On The Sixtieth Anniversary Of Her Death-Lady Day-Billie Holiday- She Took Our Pain Away Despite Her Own Pains- Happy Birthday To You-***When Radio Ruled The Air-Waves- "Stardust:Decca Records:Classics and Standards Collection"

Happy Birthday To You-

By Lester Lannon

I am devoted to a local folk station WUMB which is run out of the campus of U/Mass-Boston over near Boston Harbor. At one time this station was an independent one based in Cambridge but went under when their significant demographic base deserted or just passed on once the remnant of the folk minute really did sink below the horizon.

So much for radio folk history except to say that the DJs on many of the programs go out of their ways to commemorate or celebrate the birthdays of many folk, rock, blues and related genre artists. So many and so often that I have had a hard time keeping up with noting those occurrences in this space which after all is dedicated to such happening along the historical continuum.

To “solve” this problem I have decided to send birthday to that grouping of musicians on an arbitrary basis as I come across their names in other contents or as someone here has written about them and we have them in the archives. This may not be the best way to acknowledge them, but it does do so in a respectful manner.    

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Inkspots performing I’ll Get By.

CD Review

Stardust: The Classic Decca Hits and Standards Collection, various artists, Decca Records, MCA, 1994


I am a first generation child of the television age, although in recent years I have spent more time kicking and screaming about that fact than watching the damn thing. Nevertheless I can appreciate this little compilation of Decca hits and standard tunes from the 1940s and 1950s as a valentine to the radio days of my parents’ youth, parents who came of musical age (and every other kind of age as well) during the Great Depression of the 1930s and who fought, or waited for those out on the front lines fighting, World War II. I am just old enough though, although generation behind them, to remember the strains of songs like the harmonic –heavy Mills Brothers Paper Dolls (a favorite of my mother’s) and The Glow Worm (not a favorite of anybody as far as I know although the harmony is still first-rate) that came wafting, via the local Adamsville radio station WJDA, through our big box living room radio in the early 1950s. It seemed they, or maybe the Andrews Sisters, be-bopping (be-bopping now, not then, you do not want to know what I called it then), on Rum And Coca-Cola or tagging along with Bing Crosby on Don’t Fence Me In were permanent residents of the airs-waves in the Markin household.

I am also a child of Rock 'n' Roll but those above-mentioned tunes were the melodies that my mother and father came of age to and the stuff of their dreams during World War II and its aftermath. The rough and tumble of my parents raising a bunch of kids might have taken the edge off it but the dreams remained. In the end it is this musical backdrop, behind the generation musical fights that roils the Markin household in teen times, that makes this compilation most memorable to me. Just to say names like Dick Haymes (I think my mother had a “crush” on him at some point), Vaughn Monroe, The Inkspots (who, truth, I liked even then, even in my “high, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly days, especially on If I Didn’t Care and I’ll Get By-wow), and Lois Armstrong. Or songs like Blueberry Hill, You’ll Never Know, A- Tisket- A Tasket, You Always Hurt The One You Love and so gather in a goodly portion of the mid-20th century American Songbook. Other talents like Billie Holiday, The Weavers, and Rosemary Clooney and tunes like Lover Man (and a thousand and one Cole Porter Billie-sung songs), Fever, and As Time Goes By (from Dooley Wilson in Casablanca) came later through very different frames of reference. But the seed, no question, no question now, was planted then.

Let’s be clear as well going back to that first paragraph mention of television - there something very different between the medium of the radio and the medium of the television. The radio allowed for an expansion of the imagination (and of fantasy) that the increasingly harsh realities of what was being portrayed on television did not allow one to get away with. The heart of World War II, and in its immediate aftermath, was time when one needed to be able to dream a little. The realities of the world at that time seemingly only allowed for nightmares. My feeling is that this compilation will touch a lot of sentimental nerves for the World War II generation (that so-called ‘greatest generation’), including my growing-up Irish working class families on the shores of North Adamsville. Nice work.

Coming Of Age In World War II-Torn America- With The Film "Summer Of 1942" (1971) In Mind

Coming Of Age In World War II-Torn America- With The Film "Summer Of 1942" (1971) In Mind

By Fritz Taylor

Seth Garth, the once well-known free-lance music critic for many of the big music and specialty publications that have come and gone over the years since he first put pen to paper some forty years ago, including the long gone alternative press where he got his start and first breaks (literally put pen to paper, forget beauties of the world processor then), had been thinking about the old days a lot recently. Had been, having the luxury of semi-retired status, also doing a run through of films via the good graces of Netflix that he had first seen when he was a youngster sitting in the dark every week for the double feature at the old Strand Theater in his hometown of Riverdale, a town a few dozen miles from Boston. Or else films that due to publication commitments that he had not run through when they came out in the 1970s in the days when he was determined to catch the wave of being a music critic and missed many of those films, left them by the wayside.

One night at Jack’s, his watering hole hang-out over in Riverdale that he increasingly frequented on his forays back to his old hometown to see if he could “channel” the past by being physically present on the old sacred soil (although not the Strand long ago turned into a condominium complex), Seth had mentioned to Brad Fox, an old friend from high school days who went through many of the experiences with him, that he had just reviewed a film, Summer of 1942, for Sal Davis the editor of Cinema Now who was looking for copy to fill a space quickly. The film which had been released in 1971 about coming of age, coming of sexual age during the early years of World War II. The big point he made to Brad, who had told Seth that he had seen the film when it came out but did not remember the details except that this foxy older woman played by Jennifer O’Neil had “robbed the cradle” and bedded a teenage boy, swore the film could have been about their generation, the generation of 1968 as easily as of 1942.     

Seth had mentioned, before giving Brad the details that he had missed about the film, he had started his review speculating on the fact that each generation goes through its coming of age period somewhat differently. “Coming of age’ in this context meaning after Brad had been unclear about what aspect of the term Seth meant, meaning the beginning the treacherous process of understanding all the sexual changes and commotions once you got to puberty. He said he had taken the one he, and Brad, had known about personally of coming of age in the early 1960s in the age of the “Pill,” of technology-driven space exploration and of some new as yet unspoken and undiscovered social breeze coming to shake up a lot of the old values, to turn the world upside down, from their parents’ generation. He said he tried to contrast that with the one before theirs, the one represented in the film about the coming of age of their parents’ generation. The generation that on one edge, the older edge went through the whole trauma of the Great Depression that brought barren days to the land and of slogging World War II and at the other edge, the younger edge, missing the trauma of war and its particular stamp on those who survived went on to form the alienated youth who turned “beat,” rode homespun hot rods to perdition, grabbed a La Jolla perfect wave surf board, revved up hellish motorcycles to scare all the squares and come under the immediate spell of jailbreak rock and roll. The funny thing at least on the basis of a viewing of the film on the question of dealing with sex, sexual knowledge and experiences there was a very familiar (and funny) sense that our parents who, at least in their case and the case of their growing up friends, went through the same hoops-with about the same sense of forlorn misunderstanding. (Of course in talking about parents and their sexual desire both Seth and Brad admitted they would have had a hard time linking up their own respective parents with sexual desire but their own kids if asked would probably say the same thing about them.)                   

Brad mentioned that his memory wasn’t so good of late and that although while they were talking he had been trying to dredge up some more facts about the movie other than the one he had mentioned earlier in the conversation about that sexy older woman cradle robber making Seth laugh that whatever the taboos were about intergenerational sex they both would have given their eye-teeth if some world-wise fox had come across their paths. Seth then went on to give Brad a rough outline of how the film had played out.

