most lastingly be known in the literary pantheon for his journalism and musings on his life and his times. But not merely as a journalist in the conventional sense, those are basically a dime a dozen and eminently forgettable, but as an exemplar of the then ‘new’ journalism. That concept got its greatest expansion in the later work of Doctor Hunter Thompson (‘gonzo’ journalism) but Mailer, and to a lesser extent, Tom Wolfe gave it legitimacy.

The premise behind this mode of analysis is that the reporter is not prohibited from being an actor in the action he or she is covering contrary to the norms beaten into media students that one is suppose to be ‘objective’- detached from the action one is reporting on. Now is not the time to expound of the virtues and vices of that ‘gonzo’ method but to see whether it works in Mailer’s exposition. I believe that it does.

To set the stage the Vietnam War, by 1967, had gone through various stages of escalation by the administration of Lyndon Johnson as it attempted to find a way to deal with the quagmire that it had created for itself in South Vietnam. The opposition to the war had also gone through several stages of political activity responding to those Administration acts of escalation. By the fall of 1967, working off a successful mass demonstration that spring, the diffuse leadership of the anti-war movement (Old Left, New Left, New York intelligentsia and so forth) and especially one Dave Dellinger a central leader of the time, had decided that it was necessary to up the ante. Thus, the Pentagon, a very visible and direct symbol of American imperial power, became the focus for a proposed mass rally and various undefined acts of civil disobedience in October of that year. As a long time opponent of the war and one almost always ready, despite some personally-driven contrary instincts expressed throughout the work here, to give something to the cause Norman Mailer steps into the picture. His personal saga informs the bulk of the book.

And what is that personal saga. Mailer originally signed up to bear witness to a symbolic mass draft card turn in at the Justice Department and to speak. During the course of those few days in October, however, he got dragged into, not unwillingly for the most part, an act of civil disobedience that got him arrested, confined in various holding pens and finally released after a number of twists and turns worthy of a novel. Along the way Mailer described his fellow prisoners, their responses to their confinement, his responses to his legal situation and further musings on the nature (or rather de-nature) of American society at the time, the worthiness of the anti-war opposition movement and his own periodic leadership delusions of grandeur as he tries to place the event in context of an on-going war against...well, plastic. Thus, Mailer successfully fulfilled the basic premise of ‘gonzo’ journalism- he was able to become mired in the center of the story but was also able through that process to bring out some home truths that one expects from a good journalist…or novelist.


The irony of fate of this book is that the part that Mailer spends the most time on, essentially the bulk of the book as an updated version of his perennial scheme of advertising for himself, is some forty years out the least interesting from a historic standpoint. I would say that the last twenty pages or so are what are important today for those of us who are trying to find our way out of the current quagmire in Iraq. Mailer, I believe, consciously and correctly tried to demonstrate that mere symbolic actions (including, in the final analysis, his own) would not bring the monster down. His own prescriptions however proved totally inadequate (and as echoed in today's anti-war strategies continues to do so).

Mailer is rather unkind to the Old Left (Communists, Trotskyists of various hues, professional pacifists-the ‘plan’ types) and their dependence on the centrality of the traditional working class, as well as the New Left kids (SDS, Draft Resistance, etc.- the ‘free play’ types) and their dependence of ‘students and professionals’ as the new working class. His position then seemed to be somewhere in the vicinity of an Americanized and 'sanitized' version of Che Guevara’s theories on guerrilla warfare. Except that what Mailer is really postulating is the theory behind Guevara’s work that it was necessary for a new cleansed ‘man’ (and given his other known sentiments of the time concerning women I believe Mailer meant man literally here) to emerge to fight the monster. Norman, wherever you are, I believe that sentiment, if less articulately expressed than by you, already had its day with Bakunin and later with the Social Revolutionaries in late 19th century Russia. But Kudos for Armies. Adieu, Left Conservative.

Alabama, God Damn- Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mocking Bird"

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mocking Bird" as background for this entry.

DVD REVIEW

To Kill a Mocking Bird, Gregory Peck, black and white, 1962

This film is an excellent black and white adaptation of Harper Lee’s book of the same name. The acting, particularly by Gregory Peck (and a cameo by a young Robert Duval), brings out all the pathos, bathos and grit of small town Southern life in the 1930’s. The story itself is an unusual combination, narrated by Peck’s film daughter Scout (and presumably Lee herself), of a coming of age story that we are fairly familiar with and the question of race and sex in the Deep South (and not only there) with which we were (at the time of the film’s debut in 1962) only vaguely familiar. That dramatic tension, muted as it was by the cinematic and social conventions of the time, nevertheless made a strong statement about the underlying tensions of this society at a time when the Southern black civil rights struggle movement was coming into focus in the national consciousness.

The name Atticus Finch (Peck’s role) as the liberal (for that southern locale) lawyer committed to the rule of law had a certain currency in the 1960’s as a symbol for those southern whites who saw that Jim Crow had to go. Here Finch is the appointed lawyer for a black man accused of raping a white women of low origin- the classic ‘white trash’ depicted in many a film and novel. Finch earnestly, no, passionately in his understated manner, attempts to defend this man, a brave act in itself under the circumstances.

Needless to say an all white jury of that black man’s ‘peers’ nevertheless convicts him out of hand. In the end the black man tries to escape and is killed in the process. In an earlier scenario Finch is pressed into guard duty at the jailhouse in order to head off a posse of ‘white trash’ elements who are bend on doing ‘justice’ their way- hanging him from a lynching tree. On a mere false accusation of a white woman this black man is doomed whichever way he turns. Sound familiar?

The other part of the story concerns the reactions by Finch’s motherless son and tomboyish daughter to the realities of social life, Southern style. That part is in some ways, particularly when the children watch the trial from the “Negro” balcony section of the courtroom, the least successful of the film. What is entirely believable and gives some relief from the travesty that is unfolding are the pranks, pitfalls and antics of the kids. The tensions between brother and sister, the protective role of the older brother, the attempt by the sister to assert her own identity, the sense of adventure and mystery of what lies beyond the immediate household that is the hallmark of youth all get a work out here. But in the end it is the quiet dignity of solid old Atticus and the bewildered dignity of a doomed black man that hold this whole thing together. Bravo Peck. Kudos to Harper Lee.

*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-In Defense of Homosexual Rights: The Marxist Tradition

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for "Communism and homosexuality".

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Summer 1988 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.


In Defense of Homosexual Rights: The Marxist Tradition

Defense of democratic rights for homosexuals is part of the historic tradition of Marxism. In the 1860s, the prominent lawyer J.B. von Schweitzer was tried, found guilty and disbarred for homosexual activities in Mannheim, Germany. The socialist pioneer Ferdinand Lassalle aided von Schweitzer, encouraging him to join Lassalle's Universal German Workingmen's Association in 1863. After Lassalle's death, von Schweitzer was elected the head of the group, one of the organizations that merged to form the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). The SPD itself waged a long struggle in the late 19th century against Paragraph 175 of the German penal code, which made homosexual acts (for males) a crime. August Bebel and other SPD members in the Reichstag attacked the law, while the SPD's party paper Vorwarts reported on the struggle against state persecution of homosexuals.

In 1895 one of the most infamous anti-homosexual outbursts of the period targeted Oscar Wilde, one of the leading literary lights of England (where homosexuality had been punishable by death until 1861). Wilde had some socialist views of his own: his essay, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," was smuggled into Russia by young radicals. When the Marquess of Queensberry called him a sodomist, Wilde sued for libel. Queensberry had Wilde successfully prosecuted and sent to prison for being involved with Queensberry's son. The Second International took up Wilde's defense. In the most prestigious publication of the German Social Democracy, "Die Neue Zeit", Eduard Bernstein, later known as a revisionist but then speaking as a very decent Marxist, argued that there was nothing sick about homosexuality, that Wilde had committed no crime, that every socialist should defend him and that the people who put him on trial were the criminals.

Upon coming to power in 1917 in Russia, the Bolshevik Party began immediately to undercut the old bourgeois prejudices and social institutions responsible for the oppression of both women and homosexuals— centrally the institution of the family. They sought to create social alternatives to relieve the crushing burden of women's drudgery in the family, and abolished all legal impediments to women's equality, while also abolishing all laws against homosexual acts. Stalin's successful political counterrevolution rehabilitated the reactionary ideology of bourgeois society, glorifying the family unit. In 1934 a law making homosexual acts punishable by imprisonment was introduced, and mass arrests of homosexuals took place. While defending the socialized property forms of the USSR against capitalist attack, we Trotskyists fight for political revolution in the USSR to restore the liberating program and goals of the early Bolsheviks, including getting the state out of private sexual life. As Grigorii Batkis, director of the Moscow Institute of Social Hygiene, pointed out in "The Sexual Revolution in Russia," published in the USSR in 1923:
"Soviet legislation bases itself on the following principle:

'It declares the absolute non-interference of the state and society into sexual matters so long as nobody isinjured and no one's interests are encroached upon

"Concerning homosexuality, sodomy, and various other forms of sexual gratification, which are set down in European legislation as offenses against public morality—Soviet legislation treats these exactly the same as so-called 'natural' intercourse. All forms of sexual intercourse are private matters." [emphasis in original]

—quoted in John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement 1864-1935

1950's Oldies But Goodies- Roy, Carl and Elvis

Here are few revivals out of our past, if you grew up in the 1950's.

