This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
The Christmas Truce of 1914--A Poem by Richard Greve
It was early in the war and early in their lives, but they already knew that their oh-so-brave leaders had sent them to the slaughter, with cheering crowds, no less. Blind and dumb a continent goes mad with lust-for-war disease.
In the muddy holes they dug, lice crawling under caps, and coughing from cold, they stopped the madness for a few days respite, to celebrate the prince of peace that their royal leaders gave lipservice to on Sunday morning. They sang some songs. drank a soothing drug they shared to find a little peace. They played some ball (they were so young) and went back to muddy holes to sleep a final silent night.
It could not last, their leaders, in their cozy beds, would make sure of that. For four more years the slaughter reigned and holes were dug in rows for them, for their eternal sunless beds, in the lonely fields of France that don't remember or redeem.
The Shadow Knows, Knows Nada, Nada Nunca, Nada As Legend-Slayer Will Bradley Steps Up His Game-With Alex Baldwin’s “The Shadow” (1994) In Mind-A Film Review, Of Sorts
By Will Bradley
The Shadow, starring Penelope Ann Miller, Alex Baldwin, John Lone, 1994
How the mighty have fallen. As the constant reader knows I have been on a tear the past year or so beginning with the expose of the legend around one Sherlock Holmes (where I locked horns with old man Seth Garth in an epic fourteen movie review struggle which between us left nothing much left of that silly so-called private detective and his boyfriend or whatever their relationship), or whatever his name really was since the London police files show Larry Lawrence on its books when he was arrested for transporting stolen goods and about thirty other similar charges and a couple more serious like conspiracy to murder which he and a few others did serious time for in Dartmoor, and his dear friend Doc Watson whose real name was Nigel something but don’t get hung up on names when dealing with legends since their various activities require such or their well-paid and padded press agents decided to spruce up their desperado names to appeal to the public’s fancy.
I won’t bore the reader with the litany of those whose reputations, over-inflated, bloated, undeserved or just plain false, lies so brazen that even a priest would be hard-pressed to give absolution, have been crushed and they are now ready for the trash barrel of history. I have taken my righteous campaign going back as far as Robin Hood and his press agent’s coverup of his nefarious doings when he came into some dough. This Robin Hood, for the record real name Robert Locklear or Lockwood the manse records are messy and show both spellings, for example, who was nothing but a gouging rack-renter once his patron King Richard, aka the Lion-Hearted, gave him plenty of acreage for services rendered and he became as oppressive a landlord in his lofty manor as any country squire. Forgot about those yeomen bandits who helped him with his armed robberies of rich and poor alike, whoever dared show their faces in and around Sherwood Forest up in the north of England. Shamed that Lady Marian, real name Holly, by what today would be called “pimping” her to the various courtesan when he found a younger woman, Ophelia.
(I have refused thus far to take on the “big boys and girls,” the ancient Greeks and Romans, the cranky and crazed gods and goddesses for the simple reason that tracing the records is a bear of a job but I do have a lightweight line on Andromeda and Perseus which I am following concerning his alleged fight against the sea serpents to free her which looks like it was a put -up job worked out so he could “gain her favors,” ancient talk for hitting the sheets or however they covered themselves in their pursuit of lust, if they did, did cover themselves)
Here is the exciting news though and should help me a lot moving up the food chain in this crazy quilt pattern and cutthroat profession which I am only now beginning to navigate with some confidence. A recent UCal survey, poll, conducted in association with the well-known Harrison Foundation has shown a decrease in the belief in various legendary figures of late. The survey was simplicity itself with a broad cross section of the population represented, rich, poor, various genders, races a good mix from what I have seen so far in the preliminary report, as the interviewee was asked about his or her belief in some figure, then told to read my or somebody else’s documented research and asked whether they were more likely, less likely or the same to believe in the legend. Almost across the board the ratings for these bums with nothing but high priced press agents and shills touting their deeds went down, especially a guy named Don Juan who legend was made of whole cloth by some pent up in a convent by a rich man’s hormonally-charged daughter and Captain Blood exposed as one of the worse of the worse Middle Passage slave trade transporters (and reportedly the person British painter Turner was thinking of when he painted his masterful “Slave.”)
Naturally in any human endeavor there are failures, failures when people still believe despite all the evidence to the contrary in the validity of something. That was the case with one Johnny Cielo whose legend has kept me up many a night trying to figure out why with all the documentation that I have amassed his ratings actually “spiked” in this latest polling (I should note maybe reflecting the season that belief in angels has also spiked during this period). Fellow writers had shaken their heads when I started this legend-slaying campaign although once I showed them the poll results they have since backed off since especially among the older writers who were knee-deep in backstabbing me for their own purposes, mainly to not fall down the food chain further in my wake. They still though look at me with funny glances around the water cooler when I bring up my troubles breaking the Cielo legend. My whole idea is to get people to think more reasonably to shed their misconceptions, to shed their alternate facts universe in these troubled times when clear heads and clear thinking are necessary. Hence the heavy push against the fake Cielo legend.
A few Cielo details before I go on to my current task of busting up one Lamont Cranston and his shadow game. The genesis of my knowledge of the Cielo legend came from a fellow journalism graduate student who I knew at NYU and whom I had kept in touch with over the past few years. He had been down in Florida, down in the Keys, on an unrelated story which the parties had backed off on, didn’t show up to expose whenever they had to offer (something about CIA conduits to Cuba if I recall). He was sitting in the old Tanner Tavern trying to drown his sorrows and come up with some kind of story to earn his daily bread. While there an older guy, a drunk from the look of him, Billy something (here I really don’t remember the last name) came up and tried to cadge a drink from him.
My guy reluctantly bought him a whiskey, and a few more as the evening wore on, and as a result that loosened up Billy’s tongue about the old days in Key West. The days when Johnny Cielo roamed the space, roamed the skies by day and drank and whored by night. My guy had never heard of Johnny and so Billy spent the better part of an hour describing this and that about Johnny’s place in the early aviation pantheon which every serious aficionado knows about. (That part, the press agent bullshit part is at least true that the cultists know every detail about Johnny, especially in this part of Florida and the South in general)
The rest of the story can be told by the researching I did after my fellow reporter told me the story since he knew I was looking for copy on these so-called legendary characters for my burgeoning by-line. The first tip of the Johnny iceberg was the claim that he has been the first guy to take human flight. This would seem to have been the straw that broke the camel back on the legend since I was able to retrieve a copy of his birth certificate from the Elmira clerk’s office showing one John Richard Cielo to have been born in 1910. The Wright boys did their magic at Kitty Hawk in 1903. The other kind of secondary piece of evidence for Johnny’s early days was that he gave Howard Hughes the idea for TWA and would have made millions if he had stayed with Hughes. The real deal Johnny was basically a low-rent flying mail postman who ran many operations to the ground before he had to hightail it out of the country with guys with guns breathing down his neck, and a reward on his head by some Chicago mobster who he tried to shake down.
