It Do Not Mean A Thing If You Ain’t Got
That Swing-With Swing-master Benny Goodman In Mind
CD Review
By Zack James
[This is an on-going conversation
between several aging males who back in the day were corner boys together growing
up in the poor working class Acre section of Riverdale some miles outside of
Boston. The theme of the remembrances is related to rock and roll and other musical
influences and the exact date, place and scenario where certain seminal experiences
occurred-Listen in- Z. J.]
“Jesus, now that you mentioned Mr.
Lawrence, our seventh grade music teacher, I am starting to remember some other
stuff about the guy, about what a creep he was trying to break us from our
unbreakable bond with rock and roll,” Seth Garth said to Jack Callahan as they
both hoisted their three, or was it fourth, double scotch with water chaser, an
old habit for both of them since the chaser made the drink last longer in the
old days when they were short of dough and were sipping their drinks to stretch
out the evening. The gist of what Seth had told Jack was in response to Jack’s
remembering the very first time that they had heard Woody Guthrie and what song
they had learned first. That gist of talk was based on Seth, an old time folk
music critic, mainly for The Eye out
on the West Coast having recently seen in a folk magazine the announcement that
the Smithsonian/Folkway operation was finally putting out a treasure trove in
four CDs of some Woody Guthrie songs recorded by Moses Asch during World War
II. Seth for the life of him could not remember what song he had heard and when
of Guthrie’s and so he had called upon Jack to meet him at their favorite watering
hole the Erie Grille in Riverdale where they both were now residing (and after
varying absences had grown up in the town). Jack had answered that it had been
in Mr. Lawrence’s seventh grade music class and the song had been the
alternative national anthem-This Land Is
Your Land.
The method to Mr. Lawrence’s madness,
to ween the kids off of rock and roll, had gone beyond trying to foist silly
folk music off on them but to drown them in any other kind of music he could
think to distract, or attempt to distract them with, especially during lunch
when they played their transistor radios and drove him crazy with their rock
and roll. A few times, if you could believe this he tried to get them
interested in jazz, in swing music, what each and every one of them considered
the music that their parents listen to and which had driven them to the
transistors in the first place. Worse, worse of all he had tried to get his
charges interested in the music of Benny Goodman, the so-called “king of
swing.” That was all Seth needed to hear as he blurted out in front of the
class “My mother and father dance to that pokey stuff on Saturday nights and
they are barely moving when they dance. I am not going to listen to that here.”
Needless to say Seth stayed after school a number of afternoons for his
transgression. But he felt vindicated in what he had uttered and took the
punishment like a soldier.
Still it did no good as Mr. Lawrence
played something called Blue Skies
which was his parents’ “their song.” Something else by a guy named Cole Porter
that Benny Goodman made famous. It got no better when Mr. Lawrence played stuff
with Peggy Lee because to his mother’s chagrin his father had “crush” on old
Peggy and Seth had to secretly admit that she was kind of sexy looking at that.
But that was then. A few nights after
Seth and Jack were cutting up old touches, after drinking themselves to
melancholia, Seth went to the library and picked up an old Benny Goodman CD
with plenty of American Songbook stuff on it. Guess what old Seth, old rock and
roll devotee Seth with an overhang of folk, blues, and a little mountain music
started to pop his fingers to the beat, started laughing to himself that he
know knew what they meant when they said “it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t
got that swing.” And they were right. Just ask Benny,
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