Roy The Boy

Black and White Nights, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison Productions, 1987

In another entry in this space I have reviewed Roy Orbison’s In Dreams that is a more ‘talking heads’ approach to his life and music. And that too has its merits. However, when we talk of Roy Orbison then the music is what we really want to deal with. And here one gets all the Roy the Boy one wants, and more. Backed by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Tom Wait and Jackson Browne Roy goes through a litany of his greatest hits from Claudette to Pretty Woman.

But wait, what about the back up singers that were mandatory to late 1950’s rock music. Well, how about k.d. Lang, Bonnie Raitt and Jennifer Warnes. Well, not bad for backup, right? That tells you exactly what you are getting here. The best. Plus a bonus, bonus in some very, very fine licks by T-bone Burnett. Outstanding here are Sweet Dreams, Baby (with Springsteen on lead vocals along with Roy) and the finale Pretty Woman (with an incredible series of riffs by all the guitarists). Yes, Sweet Dreams, Baby.


How About Them Blue Suede Shoes

Carl Perkins- King of Rockabilly and Friends, Carl Perkins, 1985

Everyone who cares now knows that the roots of rock and rock came from a few sources, country blues, city blues, and rhythm and blues of the Big Joe Turner sort and from the white South rockabilly from the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and the artist reviewed here- Carl Perkins. Over the long haul I believe that the key is that Turner rhythm and blues on Shake, Rattle and Roll that defines the roots of rock and roll but that is just for argument’s sake. Carl Perkins can lay claim to a piece of that magic with Blue Suede Shoes (latter covered by Elvis, adding a great deal to his career, of course).

Whether Perkins is a key figure is the history of rock and roll beyond that initial contribution is also an open question. However, no one can question that here in a 30th Anniversary show in London to an audience that was perhaps more appreciative than a home-grown one at that time no one can doubt that he rocks the rockabilly with the best of them. As usual with this format we have the guests- and quite good ones in the likes of Roseanne Cash, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton and George Harrison as well as a nice traveling band. Additionally there were some serious dancers, dressed in appropriate 50's style, in the audience kicking up a storm. The hit here is, without a doubt, the finale with a collective all out rendition of Blue Suede Shoes.

Inventing Elvis

Elvis-The First Year-1954, narrated by Jack Perkins, 1992

Elvis Presley a rock and roll hero of my youth, if not to me personally then to many I knew especially girls, is the subject of this in-depth look at the first year that Elvis began inventing himself as the King. Jack Perkins’s somber narration and idiosyncratic style sets the tone for a thoughtful look back at Elvis’s trials and tribulation on the road to stardom. We have the full ‘talking head’ treatment here from Elvis’s surviving band member, Scotty Moore, to ex-sweethearts, motel owners, agents, radio producers and announcers, cooks, bakers and candlestick makers. Basically anyone who crossed his path in 1954 in that first tough year out on the road.

And what a road it was. Playing small clubs, high school auditoriums, the Louisiana Hayride and every where he could get his foot in the door Elvis stretched and clawed his way to success, and apparently was not a bad guy to hang around with then either. He, moreover, exhibited all the virtues that small town Southerners liked in the 1950’s, except maybe those sideburns and, just maybe, swinging that pelvis just a little too much when their daughters were around.

An interesting part of this presentation is an attempt to place the roots of Elvis’s music in the context of his time and place. And, as has been expressed elsewhere as well, that included black musical influences in the deeply segregated South. Sun Records Sam Phillip’s old adage comes true through Elvis- finding a white boy who could sing black. This segment only adds to something that I have been arguing for the past few years- the roots of rock and roll owe more than a little to black blues musical influence – think in this regard of the importance of Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle and Roll, also produced in 1954. But Elvis certainly rode the wave to great effect and this little valentine to him is good for those who like musical history with their music. For those who need just the music look elsewhere.

A Victory For The Right To Bear Arms

Commentary

Sometimes it is actually fun to watch the maneuverings of the Justices of the United States Supreme Court as they form their various majority opinions (when they can avoid those plurality opinions where every justice who can put pen to paper gives a concurring opinion). Today’s, Thursday June 26, 2008, big decision is really big as this court has held that the Second Amendment to the Constitution concerning the right to bear arms means more than provision of well- regulated militia by the state and entails the individual right to bear arms. The specifics of the case involved overturning Washington, D.C.'s extremely restrictive handgun laws (and upholding the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals' previous holding overturning those laws). Justice Scalia, author of the majority decision (who by a fortunate quirk of fate as far as this decision goes never got past the legal decisions of 1791 in law school), is our ‘friend’ here. Along with ‘friends’ Roberts, Alito. Thomas and swing voter Kennedy.

They say that politics makes strange bedfellows and that is true on this issue. Of course we are also keeping company with the likes of the National Rifle Association but so be it. While they all have their own axes to grind here is what concerns us. We support, unlike the august Supreme Court Justices, the right to revolution just like our forbears did. That is why this decision is legally, at least, important to us. But as a practical matter here is the skinny- we do not want the cops, crazies and criminals to be armed while we are defenseless. No way. Enough said.

Another Small 'Victory' In The Death Penalty Struggle

Commentary

Forgive me if I accuse the august justices of the United States Supreme Court (at least those who have been able to move beyond 1791 on a legal decision) for having severe cases of schizophrenia. Or, in any case, they should be subjected to analysis for that possibility. Several weeks ago the Court, by a 7-2 decision (including some of the majority in this child rape death penalty case commented on here), agreed that the current manner of administration of the lethal injection used by most states that have the death penalty on their books did not offend against the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the American Constitution. Moreover, there were so many opinions issued, as each justice tried to parse his or her way through that legal thicket, that I feared for the paper supply at the Court.

Now, on Wednesday June 25, 2008, the Court, by a 5-4 decision, has held that those states that permit the death penalty in cases of child rape without the murder of the victim cannot impose the death penalty for such actions. In the Justice Kennedy-authored opinion the majority found that, heinous as this crime may be, without more this is cruel and unusual punishment. (Kennedy also authored the majority opinion in the Guantanamo detainees federal courts access decision last week. His law clerks must be working overtime these days as he tries to atone for his many legal sins committed over the last several years.) This decision is in line with an attempt by a least a few members of the court to limit the scope of the death penalty without actually abolishing it. Other cases in recent years include forbidding the execution of mental incompetents and minors.

When I commented on the Guantanamo case I mentioned that such a decision is a victory, if a small one, for us. This child rape decision is a ‘victory’ in that same sense. Nobody feels anything but contempt for a child rapist. Nasty little factual aspects of cases like these cause one to gulp when we use the word ‘victory’ here. Nevertheless to the extent that we are unable today to eliminate the state’s ability to impose the death penalty- our ultimate goal- then anytime a legal decision reins in that capacity it is a victory. Not in the way that we would claim a victory if Mumia Abu Jamal, for example, was freed- a case of a wrongly convicted innocent man that we are conspicuously trying to fight and win and have put resources into- but I think you get the drift of my comment. Really though, the best way to insure a real victory for our side (and get rid of some of the underlying causes of these ugly child rape cases in the world), is not to depend on the good offices of Justice Kennedy or any other Justice to rein in the death penalty, but to create a workers party that fights for a workers government.

The Queen of The Blues- Bessie Smith

CD REVIEW

The Essential Bessie Smith, Bessie Smith, Columbia, two disc set, 1997

Elsewhere in this space I have mentioned that in the early days of the blues, at least the recorded blues, women vocalists dominated the market. One thinks of Mabel Smith and Ma Rainey in that regard. But the queen of the hill, and the one still best remembered, for roaring out those barrel house blues is Bessie Smith. This little two-disc compilation gives a very nice beginner cross section of the kind of subjects that she sang about-mainly broken-hearted love, no good men and the trials and tribulations of being a black woman on her own.

Bessie's music also represents the place, as with Blind Willie McTell on the male side, where the blues go from the Saturday night juke joints of farm, make that cotton, country to the more sophisticated Southern city locales. Furthermore, she along with Memphis Minnie were the queens of the now lost art of sexual double entendre- you know, 'put a little sugar in my bowl', 'take me for a buggy ride' and other classic lines of that type.

Be aware in listening to this compilation that the quality of the early recordings can be a little grating on the ear but bear with it because this thing just grows on you. It is rather an acquired taste but once you have the Bessie in your head you will not want to turn the damn thing off. Top selections here are a moanful , weary St Louis Blues, Weeping Willow Blues and a novelty song- Jazzbo Brown From Memphis Town that later singers have covered. Are these recordings all the essentials you need to bring you up to speed on Bessie? No way, but go back the first sentence of this paragraph-you will be saving your pennies to get the next album.