That leaving the country is really where the Johnny legend is centered, that and his later so-called exploits before he fell into the sea. Yeah, his leaving for Barranca to run a mail operation down there is when all the bullshit got wings. See he was supposed to have talked movie icon drop-dead beautiful Rita Hayworth into leaving with him before she ran off with the Aga Khan after Johnny ran out of dough-and prospects. The reality. He had met a whore working some joy house in Hoboken named Sarah Lind, remember be wary of the truth of names in this stuff who did look like Rita and went with him figuring she was getting off cheap street with this good-looking guy (so-so, okay looks from the photos). A view of her photos taken later when Johnny’s money had run out and she had too from some men’s magazines, “girlie” magazines shows that her legs were nowhere as good as Rita’s and this tramp didn’t have a tenth of Rita’s style on her best days.
I mentioned that Johnny later, in the late 1950s fell into the ocean, fell into the Gulf of Mexico. That location is important for the last really blasphemous part of the Johnny legend. That he was the guy flying arms and other supplies into Cuba for Fidel, Che and the hermanos and had fallen down into the Caribbean. All the flight manifests from Key West show Johnny flying a Piper Club, Jesus, a freaking tinplate Piper Club, taking well-heeled passengers to Naples down in Florida before he fell into the Gulf. To this day despite every denial by successive Cuban governments and every belief by those who want to see a romantic Amerciano helping the good guys that is the lynchpin of his legacy. That is the basis of the shrine, the heavy money-making shrine in the Keys which Johnny’s estate such as it was established to milk the whole thing for what it was worth. Yes, it will be tough to break that one if all the documentation has provided nothing but a spike in his legend. Damn.
But we must move on to the case of one Lamont Cranston, who claimed until his end at Bellevue where he spent the last twenty years of his life in the indigent ward that he was the so-called Shadow whose task was to rid New York City, also called Gotham, also called Metropolis, of crime and criminals. A one-man wrecking crew, ah, vigilante man. We will crack this one easily although I do feel some trepidation right now thinking that maybe one of the reasons for the durability of the Cielo legend is that he was an American and maybe there is as in a lot of things these days a sense of American exceptionalism, that all the modern recordable American legends have to be true. Baloney. (By the way I should point out that all these one-man or one-woman vigilante operations to rid New York City, Gotham, Metropolis of crime and criminals beyond questioning whatever nefarious motives they have is not borne out by the statistics. Per capita that town’s crime rate was no higher than say Roseville out in Kansas then, maybe now too with the epidemic of opioid addiction flooding the rural parts of the country.)
World War I, Lamont Cranston’s war, I will use that name despite the fact that the only person with that name in the 1920s was on the NYPD police blotter for selling jewelry from a push-cart without a license on 7th Avenue and subsequently for a “bait and switch” con on so-called magic decoder rings, was hard on a whole generation of European and American youth. The effects hit Lamont like a ton of bricks, maybe shell shock is what he had although that diagnosis was in its infant stages back then, made him a Class A junkie before long. But instead of heading to Paris in the 1920s, in the Jazz Age he headed to Tibet and gathered in a serious opium addiction and lustful carryings on with a fistful of concubines-all at one time when he was really high. Then the Lama, Jimmy Lama if I am not mistaken, Lama in any case, took up his case, made him see that he was made for better stuff, made to see the better angel of his nature.
This Lama, no it wasn’t Jimmy but Jerry, yeah, Jerry Lama spent a ton of time giving Lamont the skill set to go back to America, go back to so-called cesspool NYC and clean house, make it livable for average joes to survive. One of the skills he picked up was the ability to transform himself via a joke store nose to look differently when he was doing his whirling dervish Shadow shtick. That and a silly eerie laugh fit in the end more fit for Bellevue than the mean streets of NYC. Yeah, the Shadow knows alright.
I grant that for a while this Cranston caught the public’s imagination although strangely during his escapades the crime rate in Gotham spiked before they put him in a safe place. Mostly I attribute that positive spin to his hiring a press agent, the famous society columnist John Kerr, and his reputation soared for a bit. Then the wheels came off his express. See back in Tibet the word was that Lamont was some progeny of one Genghis Khan, yes that Genghis whose nomadic marauding Mogol hordes at least according to some revisionist historians brought some stability and modernization to Central Asia in his day. DNA testing has proven once Lamont’s body was exhumed at the request of his estate to see the truth of that matter showed he was descended originally in the 14th century from a pig thief in England who was hanged, hanged high in those days when stealing livestock meant something, especially when the stolen object was of royal or noble ownership.
Yeah so Lamont played out the Genghis Khan gag, along with his brother Don, the bad guy in the loop who like his forebear wanted to rule the known world. A known world much larger to conquer these days than the steppes of Central Asia which was child’s play for those lustful Mongol hordes. This Don Khan, this brother, arrived in H.G. Wells time machine fashion via a coffin delivered to the natural history museum in that town. After Don arrived all hell broke loose since all he cared about were two things-world conquest and bringing brother Lamont in on the deal as his hatchet man, as his alter ego maybe since Don too had been trained by Jerry Lama. No wonder this so-called Lamont character wound up in a straight- jacket, maybe they should have used two to be safe.
Of course when you have a guy like John Kerr sprucing up your legend, taking liberties with the truth you have to have some society dame in the mix or these Mayfair swells won’t read the column or buy into the legend. The love affair aspect here is provided by one Lois Lane, no Margo Lane, whose father allegedly was the real father of the atom bomb. More on him in a minute. We know that Lamont had some kinky sex habits when he was high as a kite on cocaine, opium whatever he could find in Xanadu, in the late Kubla Khan’s opulent opium den where Sam Coleridge earlier had picked up his habit by the sunless seas. This so-called society girl, this so-called Margo, was some call girl he picked up in a joy house he frequented on 8th Avenue when he was looking for a “flute player” just because she said she could read Lamont’s mind. Not the hardest task in the world when somebody is looking for a little off-kilter sex.