He told Brad that his habit of late was after viewing a film, particularly a film that he was being paid good dollars to produce a review on, was to go on-line and look up what somebody had to say about the film on Wikipedia.  Wistfully stated that service was something he wished had been around earlier in his career which would have saved him a lot of time in the library or looking at the archives of various publications of the time and allow him under the constant press of deadlines to be able to write better thought out copy. The story line of the film had been based on the essentially true-to-life experiences of a Hollywood screen-writer Hermie Raucher (played by Gary Grimes), coming of age 15, and his two companions, gregarious Oscy and studious Benji, known as “the Three Terrors,” three virginal teenage boys, who were slumming in the year 1942 at the beautiful but desolate end of an island retreat in the first summer of the American direct involvement in the Pacific and European wars after the Japanese bombings of Pearl Harbor. (The island had been Nantucket Island in the book published after the movie but had been filmed off desolate Mendocino in California). They like a million other virginal boys of that age during war or peacetime were driven each in their own way by the notion of sexual experimentation and conquest and so the chase was on.      

That chase had been on at two levels. The rather pedestrian one of seeking out young girls of their own age to see what shook out of the sexual tree and Hermie’s almost mystical search for “meaningful” love in the person of an older foxy woman, Dorothy, played by Jennifer O’Neil, who had been a young war bride staying on the island after her husband headed off to war. The own age part, funny in parts, driven mostly by pal Oscy’s overweening desire to “get laid” with a blonde temptress whom he finally got his wish with on night at the secluded end of the beach with his most experienced partner. On that occasion Hermie was shut out of any desire he had to do the same with her friend who was as bewildered by sex as he was. The “older woman” (in our circles she would have been a “cradle-robbing” older woman although she was only 22) notion of love is what drove him the moment he has set eyes on her when the trio was spying on her and her husband in their cozy cottage so he was “saving” himself for her. And after a series of innocent (and some goofy) encounters with Dorothy one night, after she has just found out that her husband had been killed in the war, she bedded him (there is no other honest way to put the matter). That was that though, for when Hermie subsequently went back to the cottage she had left the island and left him a more solemn young man.              

Having given Brad those details Seth mentioned that those were the main lines that got played out but what had made this film more than of ordinary interest to him was the whole lead-up, the whole “foreplay” if you will of the desire of the trio to be doing something about getting out of that dreaded virgin status. Said all the guys were fearful of being tagged with the “homo” tag and didn’t Brad remember how vicious teenage guys could be about the “manhood” question. Before he could go further Brad mentioned how when they were fourteen or fifteen he could not remember when how all the guys from around the corner that they hung on, including Seth used to “fag” bait him because he had refused to kiss Sarah Langley at a “petting” party and had actually run out of the house where the party was being held he had been so embarrassed. At the time he had been sweet on Jenny Price who had been at the party although nobody was aware of that situation. Nothing ever came of that desire and so he had spent some time living down the “fag” tag until he found Sandy Lee in junior year and she took him out of that status since she was something of a fox herself. Although nobody thought anything of calling another guy a “fag” as masculine craziness about sex and sexual identity erupted nobody seriously thought that the guys were gay or anything like that it was just a separation expression. Who knows who at the time really wasn’t interested in girls, wasn’t into “getting in their pants” although Seth speculated that some guys around the block must have since not a few guys lived at home with their mothers and were not seen with woman companions. Nowadays nobody would think twice about it although the usual baiting in school and among the jocks would still go on given the unchanged nature of certain heterosexual young males. Seth mentioned that he could not believe the pressure to “lose your virginity” that all the guys suffered through, although he admitted that it also took him a long time, long after the Christopher Street riots in the Village that began the serious modern gay rights movement to stop his calling gays “fags.” Not until his eyes were opened up when gay musicians and actors whom he interviewed and assumed were straight came out of the “closet.”   

Seth had laughed at the very realistic scenes when Hermie and Oscy picked up a couple of girls at the movie theater (playing Bette Davis and Paul Henried in Dark Voyage, a film that he actually had reviewed when it came out in a film retrospective at the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square for the old Avatar alternative newspaper). The scene which showed the guys “feeling up,” or trying to, had been amazing with Oscy grabbing his just met girl almost from minute one and Hermie, missing the mark thinking his girl’s shoulder was her breast. Jesus. Brad laughed but reminded Seth that no way would that kind of thing have happened in their days since everybody, or almost everybody knew the drill at the Strand Theater Saturday matinee double-header or Saturday night date it did not matter. Some ancient tradition, hell, maybe going back to 1942 for all anybody knew about the original of the practice made it clear that those who sat in the orchestra were not going to “make out.” If they were in the balcony then whatever went on, went on from “feeling up” to blow jobs. It was solely a question of asking your date where she wanted to sit. That sealed the deal, and in many cased meant a last date.

Brad’s reminder of the old “policy” reminded Seth of the time that he was cray for Rosalind Green in junior high, they had gotten along well, had been a couple of chatterboxes in English class about books by a bunch of foreign guys to show they were “hip.” One day after a few weeks after all this “foreplay” Seth had finally asked her to a Saturday matinee (the usual strategy for a girl you were not sure would accept your date) and she accepted. When after paying for their tickets and hitting the refreshment stand for popcorn and sodas he asked her where she wanted to sit she had answered “silly, of course the balcony why else would I have come with you.” Bingo. Of such events decent youthful memories are made. Brad on the other hand spent many hours in the orchestra section once he latched onto Betsy Binstock (whom he eventually married and was still married to) who was “saving” whatever she was saving for marriage. Okay, too-now.        

Seth quickly mentioned the scene, the awkward scene, where Hermie was helping Dorothy with storing some packages and he got sexually excited, okay, okay, an erection, by her off-hand helping hand touch since neither man wanted to talk about those nighttime wandering hands that came down when they got an erection.  Nor did he spent much time on the scene where the three friends “discover” what sexual intercourse is all about through the good graces of Benji’s mother’s medical books since that scene rang false in their old neighborhood where sexual information was passed from older brother or sister to younger, a lot of it wrong, very wrong when the girl had to go out of town to see “Aunt Emily” (she was pregnant) in other works right out on the streets. Nobody back in 1942, or 1962 expected uptight parents who were assumed to probably not have had sex to give any serious information except some twaddle about the birds and the bees.  And of course the fumbling by the numbers (off-screen) when Oscy has his first sexual experience with the girl he had picked up at the movies. That scene had little over the top and as reticent about talking about sex as parents were guys and gals might give an inkling about what they were doing behind the bushes but a “free show” was off the charts.

The best scene of all though and it really showed the difference between then and now when the younger generations can grab condoms off the shelf at any drugstore or in some places right in schoolhouse restrooms (formerly “lav’s”) and who might not quite appreciate enough the scene where Hermie tried to buy “rubbers” at the local village drugstore from the jaded disbelieving druggist. Brad automatically remembered that scene once Seth recalled it. Remembered too, as he told a disbelieving Seth that night, his own confusion when he was in junior high and had found some condoms in a bottom bathroom drawer in his family house when he was looking for some band-aids. Had asked a kid at school, actually had shown a kid at school one and the kid had said they like balloons you fill them with water and throw them at somebody. It was not until high school and he had begun his own sexual explorations (obviously not with ever-loving Betsy) that he found out their real purpose and blushed silently about his parents’ sexual practices. Hence another example of the very general understanding about the young that their own parents never had sex. Whatever else being a youth today may be about in terms of trauma at least there is a hell of a lot of good information hanging out there on the Internet for the young to inquire into with embarrassment. 

Yeah, Seth gave Brad the word as they finished up that last round of drinks and began to head to their respective homes -watch this film and remember your own, either sex, torturous rumbling around coming to terms with sex.     

Blame It On Woody Allen, Okay?

Blame It On Woody Allen, Okay?