Empty Bed Blues, Bessie Smith EMI, 1991

Be aware listening to Bessie is rather an acquired taste but once you have the Bessie in your head you will not want to turn the damn thing off. Unlike compilations that start with her earlier material like Aggravatin' Papa where the quality of the recording gets in the way of your listening pleasure this one is mainly later material with better sound quality. Top selections here are a moanful , weary St Louis Woman, the sexy Easy Rider, the jump two parts of Empty Bed Blues of the title, the down and dirty Me and My Gin and the novelty song Jazzbo Brown From Memphis Town. Are these recordings all the essentials to bring you up to speed on Bessie? No way, but go back the first sentence of this paragraph- you will be saving your pennies to get the next album.

The Preacher Man- Son House

CD REVIEW

Son House Revisited, Son House, 2-disc set, Fuel Records, 2002

This review was used for a previous review of Son House's work. This compilation is very similar although there are more preacher type blues in this set.

I recently reviewed Mississippi John Hurt’s The Last Sessions in this space. Hurt was ‘discovered’ in the early 1960’s by young, mainly white, folk singers looking to find the roots of American music. Well, Hurt was not the only old black country blues player ‘discovered’ during that period. There is a now famous still picture (as well as well as video performance clip. I wonder if it is on YouTube?) of Hurt along with the legendary Skip James and the musician under review Son House jamming at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. That was a historic (and probably one of the last possible) moments to hear these legends of country blues in one spot together.

And why was House on that stage with Hurt and James? Well, the short answer is that old flailing National steel guitar of his. However, the real answer is that like Hurt he represented a piece of American music that was fast fading away, at least in its original form –the country blues. Can anyone beat the poignancy of Death Letter Blues or bitterness of Levee Moan? Or when House gets preachy on John the Revelator and other old time religious songs of shout and response. The tension between being a preacher man and doing the ‘devil’s work (playing the blues) is more clearly felt in House’s work than in Hurt’s.

House’s repertoire is not as extensive as Hurt’s and there is a little sameness of some of the lyrics here but when he is hot watch out. There is another famous film clip of him sitting in a chair on stage alone under the hot lights flailing away at the guitar almost trance-like, sweating buckets doing Death Letter Blues. That is the scene you want to evoke when you listen to this selection. And do listen.

*In The Time Of "The Good Old Boys" (And Gals) - Hillbilly Heaven-Ozark Style

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of the trailer for "Homemade Hillbilly Jam".

DVD Review

Homemade Hillbilly Jam, various professional and amateur musicians playing old time and modern instruments, First Run Productions, 2005

Well, this traveling American “roots” music caravan that I have been running via the Internet, in this and other “hot” cyberspace spots, has been all over this country. I have been down in the Delta with the country blues artists like Robert Johnson, Skip James and Son House. I have been in those dust-blown Oklahoma hills with Woody Guthrie. I have been out West with the cowboy balladeers. I have been down in the swamps of Louisiana with the Cajun boys and girls, black and white. I’ve have been up in those Kentucky mountains with Roscoe Holcomb. Hell, I have even spent time, an inordinate amount of time, discussing roots music as it filtered through the 1960s folk revival in those rural meccas of New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts. You will agree I have been around. On this stop we go to the hills again this time to the Ozarks to “discover”….hillbillies and their musical traditions.

Now I know that it is hardly news that the term “hillbilly” has, over the last few decades, carried some pretty negative connotations. Hard-nosed 'wild men' truckers and car aficionados , honky tonks and honky-tonk women, “know-nothing” politics, in short, good old boys and girls fully enjoying the benefits of the 19th century in the outback. The truth or falsehood of those characterizations is not at issue here though. What concerns me is the addition of this “hillbilly” flavor to the “roots’ music bandwagon. This is done here, by following the doings, comings, goings and whatnot of three modern “hillbilly” (or at least hillbilly-descended families) musical families out in Ozark country.

Some of this music, the motels, honky-tonks and barns where it is played, and the instruments used to play it are very familiar from other regions like those Kentucky hills mentioned before. This, moreover, makes sense because there are some common Scotch-Irish Child Ballad-like traditions that unite these various strands as the forebears drove relentlessly westward. This region, isolated back in the older times, did develop its own variations but I sense that, good old boys and girls or not, we are on some very familiar ground. And here is the kicker for this reviewer, personally, when it comes to knowledge of this music. Oh sure, as I have mentioned in other reviews, it was in the background in our house from my Kentucky-born father back in my youth. It’s in the genes. But let me tell where I really started to get a better sense of this mountain music. Many years ago I used to listen to a Saturday morning local radio show from the wilds of Cambridge. The name of the show-“Hillbilly At Harvard”. What do you think about that, my friends?


Pretty Saro

When I first come to this country in eighteen and forty nine
I saw many fair lovers, but I never saw mine
I viewéd all around me, I found I was quite alone
And me a poor stranger and a long way from home

My true love she won't have me and this I understand
She wants a freeholder and I've got no land
But I could maintain her on silver and gold
And as many of the fine things as my love's house could hold

Fare you well to old father. Fare you well to mother too.
I'm going for to ramble this wide world all through
And when I get weary, I'll sit down and cry
And I'll think of Pretty Saro, my darling, my dear.

Well I wish I was a poet, could write some fine hand
I would write my love a letter that she might understand.
I'd send it by the waters where the islands overflow
And I'd think of my darling wherever she'd go.

Way down in some lonesome valley. Way down in some lonesome grove
Where the small birds does whistle, their notes to increase
My love she is slender, both proper and neat
And I wouldn't have no better pastimes than to be with my sweet.

Well I wish I was a turtle dove, had wings and could fly
Just now to my love's lodging tonight I'd draw nigh
And in her lily-white arms I'd lie there all night
And I'd watch the little windows for the dawning of day.

Well I strolled through the mountains, I strolled through the vale
I strolled to forget her, but it was all in vain.
On the banks of Ocoee, on the mount of said brow
Where I once loved her dearly and I don't hate her now.

Of Music and Movies and Politcal Doldrums

Commentary


Over the past several weeks I have been doing more commentary on music and movies than I have previously done in this space. Part of this is a conscious effort on my part to integrate those cultural phenomena into this blog as part of our common history, whether they have impact today or not. My own political evolution is bound up with, as is that of many of the Generation of ’68, the cultural phenomena associated with the times- folk and rock concerts, various communal activities, people’s art, etc. Moreover, at least for the 1960’s, one cannot separate out, at least not easily, the cultural from the political in trying to draw some lessons for today’s struggles.

Those are personal reasons to be sure but, my friends, the main reason that I am writing more of this kind of material is that there is not much doing on the political horizon today. And that fact does not have to do with the summer doldrums, although that is always part of the mix. What it has to do with is the hard fact that the bourgeois politicians, and here I mean Obama as well as McCain, have sucked the best part of the air out of politics. Surely, there are things to comment on in the world beyond that narrow, basically technical presidential campaign trip but other than our traditional on-going propaganda efforts we are not getting a hearing on those issues.

One indication of that impasse is the material posted on various Indy Media sites that I monitor. Up until a couple of years ago there were plenty of hard-hitting reports on struggles and commentary on what to do next. Today, most of the items concern various crank conspiracy theories or fervent messages that we get behind Obama in order to deprive Bush of a third term (meaning a vote for McCain). Meanwhile we have those few little problems in the Middle East and South Asia like Iraq and Afghanistan that are not being addressed by those we wish to reach. I wish I had a positive message of encouragement right this minute but more later. Given world conditions though our day will come, or at least we will get our chances at it.

The Rolling Stones- Altamont 1969

DVD REVIEW

Gimme Shelter, The Rolling Stones Altamont Concert 1969, 1970

I have written elsewhere in this space that when it comes to musical influences in my youth that the Stones played a key role in developing my tastes. I have also mentioned elsewhere that my youthful alienation was reflected in the language and sound of the group. I mentioned Street Fighting Man and Tumbling Dice, as well as an earlier cover of Little Red Rooster as important. All this is by way of saying that I looked forward recently to re-watching the old Stones documentary Gimme Shelter reviewed here, despite my knowledge of the tragic and unnecessary incidents that occurred at Altamont and marred the whole experience.

If one is to recount the nodal points of the too short counter-cultural explosion of the 1960’s one could arbitrarily assign the Summer of Love in 1967 as the height and Altamont as the start of the decline. We can argue that point endlessly but clearly something or some things happened at Altamont that exposed the ugly side of the dope/counter-cultural scene. Moreover, on reflection no one can deny the unreasonableness of having the notorious California Hell’s Angels, despite favorable press from Tom Wolfe in Electric Kool Aid Acid Test and Hunter Thompson in his classic study Hell’s Angels, as security for a 300,000 person event.

