The
Blues Aint Nothing But Lucille On Your Mind- With The Late B.B. King’s
Lucille In Mind-Take Two
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
Here
is the drill. Bart Webber had started out life, started out as a captive nation
child listening to singers like Frank Sinatra who blew away all of the swirling,
fainting, screaming bobbysoxers who really did wear bobby sox since the war was
on and nylons were like gold, of his mother’s generation proving that his own
generation, the generation that came of age to Elvis hosannas although to show
human progress they threw their undergarments his way, was not some
sociological survey aberration before he, Frank, pitter-pattered the Tin Pan Alley crowd with
hip Cole Porter champagne lyrics changed from sweet sister cocaine originally
written when that was legal, when you could according to his grandmother who
might have known since she faced a lifetime of pain could be purchased over the
counter at Doc’s Drugstore although Doc had had no problem passing him his
first bottle of hard liquor when he was only sixteen which was definitely
underage, to the bubbly reflecting changes of images in the be-bop swinging
reed scare Cold War night, Bing Crosby, not the Bing of righteous Brother,
Can You Spare A Dime? when he spoke a little to the social concerns of the
time and didn’t worry about Yip Harburg some kind of red pinko bastard raising
hell among the workers and homeless guy who slogged through World War I but White Christmas put to sleep stuff
dreaming of very white Christmases along with “come on to my house” torchy who
seemed to have been to some Doc’s Drugstore to get her own pains satisfied Rosemary
Clooney (and to his brother, younger I think, riding his way, Bob and his
Bobcats as well), the Inkspots spouting, sorry kit-kating scat ratting If I
Didn’t Care and their trademark spoken verse on every song, you know three
verses and they touched up the bridge (and not a soul complained at least
according to the record sales for a very long time through various incantations
of the group), Miss Patti Page getting dreamy about local haunt Cape Cod Bay in
the drifty moonlight a place he was very familiar with in those Plymouth drives
down Route 3A and yakking about some
doggie in the window, Jesus (although slightly better on Tennessee Waltz
maybe because that one spoke to something, spoke to the eternal knot question,
a cautionary tale about letting your friend cut in on your gal, or guy and
walking away with the dame or guy leaving you in the lurch), Miss Rosemary
Clooney, solo this time, telling one and all to jump and come to her house as
previously discussed, Miss Peggy Lee trying to get some no account man to do
right, do right by his woman (and swinging and swaying on those Tin Pan Alley
tunes of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, the Gershwin brothers and Jerome Kern best
with Benny Goodman in wartime 1940s which kept a whole generation of popular
singers with a scat of material), the Andrew Sisters yakking about their
precious rums and cokes (soft drinks, not cousin, thank you remember what was
said above about the switch in time from sweet sister to bathtub gin), the
McGuire Sisters getting misty-eyed, the Dooley sisters dried-eyed, and all the
big swing bands from the 1940s like Harry James, Tommy Dorsey (and his brother
Jimmy who had his own band for some reason, maybe sibling rivalry, look it up
if you like) as background music on the family radio in the 1950s.
The
radio which his mother, Delores of the many commands, more commandments than
even old Moses come down the mountain imposed on his benighted people, of the
many sorrows, sorrows maybe that she had picked a husband more wisely in the
depths of her mind although don’t tell him, the husband, his hard-pressed
father or that she had had to leave her own family house over on Young Street with
that damn misbegotten Irish red-nosed father, and the many estrangements,
something about the constant breaking of those fucking commandments, best saved
for another day, always had on during the day to get her through her “golden
age of working class prosperity” and single official worker, dad, workaday
daytime household world” and on Saturday night too when that dad, Prescott,
joined in.