Here is where things get interesting. The legend anyway. Don, Don Khan in case you forgot his name, that erratic symbiotic brother was interested in this Margo too, and for the same reason in the end but mainly because she had a certain style which could work with the guy who claimed to be the father of the atomic bomb. This bomb is what Don needed to play out his hand. Margo got handed back and forth and in the end she went with Lamont since he was more her speed than the defeated maniac Don. Done in by the NYPD wrapping up his operations off the East River. Well folks that is the legend, the legend the Mayfair swells bought into to keep the “people with the pitchforks” from Riverside Drive and other high number precincts in the 1920s and 1930s. In the end though they trusted their local coppers who at least they could bribe rather than another one of John Kerr’s paste-up jobs. Still legends die hard, especially modern legends which can be traced as I have been doing of late. For now though another bum-of-the-month down.
In Honor Of The Late Black Liberation Fighter The Omaha Three’s Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa -Support And Donate To The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal For Our Political Activists Inside The Prison Walls
By Frank Jackman
I know, as I have recounted elsewhere about my personal situation during my military service, so-called, my military resister time, during the Vietnam War, that the holidays are tough times for our political prisoners, hell all prisoners, but today we write on behalf of our fellow activists behind the walls. A place where we outside the walls may find ourselves under the regime of whatever party in power. (After all Lynne Stewart and Chelsea Manning among others, for example, were in jail in Obama time.) And nobody on the outside working for social change is exempt as the case of the late black liberation fighter Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, outlined below, will demonstrate. So be very generous this year in aid of those on the inside who will garner strength knowing that those outside the walls today are standing in solidarity. I know in my time I did from such support in my time.
*********
Workers Vanguard No. 1124
15 December 2017
The following article appeared under the Partisan Defense Committee's Class-Struggle Defense Notes masthead in the print version of this issue of Workers Vanguard. The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which champions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people. This purpose is in accordance with the political views of the Spartacist League.
32nd Annual Holiday Appeal
Free the Class-War Prisoners!
(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)
This year’s Holiday Appeal marks the 32nd year of the Partisan Defense Committee’s program of sending monthly stipends as an expression of solidarity to those imprisoned for standing up to racist capitalist repression and imperialist depredation. This program revived a tradition initiated by the International Labor Defense under James P. Cannon, its founder and first secretary (1925-28). This year’s events will pay tribute to a former stipend recipient, Lynne Stewart, who succumbed to the effects of metastasized breast cancer last March. A courageous radical lawyer who defended numerous poor people and fighters for the oppressed, including the Ohio 7, Stewart had been incarcerated for her vigorous defense of a fundamentalist sheik who was convicted in an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks. We honor her by keeping up the fight for the freedom of all class-war prisoners. The PDC currently sends stipends to 12 class-war prisoners.
* * *
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” Framed up for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer, Mumia was sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Federal and state courts have repeatedly refused to consider evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed the policeman. In 2011 the Philadelphia district attorney’s office dropped its longstanding effort to legally lynch Mumia, condemning him to life in prison with no chance of parole. Last year attorneys for Mumia filed a petition under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) seeking to overturn the denial of his three prior PCRA claims by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. If successful, he would be granted a new hearing before that court to argue for reversal of his frame-up conviction. On September 7, Judge Leon Tucker ordered a private review of the complete file of the prosecution by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office of Mumia’s case, looking for evidence of the personal involvement of then D.A. Ronald Castille, whose refusal as a judge to recuse himself during Mumia’s PA Supreme Court appeal is the basis for this PCRA. After a two-year battle, Mumia was finally able to begin lifesaving treatment for hepatitis C. In May, lab tests showed that he was free of this life-threatening illness. But the drawn-out period during which he was refused treatment left him with an increased risk of liver cancer.
Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its Native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier was framed up for the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents marauding in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation. The lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have repeatedly denied Peltier’s appeals while acknowledging blatant prosecutorial misconduct. Before leaving office, Barack Obama rejected Peltier’s request for clemency. The 73-year-old Peltier is not scheduled for another parole hearing for another seven years. Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions including a heart condition for which he had to undergo triple bypass surgery. He is incarcerated far from his people and family.
Seven MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa and Eddie Africa—are in their 40th year of prison. After the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, they were sentenced to 30-100 years, having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops when a bomb was dropped on their living quarters. Collectively known as the MOVE 9, two of their number, Merle Africa and Phil Africa, died in prison under suspicious circumstances. After nearly four decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings.
Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. Now Laaman and Manning face prison torture where they are isolated in solitary confinement for extended periods. Manning has been deprived of necessary medical attention. The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals but, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not crimes. They should not have served a day in prison.
Ed Poindexter is a former Black Panther supporter and leader of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. He and his former co-defendant, Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, who died in prison last year, were victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation, under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. They were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and Poindexter has now spent more than 45 years behind bars. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter a new trial despite the fact that crucial evidence, long suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.
Contribute now! All proceeds from the Holiday Appeal events will go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. This is not charity but an elementary act of solidarity with those imprisoned for their opposition to racist capitalism and imperialist depredation. Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.
***********
Workers Vanguard No. 1086
25 March 2016
Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa
1947—2016
Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, born David Rice, died on March 11 in the maximum-security Nebraska State Penitentiary of respiratory failure. A courageous class-war prisoner who was imprisoned for life for a crime he did not commit, Mondo suffered his last days ill with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, still fighting for his freedom. He spent almost 46 years in prison and remained a political fighter against racial oppression until the end.
Mondo had been an activist since his youth, radicalized by the mass social struggles that swept the country in the 1960s. Mondo became a supporter of the Black Panther Party in response to racist police brutality, in particular the killing of black 14-year-old Vivian Strong, who was shot in the back of the head by a cop in Omaha, Nebraska, in the summer of 1969. He went on to be a leader of the Omaha National Committee to Combat Fascism with his comrade Ed Poindexter. As Mumia Abu-Jamal put it in a March 15 audio tribute, by becoming a Panther, Mondo “walked into the crosshairs of the state.” He became one of the many victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation under which 38 Black Panthers were killed and hundreds more framed up and imprisoned.