Now, we finally get to the music and the film. And I think that this is about the right place for such comments about the event itself in the scheme of things. There have been many, many Stones concerts during the past forty years but none have had the cultural significance of Altamont. Most of the film is about how the Stones, good-naturedly if ultimately naively, tried to put the event together. A fair portion of the film is footage of the reaction by the Stones to the events that they witnessed from the stage including the one that led to a death. These segments are interspersed in between parts of the performances by the Stones and others.

This film has not aged well, although Mick has. His voice comes off tinny here reflecting an earlier, more primitive sound technology that does not do justice to how Mick and the boys could whip up an audience. A nice surprise though is a very sensual Tina Turner (backed by Ike) performance. Unfortunately, the Jefferson Airplane's afternoon performance is marred by the same kind of violence that doomed the event. But here is the skinny. If you need to look at rock and roll history watch this one and one half hour documentary. If you want to hear the Stones at their best then purchase any one of about ten greatest hits albums available. That’s the ticket.

*Bringing It All Back Home-Bob Dylan

CD REVIEW

Bringing it All Back Home, Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1965

It seems hard to believe now both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). It is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.

Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan’s role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to comment on a couple of songs here. Obviously, no one will ever really unravel what the meaning of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" is about except that it has produced one of the most famous lines of the 1960’s- ‘you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’ (although if the truth be known you do) that I am fond of using anytime I get a change to use it as a political cutting edge. "Love Minus Zero No Limit" is one of the great modern love songs that will along with a few others define what love,longing and companionship meant for our generation.

Needless to say "Gates of Eden" is the modern equivalent of John Milton’s Paradise Lost (and I do not mean to use that praise hyperbolically). If Milton was explaining the ways of god to man in the aftermath of the defeat of the English Revolution then Dylan was attempting to give his take on the eternal verities for modern times.


John Wesley Harding, Bob Dylan, 1970


Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan's role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to comment on a couple of songs here. Needless to say this is a theme album centered on the old West that Dylan has written songs about elsewhere as well. That too is part of the American folk heritage. This rather good thematic conception hits right from the opening "John Wesley Harding" (a real, if more villainous, character of the Old West than portrayed here), "All Along the Watchtower" (that was given its definitive cover by Jimi Hendrix) and finishes up with the bittersweet "I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight". Politically, "I Pity The Poor Immigrant" takes on added meaning with today’s immigrant trials and tribulations. Is this Dylan’s best work? No, but it is a worthy effort.

Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol 3, Bob Dylan, 1993


Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan's role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to comment on a couple of songs here. This is compilation of songs from various, none of them new except the lyrically very well done "Dignity" that tells more about the meanness of modern life than many a novel. Some of the other material of note- "Forever Young" (our anthem as the 1960’s generation grows older) - the surreal "Brownsville Girl" that shows that Dylan could certainly use that stream of consciousness trope to great effect, the flat out rocking of "The Groom Still Waiting At The Altar", the topically political "Hurricane" (about the frame up for murder of the fighter Rubin Carter and the fight to free him-a fight that we can draw lessons from today about the nature of class struggle defense) and from his born-again Christian period a rousing "You Got To Serve Someone". Just a nice cross section of material here.

Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1965

Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan’s role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to mention a couple of points here. Any song that starts out like "Desolation Row" with the line- “ They are selling post cards of the hanging, they’re painting the passports brown” will automatically get my attention every time- and keep it through over 11 minute of stream of consciousness, word play and harmonica energy. If I had to pick my number one favorite Dylan song (and the one that I have listened to the most) this is the one. Start me off with the “ When you're lost in the rain in Juarez ” of "Tom Thumbs Blues" as an appetizer and I am all set for a while. How is that for back-to-back treats- harmonica thrown in gratis?

Having mentioned my two favorites on this album I have hardly completed comment. I am not sure whether Bob Dylan was the voice of the generation of ’68, or whether he wanted to be. However, few can deny that "Like A Rolling Stone" was one of the anthems of our generation- with or without direction home. Highway 61 Revisited has over the years gone up in my estimation as a song with an interesting story line and a very rock beat. Of course, with Dylan one needs some thoughts of lost love, longing and the vagaries of keeping a relationship on course so "Queen Jane Approximately" fits the bill. Well, I could go on and on but you get the point this is a Dylan album you must own. More than that though if you want to get a feel for the trials and tribulations of the 1960’s by one of its best troubadours you NEED this album.

When The Sun Goes Down- Blind Willie McTell

CD REVIEW

When The Sun Goes Down, Blind Willie McTell, BMG Music, 2003

Recently I have been doing a run of reviews on old time country blues players that have included the likes of Mississippi John Hurt and Son House. Here we are getting a little slice of what the acoustic blues looked like when it went to the Southern cities in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Hurt and House stayed on the farm, so to speak, but McTell, blind from birth I believe, went to the streets of the cities to sing his songs and make his daily bread. Along the way he worked with women singers and sometimes with the legendary Tommy Dorsey (no, not the bandleader from the forties). But mainly he worked the streets and joints alone.

A close listen immediately tells you that this artist is different from the country blues singers. The guitar work is more polished (check it out on Statesboro Blues, if you want a treat) but the whole presentation is also different. The lyrics are more polished and the presentation is clearly for an audience that can walk out the door if it does not like what it hears. Hell, there are seven other guys or gals down the street to listen to. This is really the first manifestation, in song, of the changeover in the blues from the chant like quality of the pace of the cotton field to the rhythms of urban life. It changes again latter when it goes north and gets electrified but here McTell and a little later Big Bill Broozey (and as always Robert Johnson) are pushing the work in new directions

From Beulah Land- Mississippi John Hurt

CD REVIEW

Last Sessions, Mississippi John Hurt, Vanguard Records, 1972

If one were to ask virtually any fairly established folk music singer in, let’s say 1968, what country blues musician influenced them the most then the subject of this review would win hands down. The list would be long- Dave Van Ronk, Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, Phil Ochs, Chris Smithers, Joan Baez and on and on. Hell, Tom Paxton wrote a song about him-Did You Hear John Hurt? That song still gets airplay on the folk station around where I live.

So what gives? Why the praise? What gives is this- Mississippi John Hurt and his simple country blues were 'discovered' at a time when many young, mainly white urban musicians were looking for roots music. This search is not anything particularly new-John and Alan Lomax went on the hustings in the 1930’s and recorded many of the old country blues artists that were ‘discovered’ in the 1960’s. Hell, you can go back further to the 1920’s and the record companies themselves were sending out agents to scour the country looking for talent- they found the likes of the Carter Family and Blind Willie McTell along the way.

And what made John Hurt so special? Well, for one, very clean, very simple picking on the old guitar. For another that little raspy voice that you had to perk up your ear to if you wanted to hear him. But the big deal really is that he sang songs in a simple country way that reflected the hard life of the Mississippi delta, the hard work of picking cotton, the hard fact of being black in the Jim Crow South and the hard fact of needing some musical entertainment on a hot Saturday night after a hard week in the fields. The flow changed when the blues headed north to Chicago and got electrified but if you want to hear a master at work when the sound was simpler then hear John Hurt, hear him playing Creole Belle. And Joe Turner Blues, Spanish Fandango, Beulah Land and the rest.

A Short Note On The United States Supreme Court Decision On The Guantanamo Prisoners

Commentary

By a 5-4 vote, during the week of June 6, 2008, the United States Supreme Court has held that when the courts are open (in short, when martial law is not a factor) the bedraggled prisoners being held in the American 'prisoner of war' camp in Guantanamo are entitled to access to the federal courts to seek redress of grievance. Of course, as always this decision will have to be fleshed out in real cases but the Justice Kennedy-authored decision, he of swing vote fame, as least gives defense lawyers a chance to argue someplace other than a rigged military tribunal in the future.

Do militant leftists see this as an important decision? A victory even? Well, yes we will take our victories, large or small, anyway we can get them today. Look, the import for us is this. The details of cases fighting for democratic rights, or in this case just basic democratic decency, like the details in criminal cases do not always make for pretty reading. Islamic fundamentalists, indiscriminate suicide bombers and the like, if that is what they have down in Guantanamo (rather than some guys that they indiscriminately scooped up along the way which appears to be true in at least some of the cases), are not out friends. In the end we will be crossing our own swords with these guys. Today, however, the fight for their basic democratic rights to a hearing denied so long by the Bush Administration and this same Supreme Court in previous cases is our fight. If they can disappear these guys that nobody really likes what happens when we get ‘uppity’? That too would not be pretty reading as witnessed by the “red scare” roundups of our predecessors after World War I and World War II.