Joined
in so they, mother and father sloggers and not only through the Great
Depression and World War II but into the golden age too, could listen to Bill Marley
on local radio station WJDA and his Memory Lane show from seven to
eleven where they could listen to the music that got them (and their
generation) through the “from hunger” times of the 1930s Great Depression (no
mean task not necessarily easier than slogging through that war coming on its
heels) and when they slogged through (either in some watery European
theater or the Pacific atoll island one take your pick) or anxiously waited at
home for the other shoe to drop during World War II. A not unusual occurrence,
that shoe dropping, when the lightly trained, rushed to battle green troops
faced battle-hardened German and Japanese soldiers until they got the knack of
war on bloody mudded fronts and coral-etched islands but still too many Gold
Star mothers enough to make even the war savages shed a tear.
Bart,
thinking back on the situation felt long afterward that he would have been
wrong if he said that Delores and Prescott should not have had their memory
music after all of that Great Depression sacking and war rationing but frankly
that stuff then (and now, now that he had figured some things out about them,
about how hard they tried and just couldn’t do better given their circumstances
but too later to have done anything about the matter, although less so) made
him grind his teeth. But he, and his three brothers, were a captive audience
then and so to this very day he could sing off Rum and Coca Cola, Don’t
Sit Under The Apple Tree (the Glenn Miller version not the Andrew Sister’s)
and Vera Lynn’s White Cliffs of Dover from memory. But that was not his
music, okay. (Nor mine either since we grew up in the same working class
neighborhood in old Carver, the cranberry bog capital of the world, together
and many nights in front of Hank’s Variety store we would blow steam before we
got our very own transistor radios and record players about the hard fact that
we could not turn that radio dial, or shut off that record player, under
penalty of exile from Main Street.)
Then
of course since we are speaking about the 1950s came the great musical
break-out, the age of classic rock and roll which Bart “dug” (his term since he
more than the rest of us who hung around Jimmy Jack’s Clam Shack on Main Street
[not the diner on Thornton Street, that would be later when the older guys
moved on and we stepped up in their places in high school] was influenced by
the remnant of the “beat” generation minute as it got refracted in Carver via
his midnight sneak trips to Harvard Square, trips that broke that mother
commandment number who knows what number), seriously dug to the point of
dreaming his own jailbreak commandment dreams about rock star futures (and
girls hanging off every hand, yeah, mostly the girls part as time went on once
he figured out his voice had broken around thirteen and that his slightly
off-key versions of the then current hits would not get him noticed on the
mandatory American Bandstand, would not get him noticed even if he was
on key) but that Elvis-etched time too was just a bit soon for him, us, to be
able to unlike Bart’s older brother, Payne, call that stuff the music that he,
I came of age to.
Although
the echoes of that time still run through his, our, minds as we recently proved
yet again when we met in Boston at a ‘60s retro jukebox bar and could
lip-synch, quote chapter and verse, One Night With You (Elvis
version, including the salacious One Night Of Sin original), Sweet
Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry, of course, too bad he couldn’t keep his hands
off those begging white girls when the deal went down and Mister wanted no
interracial sex, none, and so send him to hell and back), Let’s Have A Party
( by the much underrated Wanda Jackson who they could not figure out
how to produce, how to publicize -female Elvis with that sultry look and that
snarl or sweet country girl with flowers in her hair and “why thank you Mister
Whoever for having me on your show I am thrilled” June Carter look ),
Be-Bop-a-Lula (Gene Vincent in the great one hit wonder night, well almost
one hit, but what a hit when you want to think back to the songs that made you
jump, made you a child of rock and roll), Bo Diddley (Bo, of course, who
had long ago answered the question of who put the rock in rock and roll and who
dispute his claim except maybe Ike Turner when he could flailed away on Rocket 88), Peggy Sue (too soon
gone Buddy Holly) and a whole bunch more.
The
music that Bart really called his own though, as did I, although later we were
to part company since I could not abide, still can’t abide, that whiny music
dealing mainly with mangled murders, death, thwarted love, and death, or did I
say that already, accompanied by, Jesus, banjos, mandos and harps, was the
stuff from the folk minute of the 1960s which dovetailed with his, our coming
of chronological, political and social age, the latter in the sense of
recognizing, if not always acting on, the fact that there were others, kindred,
out there beside us filled with angst, alienation and good will to seek solidarity
with which neither of us tied up with knots with seven seals connected with
until later after getting out of our dinky hometown of Carver and off into the
big cities and campus towns where just at that moment there were kindred by the
thousands with the same maladies and same desire to turn the world upside
down.
