In The Beginning Was The Jug- The Jim
Kweskin Jug Band
By Sam Lowell
No question I was, am, a central figure
in the still on-going fallout over the purge, and that is exactly the right
term although half the writers here who were down and dirty in the fight prefer
to tell the tale that the previous site manger “retired.” Like Allan Jackson,
yes, I am using his given name despite the notice from new site manager Greg
Green that we were in the future in the interest of “moving on” not to mention
him by name or speak of his accomplishments (presumably Allan’s down sides are
still fair game), would voluntarily retire from something he helped create and
loved. I also acknowledge here that although I was Allan closest and longest
known friend going back to elementary school that I sided with the young rebel
writers, the self-styled “Young Turks” although I hate that term when it came
to choosing sides.
Allan was getting more and more wrapped
into some 1960s and forget the rest thing that disturbed me no end as I
continually told him especially when he went over the edge in
that overkill of the 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love, 1967
stuff. So when I “conspired” with the younger writers (some of who had before
Allan went hog wild over the situation never heard of the event, were to young
to give fuck about the legendary in the mist 1960s) I told everyone straight up
that this would have to be a purge-no quotation marks needed. We, he and I, had
come up in the rough and tumble of radical 1960s politics so Allan knew that my
defection meant only one thing if we were to be successful. He would be out, in
exile, although don’t believe all that stuff about him being holed up Utah sucking
up to Mitt Romney and that white underwear Mormon crowd or Kansas with the
hard-shell flat-landers that is just urban legend stuff he, or somebody at his
direction, made up to make this whole thing seem like a Stalinist coup and he,
Leon Trotsky-like suffered defeat and exile in some American Siberia for his
efforts. I know my Allan and I would not be surprised that a counterattack
against me and the blog will come any day.
As part of the change
in course and presumably as a safeguard against things going haywire like they
began to do under the Jackson regime Greg initiated on his own a seven member
Editorial Board to filter ideas and motions through. Some people, some
opponents have called the board a group of toadies and “yes” people for
whatever Greg has in mind. That is their opinion. In any case I was asked to
sit on the board and I have along with several younger writers and one of the
older writers who had abstained on the Jackson removal vote (there were several
abstentions by older writers which makes me think I was not alone in thinking
Allan had gone over the edge but didn’t want to buck him for any number of
reasons. I would argue that had any one of them voted for Allan then my
“desertion” would have meant nothing except I might have been the guy rumored
to be in Utah or Kansas. Such is life.)
Although the board is
up and running for a few months now it has only been asked to approve one
item-the “erasing” of Allan’s name from this site in the interest of whatever
Greg thought that served. I have been around enough to know that it is beyond
poor form to “erase” the past especially on a site dedicated to putting a big
shining light on that past particularly the parts that get short shrift in the
history books and mainstream media. I voted “no,” the lone dissenter with that one
older writer’s abstention which may be his mode of operation on tough questions.
Maybe that dissent will put me in better grace with Allan.
I took this jug band,
Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band assignment because I am still crazy about this
kind of music and because at least three of the original members of the band,
Jim, Geoff, Maria are still performing occasionally together but usually
individually and over the past several years I have seen them in various
admittedly small venues around Greater Boston. I was surprised though when Greg
mentioned to me that he no longer wanted to see pieces about “f—king” jug band
music in the future and that this would be the last time he would let it pass
since nobody under about the age of sixty gave a damn about this kind of music
anymore.
Since Greg is
considerable younger than I am I could see where it did not mean anything to
him when he was growing up in Westchester County in New York but to cancel out
in advance any reference to an important part of Americana in the 1920s and the
revival in the 1960s seems short-sighted. Allan who also was crazy for jug
music and who turned me onto the stuff in high school when he took me and our
dates to the Unicorn Coffeehouse in Back Bay Boston to hear the legendary
Harper Valley Boys do their jug, washtub, wringer magic. I will be bucking Greg
a little on this one if I can find a spot to sneak a jug piece in.
Finally, and this
part has nothing directly to do with jug music or anything else that has been
presented here over the past almost fifteen years of this blog’s existence and
prior to that the hard copy of it and it predecessors. I, like a number of
irritated readers and a not a few writers have grown tired of seeing more than
enough coverage of the internal crisis of the past few months here leading to
the new regime. This new mandate by Greg with the majority of the Ed Board’s
approval of “erasing” Allan Jackson’s name and work is kind of a watershed
making me think the whole public airing has gone too far. Moreover the story is
all over the place depending on who has their hackles up. This must stop and a
return to ordinary commentary and reviews is in order.
As a decisive member
of the Editorial Board I have been able to negotiate with Greg a truce, an
“armed truce” as one older wag put it which seems strange since the majority of
personnel here have some very strong anti-war views. The “truce” has two parts.
The first- all articles now in the pipeline, about fifteen, can carry whatever
commentary about the internal dispute the writer wants to talk about. In return
after that amnesty lot is posted there will be no overt references to the
previous site manager or his achievements or failures. The second is that I
will write as probably the most knowledgeable person around about all aspects
of this publication and its personnel a full history of the site and of the
internal dispute to be after it completion referenced in the archives as such
for anybody to cite and refer others to -either writer or scholar. No guidance
was given about how to do this task but I have decided to cut it up among the
various parts of the American Songbook series which the jug band piece below is
one example and then post the whole thing with comments from the two Ed Board
members Greg has assigned to me for this work.
********
Who knows how it happened maybe
somebody in the band looked up some songs in the album archives, or found some
gem in some record store, an institution that sustained many for hours back
then in the cusp of the 1960s folk revival when there were record stores on
almost every corner in places like Harvard Square and you could find some gems
if you searched long enough and found Harry Smith’s Anthology of American
Folk Music (although sometimes the search was barren or, maybe worse,
something by Miss Patti Page or Tennessee Ernie Ford stared you in the face).
From there they found, maybe Cannon’s Stompers, the Mississippi Sheiks or the
Memphis Jug Band, saw they could prosper going back to those days if they kept
the arrangements simple, and that was that.
See, everybody then was looking for
roots, American music roots, old country roots, roots of some ancient thoughts
of a democratic America before the robber barons and their progeny grabbed
everything with every hand. And that search was no accident, at least from the
oral history evidence having grown up with rock and roll and found in that
minute that genre wanting. Some went reaching South to the homeland of
much roots music and found some grizzled old geezers who had made a small name
for themselves in the 1920s when labels like RCA and Paramount went out looking
for talent in the hinterlands.
So there was history there, certainly
for the individual members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim, Geoff Muldaur, Mel
Lymon, Maria Muldaur, Fritz Richmond , all well-versed in many aspects of the
American Songbook (hell, I would say so, even old tacky Irving Berlin got a
hearing), history there for the taking. All they needed was a jug, a good old
boy homemade corn liquor jug giving the best sound and so they were off, off to
conquer places like Harvard Square, like the Village, like almost any place in
the Bay area. And for a while they did, picking up chimes, kazoos, harmonicas,
what the heck, even standard guitars and they made great music, great
entertainment music, not heavy with social messages but just evoking those long
lost spirits from the 1920s when jug music would sustain a crowd on a Saturday
night. Yeah, in the beginning was the jug…
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