As a last point the other interesting thing about this decision is the minority position led by one Justice Antonin Scalia and his little cabal of upfront, in-your-face reactionaries. Scalia, in particular, went out of his way to demonstrate once again why as a general rule we place no faith in the courts (basically when Kennedy votes the other way with the four serious Neanderthals). Scalia and his cohorts on the bench and outside in the Federalist Society are all hard-core original intent theorists. This means that the world, and here they mean the constitutional world, stopped about 1791 (at the latest). Thus, drawing and quartering, public hangings, even the occasional governmental agent kicking down the door and such do not offend their sensibilities. Here is the really scary part though- remember we have actually had over two hundred years of human evolution and understandings about the nature of law and society. If these august justices are scandalized today by allowing access to the courts to foreigners (and that is what this is really all about) then can you image their political positions then- God Save the King, I assume. No, Antonin Scalia and his boys are no James Madisons.

Do Not Cry For Me, Argentina- Remembering Che Guevara

Commentary

A recent news item out of Argentina concerning the dedication of a memorial to Che Guevara caught my eye. Apparently forty years after his death the legendary guerrilla fighter and hero of the Cuban Revolution is being honored with a statute in his hometown of Rosario. This event has not been without controversy, nor should it have been if one understood Che’s life at all, among residents there over the appropriateness of the gesture. That controversy is nevertheless neither here nor there for those of us still trying to make the revolution. Whatever political differences Che and this writer had over the questions of the right strategy for pushing the fight for socialism forward we would, I am sure, agree today that a fitting memorial for a revolutionary is not some slab of stone or metal in Argentina but to get out and organize the struggle. With that in mind a couple of comments about Che’s influence and about the real way to honor Che are in order.

Political activists of many persuasions including at that time this left liberal writer, not just radicals and revolutionaries, saw Che coming out of the Cuban Revolution as a figure larger than life. Trained as a doctor he could have pursued that career and carved a small niche for himself in the medical profession in the Argentine. He nevertheless rejected that path as too narrow for his huge appetites for life. Moreover the Argentine itself was eventually too narrow for his interests.

I have mentioned elsewhere in reviewing one of the of the many biographies about him that, in the end, he was that classic Latin revolutionary in the mold of the 19th century revolutionary Louis Auguste Blanqui- the man of the barricades (or rather one of its modern equivalents- the hills). And so a quick outline of the saga of Che’s life would indicate- the eye-opening travel chronicled in the Motorcycle Diaries, Guatemala during the CIA coup against the Arbenz government, on the lamb in Mexico, the decisive Cuban revolutionary experience by linking up with Fidel Castro in the mid-1950’s, the hard fought, if fruitless, efforts to push African liberation struggles forward and, finally, death in the god-forsaken hills of Bolivia- fighting to the end. A post- war American youth generation (the Generation of ’68) deeply influenced by Jack Kerouacs’s On The Road and ready to ‘storm heaven’ politically could relate to that resume. Combine that with Che’s deeply held moral sense of justice (although, obviously marred by that Stalinist voluntarist streak that he also exhibited) and you have a very appealing political role model.

As mentioned above the political gap between Che and this writer over time only got wider as I got closer to understanding the necessity of relying on the centrality of the working class in the struggle for socialism and he went in search of the “new” socialist man out in the foothills in some adventure seemingly driven by Jean Jacques Rousseau rather than Karl Marx. Yet this writer, and any thoughtful person could, and can, admire a man who out of an intense sense of the injustices of the world sees the need to pick up the gun in order to slay the dragons. Yes, this man Che deserves some honor but not that one that they have erected to him in Rosario. Here is how one can really honor Che. Fight to Free The Cuban Five. Fight to Defend the Cuban Revolution. Most importantly though, fight the struggle here in the “belly of the beast”. That would be more than enough to truly honor this subjective revolutionary.

*Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then

Click on title to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archive's copy of the 1947 article ,"The Treason Of The Intellectuals", Cannon's stinging indictment of some of the turncoat intellectuals of the 1930s at a time when the American government (and others) ratcheted up the heat in the "red scare" post-World War II Cold War period.

Commentary

No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon the founder of The Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined.

The conclusion that I drew from that observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders to lead the fight for state power.

In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spend a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. That position stands in need of some amendment now.

Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.


It is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question, religion, special racial and gender oppressions) and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.

As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the ‘new’ working class or a ‘new’ vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle an ideas that goes back to the days of Marx himself.

And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic theories based on , frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray ( in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960’s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?

*The Root Of The Matter-Putting Bluegrass and Gospel Together For Real- “We Are Family”

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of The Easter Family performing "Roses Will Bloom Again".

DVD Review

We Are Family, various artists from the Easter and Lewis families, Daywind Records, 2008

Sometimes when reviewing roots music CDs and DVDs you come across material that you are both somewhat unfamiliar with and that does not fit easily in the various known categories of roots music. That is the case here with the combination of bluegrass and white gospel presented by the Easter Brothers and their family, very extended family as its turns out. A regular reader of this space might be somewhat puzzled by this remark. Of course, particularly over the last few months, I have reviewed reams of bluegrass music from the old days with the likes of Roscoe Holcombe, Ralph Stanley and the like.

Certainly the bluegrass folk revivalists of the 1960s, like the New Lost City Ramblers and The Greenbriar Boys, have gotten plenty of space. Moreover, one cannot really review Harry Smith’s “Anthology Of American Folk Music”, as I have in this space without running into plenty of bluegrass and gospel music. What is rather startling in this presentation these days is that combination, present here, of true believers in the gospel who bring their message through their bluegrass concerts for the folks. Frankly, I am much more comfortable with a secular group like The Bluegrass Gospel Project, who belt out the old tunes with fervor but not fever. .

Nevertheless, despite my befuddlement and a natural inclination to write this stuff off, this group, or rather real life extended family (I never did really get all the relationships down), knows how to sing this white gospel bluegrass music. Not enough to make me jump up and run out and get their albums but enough to appreciate that this Georgia -based group had something to say. That certainly is the case with a couple of songs, “Roses Will Bloom Again” and “I Need You”.

Roses Will Boom Again

Written by Marsha Henry
performed by Jeff and Sheri Easter
From the album, “By Request”

Verse 1


I planted a little rose bush
I tended it with care
It’s buds began to blossom
Their fragrance filled the air
But when winter came it withered,
The petals drooped and fell to the ground
My heart sank as it faded
But I’d forgotten who had made it


Chorus
Roses will bloom again
Just wait and see
Don’t mourn what might have been
Only God knows how and when that
Roses will bloom again


Verse 2
Rose was his only sweetheart
A loving wife for forty years
Cherished every day they had
And held memories oh so dear
He never dreamed he’s bury love
And go to live alone
But he lay his Rose to rest
Looked up to heaven and tried his best
To believe that


Chorus
Roses will bloom again
Just wait and see
Don’t mourn what might have been
Only God knows how and when that
Roses will bloom again


Verse 3
The precious Rose of Sharon
Broken and bruised in cruel shame
Stained on the cross of Calvary
So that men might be saved
Oh, satan cheered as He died
While Mary and the others cried
Then God raised Him up from that sleep
And kept a promise only He could keep


Chorus
Roses will bloom again
Just wait and see
Don’t mourn what might have been

*If Drafted I Will Not Run, If Elected I Will Not Serve- Revolutionaries and Running For Executive Offices Of The Capitalist State

Click on title to link to important theoretical article on the question of revolutionaries running for the executive offices of the capitalist state in "Spartacist- English Language Edition, Number 62, Spring 2009. (Yes, isn't it nice to transcend and go forward in time by the 'magic' of technology in the blogosphere.)

Commentary

If drafted, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve- words attributed to William Tecumseh Sherman at the prospect of being nominated for American president in the late 19th century.

Well, the old soldier Billy Sherman has it right, if for different reasons from those of today 's revolutionaries. We want no part in administering the bourgeois state today and therefore, disrespectfully decline to run for its executive offices. However, to show that we are not anti-parliamentary abstentionists like many of our anarchist brethren we, in our role as 'tribunes of the people', will graciously accept any elected legislative posts that come our way-of course running on our program of a workers party fighting for a workers government.

Wait a minute, Markin, haven’t you gone out of your way in previous commentaries to argue that revolutionaries should run for executive office, while also taking the historic revolutionary socialist position of refusing to actually accept the office if elected? Umm......, well yes, and here the writer will have to eat humble pie and accept that the old historic position is indeed wrong and not just wrong on a tactical basis but on principal.

Let’s go into a little background here. As I have developed a socialist worldview I have attempted to ground that position with a sense of history. Part of that history included studying the lives of various revolutionary socialists here and elsewhere. One of the first that I came across was Eugene V. Debs, one of the key early leaders in the American socialist movement. Debs not only ran for president as a socialist in the historic four-way presidential fight of 1912 (you know, the one where Teddy Roosevelt ran as a Bull Moose) but also in 1920 from the Atlanta Penitentiary where he was spending a little time, at government expense, for opposition to American entry into the slaughter of World War I. That fighting stance exemplified for me an ideal way for socialists to get their propaganda out to a hostile world that might be a little less so when confronted during traditional election periods.