By
the way if you didn’t imbibe in the folk minute or were too young what I mean
is the mountain tunes of the first generation of the Carter Family coming out
of Clinch Mountain, Buell Kazell, a guy you probably never heard of and haven’t
missed much except some history twaddle that Bart is always on top of (from the
Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music times), Jimmy Rodgers the
Texas yodeler who found fame at the same time as the Carters in old Podunk
Bristol, Tennessee, the old country Child ballads (Northwest Europe old country
collected by Child in Cambridge in the 1850s and taken up in that town again
one hundred years later in some kind of act, conscious or unconscious, of
historical affinity), the blue grass music (which grabbed Bart by the throat
when Everett Lally, a college friend of his and member of the famed Lally
Brothers blue grass band let him in on his treasure trove of music from that
genre which he tried to interest me in one night before I cut him short
although Everett was a cool guy, very cool for a guy from the hills and hollows
of Appalachia). Protest songs too, protest songs against the madnesses of the
times, nuclear war, brushfire war in places like Vietnam, against Mister James
Crow’s midnight hooded ways, against the barbaric death penalty, against a lot
of what songwriter Malvina Reynolds called the “ticky-tack little cookie-cutter
box” existences all of us were slated for if nothing else turned up by the
likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Dave Von Ronk and Phil Ochs. Bart
said that while he was in college (Boston College, the Jesuit school which was
letting even heathen Protestants like Bart in as long as the they did not try
to start the Reformation, again on their dime, or could play football) the
latter songs (With God On Our Side, Blowin’ In The Wind, The Time They Are
A-Changing, I Ain’t Marching No More, Universal Soldier and stuff like
that) that drove a lot of his interest once he connected their work with the
Harvard Square coffeehouse scene (and the adjacent hanging out at the
Hayes-Bickford Cafeteria which he has written plenty about elsewhere and need
not detain us here where he hung on poverty nights, meaning many nights.
Bart
said a lot of the drive toward folk music was to get out from under the
anti-rock and rock musical counter-revolution that he, we although I just kept
replaying Elvis and the crowd until the new dispensation arrived, kept hearing
on his transistor radio during that early 1960s period with pretty boy singers
(Fabian, a bunch of guys named Bobby, the Everly Brothers) and vapid young
female consumer-driven female singer stuff (oh, you want names, well Sandra
Dee, Brenda Lee, Patsy Cline, Leslie Gore say no more). I passed that time,
tough time it was in that cold winter night where the slightest bit of free
spirit was liable to get you anywhere from hell form commandment mother to the
headmaster to some ill-disposed anonymous rabid un-American committee which
would take your livelihood away in a snap if you didn’t come across with names
and addresses and be quick about it just ask the Hollywood Ten and lesser
mortals if you think I am kidding which I agreed was a tough time in the rock
genre that drove our desires, feeling crummy for not having a cool girlfriend
to at least keep the chill night out playing my by the midnight phone classic
rock and roll records almost to death and worn down grooves and began to hear a
certain murmur from down South and out in Chicago with a blues beat that I
swear sounded like it came out of the backbeat of rock. (And I was not wrong, found out one night to Bart’s
surprise and mine that Smiley Jackson big loving tune that I swear Elvis ripped
off and just snarled and swiveled up. Years later I was proven right in my
intuition when it turned out that half of rock and roll depended on black guys
selling scant records, “race records” to small audiences.)