CD REVIEWS

Yes, here is one more thing to blame on Woody Allen, as if he hasn’t had enough problems in his life. Earlier this year I watched and reviewed in this space the film Radio Days that Woody directed. Every since then in the deep recesses of my brain the tunes Paper Dolls and Sentimental Journey have been pounding away. Hey this is music made before I was born, although maybe I picked it up in the womb. Why is it in my head? I am still a child of my generation (the Generation of '68) and fought the anti-Vietnam War fight to the tunes of Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row and The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter but I think I can make a little room for this, if only to keep my brain from stopping that pounding. Directly below are a few comments from my Radio Day review that fit here and below that some specific comments on the CDs being reviewed.

"…I am a first generation child of the television age, although in recent years I have spent more time kicking and screaming about that fact than watching the damn thing. Nevertheless I can appreciate Director (and narrator) Woody Allen’s valentine to the radio days of his youth. I am just old enough, although about a half generation behind Allen, to remember the strains of songs like Paper Dolls and Autumn Leaves that he grew up with and that are nicely interspersed throughout his story as backdrop floating in the background of my own house.

I am also a child of Rock 'n' Roll but those above-mentioned tunes were the melodies that my mother and father came of age to and the stuff of their dreams during World War II and its aftermath. The rough and tumble of my parents raising a bunch of kids might have taken the edge off it but the dreams remained. In the end it is this musical backdrop that makes Radio Days most memorable to me……

….Allen’s youth, during the heart of World War II, was time when one needed to be able to dream a little. The realities of the world at that time seemingly only allowed for nightmares. My feeling is that this film touched a lot of sentimental nerves for the World War II generation (that so-called ‘greatest generation’) whether it was his Jewish families (as portrayed here) on the shores of New York’s Far Rockaway or my Irish families on the shores of Quincy, Massachusetts. Nice work, Woody."

Songs that Got Us Through WWII- Vol. 2, various artists, Rhino Records, 1994

The highlights here are Vaughan Monroe’s There I’ve Said It Again. This is the time of the male crooner and the big band orchestra and Monroe combines both here. Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters hit with Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby. Male crooner and three female harmonies was another trade mark of the times. Billie Holiday’s Lover Man. Let me keep this one simple- I could get through war, pestilence and the apocalypse as long as I had a Billie album with me.

Sentimental Journey- Vol. 1 (1942-1946) various artists, Rhino Records, 1993

The highlights here include, obviously, Les Brown and his band doing Sentimental Journey with a young Doris Day on vocals-nice. Dick Haymes doing You’ll Never Know is something like the crooner voice of World War II. Of course, Paper Dolls by the Mills Brothers done here with a little jump middle section is classic. A nice version of Cole Porter’s Night And Day by one Frank Sinatra. It will not replace Billie Holiday’s rendition but is very nice and with the trademark Sinatra phrasing. The top tune here though is Lena Horne doing an incredible version of Stormy Weather. I have heard this tune done by many vocalists- male and female- this is the first time I stopped what I was doing to make sure I gave it its proper due.

The 1940’s, Volume I- 16 Most Requested Songs, various artist, Columbia Records, 1989

Highlights here include the classic Sentimental Journey with Les Brown and his band. Harry James and his band doing a bang up job on You Made Me Love You. A startlingly beautiful version (I didn’t expect it to be in this kind of compilation) of Some Enchanted Evening from the Broadway musical South Pacific done by Ezio Pinza. Kudos here. The surprise is a very sensuous Latin- tropical version of Amor in Spanish done by Xavier Cugat and his band with an unknown (to me) Carmen Castillo on vocals. Wow.

16 Most Requested Songs, Rosemary Clooney, Columbia, 1989

Yes there was a musical world before 1956 and the Elvis explosion. That musical world, however, was the world of the parents, including mine, of the Generation of ’68. One of those voices was that of Rosemary Clooney. Then I thought she was square- you know with that smooth voice and ‘good girl’ image and all in a film like White Christmas with Bing Crosby. Then, several years ago, before she died I heard her in an interview on National Public Radio where she admitted to a drug problem and other little indiscretions. Of course, for this reviewer that meant that I might have to reevaluate her work now that I knew she was not really that ‘good girl’. Now a lot of her sound is still beyond the pale for me and her seeming addiction to bebop novelty songs like Mambo Italiano is off-putting but she certainly is more interesting as a singer to me now. I like the sound of Come On-A My House but what really is nice is Ms. Clooney's way with a ballad. Try Hey There and Tenderly on for size. Then work your way to Half As Much and then a nice little version of Blues In The Night and Too Young. It only took me 50 years to recognize it but Rosemary- you done good.

When The Whole World Reached Out For One Sweet Breathe Of Hollywood Glamour When It Counted-In Honor Of The Commemoration of 100th Birthday Of Rita Hayworth-Who Is That Fred Astaire Is Dancing With?-“You’ll Never Get Rich”- A Film Review

When The Whole World Reached Out For One Sweet Breathe Of Hollywood Glamour When It Counted-In Honor Of The Commemoration of 100^th Birthday Of Rita Hayworth-Who Is That Fred Astaire Is Dancing With?-“You’ll Never Get Rich”- A Film Review

By Si Lannon  

You know the Internet is a wonderful tool at times especially for sites like this one very interested in history, of everything from governments to holy goofs. Most of the time you can find out information or information comes your way when you are perusing for something else. That was the case last year when I was looking something up at the archives of American Film Gazette and noticed they were doing a serious commemoration of the 100^th birthday of ruggedly handsome and versatile male hunk from the 1940s Robert Mitchum. That information led to a full-scale retrospective of his work, or the best of it anyway. The best being his noir stuff where he is hunk style and manly ready to take a few punches, throw a few, take an errant slug or two, bang-bang a few too for some dame, for some femme who had him all twisted up inside trying to find the mystery of her. Fat chance of discovering that as a million guys since Adam, maybe before have found out the hard way, although usually not  at the end of some femme fatale gun.

Not so with the way I got the information about 1940s sex siren and maker of guys, who knows maybe gals too and not just lesbians or bi’s either although they can have their stares just like anybody else but in their own right beautiful women who will concede that she has bested them, steamy midnight dreams Rita Hayworth. I was in Harvard Square on some unrelated business when I passed the famous and historic Brattle Theater a place I knew well in my 1970s cheap date period and have probably seen more films there than any other place. But video stores, studio comps, and lately Netflix and Amazon have taken the place of going to the big screen theater for me for many years now just because it is easier and more efficient to see the films at my discretion. For old-time’s sake I decided to take an “upcoming schedule” broadside which was provided in a little box in front of the theater entrance. When I opened it up later there was one of the icons of icons of Hollywood glamour when that burg was the only game in town and when glamour meant something to eye candy hungry soldiers and sailors, airmen too, during World War II and their waiting for the other shoe to drop anxious honeys sitting in dark movie houses too. Yes, Rita in a 1940s provocative, although what would now draw nothing but a snicker from even naïve eight grade girls, sun suit with that patented come hither if you dare look that every guy, every cinematic guy, begged to get next to. Was ready to take the big step off for like her then husband Orson Welles almost did in the fatal Lady From Shanghai.   

What the theater was doing and was famous for in the old days when the classic no money classic college date world was when I lived was a big retrospective of her work from early B-film stuff as she made her way up the Hollywood stardom food chain to some astonishing dance routines with Fred Astaire making you watch her moves not his something hard to do believe me to the later femme fatale classics like Gilda and the previously mentioned Lady From Shanghai  and then the drop back to B-films and cameos at the end of her career. Since the theater had treated her to this royal treatment I decided the least I could was to do a retro-review of those efforts for a now glamour-hungry world. That type of “innocent” glamour will never come back, the world is just a bit too weary and wary for that to happen but the younger sets should at least know why their grandfathers and grand-grandfathers stirred to her every move, pinned her photo up on a million lockers and in a million duffle bags.