That position was fortified further for me by a look at the latter campaigns of the American Communist Party from the time that they placed William Z. Foster and Ben Gitlow on their presidential ticket in the 1920's. To speak nothing of later campaigns by Earl Browder in 1940 and Gus Hall more recently for that same party, as well. Moreover, when I first began sniffing around the Trotskyist movement in the early 1970’s I distinctly remember, as an act of defiance in breaking with the Democratic Party (I had after all, when all the dust was settled, supported Hubert Humphrey in 1968), voting for the Socialist Workers Party candidate in 1972 (and here memory fails for I am not sure whether it was Doug or Linda Jenness who was running for president that year but I believe that it was Linda- someone can correct me on that, please) Moreover, in the harsh reality of American politics since then and the harsher realities of socialist propaganda politics the question of the pitfalls of running for executive office seemed a little exotic, to say the least. In short, nothing really seemed to require that I seriously work through the issue.

Then, a few years ago, entered the International Communist League (ICL) and presumably others to upset the historic applecart. Apparently within that organization some qualms developed over the historic position mentioned above(a position that they themselves utilized back in the 1980’s running a candidate for Mayor of New York City). Researches by the ICL back to the early days of the Communist International concerning various nebulous formulations of the workers government slogan and some unfinished business concerning electoral platforms opened up this can of worms. When I first read of this dispute I dismissed it out of hand as a 'tempest in a teapot' rather than as a serious issue that needed a full airing today among small left-wing propaganda groups and labor militants trying to avoid the pitfalls of opportunism.

Now there are many ways to obtain political enlightenment in the world. One of the most important for me about the nature of the state came from being part one of that state’s armed bodies of men- a member of the American armed forces during the Vietnam War. On the present question my awakening was not nearly so dramatic but as I mentioned in a recent blog entitled "The ‘Woes’ of The British Labor Party" (see May 2008 archives) the defeat of “Red” Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London brought the issues home. The idea that a soft pink leftist, much less a hard Bolshevik would want to administer the bourgeois state for Her Majesty showed me graphically the absurdity of the old historic position. And Livingstone did not even bother with the formality of refusal but accepted that political responsibility, gladly, to boot. Reinforced by a little quick research on my part into the German Social Democratic and French and Italian Communist executive running of municipalities and states and things began to fall into place.

Sometimes old habits die hard though. I still have to think through how critical support to other leftist formations who do run for executive office with some supportable positions would work in connection with this new standard. My question: Are we just maintaining theoretical ‘purity’ by not personally sullying our hands administering the bourgeois state but are more than happy to let others, whom we give critical support to, do that dirty work? In any case I am ‘born again’ on the principal of executive office refusal now and have swore off that childhood dream of becoming president of the American imperial juggernaut- but, hey, how about being a commissar?

*A Practical Note on Class Struggle Defense-A Personal Note

Click on the title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.


Commentary

This comment originally was placed as a note on a "Defend the Evergreen State College" blog dated June 7, 2008. I think that the that note I made there about an aspect of class struggle defense can be of general use to the radical public and so have reposted it here as a separate blog.

A Lesson For The Unwary

As I have explained before this site is, among others things, committed to trying to pass on some of the lessons of the international labor movement and other struggles of the oppressed. Sometimes that takes the form a review of someone else’s struggles, now or in the past. Sometimes it takes the form of personal comment, many times on some sin of omission or commission from which the writer has ‘learned’ something. This situation with the struggling students out in Evergreen State College in Washington brings up just such a situation. Some of the students there are in deep legal trouble over some incidents that occurred last winter. The details can be found in the article above or by going to their website which I have listed.

Here is a little nugget about what not to do when writing in to the authorities in defense of fellow militants. I will leave out names of persons, places and organizations on the off-hand chance that the government may still want to make something of it. The cases of the ex-Black Panthers of the San Francisco 8 this past year graphically bring that thought to mind.

Many years ago, back in the early 1970’s, I, at the urging of some defense organization (not the Partisan Defense Committee because it was not around then) urged me to write to a Midwestern prosecutor on behalf of a well-known defendant in a criminal case. There were a range of charges alleged, some serious, some not. Moreover, I had personally worked on a few occasions with this person. However, here is the sticking point. That defendant’s politics (black nationalism mixed with anarchism) had drifted far from mine (drifting toward Marxism).

Despite those differences, as I had been committed ever since my youthful liberal days to the old labor slogan- ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ I duly sent off my letter. (I believe that I also made a donation but do not hold me to that.) Of course the letter spoke of the injustice of the charges, the implication of a frame-up and the need to free the defendant immediately. So far, so good. But then I got on my high horse and started to berate the obvious limitations of the defendant’s political perspective and that while not accusing him of being a counter-revolutionary I might have well have. Here is the kicker. At trial the prosecutor, in his own screwy way tried to make something of it to- on the basis of something I wrote – put the defendant's political views outside the realm of rational politics and therefore to validate the need to incarcerate him. The defendant eventually got off on all counts-the frame actually was on- but that is not the point.

The point though is why was I, in essence, telling an agent of the bourgeois state- a state that I, moreover, was in the process of seeing needed to be changed fundamentally- of the disputes within the working class movement. The gap between us (the defendant and I) and that state was far greater than the differences between us. A chasm. I latter mentioned this story to an old communist who is the source for this piece of wisdom that I have just imparted to you about the class divide here. He further stated that the state did not have political defendants put on trial because of their bad leftist politics but because they represented some kind of perceived threat to that state.

So when you write letters of support to the authorities in Washington, or elsewhere, just state your outrage at the injustice of the charges, your solidarity with the defendants, the call for their freedom and leave it at that. Then come back here and talk about the political shortcomings of the defendants’ political positions. See my May 1968, Student Power and the Working Class, for example.

Full Citizen Rights For Immigrants- Amnesty Now!

Commentary

If one remembers back only two years ago to May Day 2006 when there were massive protests led by Hispanics in the West, the Southwest and elsewhere over the question of immigrant rights then one would have thought that we would have some justice on this question by now. That has clearly not been the case and mainstream politicians have fallen all over themselves to distance themselves from the mere thought of justice for such people (who moreover either do not or cannot vote, a mortal sin for any politician). There are political reasons for this, including the conscious policies of Hispanic politicians, and others who represent immigrant constituencies to not rock the boat in this august presidential year. This year the protests were rather muted and, in any case, were placed on the back burner by the overwhelming capacity of the current presidential political campaigns to suck all the political oxygen out of the air.

More ominously, since 2006 there have been any numbers of la Migra (immigration service) raids on factories in the Midwest and the South, including one this spring which netted over 400 immigrants at a meat processing plant and that nearly decimated the life of one town. The only rationale for such governmental actions is to tell those who are here illegally (and some who are here legally but want to in the age old tradition of America get 'uppity"- that is, defend their rights) that it is hunting season and they are the targets. Moreover, such actions graphically tell immigrants not to organize themselves for collective protection in such things as trade unions- or you will wind up back from where you came, one way.

There are a whole lot of issues that need to be resolved on the immigration question but no one, and I mean no one in mainstream politics is proposing any just solution to the question. All one hears about there days the need for more deportations, more walls and more cops. Oh, I forgot this gem- also a return to some form of indenture servitude straight out of the 18th century, as well, if some of the proposed legislation in Congress goes through. What this all tells me is that today militants should be proposing a general amnesty for all immigrants, legal or illegal, who have made it here. If anyone, including one Barack Obama whose life profile includes recent immigrant experiences, should in the great by and by propose such a scheme then we will support it. In the meantime the fight is clear- Full citizenship rights for all who make it here. We will worry about the green cards later.

Hands Off The Mormons!

Commentary

I thought I was done talking about Mormons for a while after the demise of Mitt Romney’s Republican presidential campaign, but apparently not. At that time I spent not a few words on Mr. Romney’s family history, including an admiring comment on the executive ability of his great-grandfather in presiding over a household with five wives. I mentioned at the time that, in the old days, I had my hands full when I has more than one girlfriend. I also have in the past expressed an interest in Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS), not for his finding golden tablets, or whatever, out in the wilds of upstate New York in the 1820's but as a Free-Soiler (anti-slavery advocate) and presidential candidate in the mid-1840’s before his murder by the rabble in Illinois. Today, though I have to speak of more serious issues, even though belatedly.

We have all become painfully aware over the past several weeks of the plight of several hundred women (mostly mothers) and children of the separatist Fundamental Church of Latter Day Saints as they were hounded and rounded up by a phalanx of Texas legal and social service authorities over some sexual abuse that was allegedly going on at their rural ranch. This sect, which has no direct relationship to Mitt Romney’s mainstream LDS’ers, holds the practice of polygamy as one of their central tenets, a tenet given up by the mainstream Mormons in 1890. Since that roundup which eventually scattered the children all over the state in foster homes and state institutions, a series of Texas court actions, including a successful appeal to the Texas Appeals Court, the state’s highest court, has finally gotten the children back with their kin. There are, however, still rumblings by the state authorities about their self-ordained right to carry out such invasions at will.