Mondo and Poindexter, who became known as the Omaha Two, were falsely convicted of the 1970 killing of a cop in a bomb explosion on the perjured testimony of teenager Duane Peak, who first confessed to acting alone in placing the bomb. Peak was threatened with getting the electric chair and was offered a deal to be sentenced as a juvenile if he helped frame Mondo and Poindexter. Peak’s clearly coerced testimony was shown to be completely bogus. A recording of a 911 call that proved Peak’s testimony was perjured was excluded from evidence in the trial and was long suppressed by the FBI. The political motivation for the frame-up was made clear two decades later by Jack Swanson, an Omaha police detective and key figure in the prosecution. In a 1990 BBC documentary, Swanson boasted: “We feel we got the two main players in Mondo and Poindexter, and I think we did the right thing at the time, because the Black Panther Party...completely disappeared from the city of Omaha...and it’s...been the end of that sort of thing in the city.”
Federal appeals courts ruled that Mondo should be released or retried, but that ruling was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, which ordered the case returned to the Nebraska state courts. The Nebraska Supreme Court then ruled that his appeal time had lapsed! In 1993, the Nebraska parole board recommended that the Board of Pardons commute Mondo’s life sentence to a term of a set number of years, which would have made him eligible for parole. But the Board of Pardons denied Mondo a hearing.
Mondo was one of the class-war prisoners who receive monthly stipends from the Partisan Defense Committee. The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which champions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people. This purpose is in accordance with the political views of the Spartacist League. The class-war prisoner stipend program is not an act of charity but the duty of those on the outside toward those inside prison walls, irrespective of their particular views or affiliation. Ed Poindexter, who remains imprisoned, is also a PDC stipend recipient.
We remember Mondo—writer, artist and unbroken fighter—who was consigned to America’s prison hell for his opposition to racial oppression. We print below a poem he composed in June 2015 titled When It Gets to This Point.
I Hear The Voice Of My Arky Angel-Once Again-With Angel Iris Dement In Mind
By Frank Jackman
SWEET FORGIVENESS (Iris DeMent)
(c) 1992 Songs of Iris/Forerunner Music, Inc. ASCAP
Sweet forgiveness, that's what you give to me
when you hold me close and you say "That's all over"
You don't go looking back,
you don't hold the cards to stack,
you mean what you say.
Sweet forgiveness, you help me see
I'm not near as bad as I sometimes appear to be
When you hold me close and say
"That's all over, and I still love you"
There's no way that I could make up for those angry words I said
Sometimes it gets to hurting and the pain goes to my head
Sweet forgiveness, dear God above
I say we all deserve a taste of this kind of love
Someone who'll hold our hand,
and whisper "I understand, and I still love you"
AFTER YOU'RE GONE (Iris DeMent)
(c) 1992 Songs of Iris/Forerunner Music, Inc. ASCAP
There'll be laughter even after you're gone
I'll find reasons to face that empty dawn
'cause I've memorized each line in your face
and not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me
I'll miss you, oh how I'll miss you
I'll dream of you and I'll cry a million tears
but the sorrow will pass and the one thing that will last
is the love that you've given to me
There'll be laughter even after you're gone
I'll find reason and I'll face that empty dawn
'cause I've memorized each line in your face
and not even death could ever erase the story they tell to me
Every once in a while I have to tussle, go one on one with the angels, or a single angel is maybe a better way to put it. No, not the heavenly ones or the ones who burden your shoulders when you have a troubled heart but every once in a while I need a shot of my Arky angel, Iris Dement. Every once in a while when I am blue, not a Billie Holiday blue but maybe just a passing blue I need to hear a voice that if there was an angel heaven voice she would be the one I would want to hear.
I first heard Iris DeMent doing a cover of a Greg Brown tribute to Jimmy Rodgers, the old time Texas yodeller, on Brown's tribute album, Driftless. I then looked for her solo albums and for the most part was blown away by the power of Iris’ voice, her piano accompaniment and her lyrics (which are contained in the liner notes of her various albums, read them, please). It is hard to type her style. Is it folk? Is it Country Pop? Is it semi-torch songstress? Well, whatever it may be that Arky angel is a listening treat, especially if you are in a sentimental mood.
Naturally when I find some talent that “speaks” to me I grab everything they sing, write, paint, or act I can find. In Iris’ case there is not a lot of recorded work, with the recent addition of Sing The Delta just four albums although she had done many back-ups or harmonies with other artists most notably John Prine. Still what has been recorded blew me away (and will blow you away), especially as an old Vietnam War era veteran her There is a Wall in Washington about the guys who found themselves on the Vietnam Memorial probably one of the best anti-war songs you will ever hear. That memorial containing names very close to me, to my heart and I shed a tear each time I even go near the memorial when I am in D.C. It is fairly easy to write a Give Peace a Chance or Where Have All the Flowers Gone? type of anti-war song. It is another to capture the pathos of what happened to too many families when we were unable to stop that war. The streets of my old-time growing up neighborhood are filled with memories of guys I knew, guys who didn’t make it back, guys who couldn’t adjust coming back to the “real world,” or could not get over no going into the service to experience the decisive event of our generation.
Other songs that have drawn my attention like When My Morning Comes hit home with all the baggage working class kids have about their inferiority when they screw up in this world. Walking Home Alone evokes all the humor, bathos, pathos and sheer exhilaration of saying one was able to survive, and not badly, after growing up poor, Arky poor amid the riches of America. (That may be the “connection” as I grew up through my father coal country Hazard, Kentucky poor.)
Frankly, and I admit this publicly in this space, I love Ms. Iris Dement. Not personally, of course, but through her voice, her lyrics and her musical presence. This “confession” may seem rather startling coming from a guy who in this space is as likely here to go on and on about Bolsheviks, ‘Che’, Leon Trotsky, high communist theory and the like. Especially, as well given Iris’ seemingly simple quasi- religious themes and commitment to paying homage to her rural background in song. All such discrepancies though go out the window here. Why?
Well, for one, this old radical got a lump in his throat the first time he heard her voice. Okay, that happens sometimes-once- but why did he have the same reaction on the fifth and twelfth hearings? Explain that. I can easily enough. If, on the very, very remotest chance, there is a heaven then I know one of the choir members. Enough said. By the way give a listen to Out Of The Fire and Mornin’ Glory. Then you too will be in love with Ms. Iris Dement.