My own Rita experience is like many things in the film business when Hollywood was top dog, rightly or wrongly, second hand from those cheap date retrospectives and earlier, high school earlier with Allan Jackson who used to rule the roost at this publication. In those old Acre neighborhood days, usually Saturdays, we would hike a couple of miles up the carless road to the old Strand Theater in Adamsville Center and watch plenty of 1940s films since to save money Sal Cadger the gregarious owner of the theater on first run features from the studios filled up the screen with this older material. We loved it, have loved it ever since. Bang-the first time I saw Rita sa-sashing into her hubby’s casino down in Buenos Aires, I think that is right, and stumbles onto ex-flame down and out gambler on a losing streak Glenn Ford, to find him working for her old man. Electricity beyond whatever words I could use to describe that tension in the air which spelled some hard times for somebody. I hope the reader will get an idea of that is this series as we commemorate Rita’s 100^th birthday year.       

  

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of a scene with Fred Astaire dancing in You’ll Never Get Rich.

DVD Review

You’ll Never Get Rich, Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth, 1941

Okay, let me bring you up to speed on the obscure meaning of the headline. See, a while back I was smitten by a film star, an old time black and white film star from the 1940s, Rita Hayworth. The film that sent me into a tailspin: the black and white noir classic Gilda where she played a “good” femme fatale who got in a jam with a no good monomaniacal crook. But that part is not important femme fatales, good or bad, get mixed up with wrong gees all the time. It’s an occupational hazard. What is important though is that I got all swoony over lovely, alluring Rita. And as happens when I get my periodic “bugs” I had to go out and see what else she performed in. Of course Lady From Shang-hai came next. There she plays a “bad” blondish femme fatale (against a smitten Orson Welles). And now this film under review, You’ll Never Get Rich. We are caught up.

Now the plot line here, the never-ending boy meets girl plot line that Hollywood mass-produced (and mass-produces) is pretty simple, except that it takes place in getting ready for World War II America and so military preparedness is part of the backdrop (although obvious this is before Pearl Harbor, after that event such shenanigans would seem unpatriotic). Broadway show dance man Fred Astaire is smitten, very smitten (join the line, Fred) by chorine dancer Rita who also has a sting of other men eating out of her hand, the important one being Fred’s devilish Broadway boss, a married, a very married, shirt-chaser. And from there the hi-jinks begin leading to Fred’s departure for the army as a refuse, and eventually, as those Hollywood boy meet girl things often did to the altar (in an unusual way here though, I‘d say).

But forget the story line here. This thing, and righteously so, is strictly about Fred’s dancing, dancing alone, dancing with a partner, dancing up a wall (oops that was another film) but dancing with so much style it is impossible to keep your eyes off him (saying how did he do that all the while). For style, grace, and physical moves every one of those guys you see on shows like Dancing With The Stars, well, just tell them to move on over, and watch a real pro. Hey, wait a minute, what about Rita? Ya, what about her. Here she is just along for the ride. She almost looks “clumsy” compared to him. She, however, has other charms, okay.

When Studs Terkel Spoke Truth To Power In A Sullen World -A Tribute From NPR’s Christopher Lydon’s “Open Source”-The Last Word- Studs Terkel Tells His American Story

When Studs Terkel Spoke Truth To Power In A Sullen World -A Tribute From NPR’s Christopher Lydon’s “Open Source”

Link to Christopher Lydon's Open Source program on the late "people's  journalist" Studs Terkel

http://radioopensource.org/sound-of-studs-terkel/ 

By Si Lannon

It was probably Studs Terkel via a series of book reviews of his interviews trying to get a feel for the soul of the American from Sam Lowell that I first heard the expression “speaking truth to power.” Spoke that message to a sullen world then. Unfortunately since that time the world had not gotten less sullen. Nor has the need to speak truth to power dissipated since Studs passed from this mortal coil of a world that he did so much to give ear and eye to. The problem, the real problem is that we in America no longer produce that pied piper, that guy who will tell the tale the way it has to be told. Something about those gals and guys who waded through the Great Depression, saw firsthand in the closed South Side Chicago factories that something was desperately wrong with the way society operated and slogged through World War II and didn’t go face down in the post-war dead ass could war night spoke of grit and of a feeling that the gritty would not let you down when the deal went down. When Mister (Peabody, James Crow, Robber Baron you name it) called the bluff and you stood there naked and raw.        

Fellow Chicagoan writer Nelson Algren (he of The Man With The Golden Arm and Walk On The Wild Side) put the kind of gals and guys Studs looked around for in gritty urban sinkhole lyrical form but Studs is the guy who found the gritty unwashed masses to sing of. (It is not surprising that when Algren went into decline, wrote less lucid prose Stud grabbed him by the lapels and did a big time boost on one of his endless radio talks to let a candid world know that they missing a guy who know how to give voice to the voiceless, the people with small voices who are still getting the raw end of the deal, getting fucked over if you really want to nitty-gritty truth to power). So check this show out to see what it was like when writers and journalists went down in the mud to get to the spine of society.     

Click On Title To Link To Studs Terkel’s Web Page.

BOOK REVIEW

Touch and Go, Studs Terkel, The New Press, New York, 2007

I have been running through the oral histories collected by the recently departed Studs Terkel, the premier interviewer of his age. As is my habit when I latch onto a writer I want to delve into I tend to read whatever items comes into my hands as soon as I get them rather than systematically or chronologically. Thus, I have just gotten my hands on a copy of Terkel’s “Touch and Go”, a memoir of sorts but more properly a series of connected vignettes (with a little off-hand celebrity name dropping along the way), that goes a long way to filling in some blanks in the life story of one Louis “Studs” Terkel (including information on that the nickname “Studs” - from the 1930’s Chicago-based trilogy “Studs Lonigan” by James T. Farrell, another author who will be reviewed here in the future). For those unfamiliar with Terkel’s work this little book acts as glue to understanding a long life committed to social justice, giving “voice” to ordinary people and expanding our knowledge of various musical traditions like jazz, folk music and the blues. Nice work, right?

And what of that life? The more famous second half of it is fairly well-known in Studs role as the ubiquitous interviewer and oral historian. That part is extensively covered through the materials in his various books such as “Working” and the “The Good War” and others that I have or will review elsewhere in this space and therefore will not spend much time on here. The less familiar first half of his life forms a fairly well-trodden exemplar of a life story from the early part of the 20th century but which today’s readers are nevertheless probably totally unaware of. Naturally enough, for an early 20th century American story, it begins with immigration of Studs parents to America, New York City as the first port of call, from the Jewish ghettos of Eastern Europe. Then, later, the also familiar internal migration that landed them in Chicago in search of more promising prospects and, ultimately assimilation by Studs (and his two brothers) into the life of the heartland, including the old traditions of hard work, hard striving and hard inquisitiveness.

Studs, like many of the members of his generation, was formed, permanently it would seen, by the hardships and cruelties of the Great Depression that, as exemplified by his oral histories of the times, are his special contributions to the history of that period. I do not believe that those of us from later generations can get a full sense of that history without Studs’ work as companion pieces to the academic histories. That was a time, as a glance at today’s’ current dire economic and social events may be foreshadowing, where one was forced to get by one’s wits, cleverness and sheer “guts”.

After a stint at law school Studs did odd jobs around the theater trying catch on a performer. But not just any theater and not just any performer. This is the period of the Theater Guild and of the WPA which gave cultural workers or those who aspired to such a chance. In short, an engaged and leftist political theater. Needless to say Studs got caught up with the international politics of the period. The struggle against fascism as a “pre-mature” anti-fascist, the fight to save the Spanish Republic and at home the struggle to aid those who were decimated by the Depression. Name a progressive social cause, he was there.

