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
Hey, blame it on Warren Smith and a freshly heard Rock and Roll Ruby via YouTubeautomatic retro magic. Hell, blame it on
Sonny Burgess burning up the world with Red-headed
Woman, yah, now that I think of it blame it on him,or even on a mad dog middle of the night discussion with kindred
Peter Paul Markin rekindled from childhood (or rather budding teen-hood) about
who was who in the be-bop rock and roll firmament in the mid-1950s. Damn, blame
it on the retro-fuelled Stray Cats but under no circumstances blame it on me
for lighting up cyberspace with a bag full of rockabilly gumbo.
The last time that I discussed rockabilly music in this space was a couple
of years ago when I was mulling over the work of artists like Elvis, Johnny
Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, when they were young and hungry, from hunger really,
and fed into our jailbreak hungry after years of listening to parent Sinatra, Como,
Page and the Ink Spots ad infinitum,
who got their start at Sam Phillips’ famed Sun Records studio in Memphis. Part
of the reason for those thoughts was my effort to trace the roots of rock and
roll, the music of my coming of age, and that of my generation, the generation
of ’68. Clearly rockabilly was, along with country and city blues from the
likes of Robert Johnson, Skip James , Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and pre-Tina Ike
Turner (think Rocket 88 among other
be-bop stuff) and rhythm and blues from the likes of Big Joe Turner (think, big
think and don’t spare anything, Shake,
Rattle and Roll) a part of that formative process. The question then, and
the question once again today, is which strand dominated the push to rock and
roll, if one strand in fact did dominate.
I have gone back and forth on that question over the years. That couple of
years ago mentioned above I was clearly under the influence of Big Joe Turner
and Howlin’ Wolf and so I took every opportunity to stress the bluesy nature of
rock. Recently though I have been listening, and listening very intently, to
early Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis and I am hearing more of
that be-bop rockabilly rhythm flowing into the rock night. Let me give a
comparison. A ton of people have done Big Joe Turner’s classic rhythm and
bluish Shake, Rattle, and Roll, including Bill Haley, Elvis, Carl
Perkins, and Jerry Lee. When I listen to that song as performed in their more
rockabilly style those versions seem closer to what evolved into rock. So for
today, and today only, yes Big Joe is the big daddy, max daddy father of rock
but Elvis, Jerry Lee, and Carl are the very pushy sons.
And that brings us to the treasure trove of rockabilly music, the stuff the
big boys came, all back forty barns dances, high school last chance dances, and
country fair jamborees from, the stuff the big boys listened to get an idea or
two, and maybe helped to create. I have
already done enough writing in praise of the work of Sam Phillips and Sun
Records to bring that good old boy rockabilly sound out of the white southern
countryside. I noted that for the most part those who succeeded in rockabilly in
say 1954, or 55 had to move on to rock to stay current with the youth wave (the
disposable income/allowance post- World War II youth wave, mainly girls, who
bought those luscious 45 RPM records and put those nickels, dimes and quarters in
the jukeboxes and, and, sometimes, pretty please some times, let the likes of cash-lite Josh Breslin and P.P. Markin help
them make their selections, okay) and so the rockabilly sound was somewhat
transient except for those who consciously decided to stay with that sound. The
best example of that, other than those mentioned above, is Red Hot by
Bill Riley and His Little Green Men, an extremely hot example by the way. If
you listen to his other later material it stays very much in that rockabilly
vein. In contrast, take High School Confidential by Jerry Lee Lewis.
Jerry Lee might have started out in rockabilly down in that Cajun mishmash Louisiana
swamp but this number (and others) is nothing but the heart and soul of rock
(and a song, by the way, we all prayed would be played at our junior high school
dances to get thing, you know what things, going). Case closed.