Iris, here is my proposal, once again. If you get tired of fishing the U.P., or wherever, with Mr. Greg Brown, get bored with his endless twaddle about old Iowa farms or going on and on about Grandma's fruit cellar just whistle. Better yet just yodel like you did on Jimmie Rodgers Going Home on that Driftless CD.
You Got That Right Brother-The Blues Ain’t Nothing But A Good Woman On Your Mind -With Arthur Alexander's Anna In Mind
By Alex Radley
A YouTube film clip of Arthur Alexander performing his classic Anna later coveted on a cover by the Beatles.
Johnny Prescott daydreamed his way through the music that he was listening to just then on the little transistor radio that Ma Prescott, Martha to adults, and Pa too, Paul to adults, but the main battles over the gift had been with Ma, had given him for Christmas. In those days we are talking about, the post-World War II red scare Cold War 1950s in America, the days of the dreamy man in the family being the sole provider fathers didn’t get embroiled in the day to day household kids wars and remained a distant and at times foreboding presence called in only when the dust-up had gotten out of hand. And then Papa pulled the hammer down via a classic united front with Ma. Johnny had taken a fit around the first week in December in 1960 when Ma quite reasonable suggested that a new set of ties to go with his white long-sleeved shirts might be a better gift, a better Christmas gift and more practical too, for a sixteen year old boy.
Reasonable since alongside Pa being that sole provider, being a distant presence, and being called in only when World War III was about to erupt in the household he also worked like a slave for low wages at the Boston Gear Works, worked for low wages since he was an unskilled laborer in a world where skills paid money (and even the skills that he did have, farm hand skills, were not very useful in the Boston labor market). So yes ties, an item that at Christmas time usually would be the product of glad-handing grandmothers or maiden aunts would in the Prescott household be relegated to the immediate family. And that holiday along with Easter was a time when the Prescott boys had in previous years gotten their semi-annual wardrobe additions, additions provided via the Bargain Center, a low-cost, low rent forerunner of the merchandise provided at Wal-Mart.
This year, this sixteen year old year, Johnny said no to being pieced off with thick plaid ties, or worse, wide striped ties in color combinations like gold and black or some other uncool combination, uncool that year although maybe not in say 1952 when he did not know better, uncool in any case against those thin solid colored ties all the cool guys were wearing to the weekly Friday night school dances or the twice monthly Sacred Heart Parish dances the latter held in order to keep sixteen year old boys, girls too, in check against the worst excesses of what the parish priests (and thankful parents) thought was happening among the heathen young.
No, that is not quite right, that “Johnny said no” part, no, he screamed that he wanted a radio, a transistor radio, batteries included, of his own so that he could listen to whatever he liked up in his room, or wherever he was. Could listen to what he liked against errant younger brothers who were clueless, clueless about rock and roll, clueless about what was what coming through the radio heralding a new breeze in the land, a breeze Johnny was not sure what it meant but all he knew was that he, and his buddies, knew some jail-break movement was coming to unglue all the square-ness in the over- heated night. Could listen in privacy, and didn’t have to, understand, didn’t have to listen to some Vaughn Monroe or Harry James 1940s war drum thing on the huge immobile RCA radio monster downstairs in the Prescott living room. Didn’t have to listen to, endlessly Saturday night listen, captive nation-like listen to WJDA and the smooth music, you know, Frank Sinatra, Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, and so on listen to the music of Ma and Pa Prescott’s youth, the music that got them through the Depression and the war. Strictly squaresville, cubed.
Something was out of joint though, something had changed since he had begun his campaign the year before to get that transistor radio, something or someone had played false with the music that he had heard when somebody played the jukebox at Freddy’s Hamburger House where he heard Elvis, Buddy, Chuck, Wanda (who was hot, hot for a girl rocker, all flowing black hair and ruby red lips from what he had seen at Big Max’s Record Shop when her Let’s Have A Party was released), the Big Bopper, Jerry Lee, Bo, and a million others who made the whole world jump to a different tune, to something he could call his own. But as he listened to this Shangra-la by The Four Coins that had just finished up a few seconds ago and as this Banana Boat song by The Tarriers was starting its dreary trip through his brain he was not sure that those ties, thick or uncool as they would be, wouldn’t have been a better Christmas deal, and more practical too.
Yeah, this so-called rock station, WAPX, that he and his friends had been devoted to since 1957, had listened to avidly every night when Johnny Peeper, the Midnight Creeper and Leaping Lenny Penny held forth in their respective DJ slots, had sold out to, well, sold out to somebody, because except for late at night, midnight late at night, one could not hear the likes of Jerry Lee, Carl, Little Richard, Fats, and the new rocker blasts, now that Elvis had gone who knows where. Killer rocker Chuck Berry had said it best, had touched a youth nation nerve, had proclaimed the new dispensation when he had proclaimed loud and clear that Mr. Beethoven had better move alone, and said Mr. Beethoven best tell one and all of his confederates, including Mr. Tchaikovsky, that rock ‘n’ roll was the new sheriff in town. But where was Chuck, where was that rock blaster all sexed up talk and riffs to match now that everybody was reduced to Bobby Darin, Bobby Rydell, and Bobby, hell, they were all Bobbys and Jimmys and Eddies and every other vanilla name under the sun now not a righteous name in the house. As Johnny turned the volume down a little lower (that tells the tale right there, friends) as Rainbow (where the hell do they get these creepy songs from) by Russ Hamilton he was ready to throw in the towel though. Ready to face the fact that maybe, just maybe the jail-break that he desperately had been looking forward to might have been just a blip, might have been an illusion and that the world after all belonged to Bing, Frank, Tommy and Jimmy and that he better get used to that hard reality.
Desperate, Johnny fingered the dial looking for some other station when he heard this crazy piano riff starting to breeze through the night air, the heated night air, and all of a sudden Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 blasted the airwaves. Ike whose Rocket 88 had been the champion choice of Jimmy Jenkins, one of his friends from after school, when they would sit endlessly in Freddy’s and seriously try to figure out whose song started the road to rock and roll. Johnny had latched onto Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle and Roll which Elvis did a smash cover of but who in Joe’s version you can definitely hear that dah-da-dah beat that was the calling card of his break-out generation, as well as the serious sexual innuendo which Frankie Riley explained to one and all one girl-less Friday night at the high school hop. Billy Bradley, a high school friend who had put an assortment of bands together and so knew more than the rest of them combined, had posited Elmore James’ Look Yonder Wall as his selection but nobody had ever heard the song then, or of James. Johnny later did give it some consideration after he had had heard the song when Billy’s band covered it and broke the place up.