For his efforts, then and later, Studs had some success in his career as a performer first in the ubiquitous field of radio that formed the mass consciousness of the so-called “greatest generation” as a disc jockey and interviewer of various musical figures like Billie Holiday on his shows, the Wax Museum and the Eclectic Disc Jockey. Later, after truncated service in the Air Force in World II, Studs got in on the ground floor of the television with the local Chicago success of Studs’ Place.

Then the roof caved in as the ‘’red scare’ hit home and hit home hard. This was not a good period for those “pre-mature” anti-fascists like Studs mentioned in the last paragraph. In any case Studs survived by “doing the best he could” and by one means or another got hooked onto his career as an interviewer that one really should get a taste of first hand by reading one of the dozen or so books of his dedicated to that art form.

I have not mentioned thus far much about the specifics of Studs’ politics. I believe that he was formed, and ultimately was stuck in, that ‘progressive’ (and capitalism-saving) politics that came to life with President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and was given highest expression by former FDR Vice-President Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party run for the presidency in 1948. A perusal of Studs later works, including comments in this memoir only confirm my impression that his worldview, formed in the 1930’s, remained about the same to the end.

That, however, is not why Studs has an honored place in the halls of the allies of the working class. His commitment to the “good fight” throughout a long life was commendable. We are always in need of those are willing to sign something, to speak to some pressing social issue and who do not squawk about it. No movement can survive without those kinds of publicists. The real tribune to Studs, however, will come when those myriad working class people that he interviewed- those downtrodden Chicago people, those poor white mountain people, those poor black migrants from the South get the society they desire and NEED. Kudos, Brother Terkel.


Studs At His Craft

The Spectator, Studs Terkel, The New Press, New York, 1999

As is my wont, I have been running through the oral histories of the mainly average citizens of America collected by the recently departed Studs Terkel, the premier interviewer of his age. When I latch onto a writer I want to delve into I tend to read whatever comes into my hands as I get it rather than systematically or chronologically. Thus, I have just gotten my hands on a copy of Terkel’s “The Spectator”, a professional actor’s memoir of sorts, that goes a long way to filling in some blanks in the life story of one Louis “Studs” Terkel (including information that the nickname “Studs” is from the Chicago trilogy “Studs Lonigan” by James T. Farrell, another author who will be reviewed here later). For those unfamiliar with Terkel’s work other than his seemingly endless capacity to interview one and all this little book acts as glue to understanding a life-long commitment to his craft as an actor, his appreciation of those who gave memorable performances, his fantastical recall of such moments in the theater and on film and his creating of a wider audience appreciation for various musically traditions like jazz, folk music and the blues. Nice work.

Studs, like many of the members of his generation, was formed by the hardships and cruelties of the Great Depression that I believe in his oral histories are his special contribution to insights into that period and that is reflected here. That was a time, as today’s’ current economic and social events seem to replicating, where one was forced to get by on wits, cleverness and sheer “guts”. Studs himself did odd jobs around the theater trying catch on a performer. But not just any theater and not just any performer. This is the period of the Theater Guild and of WPA which gave cultural workers or those who aspired to such a chance. These early efforts formed the lifelong interest that he has in the theater, playwrights, directors and the tricks of the trade in order to make the audience “believe” in the performance. I found, personally, his probing and informed interviews with Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams , two of my own favorite playwrights, the most interesting part of a book filled with all kind of interesting tidbits.

For his efforts, then and later, Studs had some success in his career as a performer first in the ubiquitous radio that formed many a consciousness of the so-called ‘greatest generation” as a disc jockey and interviewer of various musical figures like Billie Holiday on his shows, the Wax Museum and the Eclectic Disc Jockey. It is the combination of the radio as a format and the in-depth interview that sets Studs apart. Today we have no comprehension of how important these little extended interviews are as a contribution to the history of our modern culture. Will the ubiquitous mass media sound bites of the 21st century or even the unfiltered presentations on “YouTube”, or its successors, tell future generations what that culture was all about? I don’t even want to hazard a guess. But for now, savor, and I do mean savor, Studs going one-on-one with the above-mentioned Miller and Williams or songwriter Yip Harburg, come-back actor James Cagney, culture critics Harold Clurman and Kenneth Tynan and many, many more actors, actresses, playwrights, impresarios, directors and other cultural gadflies. Kudos and adieu Studs.

When Studs Terkel Spoke Truth To Power In A Sullen World -A Tribute From NPR’s- Christopher Lydon’s “Open Source”*World War II Up Close And Personal- Studs Terkel's "The Good War"

When Studs Terkel Spoke Truth To Power In A Sullen World -A Tribute From NPR’s Christopher Lydon’s “Open Source”

Link to Christopher Lydon's Open Source program on the late "people's  journalist" Studs Terkel

http://radioopensource.org/sound-of-studs-terkel/ 

By Si Lannon

It was probably Studs Terkel via a series of book reviews of his interviews trying to get a feel for the soul of the American from Sam Lowell that I first heard the expression “speaking truth to power.” Spoke that message to a sullen world then. Unfortunately since that time the world had not gotten less sullen. Nor has the need to speak truth to power dissipated since Studs passed from this mortal coil of a world that he did so much to give ear and eye to. The problem, the real problem is that we in America no longer produce that pied piper, that guy who will tell the tale the way it has to be told. Something about those gals and guys who waded through the Great Depression, saw firsthand in the closed South Side Chicago factories that something was desperately wrong with the way society operated and slogged through World War II and didn’t go face down in the post-war dead ass could war night spoke of grit and of a feeling that the gritty would not let you down when the deal went down. When Mister (Peabody, James Crow, Robber Baron you name it) called the bluff and you stood there naked and raw.        

Fellow Chicagoan writer Nelson Algren (he of The Man With The Golden Arm and Walk On The Wild Side) put the kind of gals and guys Studs looked around for in gritty urban sinkhole lyrical form but Studs is the guy who found the gritty unwashed masses to sing of. (It is not surprising that when Algren went into decline, wrote less lucid prose Stud grabbed him by the lapels and did a big time boost on one of his endless radio talks to let a candid world know that they missing a guy who know how to give voice to the voiceless, the people with small voices who are still getting the raw end of the deal, getting fucked over if you really want to nitty-gritty truth to power). So check this show out to see what it was like when writers and journalists went down in the mud to get to the spine of society.     

Click On Title To Link To Studs Terkel’s Web Page.

Book Review

“The Good War”: An Oral History Of World War II, Studs Terkel, Pantheon Books, 1984

Strangely, as I found out about the recent death of long time pro-working class journalist and general truth-teller "Studs" Terkel I was just beginning to read his "The Good War", about the lives and experiences of, mainly, ordinary people during World War II in America and elsewhere, for review in this space. A little comment is thus in order here before I do so. The obvious one that comes to mind is that with his passing he joins many of the icons of my youth who have now passed from the scene. Saul Bellows, Arthur Miller, Hunter Thompson, Norman Mailer, Utah Phillips to name a few. Terkel was certainly one of them, not for his rather bland old New Deal political perspective as much as a working class partisan as he might have been, but for his reportage about ordinary working people. These are my kind of people. This where I come from. He heard the particular musical cadence of their lives and wrote with some verve on the subject, especially that melody of his adopted Chicago home (Musically, Robert Johnson's "Sweet Home, Chicago" fits the bill here, right?).

One thing that I noticed immediately after reading this book is that, as is true of the majority of Terkel's interview books, he is not the dominant presence but is a rather light, if intensely interested, interloper in these stories. For better or worse the interviewees get to tell their stories, unchained. In this age of 24/7 media coverage with every half-baked journalist or wannabe interjecting his or her personality into somebody else's story this was, and is, rather refreshing. Of course this journalistic virtue does not mean that Studs did not have control over who got to tell their stories and who didn't to fit his preoccupations and sense of order. I would have been surprised, for example, if the central leadership of the Allied military efforts, like General Eisenhower, got a lot of ink here but I was not surprised that, for example, the late "premature anti-fascist" Milton Wolff, the last commander of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, got a full airing on his interesting World War II exploits.