Other stick-outs included Ooby Dooby, Roy Orbison (although he has a
ton of better songs); Blue Suede Shoes (the teeth-cutting, max daddy of
rockabilly songs), Carl Perkins; Susie-Q (right at that place where
rockabilly and blues meet to form rock and a classic come hither song), Dale
Hawkins; Party Doll (another great junior high school dance song), Buddy
Knox; Come On, Let’s Go (bringing
just a touch of Tex-Mex into the rockabilly mix), Ritchie Valens, and the national
anthem, Summertime Blues by the great
and underrated Eddie Cochran.
Poet’s Corner – The Gangster Poet Cometh – Gregory Corso’s “The Whole Mess…Almost”
… a man came running down the stairs of some sad sack, no elevator, long gone, brownstone ready for the wrecker’s ball, wild-haired, throwing off devil brown hair that wouldn’t stay down, devil brown-eyed, smirks, half-dressed, shirt open, pant fly open like maybe he had just finished up some hurried sex with his best friend’s wife and that best friend is now walking up Canal Street in New Jack City ready to be greeted by that ever loving wife once he walks up the six flights to their honeymoon-like cold water flat, cockroach friendly, the flat, or maybe, wild-haired maybe open pant fly open having just come from some boyfriend back alley after being drip-dried, he had that wild-eyed look for that hunger too, that boy hunger, hell for all human hungers if you looked closely, he frantic, muttering, yes, muttering a mile a minute words, machine gun gangster muttering those words, words like truth, beauty, age, wisdom, the veda, the Buddha truth, the karma sutra, the act of contrition, six hail marys and this, throw them all out and start fresh, start fresh with the new beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday, beatitude truth. …and hence Gregory Corso.
The Whole Mess... Almost
I ran up six flights of stairs to my small furnished room opened the window and began throwing out those things most important in life
First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink: 'Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!' 'Oh yeah! Well, I've nothing to hide… OUT!' Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement: 'It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!' 'OUT!' Then Love, cooing bribes: 'You'll never know impotency! All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!' I pushed her fat ass out and screamed: 'You always end up a bummer!' I picked up Faith Hope Charity all three clinging together: 'Without us you'll surely die!' 'With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!'
The Beauty… ah, Beauty-- As I led her to the window I told her: 'You I loved the best in life …but you're a killer; Beauty kills!' Not really meaning to drop her I immediately ran downstairs getting there just in time to catch her 'You saved me!' she cried I put her down and told her: 'Move on.'
Went back up those six flights went to the money there was no money to throw out. The only thing left in the room was Death hiding beneath the kitchen sink: 'I'm not real!' It cried 'I'm just a rumor spread by life…' Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all and suddenly realized Humor was all that was left-- All I could do with Humor was to say: 'Out the window with the window!'
High School Drag: Phillipa Fallon [1958] My old man was a bread stasher all his life. He never got fat. He wound up with a used car, a 17 inch screen and arthritis.
Tomorrow is a drag, man. Tomorrow is a king sized bust.
They cried ‘put down pot,’ ‘don’t think a lot,’ for what? Time, how much? And what to do with it.
Sleep, man, and you might wake up digging the whole human race giving itself three days to get out.
Tomorrow is a drag, pops, the future is a flake.
I had a canary who couldn’t sing. I had a cat who let me share my pad with her. I bought a dog that killed the cat who ate the canary. What is truth?
I had an uncle with an ivy league card. He had a life with a belt in the back. He had a button-down brain. Wind up a belt in the mouth with a button-down lip.
We cough blood on this earth. Now there’s a race for space. We can cough blood on the moon soon.
Tomorrow’s dragsville, cats. Tomorrow is a king size drag.
Tool a fast shore, swing with a gassy chick. Turn on to a thousand joys. Smile on what happened, or check what’s going to happen, You’ll miss what’s happening. Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.
Tomorrow, DRAG.
Phillipa Fallon [1958] High School Drag (Welles / Glasser) MGM 12661
From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night:
“And then... .
the great Western shore, surf’s up, white, white wave-flecked, lapis-lazuli blue-flecked ocean, rust golden-gated, no return, no boat out, land’s end, this is it coast highway, heading down or up now, heading up or down gas stationed, named and unnamed, side road diners, still caboose’d, ravine-edged sleep and beach sleeped, blue-pink American West night.