But funny as Johnny listened that night it didn’t sound like the whinny Ike’s voice on Rocket 88 so he listened for a little longer, and as he later found out from the DJ, it had actually been a James Cotton Blues Band cover. After that band’s performance was finished fish-tailing right after that one was a huge harmonica intro and what could only be mad-hatter Junior Wells doing When My Baby Left Me splashed through. No need to turn the dial further now because what Johnny Prescott had found in the crazy night air, radio beams bouncing every which way, was direct from Chicago, and maybe right off those hard-hearted Maxwell streets was Be-Bop Benny’s Chicago Blues Radio Hour. Be-Bop Benny who everybody who read the rock and roll magazines found easier at Doc’s Drugstore over on Hancock Street knew, had started Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino on their careers, or helped.
Now Johnny, like every young high-schooler, every "with it" high schooler in the USA, had heard of this show, because even though everybody was crazy for rock and roll, just now the airwaves sounded like, well, sounded like music your parents would dance to, no, sit to at a dance, some kids still craved high rock. So this show was known mainly through the teenage grapevine but Johnny had never heard it before because, no way, no way in hell was his punk little Radio Shack transistor radio with two dinky batteries going to ever have enough strength to pick Be-Bop Benny’s show out in Chicago. So Johnny, and maybe rightly so, took this turn of events for a sign. When Johnny heard that distinctive tinkle of the Otis Spann piano warming up to Spann’s Stomp and jumped up with his Someday added in he was hooked. You know he started to see what Billy, Billy Bradley who had championed Elmore James way before anybody knew who he was, meant when at a school dance where he had been performing with his band, Billie and the Jets, he mentioned from the stage before introducing a song that if you wanted to get rock and roll back from the vanilla guys who had hijacked it while Jerry Lee, Chuck and Elvis had turned their backs then you had better listen to the blues. And if you wanted to listen to blues, blues that rocked then you had very definitely better get in touch with the Chicago blues as they came north from Mississippi and places like that.
And Johnny thought, Johnny who have never been too much south of Gloversville, or west of Albany, and didn’t know too many people who had, couldn’t understand why that beat, that dah, da, dah, Chicago beat sounded like something out of the womb in his head. But when he heard Big Walter Horton wailing on that harmonica on Rockin’ My Boogie he knew it had to be in his genes.
Here’s the funniest part of all though later, later in the 1960s after everybody had become a serious aficionado of the blues either through exposure like Johnny to the country blues that got revived during the folk minute that flashed through the urban areas of the country and got big play at places like the Newport Folk Festival or like Jimmy Jenkins through the British rock invasion the blues became the dues. It was especially ironic that a bunch of guys from England like the Stones and Beatles were grabbing every freaking 45 RPM record they could get their mitts on. So if you listened to the early work of those groups you would find thing covered like Shake, Rattle and Roll (Big Joe’s version), Arthur Alexander’s Anna, Howlin’ Wolf’s Little Red Rooster and a ton of stuff by Muddy Waters. Yeah, the drought was over.
The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind-A Female Take
By Leslie Dumont
[You never know how things will turn around in the media business. One day you can’t get a thing published for love or money and the next you have more offers than you can shake a stick at. I originally was a stringer, a free-lancer, on this site a number of years ago when Allan Jackson was running the show but never got past that status despite submitting a number of articles that would later be published in places like Progressive Nation (both hard copy and on-line) and Women’s Weekly. Never got past a few short reviews of folk music when Allan decided to go all out and feature the folk revival of the 1960s, long dead except for devoted aficionados like myself. That fate for my major work despite the fact that at the time I had a relationship with Josh Breslin who Allan had known ever since they met out in California in 1967 during their Summer of Love adventures. I wasn’t expecting to be given a by-line gratis but did feel my work was good enough to see the light of day as it did later.
Recently with the changeover in management after Allan retired (there have been other rumors of a coup and such but knowing guys like Josh and Sam Lowell, who knew Allan from back in high school, involved that is boys will be boys stuff from their youthful political intrigue when every move had some such ramification) the new manager Greg Green contacted me, contacted from what I heard a number of women writers to give this site a better-rounded and more inclusive look. Finally (and maybe while he is at how about some black writers, women ones too). That contact started an avalanche of offers from some other on-line sites asking for articles mostly on folk music and books, maybe an occasional film. Some I have taken or will do so soon but I committed myself to a series of articles for Greg. Recently Sam Lowell mentioned above wrote a nostalgia article about his folk music experiences-The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind where he talked about the almost universal phenomena among college women folkies of emulating the leading straight long-haired women folk singers of the day Joan Baez, her sister Mimi, and Judy Collins. Greg when he contacted me asked as my first piece to give the women’s side of the story since he had heard from Sam who had heard it from Josh that I had a story to tell. Tell from what he quaintly called the distaff side like this was about 1960. So here goes. Leslie Dumont]
*******
Sam Lowell was as much a folk music junkie as I was back in the 1960s which he or somebody called the “folk minute” and strangely that seems about right since it got swamped by the British invasion and later acid-laced rock. I am a couple of years younger than him so I missed the very start when guys like Bob Dylan was working his way east to sit at Woody Guthrie’s feet (literally I think if some documentary I saw at the Orson Welles Theater out of Harvard Square on a college date about Woody and Arlo is right), Dave Von Ronk was switching from jazz combos and creaky-voiced folk song poetry session clear-outs and Joan Baez and her younger sister were walking around Harvard Square trying to get somebody, anybody to listen to their traditional folk song gigs featuring old-time Child ballads. My baptism came in 1964 but was nevertheless a big deal for me in breaking out, like a lot of us of whatever was happening at the time to make us jump out of our skins.