What were Stud's preoccupations in this book? Obviously from the quotation marks around the title "The Good War" there is some question in his mind and in that of at least some of his interviewees that this now storied period was all that it was cracked up to be. One, however, gets the distinct impression that, notwithstanding that assumption, those who participated in this period, called the "greatest generation" at least in America basically saw it as a necessary war to fight, whatever else happened afterward.

I have my disagreements with the premise that was this was the greatest American generation (the Northern side in the Civil War gets my vote) and what one should have done in response to the Axis threat to the world and the defense of the Soviet Union but I too will defer political judgment and let the participants tell their stories.

And what stories are being told here? Well, certainly this book is filled with interviews of the lives, struggles and fate of the rank and file servicemen (and a few women) that fought that war. Those include the stories of soldiers from the Axis powers and the Soviet Union as well. Of course we have the trials and tribulations of those who were left behind on the home fronts, including those "Rosie The Riveters" women who went to work in the factories of America (and were later kicked out on the return of the men).

Moreover, and this marks this book as different from earlier efforts to tell the war story, we have stories of the plight and successes of blacks, including the now famous Tuskegee Airmen, in this transitional racial period that in many ways is the catalyst for the later black civil rights movement of the 1950's. It is no accident that many of the early rank and file cadres of that movement were veterans of this war. As importantly we also have stories here of the effects the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war as told by those affected.

Of course, no modern account of World War II can be complete without mention of the Holocaust (Shoah), the fates of the survivors and those who didn't as well as the impact that it had on the liberators on entering the death camps. Also necessary are the interviews concerning the grizzly fates of POW on all sides. As is, additionally, the general sense that many participants sincerely thought that this war was to be something like a war to end all wars (sound familiar?), especially in light of Hiroshima.

I was somewhat surprised by the overwhelming distinction that was drawn between the "civilized" nature of the European war and the "savagery" of the Pacific war by the participants. However, I was not surprised by the general support for the dropping of the atomic bomb expressed by the bulk of the interviewees questioned nor was I surprised by the little tidbits of information about events that occurred during the war that presaged the buildup to the anti-Soviet Cold War.

For those of us who are sons and daughters of this generation that fought the war, and who came of political age in the 1960's, this little book provides more personal information in one spot than I ever learned from my taciturn and reticent parents or from the high school history books. That, my friends, makes this any extremely necessary book for your lists if you came from an even later generation and are personally farther removed from this period. Read this book! Kudos and adieu Studs.

* On Being "Dugout Doug"- William Manchester's "American Caesar"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Americna author William Manchester.

BOOK REVIEW

AMERICAN CAESAR, WILLIAM MANCHESTER

General Douglas MacArthur is one of the few military figures in American history who, even today, evokes heated partisan responses. The title of the headline for this piece clearly tells where this writer is on the partisan divide. The nickname “Dugout Doug” goes back to the days when after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines General MacArthur got himself out of harms way, with due fanfare, while his subordinates and troops for the most part got left behind to face the brunt of the Japanese forces. It was not pretty. This story and many others are detailed in the late journalist William Manchester’s biography of the general.

The history of the United States has produced a few military figures who were flamboyant. It has also produced a fair number with some military skills. It is, however, unusual to have the two come together as they did in the self-advertised grandeur of MacArthur. Europe has had some familiarity with the ‘man on horse back’. One thinks of France, in particular. In America that notion, at least publicly, has not been presented by military leaders while in uniform. MacArthur was an exception. Manchester is not incorrect to see that if there were such a candidate for the role of Caesar (or the modern variant, Napoleon) in the United States MacArthur by skill, élan and appetite fit the bill. That thread runs through the whole story line here.

No one can question that MacArthur had exceptional military skill in both World Wars, especially his role in the Pacific in World War II. One, however, should note, and note carefully his role in dispersing the Bonus Army in Washington, D.C. in the early 1930’s. That might provide a taste of what the American Caesar had in store if he ever took power. Furthermore, one should note that MacArthur was well out of his element when he faced essentially ‘unconventional’ armies in Korea. Call it ‘limited warfare’ if you will but he totally underestimated his North Korean and Chinese opposites in the age of new ‘warfare’. Later American generals faced, and are today facing, similar conditions. And making the same wrong estimations about the enemy's capacities. That MacArthur’s reputation has mainly survived his Korea debacle owes more to hubris, including his own, than reality. In any case, read this book to get a flavor of the old American Army and its most well known general.

Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Night-I’ll Get By As Long As I Have You-For Prescott And Delores Breslin

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Inkspots performing I'll Get By to give a little flavor to this sketch.

CD Review

Sentimental Journey, Pop Vocal Classics, Volume 2: 1947-1950, Rhino Records, 1993

Scene: Brought to mind by the sepia-toned family album-style photograph that graces the cover of this CD and by the song Far Away Places.

“Prescott James Breslin get your dirty hands off that wall this minute, yelled Delores Breslin (nee LeClerc), Mother Breslin to some, including the yelled at Prescott, honey, to Prescott Breslin, Senior, Father Breslin to the junior one being yelled at just this minute. Just as Mother Breslin, hell, let’s call her Delores, was getting ready for cascade rant number two aimed in Prescott, Junior’s direction wafting through the air, the radio WJDA air, came the melodious voice of Bing Crosby singing in that sweet, nuanced voice of his, Far Away Places. Their song. Their forever memory song.

Delores flashed back to the night in 1943 over at the Stardust Ballroom on East Grand in Old Orchard Beach that she, then a typist for the State Insurance Company right here in Olde Saco (and making good money for a single, no high maintenance girl), and Marine PFC Prescott Breslin, stationed after serious service in the Pacific wars (Guadalcanal, etc.) at the Portsmouth Naval Base, met while they were playing that song on the jukebox between sets. Sets being performed by the Be-Bop Sextet, a hot, well, be-bop band that was making a national tour to boost civilian morale while the boys were off fighting. They hit it off right away, made Far Away Places their song, and prepared for a future, a joint future, once the war was over, and they could get their dream, shared dream, little white house, with or without picket fence, maybe a dog, and definitely kids, a few although they never specified a number. The perfect dream to chase the old Great Depression no dough blues and World War II fighting dust away, far away. And to be to breath a decent breathe, a not from hunger breathe.

Just then Delores snapped back into the reality, the two by four reality, of their made due, temporary veterans’ housing set up by the Olde Saco Housing Authority (at the request of and funded by the War Department) to house the housing-hungry returning vets and give them a leg up. Add on the further reality that Prescott’s job at the Macadam’s Textile Mill was none too sure now that rumors were circulating around town that the mill-owners were thinking of relocating to North Carolina. And the biggest reality of all: well, Prescott, Junior, Kendrick, and most recently still in the cradle Joshua. And three is enough, more than enough thank you. But as that terrific tenor of Dick Haymes singing Little White Lies was making its way into her air space she fell back to thinking about that now old dream of the little white house, with or without picket fence, a dog and a few (exactly three, thank you) that was coming just around next corner. And just as she was winding up to blast young Prescott, his dirty hands, and that wall, maybe a little less furiously than she intended before, her thoughts returned to her Prince Charming, Starlight Ballroom 1943, and their song. Their forever memory song. Yes, she would get by.

Put Your Mother’s Dancing Slippers On- Once Again On The Songs That Got Us Through World War II

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Vaughn Monroe performing There I've Said It Again. Yes, I know with an introduction by Ronald Reagan. Yadda Yadda.