Yes, but there is more. No child vision but now of full blossom American West night, the San Francisco great American West night, of the be-bop, bop-bop, narrow-stepped, downstairs overflowed music cellar, shared in my time, the time of my time, by “beat” jazz, “hippie’d folk”, and howled poem, but at this minute jazz, high white note-blown, sexed sax-playing godman, unnamed, but like Lester Young’s own child jazz. Smoke-filled, blended meshed smokes of ganja and tobacco (and, maybe, of meshed pipe smokes of hashish and tobacco), ordered whisky-straight up, soon be-sotted, cheap, face-reddened wines, clanking coffee cups that speak of not tonight promise. High sexual intensity under wraps, tightly under wraps, swirls inside its own mad desire, black-dressed she (black dress, black sweater, black stockings, black shoes, black bag, black beret, black sunglasses, ah, sweet color scheme against white Madonna, white, secular Madonna alabaster skin. What do you want to bet black undergarments too, ah, but I am the soul of discretion, your imagination will have to do), promising shades of heat-glanced night. And later, later than night just before the darkest hour dawn, of poems poet’d, of freedom songs free-verse’d, of that sax-charged high white note following out the door, out into the street, out into the eternity lights of the great golden-gated night. I say, can you blame me?”
Leading to this …
High School Drag: Phillipa Fallon [1958] My old man was a bread stasher all his life. He never got fat. He wound up with a used car, a 17 inch screen and arthritis.
Tomorrow is a drag, man. Tomorrow is a king sized bust.
They cried ‘put down pot,’ ‘don’t think a lot,’ for what? Time, how much? And what to do with it.
Sleep, man, and you might wake up digging the whole human race giving itself three days to get out.
Tomorrow is a drag, pops, the future is a flake.
I had a canary who couldn’t sing. I had a cat who let me share my pad with her. I bought a dog that killed the cat who ate the canary. What is truth?
I had an uncle with an ivy league card. He had a life with a belt in the back. He had a button-down brain. Wind up a belt in the mouth with a button-down lip.
We cough blood on this earth. Now there’s a race for space. We can cough blood on the moon soon.
Tomorrow’s dragsville, cats. Tomorrow is a king size drag.
Tool a fast shore, swing with a gassy chick. Turn on to a thousand joys. Smile on what happened, or check what’s going to happen, You’ll miss what’s happening. Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.
Tomorrow, DRAG.
Phillipa Fallon [1958] High School Drag (Welles / Glasser) MGM 12661
******* I ain’t saying that High School Confidential and this low budget be-bop B-film’s (although with a solid A on the rock and roll intro with Jerry Lee Lewis sitting at the piano in back of a flat-bed truck flailing, yes, flailing away on his classic rock and roll song, teen angst-busting , teen alienation-busting song, HighSchool Confidential, heralding the hint, just the hint, of a possibility that we of the generation of ’68 might be getting ready for that big jail break we were sitting under some atomic bomb air raid school desk looking for a sign of) “beat” poetesswill make you throw away your personally autographed first edition City Lights copy of mad monk om om man Allen Ginsberg’s Howl or even some torn-up paperback copy of Jeanbon (Jack) Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues or even some shotgun version of street gunsel mad poet Gregory Corso’s machine gun sonnets but she was a sister, a sister in the struggle to break out of squaresville, to break out of the void, to break from nine to five, to break from soda fountain giggle girl dreams, to break from seventy-six, count ‘em, forms of teen angst and sixty-six, count ‘em again, forms of teen alienation, to break from same old, same old, to, ah hell, just to break as portrayed by know nothingHollywood with its angst-less dreams and its alienation-less non-sorrows. So be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.