Of
course both of us, Bart and me, with that something undefinable which set us
apart from others like Frankie Riley the leader of the corner boy night who
seemed to get along by going along, being nothing but prime examples of those
alienated teenagers whom the high-brow sociologists were fretting about, hell,
gnawing at their knuckles since the big boys expected them to earn all that
research money by spotting trends not letting the youth of the nation go to
hell in a handbasket without a fight, worried that we were heading toward
nihilism, toward some “chicken run” death wish or worse, much worse like Johnny
Wild Boy and his gang marauding hapless towns at will leaving the denizens
defenseless against the horde and not sure what to do about it, worried about
our going to hell in a handbasket like they gave a fuck, like our hurts and
depressions were what ailed the candid world although I would not have
characterized that trend that way for it would take a few decades to see what
was what. Then though the pretty boy and vapid girl music just gave me a
headache, a migraine if anybody was asking, but mostly nobody was. Bart
too although like I said we split ways as he sought to seek out roots music
that he kept hearing in the coffeehouses and on the radio once he found a
station out of Providence (accidently)
which featured such folk music and got intrigued by the sounds.
Part
of that search in the doldrums, my part but I dragged Bart along a little when
I played to his folkie roots interests after he found out that some of the
country blues music would get some play on that folk music station, a big
search over the long haul, was to get deeply immersed in the blues, mainly at
first country blues and later the city, you know, Chicago blues. Those country
guys though intrigued me once they were “discovered” down south in little towns
plying away in the fields or some such work and were brought up to Newport for
the famous folk festival there, the one where we would hitchhike to the first
time since we had no car when Steve when
balked at going to anything involving, his term “ faggy guys and ice queen
girls” (he was wrong, very wrong on the later point, the former too but guys in
our circle were sensitive to accusations of “being light on your feet” and let
it pass without comment) to enflame a new generation of aficionados. The likes
of Son House the mad man preacher-sinner man, Skip James with that falsetto
voice singing out about how he would rather be with the devil than to be that
woman’s man, a song that got me into trouble with one girl when I mentioned it
kiddingly one time to her girlfriend and I got nothing but the big freeze after
that and as recently a few years when I
used that as my reason when I was asked if would endorse Hilary Clinton for
President, Bukka White (sweating blood and salt on that National Steel on Aberdeen
Mississippi Woman and Panama Limited which you can see via YouTube), and, of course Creole
Belle candy man Mississippi John Hurt.
But
those guys basically stayed in the South went about their local business and
vanished from big view until they were “discovered” by folk aficionados who headed
south in the late 1950s and early 1960s looking for, well, looking for roots,
looking for something to hang onto and it took a younger generation, guys
who came from the Mister James Crow’s South and had learned at their feet or through
old copies of their records like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the guy whose
photograph graces this sketch, the late B.B. King, to make the move north, to
follow the northern star like in underground railroad days to the big
industrial cities (with a stop at Memphis on Beale Street to polish up their
acts, to get some street wise-ness in going up river, in going up the Big Muddy
closer to its source as if that would give them some extra boost, some wisdom)
to put some electric juice in those old guitars and chase my blues away just by
playing like they too had, as the legendry Robert Johnson is said to have done one
dark out on Highway 61 outside of Clarksville down in the Delta, made their own
pacts with the devil. And made a lot of angst and alienation just a shade more
bearable.
B.B.
King was by no means my first choice among electrified bluesmen, Muddy Waters
and in a big way Howlin’ Wolf, especially after I found out the Stones were
covering his stuff (and Muddy’s) got closer to the nut for me, But B.B.
on his good days and when he had Lucille (whichever version he had to
hand I understand there were several generations for one reason or another) he
got closer to that feeling that the blues could set me free when I was, well,
blue, could keep me upright when some woman was two-timing me, or worst was
driving me crazy with her “do this and do that” just for the sake of seeing who
was in charge, could chase away some bad dreams when the deal went down.
Gave
off an almost sanctified, not like some rural minster sinning on Saturday night
with the women parishioners in Johnny Shine’s juke joint and then coming up for
air Sunday morning to talk about getting right with the Lord but like some old
time Jehovah river water cleaned, sense of time and place, after a hard juke
joint or Chicago tavern Saturday night and when you following that devil minister
showed up kind of scruffy for church early Sunday morning hoping against hope
that the service would be short (and that Minnie Callahan would be there a few
rows in front of you so you could watch her ass and get through the damn thing.
B.B. might not have been my number one but he stretched a big part of that arc.
Praise be.
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