I grew up in Ardsley-on-Hudson (we just called it Ardsley but that was, and is, its official name) about thirty miles from New York City and when I was in high school there, a senior, I had a boyfriend, Lenny, from town who went to NYU not far from what turned out to be one of the serious folk meccas, the Village. He would, for the eternal college boy cheap date which every guy who was into folk music blessed to high heaven and which I will give my view on soon, take me to the arch in Washington Square where every weekend budding folk singers would strut their stuff. Some good, some frankly bad who maybe knew a couple of chords and tried to work that into something mainly I think as a way to meet girls since if you looked at the obligatory guitar case “basket” it would be empty of donations. That was the cheapest of cheap dates which I didn’t care that much about because I was just thrilled to be in New York City away from stuffy Ardsley. When Lenny had some money we would move up a step he would take me to a coffeehouse for a cup of coffee, a lingering cup of coffee, and a sandwich or pastry. Occasionally when I had some money, allowance money, I would take pity on him and we would go “dutch treat” but I will go further into that social custom so more later.
Like I said what did I know about what in those days a guy was supposed to do for dating purposes since Lenny was my first serious boyfriend. I thought it was great that a college guy was interested in me, would take me to New York City (usually without telling my parents where I was going since they would have had a fit if they thought I was going to “sin city” especially at night), and buy me a meal. I know a few of my girlfriends were jealous that I had a boyfriend in college when all they had were stupid high school guys whose idea of a date was to go down to the river and try to “feel them up.” I heard a few guys who wouldn’t give me the time of day suddenly let it be known that they were interested in me. (Probably figuring if I was with a college guy I was “easy” knowing the guys although it did not turn out like that with Lenny whom I still talk and meet occasionally when I am in Boston for a conference or some event.) It wasn’t until I was in college that I found out that guys in those days who were interested in me would spring for a real dinner in a nice place. Were supposed to do that. But that had nothing to do with folk music which I did seriously get into with Lenny and would continue to like to hear until this very day.
Of course knowing Sam, although we hadn’t been in contact for a number of years since when I was a stringer, he had to go on and on in his article about every trend that led a certain small section of our generation to grab onto folk music as a way of showing our rebellion and, here I agree with Sam, a revulsion of what was passing for our youthful rock and roll which seemed to have run out of steam. Had to do all of that just to get to the point about how in a short while, particularly after the mainstream media of the time, Time magazine for one, dubbed Bob Dylan the king of the folk scene and long straight raven-haired Joan Baez the queen, his queen the silly bastard, young women, women who included me as well, were wearing their hair longer-and straighter. He seemed to think this was something from out of space or something when it was merely us keeping up with a fashion which women have been doing one way or another and not just for men don’t’ forget since Eve.
What had gotten Sam in a tizzy was an old photograph of Joan Baez, Mimi Farina (her married named then being married to hell-bent songwriter-poet Richard) and Judy Collins at Newport in I believe 1963 where he noticed the long-haired effect. The photograph graced one of the months in a New England Folk Song Society calendar. That got him wondering once again about how they were able to keep it that long or get it that straight. That is when he thought back to the whole hair-ironing experience and a story about one of his dates at the time.
Sam also made an outlandish comment and I will quote here just to make sure I don’t fumble up what he said:
“Looking at that photograph now, culled from a calendar put out by the New England Folk Archive Society, made me think back to the time when I believe that I would not go out with a girl (young woman, okay) if she did not have the appropriate “hair,” in other words no bee-hive or flip thing that was the high school rage among the not folk set, actually the social butterfly, cheerleader, motorcycle mama cliques. Which may now explain why I had so few dates in high school and none from North Adamsville High (located about thirty miles south of Boston). But no question you could almost smell the singed hair at times, and every guy I knew liked the style, liked the style if they liked Joan Baez, maybe had some dreamy desire, and that was that.”
Then one night many weeks later after we had had a couple of subsequent dates and I hadn’t seen him for a while wondering what had happened to him since I was very interested in “going out with him” he called and asked for a date saying some nonsense about being busy with school work. I startled him when he picked me up at my dorm at Boston University to go over the Club Blue in the Square to see Dave Van Ronk hold forth in his folk historian gravelly-voiced way. I met Stan at the door with the mandatory long-stranded hair which frankly made my face even longer. He smiled that Stan smile that always got to me and said the real reason he didn’t call me up was because he was not sure that he liked my hair the way it was. Instead of showing him the door, I really was interested in him, I blushed like crazy. When Stan asked me a couple of minutes later why the change I did have a good comeback, did lie to him, when I declared that I could not possibly go to Harvard Square looking like somebody from some suburban high school not after seeing my idol Joan Baez (and later Mimi and Judy Collins too) with that great long hair which seemed very exotic, very Spanish. He smiled that Stan smile again but I think he knew I had done it to please him.
Of course Stan then compounded his troubles by making the serious mistake of asking me if I had it done at the beauty parlor or something and I looked at him with burning hate eyes since no self-respecting folkie college girl would go to such a place where her mother would go. Still silly schoolgirl me let that go. Little did he know then or later that just before our dates I would get the iron board out and either I or one of my roommates, proably best friend Anna, and try to starighten out as best I could my hair that would turn kinky every time I washed it. So I joined the crowd, Stan always when we were together said he loved it and after a while I did begin to look like a folkie girl (and started wearing the inevitable peasant blouses that Sam mentioned his girlfriend started wearing instead of those cashmere sweaters or starched shirt things I used to wear under strict orders from my mother to essentially show no signs of having shape to tempt errant boys with).
That recollection by Sam got me thinking about other funny ideas we had back then. About the occasions when Lenny and had to go “dutch treat” which I never told my high school girlfriends about or they might not have thought it was not so cool to be dating a college guy, a poor college guy. That “dutch treat” thing was thus not very popular then unlike now when it is no big deal although there were slight changes and essentially has gone the way of one breadwinner fathers in the household economy. As much as I liked Stan that “dutch treat” is what happened when we went to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue thing. Stan and I were thus by definition not on a heavy date, by definition neither supposedly had been intrigued by the other enough to be more than very good friends after those first few dates and so no social stigma attached to this understanding although I was hurt having let my hair grow long with certain expectations. Folk music was our bold. Despite my persistent BU dorm roommate rumors what with Stan hanging around all the time listening to my albums on the record player we had had never got to the serious lovers stage. A few years later I mentioned that Club Blue night to Stan, who after all that dorm hanging around and rumor stuff actually was hanging around to see my best friend roommate Anna Jacobs who was by his side that night, as we waited to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie with me and my companion, Jim Lawrence, to see if he remembered Van Ronk’s performance and while he thought he remembered he was not sure.