I ain’t, furthermore, saying that everything the sultry sister (1950s sultry don’t touch me just listen tea-head, but what were we to know of that kind of sultry out in Podunk teen land, cashmere sweater, black skirt, maybe devil black stockings not shown, teen boy dreams sultry whatever her message, or even no message but bop) had to say had its head on straight. Or that if we, we meaning those fledgling angst-filled, alienation sorrowed‘68ers mentioned above, had heard her in some forbidden teenage night club (no liquor allowed, no petting allowed, no, no allowed enforced by burlyguys with direct access to parents/priests/teachers/cops/authorities and hence to some mischievous god),a club filled with smoke, cigarette smoke and djinn smoke and weed smoke and maybe hash pipe smoke too although that might have been for more private moments, and maybe too train smoke and dreams, road dreams to see mystic vistas,sitting with some cashmere sweater frill, not quite old enough to do the apparel justice, blonde maybe, red-headed for sure, in ancient landlocked celtic strongholds where some fierce blue-eyed boys stood waiting, holding forth against the squares, against the cubes, against the pentagonals,against the angry young men, against the not angry young men, and ditto women, against the death-dealing old men, against the country club uncertain certainties, against that cold war hot war red scare night, against the break-out blockers as fierce as any New York Giants monster linebacker, that we would have understood half, hell, a quarter of what she said but like some mad dash shaman, oops, shaman-ess, it would have stuck, stuck to be mulled over, stuck for later times and so…be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.
And I definitely ain’t saying that even ifall she said did have its head on straight that we, we meaning those fledgling ‘68ers mentioned above, had heard her in some forbidden teenage night club,a club filled with smoke, cigarette smoke and djinn smoke and weed smoke and maybe hash pipe smoke too although that might have been for more private moments, and maybe too train smoke and dreams, road dreams to see mystic vistas,sitting with some cashmere sweater frill, not quite old enough to do the apparel justice, blonde maybe, red-headed for sure, in ancient landlocked celtic strongholds where some fierce blue-eyed boys stood waiting, holding forth against the squares, against the cubes, against the pentagonals,against the angry young men, against the not angry young men, and ditto women, against the death-dealing old men, against the country club uncertain certainties, against that cold war hot war red scare night, against the break-out blockers as fierce as any New York Giants monster linebacker, would have dug, yes, dug, in dig beat language dug, exactly what she had to say any more than when our time did come (when we shed teen know nothing-ness, Hollywood know nothing-ness,parent know nothing-ness, cop know nothing-ness, priest know nothing-ness, authorities know nothing-ness), the time when we got our bloody jail break time signal, that we more than echo-listened to om om-antic New Jersey mad monk Allen Ginsberg (tea head, acid head, Buddha head) howl against that evil night, or to Jeanbon (Jack) Kerouac, sweet Lowell mill boy gone sour, sittingin some hell-hole mere florida trailer park (or bungalow, maybe) sweating whiskey and hubris against his children, or to New Jack City Gregory Corso playing the lone ranger against the death night, but it would have stuck, stuck to be mulled over, stuck for later times and so…be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.
REMEMEBER THE BASTILLE, BUT HONOR ROBESPIERRE AND SAINT JUST.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, HISTORY CHANNEL PRODUCTION, 2004
This year marks the 223rdanniversary of the beginning of the Great French Revolution with storming of the Bastille on July 14th 1789. An old Chinese Communist leader, the late Zhou Enlai, was once asked by a reporter to sum up the important lessons of the French Revolution. In reply he answered that it was too early to tell what those lessons might be. Whether that particular story is true or not it does contain one important truth. Militants today at the beginning of the 21st century can still profit from an understanding of the history of the French Revolution.
There are many books that outline the history of that revolution. I have reviewed some of them in this space. Probably the most succinct overview, although it was written over one half century ago, is Professor Georges Lefebvre’s study. For those who want a quick visual overview of the main events and political disputes the History Channel production under review has a lot to recommend it. The production covers all the main points from the pre-revolutionary problems confronting France at the time including, its terrible debt problems caused in the main by its support of the American Revolution to the political, social and, yes, sexual inadequacies of Louis XVI. As has been noted by many commentators on revolution, including myself, one of the prerequisites for revolution is that the old regime can no longer govern in the same way. The personage of Louis XVI seemingly fits that proposition to a tee.