CD Review


Songs That Got Us Through World War II, Volume 2, various artists, Rhino Records, 1994

There I’ve Said It Again, came wafting through the halls from another ballroom as Sally Madigan began to sit down at her table after having danced to her favorite dance, and almost naturally so, Mustang Sally. Strange juxtaposition, strange times she thought to herself. Just a bunch of years ago, a bunch of childhood 1950s years ago, she would do her own swoon, almost swelling to tears, just like her mother, sweet mother, Delores, when that deep bass voice of Vaughn Monroe came over WJDA, the local radio station in Clintondale that feature songs of the 1940s, the war-torn and separated 1940s, her mother’s time, and surely her father’s too. And now it just sounded, well, old-fashioned, old hat, and old fogy. Hell, now the be-bop rock 1950s that she craved sounded that way too. But that is a story for another time, a time of boy-finding and finding out about being a girl.

Strange that just that song, and now what sounded like the strains of Sentimental Journey starting up, heard more clearly now that the Lazy Crazy and the Rocking Ramrods were taking a break after finishing that last set with as sweat-poring, handkerchief wet rendition of Sally, are in the air. Strange since only a couple of weeks ago as Sally packed up her belongings from her room so that her younger sister, Meg, could move up in the Madigan girls' room pecking order and move in she had been flashed back to that same 1940s time. She was packing her belongings, sorting out what she was taking to State University and what she was storing, her other valuables and mementos like Timmy the Bear that just could not be parted with, down in the cellar.

In the cellar she had come across her mother’s wrapped in seven layers of plastic dancing slippers, or what was labeled as such by her label-happy mother. And a few Brownie-camera taken photographs, faded brown now, of her younger days mother, escorted by various beaus, some in uniform others not. But none of her mother with her father. And every picture had a note written in fountain pen, or what looked like fountain pen ink, thicker and more squiggly than Bics, that read something like this one- “to Delores Taylor, the rose of the Class of 1943 and the best slow dancer around. Love and kisses, Zack.”

Those finds had gotten Sally thinking about what those things meant, as they did now, as Caldonia came be-bopping through those halls and that distinctive Woody Herman flute reached for the high white note. Funny, she found herself toe-tapping to that sound, as were others around her, even though everybody agreed, agreed totally, that that was nothing but mothers and fathers music when she mentioned the name of the song. And Sally was thinking hard about the fact that her mother never danced, never mentioned dancing, and never mentioned any of the facts behind all that WJDA music that had practically mesmerized her in the 1950s. And if that was true of her mother then it was ten times more true about her father, Jim, who for the past several years had been a blur in her life, both because he did not understand how in the world he produced five girls and no boys. Although he repeated emphasized that he loved them all dearly when pushed on the subject and he had taken to spending more time with his old-time war buddy cronies and some younger guys as Timmy’s Irish Pub over near the softball field in North Clintondale. All she knew about those times was that Jim had a fist full of medals on a uniform that was also laid out in seven layers of plastic down in the cellar, and that was it.

Sally mentioned that fact to her escort, yes, escort, not boyfriend, okay, Johnny Rizzo, a fellow freshmen she had met her first day at State at orientation and whom she immediately liked. He invited her to this first Freshman Mixer and she accepted. He noted that his own parents never talked about those war days, although they did not play the old-timey music so maybe they just wanted to forget. That opinion was shared, mostly, by the other three couples at the table, at least between the cooings being made by those couples. And as When My Man Comes Home started to get competition from Lazy Crazy warming up to the Kingmen’s Louey, Louey Sally was determined to fill in the lost years. Just then Johnny asked her to dance, and as her feet were feeling too hot she slipped off her own dancing slippers before heading to the dance floor.

Note: Sally did find out, or partially find out, what happened back in those days and to make a long story short, There I’ve Said It Again was the “their” song for Delores and Zack, Zack Smith. Zack was killed, like too many boys, at Anzio (Italy) and Delores had married Jim Madigan, war hero and alive, on the “rebound.” Jim never said anything about it, that was Jim’s way, but he never danced with Delores either.

His Father’s Uniform- “The Songs That Got Us Through World War II”

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Ink Spots performing I'll Get By.

CD Review

The Songs That Got Us Through World War II, various artists, Rhino Records, 1990

Rick Roberts was curious. Not curious about everything in the world just this minute, although more than one teacher had noted on his early childhood reports cards that little characteristic, but curious about his father’s military uniform, his faded, drab, slightly moth-eaten army dress uniform, World War II version, of course. That curiousness came not from, like the usual, some daydream curiosity but the result, the this minute result, of having come across the suit in an attic closet as he was preparing to store his own not used, not much used, or merely out-of-fashion, excess clothing against time. And that time was, or rather is the time of his imminent departure for State University and his first extended time away from home.

Funny Rick knew that his father had been in World War II, had gotten some medals for his service as was apparent from the fruit salad on the uniform, and had spent a little time, he was not exactly sure on the time but his mother had told him 1950 when he asked, in the Veterans Hospital for an undisclosed aliment. But he had not heard anything beyond those bare facts from his father. Never. And his mother had insistently shh-ed him away when ever he tried to bring it up.

Oh sure Rick had been sick unto death back in the 1950s when the kitchen radio, tuned into WNAC exclusively to old-time World War II Roberts’ parent music. To the exclusion of any serious rock music like Elvis, Chuck, Little Richard and Jerry Lee, but that was parents just being parents and kicking up old torches. Especially when Frank Sinatra sang I’ll Be Seeing You, or his mother would laugh whimsically when The Andrew Sisters performed Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy or The Mills Brothers would croon Till Then. But they, Rick’s parents, never were overheard discussing that war, nor was it discussed when his father’s cronies, and fellow veterans, came over to play their weekly card games until dawn. What happened back then, what went wrong?

After having spied the uniform Rick decided it was time to ask those questions, those curiosity questions. Later it would be too late, he would be too busy raising a family of his own, or he would be doing his own military service, although he hoped not on that count. It just didn’t figure into his plans, and that was that. So with a deep breathe one evening, one Friday evening after dinner, when his father would not be distracted by thoughts of next day work, or Saturday night card games, his asked the big question. And his father’s answer- “I did what a lot of guys did, not more not less, I did it the best way I could, I saw some things, some tough things, I survived and that’s all that there is to say.” And Rick’s father said it in such a way that there was no torture too severe, no hole too deep, and no hell too hot to get more than that out of him.

Later that evening, still shell-shocked at his father’s response, as he prepared to go out with his boys for one last North Adamsville fling before heading to State, he could hear his mother softy sobbing while the pair listened on the living room phonograph to Martha Tilton warble I’ll Walk Alone, The Ink Spots heavenly harmonize on I’ll Get By, Doris Day songbird Sentimental Journey, Vaughn Monroe sentimentally stir When The Lights Go on Again, and Harry James orchestrate through It’s Been A Long, Long Time. Then Rick understood, understood as well as an eighteen year old boy could understand such things, that it was those songs that had gotten them through the war, and its aftermath. And that was all he had to know.

*In The Time Of The Time Of The Parents Of The Generation Of '68- David Kennedy's "Freedom From Fear: The American People In Depression And War; 1929-1945- A Book Review

Book Review

Freedom From Fear: The American People In Depression And War; 1929-1945, The Oxford History Of The United States, David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press, New York, 1999

Over the course of the past several years I have mentioned many things about both my own generation, the Generation of ’68 (read: the beginning of the baby-boomer curve), and that of my parents. Probably more readers today are familiar with the political turmoil churned up by my generation, have seen or read about the 1960s and the “hippie counterculture, or have been thrust into the center of various “culture wars” that have been fought in reaction to those times for the last forty years or so. As my parents’ generation, the generation who lived through the hard times of the Great Depression of the 1930s, a period that has been the subject of many comparisons with today’s economic mess, and who fought a war, a “good” war in their eyes, have begun to pass away in great numbers that story may not be as fresh to today’s reader.