But here is the real issue for socialists and just plain civil libertarian types. Why was this sect being so readily prosecuted by the state on what, at best, were flimsy and unsubstantiated charges that proved to be laughable in court? As distant as I am from the beliefs of this seemingly harmless, reclusive and isolated sect and as distant as I am from either wanting to have several wives or being one of several husbands of a woman (polyandry) for that matter, I find it that it is necessary to defend these fundamentalist Mormons against the ravages to their personal lives by the state actions. As long as the question of effective consent is given, the only real criteria that should govern such relationships, it is nobody’s business, especially the state’s what social relationships people enter into. For all those shocked by the notion of so-called "child brides" look to the history of marriage regulation or for that matter the common law of your locale (if in a common law state).

I think that the way that the state of Texas has handled this matter has outraged more people than normally would be the case, unlike the Waco governmental invasion under Bill Clinton, and that is to the good. As the old adage goes- if they can get away with carting off the helpless and reclusive then what about the rights of rest of us- is fully operational here. But this episode should also make us aware, very aware, of why we leftists support the slogan- Government out of the bedrooms! Hands Off The Mormons! And Keep Them Off!

The Dog Days Of The American Anti-war Opposition

Commentary

Here is an unfair question. Who, recently, has been more committed to seeking the withdrawal of American and Allied troops from Iraq- the American anti-war movement or Sheik Sadr’s Madhi Army and his political apparatus in the mosques of Sadr City? Answer: These days it is clearly Sadr and his cohorts. Not only have Sadr’s forces borne the brunt of fighting against American and Iraqi governmental forces this spring but every Friday over the past several weeks after prayers they have gone into the streets to call for the American withdrawal. On the American anti-war side there has been the infinitely harder task of..... breathlessly waiting for the other shoe to drop- the election of non-Bush, presumably Obama, to get America out of its quagmire one way or another.

Yes, I know that this is an unfair comparison but hear me out on this. This street fight that the two supposedly anti-war democrats Obama and Clinton have just completed has taken all the political air out of domestic politics. Such silly things as fighting to deny war funding have taken a back seat to the pressing questions of Obama’s religious affiliation and , my favorite, what does Hillary want. Moreover, I have noted more than once that, historically, the traditional pro-Democratic outfits like United For Peace and Justice and 'progressive' coalitions of that ilk have taken cover when these democratic parliamentary campaigns are in full swing.

Goodness gracious, the Quakers, pacifists and home grown professional radical leftists of every persuasion would not want to spoil the chances of the liberal parliamentary types (read today-Democrats) by filling the air with people and chants denouncing these same do-nothings. Moreover, the much ballyhooed mid-term Congressional elections of 2006 which were suppose to usher in the Golden Age after the turnover to Democratic majorities proves my case rather than theirs. We should now instead be screaming bloody murder in the streets to get the troops withdrawn-over the political corpses of these same Democrats .

When I made the comparison between the activity of Sadr concerning American troops and the American anti-war movement I was, obviously, overdrawing the picture in his favor. Sadr and his pals have their own axes to grind and are responding to their fraction of the Shia base, especially on the national sovereignty question. With the very real likelihood that American bases will be in Iraq for that McCain- predicted 100 years there is no political capital to be lost by leading Iraqi opposition to that move and to opposing the desires of the other Shia faction led by the Malaki government.

Moreover, Sadr's ‘opposition’ to American imperialism has been spotty, at best- he brokered the stand down of the Mahdi Army that has permitted the Iraqi government (and the Americans) some breathing room in order to stabilize their regime (or, at least, stem the daily slaughter on the streets of Iraq). But, even more noteworthy than that is that while Sadr has been our objective ‘ally’, as they say, remember in the final analysis his brand of Islamic fundamentalism is committed to imposing some form of Islamic Republic on Iraq that is counterpoised to our fights. So, when I headlined this commentary 'in the dog days' I was not just talking out of my hat but also expressing our real quandary- except I am not in any quandary about the main task that we still face- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal From Iraq and Afghanistan of American/ Allied troops and their mercenaries!

*Free The Cuban Five Update-In Defense Of The Cuban Revolution

Click on title to link to National Committee To Free The Cuban Five Committee web site for the latest political and legal updates.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the sentences of the Five last week (the week of June 1, 2008). As the legendary comic and social commentator Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American 'justice' system himself, once said- "In the halls of justice, the only justice in the hall". I might only add here, class justice cannot even be found in the halls in this case. Go to the link listed on the right of this page for more details. Remember the defense of the Cuban Five is the concrete manifestation of the defense of the Cuban Revolution. Venceramos! Free The Cuban Five-Ahora!

*May 1968, Student Power and the Working Class- A "Generation Of '68" Commentary

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the Students For a Democratic Society (SDS), Old Believers edition.

Commentary

I just recently posted a note passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee concerning some student activity at Evergreen State College in Washington (Defend the Evergreen State College 6, June 7, 2008). There a number of students have been charged with offenses stemming from an incident last winter. Those charges, brought after what appears to be a police riot on that small out-of-the-way liberal campus, should be dropped. Moreover, ominously, the Evergreen State College administration has banned a chapter of the Students For A Democratic Society (SDS) from campus. The details are fuzzy but some students have staged an occupation (shades of Columbia 1968?). Any more up-to-date information is welcome here. Again, all militants must call for the defense of the right of leftist political organizations to exist on campus. Those are the minimum demands we pose today around this case.

This case, however, also brings to this old militant’s mind some reflections on the student movement of forty years ago, the campus struggles of the Generation of ’68 that I am seemingly endlessly commenting on this year. One of the slogans that the Evergreen State students have been putting forth is the notion of ‘student power’. I am not quite sure what that entails in the minds of the students out there but I assume that it is some variation of students having more input into the day-to-day operations of the campus. That my friends, in any case, is usually always a good democratic propaganda point to fight around- on the road to socialism. And that combination will, in the end, be the point that I want to make here.

It is rather a truism that politics abhors a vacuum. In a proper political universe the Evergreen struggle would be taken up, as a matter of course, by any workers party worth its salt. Today, in the absence of any other social force committed to speaking in alliance with them the students have correctly moved on their own. Thus, confronted with a non-responsive campus administration the beginning of wisdom for leftist student activists is to demand more say in what is going on, and to be left alone while doing it. However, it is also true that one should try, as previous student generations,in some individual cases willfully so, have not, to learn the lessons of history.

The question of 'student power' is hardly a new one and that is where references to the 1960’s are very germane. The 1960’s on campuses throughout the world represented the highest expression of the fight for student power. There were more theories about students as the ‘new’ working class and about the inviolability of the ‘red’ university than one could shake a stick at. Moreover, many of the early anti-Vietnam War struggles in this country were focused on the campus. The right of students to more say in the university furthermore got fully explored in the famous Columbia occupations led by Mark Rudd and SDS in 1968. In the end, however, power flowed back to the university administration. In Europe, that same year, another student uprising culminating in the May General Strike in France even more dramatically highlighted the struggle for student power. Again, power flowed back to the French capitalist state. Some ‘uppity’ students also ignited earlier struggles in France and other parts of Europe going back to the early 19th century revolutionary movements, and those effort, for the most part, failed as well.

Now that I have paid proper respect to the vices and virtues of student activism we have to come to the question of power. In short, do students control the life of the campuses today? It is almost silly to pose that question at this point. So what is the road forward? For this the May General Strike in France is illustrative. The students led the initial actions but until the social power of the working class was thrown into the balance the students were spinning their wheels. And that is the question of power in a nutshell. Until the issues that engaged the students got linked up to the social power of the working class they could not fundamentally get resolved. Although we know that the French Communist Party, in the end, sold out both workers and students the notion that students, by themselves, could fundamental change society took a beating.

The world-wide impact of the May events in France were moreover reflected in this country. SDS and the bulk radical student movement, including this son of the working class, had previously contemptuously written off the working class as hopelessly bought off or organically incapable of using its social power to change society. Sound familiar? After May the more serious student elements started dusting off their old text books that contained some words about the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx, Lenin, the Bolsheviks and the Russian Revolution. And they were not wrong to do so.

That is what is missing in today’s student analysis of the way to obtain social power, the obviously limitation of the student power slogan. With the demise of the Soviet Union and other workers states the crying need for socialist solutions to the world’s problems, Marxism, communism and the like have been written off as failed experiments. That is why those Evergreen students, as sincere as they are in their struggles, can resurrect the student power slogan without embarrassment.

Let me make a point that shows this problem in graphic detail. Long ago, in the late 1960's, ostensible revolutionaries brought up the slogan on the campuses for worker/student/ teacher control of educational institutions(I believe that it was first brought up by Progressive Labor but I may be wrong). That is, in fact, a correct and worthy slogan. But here is the reality. Under what conditions would that slogan make more than propaganda sense? The answer- in a situation where the campuses were being nationalized under workers control.