The production goes on to highlight the key events. Obviously, and most visibly the storming of the Bastille that opened up the cracks in the old monarchial regime. It details the struggle to create a constitutional monarchy through the various legislative assemblies that sought to carry out the reforms necessary to bring France into the modern age short of declaring a republic. And also the attempts, including by Louis himself, by forces of the old regime to return the old monarchy or stop the revolution in its tracks. When those efforts failed and the revolution began in earnest the production details the internal struggle by the revolutionaries, most notably the great fight between the Girondins and Jacobins for power, and the formation of the republic. After the defeat of the Girondins this led to the further fights to ‘purify’ the revolution among the Jacobin forces and the reign of the Robespierre-led Committee of Public Safety that consolidated the gains of the revolution through the ‘Reign of Terror’. Finally, the downfall and execution of Robespierre in 1794 represented the reaction that most revolutions exhibit when the political possibilities for further leftward revolutionary moves are no longer tenable.
There are many great scenes portrayed here as well. The murder of Marat by Corday. The Festival of the Supreme Being. The oratory of Danton and many more scenes that give one a pretty good general feel for the dynamics of the revolution. Included are‘talking head’ comments by noted historians of the revolution giving their take on the meaning of various events. This is a plus. The major negative is in the axis of presentation. Almost fatalistically the emergence of Robespierre is intertwined throughout all of the earlier events giving the impression that he was inevitably bound to take power. And, also inevitably, due to the excesses of the ‘Reign of Terror’ to lose it. This may be good documentary presentation form but it is bad history. Revolutions, particularly great revolutions, are few and far between. They are messy affairs at the time and as seen through the historical lens. Nevertheless if the social tensions in society could always, or should always, be resolved in a nice non- violent parliamentary way there would be no revolutions. Damn, where would that leave us as the inheritors of the sans-culottes tradition?
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the British film The Small Back Room.
DVD Review
The Small Back Room, starring David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, British Lion Films, 1949
Sure, lots of people on both sides of the Atlantic admired the pluck of the under-armed, under-manned, under- led British in holding up Hitler’s plans for a while to conquer all of Europe and who knows where else. And everybody knows, who has thought about it for a while, that running a modern war machine requires more than having X number of battalions fully armed and mobile ready to fight on some god-forsaken front. Those two ideas combine (oh, yah, along with a little off-hand romantic interest this is after all a cinematic effort) to drive this film under review, The Small Back Room.
Sammy (played in a manic-depressive manner as befits the character by David Farrah) is an explosives expert who, having done his bit at the front and taken a hit, a painfully bothersome artificial leg resulting, is now working his magic in the back rooms of the war establishment figuring out what will work and will not work in terms of military hardware. Of course all of this is tangled up with his pain, his attempts to deal with it through drugs and alcohol, his affair with his resolute stiff-upper lip girlfriend, Susan, (played by Kathleen Byron), who is forced to leave him as he attempts to hit bottom, military bureaucratic snafus, and other impediments to the war effort in order to turn the tide against the Germans.
Oh yah, and to keep a little dramatic tension a little off-hand problem with booby-trapped bombs that the Germans keep dropping over the English countryside. Naturally Sammy, in his element then, has to have a go at defanging these dastardly instruments, does so successfully and receives a big boost to his self-esteem (and a small back room of his own). Oh yah, as well, Susan comes back to him. Hell, you knew that was coming I told you she was resolute.
Frankie Riley was shocked, well maybe not shocked but stunned when he heard the news of Bill Higgins’ murder. Jesus, he had had just seen Bill in Los Angeles a couple of months before when Bill was passing through on his way south and he and Maria, his live-in mex girlfriend (immigration status fuzzy so Maria, okay), her of the sparkling laughing eyes and dark brown skin, had let Bill stay in their apartment for a couple of weeks while he worked on some plan that he had hatched, some vague plan connected with making a pile down in Mexico, downSonora way that would put he and Clara on easy street.