Needless to say as part of a generic Oxford History of The United States this volume , Freedom From Fear, by David Kennedy is heavy on the macro-history of the period in its eight hundred plus pages. While that may not be enough, not nearly enough for those who want to learn the lessons of the history of this period I believe that as a general primer in order to get the flavor of the periods explored that this is an excellent primer, for the general reader and budding specialist. I might add here that Professor Kennedy has aided the reader’s cause by keeping a light hand on the story line and in keeping the sometimes bewildering mass of material in an orderly manner. And always appreciated, especially in eight hundred page tomes, the footnotes are on the same page as they are cited, a practice that a great many scholarly works could benefit from.

No one, historian or lay reader, can speak of the period from 1929-1945 in America without recognizing the central figure of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In my household for my parents’ generation, and their parents’ generation, the name evoked a living god. Although this book bring FDR back to earth a little, especially over some of his more bureaucratic moves, like trying to pack the Supreme Court, he still mainly comes off as the hero of my family household remembrances.

Professor Kennedy takes us through the reasons for that positive image as he starts with the economic and political atmosphere in America in the late 1920s, the great Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the policies of FDR’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover, that were either too little too late or too benign to be effective. After a few years of the Hoover policy FDR (read: non-Hoover) looked pretty good. At least his ideas for putting a massively unemployed nation back to work held out promise. Kennedy also spends much time on the general condition of the country, who was being listened to, who had the ear of the people and who was just spinning wheels, as FDR entered office.

Then we are taken on a long stretch through the various alphabet soups of agencies and programs that FDR and his cohorts tried to implement in order to get things moving and that is the theme that carries the book through most of the 1930s up until the war rumblings from Europe started. The most central proposition that Professor Kennedy (and not he alone) pushes forth, and he is basically correct, is that no amount of tinkering to save the capitalist system by FDR and his programs really broke the back of unemployment and resolved the central problem of economic turmoil in America. That was not resolved until the massive buildup of armaments for World War II put people back to work.

FDR’s domestic program takes up about one half of the book, the other half, and to my mind the less fruitful part takes up the struggle for America’s entry into World War II against the very strong isolationist tendencies here and then, once war was inevitable, the various strategies to win the European and Pacific component of the war. Professor Kennedy does a good job of running through the various controversies, at home and with foreign allies, and the order of battles on each front up to the decisive one of using the atomic bomb against the Japanese.

For the most part reading through this broad history of the period reminded me of my high school readings from this period. But history is a moving target and thus Professor Kennedy, as befits later research and a tip of the hat to the modern trend toward the concerns of micro-history, addresses several issues that never saw the light of day back then. Among them the controversy over the “wisdom” of using the atomic bomb, the placing of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps (along with a legal imprimatur from the Supreme Court) , the segregation of blacks soldiers in the military, the role of women in war production and the governmental bureaucracy and the labor movement’s attitude toward the war. I do wish that Professor Kennedy had spent a little more time on life at the base of society during this whole period (as opposed to reports about what some government official thought was happening at the base). But for that kind of thing you can run over to Studs Terkel’s The Good War or other such compilation. For an outstanding primer on the period though, this is your stop,

From The SteveLendmanBlog-Franklin Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights

Franklin Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights
by Stephen Lendman

Email: lendmanstephen (nospam) sbcglobal.net (verified) 28 Oct 2010
his economic bill of rights
Franklin Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights - by Stephen Lendman

Ferdinand Lundberg's "Cracks in the Constitution" deconstructed what framers, in fact, created, men he equated with a Wall Street crowd, given their economic status and prominence as bankers, merchants, lawyers, politicians, judges, and overall wheeler-dealers. In 1787, they convened for their own interests, not the general welfare as most people believe.

As a result, they produced no "masterpiece of political architecture (falling far short of) one great apotheosis (bathed) in quasi-religious light," as Lundberg masterfully explained. His book, if not the Constitution, is an epic work, must reading about America's most important document, the Bill of Rights added belatedly in the first 10 Amendments, again not for reasons commonly believed.

They protected property owners, not ordinary people, who wanted:

-- free speech, press, religion, assembly and petition rights for their interests, not "The People;"

-- due process of law and speedy public trials for themselves if charged;

-- quartering troops in their homes or on their land prohibited;

-- protection from unreasonable searches and seizures;

-- the right to have state militias protect them;

-- the right to bear arms, but not the way the 2nd Amendment today is interpreted; and

-- and various other rights for them, privileged elites who, like today, lied, connived, misinterpreted, misrepresented, and pretty much operated as they wished for their own self-interest, law or no law.

Yet, the Constitution is hailed as the "supreme law of the land," including its 27 Amendments, the last one first proposed on September 25, 1789 (no typo), enacted over 200 years later on May 7, 1992, preventing congressional salaries from taking effect until the beginning of the next term.

Franklin Roosevelt's Proposed Economic Bill of Rights

On January 11, 1944, in his last State of the Union Address, Roosevelt proposed a second bill of rights, saying the initial one "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness." His solution: an "economic bill of rights," guaranteeing:

-- employment with a living wage;

-- freedom from unfair competition and monopolies;

-- housing;

-- medical care;

-- education; and

-- social security, overall what he provided inadequately in his first 11 years, except for measures like the 1935 Wagner Act letting workers, for the first time, bargain collectively on even terms with management, and the landmark Social Security Act, keeping millions of retirees, disabled, and qualified survivors from the ravages of poverty.

These benefits are fast eroding today, Obama administration neoliberal ideologues wanting social benefits slashed, and Social Security and Medicare privatized so Wall Street racketeers can pillage them for profit until nothing's left for the needy.

Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform will recommend austerity measures during Congress' lame duck session. Legislation will likely follow, focusing heavily on Medicare and Social Security, gutting them over time, leaving millions high and dry. What Roosevelt proposed but couldn't implement, the entire Washington establishment plans to take away, cleverly so most people won't notice until it's too late to matter.

With WW II nearly won, Roosevelt stressed focusing the nation's energies and resources on finishing it, suggesting among other measures:

-- "A realistic tax law - which will tax all unreasonable profit," corporate and individual;

-- "A cost of food law" with floor and ceiling limits on prices; and

-- reenactment of the October 1942 stabilization statute, pertaining to prices, wages and salaries affecting the cost of living.

He continued saying:

"We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."

"In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security can be established for all - regardless of station, race, or creed." He then listed what he meant, covering:

"Opportunity.

The right to a useful and remunerative job.

The right to a good education.

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies.

Security.

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.

The right of every family to a decent home.

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation."

Though partly implemented at best, they were positive recommendations, mirror opposite of policies under both parties since the 1980s, and Obama's proposed austerity at a time stimulus is desperately needed.

For example, the 1944 Servicemen's Readjustment Act (the GI Bill) provided college or vocational education for 7.8 million returning vets plus a year of unemployment compensation. In addition, 2.4 million got VA-backed low-interest, no down payment home loans at a time their average cost was under $5,000, enabling millions of families to afford them, many with government help.

Roosevelt called his proposal "security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these happiness and well-being" measures in the interest of democracy, humanity, fairness, justice, and a nation discharging its responsibilities for all its citizens equitably.

Today, these ideas are lost at a time of an unprecedented wealth gap, and officials ignoring essential needs by growing millions, on their own and out of luck because both major parties spurn them.

Instead they focus on imperial wars, handouts to bankers and other corporate favorites, repressive laws, and eroding freedoms, destroying them one at a time or in bunches, creating banana republic harshness in their place.

FDR's prescription was different, a patrician who gave back to save capitalism with policies mirror opposite of today's that will end up destroying it and America - its political and economic dominance, afterwards its military might when little money's left to fund it, then bankruptcy when it's gone, leaving only a short epitaph saying rest in peace.

Perhaps humanity will then exhale, absent America's belligerence and no shyness unleashing it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com


This work is in the public domain