Let’s me just present a concrete example, for now, though by way of illustration. Make a call for the nationalization of Harvard, as the young revolutionaries of the Spartacus Youth Clubs do today. But do not link that call with the struggle for a workers party and a workers government. Now, I hope, you get the point. The bourgeoisie will no more voluntarily nationalize its Harvards, its traditional sacred stomping grounds for creating its administrative elite than it will do any other progressive things. To challenge their exclusive 'right' to do so sounds to these ears like something that, in the end, can only be resolved by civil war. Under those conditions can students struggle for power by themselves? To pose the question is to give the answer. Students, right now, today make the leap and link up your struggles with those of the working class. Or, and I will play the role of professor now- at least think about it. Meanwhile- Defend the Evergreen State College 6!

*The Torch Singer's Torch Singer-Billie Holiday-Lady Day To Lighten Your Day

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Billie Holiday performing Strange Fruit.

DVD REVIEW

Billie’s Best, Polygram Records, 1992

In my book, and I am hardly alone on this, Billie Holiday is the torch singer's torch singer. Maybe it is the phrasing on her best songs. That well-placed hush. Maybe it is the unbreakable link between her voice when she is on a roll and the arrangements. Hell, maybe in the end it was the dope but, by Jesus, she could sing a modern ballad of love, lost or both like no other. And if it was the dope, let me say this- a `normal' nice singer could sing for a hundred years and never get it right, the way Billie could get it right when she was at her best. Dope or no dope. Was she always at her best? Hell no, as the current compilation makes clear. These recordings done between 1945 and her death in 1959 for Verve show the highs but also the lows as the voice faltered a little and the dope put the nerves on edge toward the end.

Many of the songs on the current compilation are technically sound, a few not, as is to be expected on such re-mastering. You will like Come Rain or Come Shine, Stars Fell On Alabama and Stormy Blues. A tear will come to your eye with Some Other Spring and East of the Sun. The surprise of the package is Speak Low, a sultry song with tropical background beat. That one is very good, indeed.

One last word- I have occasionally mentioned my love of Billie Holiday's music to younger acquaintances. Some of their responses reflecting, I think, the influence of the movie version of her life (Lady Sings the Blues with Diana Ross) or some unsympathetic black history 'uplift' type views on her life have written her off as an 'addled' doper. Here is my rejoinder- If when I am blue and need a pick me-up and put on a Billie platter (CD)and feel better then, my friends, I do not give a damn about the dope. Enough said.

*In The Shadow Of The Great Blues Guitarists- Joe Louis Walker & His Bosstalkers

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip pf Joe Louis Walker's cover of the Big Joe Turner sassy classic "Rebecca".


DVD Review

Joe Louis Walker & His Bosstalkers: In Concert, Joe Louis Walker and various sidemen, Gema Productions, 2003

I have gone through the repertoire of blues great-John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Lightnin’ Hopkins and so on in this space over the last period. I have not included the artists under review, Joe Louis Walker & His Bosstalkers and with reason. Although Joe Louis played with all of the above named artists of the electric blues pantheon he, off of this performance, does not belong there. On the second or third level, yes. No question that he is a virtuoso guitar player-behind someone else. Nothing wrong with that, right? Here in this 1991 concert the stick outs are “I Didn’t Know”, “The Gift’ and “One Time Around”. Good solid blues but nothing to turn your head or stop what you are doing like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy or John Lee REQUIRE you to do.

***********

Blues Survivor
This is the title track from his Verve/Gitanes CD, recorded in 1992 in California. In this funky song he tells of the obstacles he had to overcome in his career; keeping the blues alive, as it were, while the blues were keeping him alive.

True blues survivor

I'm a true blues survivor, I'm proud I am
I tried a little bit of this and a little bit of that
Searching for something that would be right for me
Tryin' to find some place where I belong at
I tried a little rock, I tried a little roll
I tried a little top hit(?) and I tried a little soul
Hey hey you don't know what it's like
Fightin' the powers all of my life
I've got my own way of walkin'
My own way of talkin'
I'll do what I want and I'll do what I like
Yeah yeah

Sixteen years old, I'm fresh outa school
Tryin' to figure out what I wanna do
I couldn't find no work and I couldn't stay at home
The only thing to do was to sing the blues
I practise every day, go travellin' every night
Tryin' not to get it wrong, I'm still tryin' to get it right
Hey hey you don't know what I've done
All my life I've beren under the gun
I wanna do my own drivin'
I'm true blues survivin'
And that's what's keepin' me strong strong strong
Yeah yeah

(solo)

(I'm a true blues survivor)
I've been left in distress up sky high
(I'm a true blues survivor)
I've been busted and mistrusted, left by myself
(I'm a true blues survivor)
I've been up, I've been down, left all around
(I'm a true blues survivor)
I been busted, mistrusted, I been up, I been down,
locked in, left out, kept me hangin' around
(I'm a true blues survivor)
(I'm a true blues survivor)
(I'm a true blues survivor)




Mama Didn't Raise No Fool
This song can be found on the CD "The Gift" (Hightone Records, 1988)

Mama didn't raise no fool (D. Walker - J. L. Walker)


If I was a fool, it would sure be easy
I could fall, oh baby, for your wicked smile
Buy you a drink, whisper some lie, oh no
And we could go somewhere quiet, for a little while

But my mama she didn't raise no fool
She said, you be careful what you do
Don't let no-one take advantage of you
But my mama she didn't raise no fool
No fool

If I was a fool, I'd forget those promises I already have made
Wipe my woman from my mind, so we could play, oh baby
If I was a fool, I'd follow you home
I would hug you, kiss you and squeeze you, all night long

But no...
My mama she didn't raise no fool
She said, you be careful what you do
Don't let no-one take advantage of you
Cause my ma she didn't raise no fool


Moanin' News
From his Hightone Records CD "Cold Is The Night", a J. L. Walker composition with an intriguing, suggestive title.

There once was a man, who loved to sing the blues
He'd two pair of pants and just one pair of shoes
But when he's moan that lowdown dirty blues
People come a-runnin' from miles around
Just to hear what he was puttin' down
That is why they call him
The moanin' news
The moanin' news

Late at night, when he start to make his move
He irons his pants, and shines those pair of shoes
And then he moan that gutbucket downhome blues
People would begin to jump and shout
After they had heard what he was talkin' about
That is why they call him
The moanin' blues
The moanin' blues

He starts to moan
He said "A-hoo... A-hoo..."
He start to moan
He said "A-hoo... A-hoo..."
People come a-runnin' from far away
Just to hear what the man had to say
That is why they call him
The moanin' blues
The moanin' blues

Later on, when he finally found success
He come back home, and tried to get some rest
And he could moan, that funky urban blues
Now that you're in, you turn on your TV
You never guessed who you might see
The man they used to call
The moanin' blues
The moanin' blues
The moanin' blues
The moanin' blues


Shade Tree Mechanic
This song was written by Henry Oden, Joe Louis' long-time bass player. It's on the CD "The Gift".

I want you to put me under your shade tree
Please get me out of the sun
I want you to put me under your shade tree
Please get me out of the sun
Cause I'm your shade tree mechanic
And heaven knows that I'm the one

I can oil and lube you
And not lose a single drop, no no
I can cool you down
When you start to runnin' hot
I'm your shade tree mechanic
I never leave my shady spot

I can check your battery baby
With my special pressure gage
My work is guaranteed
Guaranteed for thirty days
I want you to put me under your shade tree
Please get me out of the sun
Cause I'm your shade tree mechanic
And heaven knows I'm the one

(guitar solo)

I want you to put me under your shade tree
Please get me out of the sun
I want you to put me under your shade tree
Please get me out of the sun
Cause I'm your shade tree mechanic
And heaven knows I'm the one

You say your drive shaft may misfire
Your piston rod is running flat
Don't you worry about a thing
I got the tools for that
I want you to put me under your shade tree
Please get me out of the sun
My work is guaranteed
I've got just what you need
You can call me day or night
I'll always treat u right
I am the one

Ten More Shows To Play
Another blues about being a blues singer, from the CD "Cold Is The Night" (Hightone Records, 1986)

Ten More Shows To Play (D. Walker - L. Fulson)

Tonight I'm in Houston, then Dallas and L.A.
My woman need me with her but I got ten more shows to play
How long 'fore she'll ask me to choose
Between her lovin' and these ever lovin' blues

I've hit the road before, she never once complained
This time she was cryin' when I got on the plane
I'm hopin' and I'm prayin' she can wait and be true
And not be discouraged without the things we used to do
How long 'fore she'll ask me to choose
Between her lovin' and these ever lovin' blues
All right...

I'm sittin' here in misery, you know I'm on the spot
That woman and this guitar is all I've really got
How long 'fore she'll ask me to choose
Between her lovin' and these ever lovin' blues

Tonight I'm in Houston, then Dallas and L.A.
My woman need me with her but I got ten more shows to play