Bill Higgins and Frankie Riley had known each other from the hunger days in the old 1960s Olde Saco (Maine, okay) neighborhood, the old just barely working- class neighborhood where the chronically unemployed, under-employed and just plain ne’er-do-wells, mainly Irish and hence locally known as Irishtown (although more generically to outsiders, combined with the French-Canadian streets, as the Acre), mainly third or fourth generation Irish and thus firmly planted by the prior toil of forbears lived, where they had met, beyond Olde Saco Junior High corridor nod (the junior high, and come to think of it, high school nod too, a subject worthy of its own sketch but not here, not now when dope, guns, and girls, ah,women, are central to what is what) met, while hugging the walls (literally according to both sources at the time) at the old Sacred Heart (Roman Catholic) Church at the weekly (except Lent, of course, and other odd-ball feast days like the Feast of the Immaculate Conception which even as ignorant, sex ignorant,flat- out sex ignorant, as these boyos were drew a guffaw) “sock hop” held by the senior parish priest, Monsignor Lally.
Held to, well, “keep an eye, maybe more than one, on the younger portion of his flock,” as the good father expressed it each Sunday when making the announcement for the next hop in the line-up. The real reason, of course, whispered among the young, including wall-huggers Higgins and Riley, was to keep said young angel sheep, away from too much heathen devil’s music (read: ersatz Protestant music probably a Baptist or Unitarian conspiracy, the good priest spouted both theories); that rock and roll music that was just then epitomized by that hip-swaying, butt-flaying, making the girls “wet” (wet in the wrong places) praying false god praying Elvis Presley. And by all means to keep them, that unprotected angel flock to a person, but especially those with access to automobiles, from dark seawalls down at Olde Saco Beach listening to fogged-up car radios in the back seat and digging the beat while, well, just while and leave it at that or for those without golden automobile access or who were too young, away from the Strand Theater, the exclusive upstairs balcony section of course, for the young set, the car-less healthy young interested in lightless dark night s-x (you know just in case the old bastard is still around).
Frankie still remembered the first song that they had heard upon meeting at that fateful junior high school time sock hop, Danny and the Juniors’ At The Hop. And the reason he remembered that song so vividly was one sparking blue-eyed, flaming red-haired Clara Murphy, just mentioned Clara, a girl who had given both of them her come hither twelve-year old look that night (and previously at school too) and they had been hooked, hooked as bad as men (okay, boys) could be hooked by a woman (okay, girl). So it was not surprising that they both had rushed over to ask her to dance when that number was being played at that fateful dance. And Clara in her Solomonic wisdom turned them both down. Or maybe not so solomonic. Clara Murphy couldn’t, just that moment, decide whether she liked Bill or Frankie better, or whether she liked either of them, according to Frankie’s intelligence source, his younger sister Amy who was friends with Clara’s sister Bonnie and so gave in to her budding feminine wiles and had turned them both down.
Naturally that denial after those come hither looks inflamed the boyos. So for the next several weeks Bill and Frankie made every mad school boy mad attempt to win her favors. Both had recklessly, although determinedly, courted legal danger by “clipping” (five finger discount, oh, you know, petty larceny) onyx rings (Frankie’s had a diamond in the center) for her at Sam’s Jewelry Store in downtown Olde Saco (again intelligence, reliable intelligence, Clara sister Bonnie via Amy, had informed them separately that she liked those kinds of rings). She accepted both as tokens of friendship she called it. Ditto 45 RPM Elvis and Jerry Lee records from Chuck’s Record Shop over on Main Street (an easy “clip” for these adventurers, just place under your undershirt and walk out, or better slide into your underpants, no salesperson, no girl salesperson on duty at the time was going there, no way). Accepted, dispassionately accepted. Not ditto though, not ditto“clipped” flowers and candy (especially when Clara heard how the previous goods were “purchased” although she did not go so far as to give them back). They had each worked, really dragged their butts carrying doubles, as caddies as the local golf course to gather the dough necessary for those expenses. And on it went like that for several weeks.