He asked me, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” I had replied yes and that I too had never forgotten that song and how the house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone was performing had been dead silent once he started singing.
As for the long-ironed haired women in the photograph which jogged Sam memory their work in that folk minute and later speaks for itself. Joan Baez worked the Bob Dylan anointed “king and queen” of the folkies routine for a while for the time the folk minute lasted. Mimi (now passed on) teamed up with her husband, Richard Farina, who was tragically killed in a motorcycle crash in the mid-1960s, to write and sing some of the most haunting ballads of those new folk times (think Birmingham Sunday). Julie Collins, now coiffured like that mother I was beauty parlor running away from and that is okay, still produces beautiful sounds on her concert tours. But everyone should remember, every woman from that time anyway, should remember that burnt hair, and other sorrows, and know exactly who to blame. Yes, ladies, the photo is still around.
The desire to live in peace was found in other places in the Western Front, from Switzerland’s frontier to the North Sea. There were no gunshots. No cavalry charging, no tanks advancing, no airplanes bombing the enemy. There were, instead, frequent hugs, games, chocolate candies, smoke from cigarettes and bonfires.
In some places, the truce extended over to the New Year. But rumors got to the High Commanders. And to Governments. And to weapons’ makers. All of them moved for killingto resume. They sent the officers to tell all those who kept, promoted or accepted the truce, that they could be court martialed, jailed or even shot like traitors. Thus the truce ended and the war moved on; a war that caused the loss of millions of young healthy and strong human beings, more greed, animosity, high debts, and other conditions that ended in the next international insanities: the Spanish Civil War and WW II."
The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind
By Lenny Lancaster
Funny how trends get started, how one person, or a few start something and it seems like the whole world follows, or the part of the world that hears about the new dispensation anyway, the part you want to connect with. That new dispensation for my generation began back in the late 1950s, early 1960s so maybe it was when older guys started to lock-step in gray flannel suits (Mad Men, retro-cool today, okay) and before Jack and Bobby Kennedy put the whammy on the fashion and broke many a haberdasher’s heart topped off by a soft felt hat. It would be deep into the 1960s before open-necks and colors other than white for shirts worked in but by then a lot of us were strictly denims and flannel shirts or some such non-suit combination. Maybe it was when one kid goofing off threw a hard plastic circle thing around his or her waist and every kid from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon had to have one, to be tossed aside in some dank corner of the garage after a few weeks when everybody got into yo-yos or Davey Crockett coonskin caps. Or maybe, and this might be closer to the herd instinct truth, it was after Elvis exploded onto the scene and every guy from twelve to two hundred in the world had to, whether they looked right with it or not, wear their sideburns just a little longer, even if they were kind of wispy and girls laughed at you for trying to out-king the “king” who they were waiting for not you.
But maybe it was, and this is a truth which I can testify to, noting the photograph above, when some girls, probably college girls (now called young women but then still girls no matter how old except mothers or grandmothers, go figure) having seen Joan Baez on the cover of Time (or perhaps her sister Mimi on some Mimi and Richard Farina folk album cover)got out the ironing board at home or in her dorm and tried to iron their own hair whatever condition it was in, curly, twisty, flippy, whatever don’t hold me to hairstyles to long and straight strands. (Surely as strong as the folk minute was just then say 1962, 63, 64, they did not see the photo of Joan on some grainy Arise and Sing folk magazine cover the folk scene was too young and small then to cause such a sea-change).
Looking at that photograph now, culled from a calendar put out by the New England Folk Archive Society, made me think back to the time when I believe that I would not go out with a girl (young woman, okay) if she did not have the appropriate “hair,” in other words no bee-hive or flip thing that was the high school rage among the not folk set, actually the social butterfly, cheerleader, motorcycle mama cliques. Which may now explain why I had so few dates in high school and none from Carver High (located about thirty miles south of Boston). But no question you could almost smell the singed hair at times, and every guy I knew liked the style, liked the style if they liked Joan Baez, maybe had some dreamy desire, and that was that.
Then one night many weeks later after they had had a couple of dates she startled him when he picked her up at her dorm at Boston University to go over the Club Blue in the Square to see Dave Van Ronk hold forth in his folk historian gravelly-voiced way. She met Sam at the door with the mandatory long-stranded hair which frankly made her face even longer. When Sam asked her why the change Julie declared that she could not possibly go to Harvard Square looking like somebody from some suburban high school not after seeing her idol Joan Baez (and later Judy Collins too) with that great long hair which seemed very exotic, very Spanish.
Of course he compounded his troubles by making the serious mistake of asking if she had it done at the beauty parlor or something and she looked at him with burning hate eyes since no self-respecting folkie college girl would go to such a place where her mother would go, So she joined the crowd, Sam got used to it and after a while she did begin to look like a folkie girl (and started wearing the inevitable peasant blouses instead of those cashmere sweaters or starched shirt things she used to wear).
By the way let’s be clear on that Julie thing with Sam back the early 1960s. She and Sam went “dutch treat” to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue. Sam and Julie were thus by definition not on a heavy date, neither had been intrigued by the other enough to be more than very good friends after the first few dates but folk music was their bond. Despite persistent Julie BU dorm roommate rumors what with Sam hanging around all the time listening to her albums on the record player they had never been lovers. A few years later she mentioned that Club Blue night to Sam as they waited to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie with me and my companion, Laura Talbot, to see if he remembered Van Ronk’s performance and while he thought he remembered he was not sure.
He asked Julie, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” Julie had replied yes and that she too had never forgotten that song and how the house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone was performing had been dead silent once he started singing.
As for the long-ironed haired women in the photograph their work in that folk minute and later speaks for itself. Joan Baez worked the Bob Dylan anointed “king and queen” of the folkies routine for a while for the time the folk minute lasted. Mimi (now passed on) teamed up with her husband, Richard Farina, who was tragically killed in a motorcycle crash in the mid-1960s, to write and sing some of the most haunting ballads of those new folk time (think Birmingham Sunday). Julie Collins, now coiffured like that mother Julie was beauty parlor running away from and that is okay, still produces beautiful sounds on her concert tours. But everyone should remember, every woman from that time anyway, should remember that burnt hair, and other sorrows, and know exactly who to blame. Yeah, we have the photo.