To no avail for Frankie though because, also exhibiting another aspect of budding wiles, Clara took up with Bill (and had really, according to other reliable intelligence sources, had her eye on him all along. Girls, ah, women, go figure).Reason: stated Clara reason. Bill had a head on his shoulders and, quote, was not so hung up on silly rock and roll that was just a passing thing like Frankie, unquote. Frankie laughed at the recollection, a bittersweet recollection, since later Clara married Bill, they thereafter had drifted west to the coast, formed and unformed a couple of rock and roll bands in the strobe light dreams 1960s with Clara as a Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick –like lead singer and Bill on lead guitar, and now in 1973 Bill had been killed, face-down killed, down in some dusty back alley, Sonora, back alley, when that plan, that major drug deal went south on him.
According to the reports, the police reports when he went to check, Mexican police reports, so maybe a little off on the details, but on point on the face-down dead part, Bill and Clara had“muled” many times for one of the budding drug cartels. (Frankie had known this, hell, had taken delivery of some goods himself, and had, once, accompanied Bill and Clara, down there, down there the time he had met Maria, met her down in that Mexicali whorehouse and brought her Norte but that was another story).Bill, while he was working on his plan in L. A. the details of which were unknown to Frankie, had decided to go “independent” trying to take-off with one of his cartel deliveries to be used as seed money for his own operation to Panama (the ideas being trying to get to the Canal Zone and some Estados Unidos protection if things went awry, he obviously never made it) and wound up in a back alley with six slugs in the back of his head for his efforts. End of story, just another number in the broken dreams world, the fast stuff of dreams world.
What Frankie didn’t know, although if he had thought about it for ten seconds he should have known, was that Clara, Clara with her chandelier Irish dreams, was the driving force behind their new careers, and kept prodding Bill on that plan to step up to the “bigs” and build his own operation. Jesus, girls, ah, women, go figure. See here is what is funny though. Clara who had accompanied him on that fateful trip (and had been holding that delivery, ten kilos of coke just then becoming the drug of choice for the hipsters, and never cartel recovered) was never heard from again. Just that moment, that reflected moment , Frankie raised his finger to his head and nodded that old schoolboy nod to Bill’ s memory and raised his drink to Clara Murphy, Clara of the sparkling eyes and flaming red hair, and of his youth.
P.S. Frankie, few years later, receiveda report that someone, second-hand, had heard that Clara was running a whorehouse stocked with anglo girls serving the booming drug cartels down in Tampico but he just let it pass, let the schoolboy nod and the drink stand.
I already told you today the story about the Moline Meltdown that was part of the search in the old days for the great blue-pink American West night so I don’t have to repeat that here but I did start to think that the story of Captain Cob and the S.S. Blue-Pink Night that was part of it would be easier to tell and I would not get myself so balled up in the telling if it was done as a ballad. Shorter and more to the point, if nothing else. Also an important source for this story, or model for the story if you will, was Red Sovine’s Big Joe and Phantom 309 as translated by Tom Waits. And Big Joe was nothing but a “talking” ballad in the old Hank Williams or Woody Guthrie style. So I am in good company. Here goes:
The Ballad Of Captain Cob And The S.S. Blue-Pink Night
Okay, let me tell this thing straight through even though I know it will sound off-kilter to you anyway I say it, hell, it will sound half off-kilter to me and I lived through it:
See, back a few years ago, yah, it was back a few years ago when I was nothing but a summer-sweltered sixteen year old high school kid, a city boy high school kid, with no dough, no way to get dough, and nobody I knew who had dough to put a touch on, I went off the deep end.
Plus, plus I had had about thirty-six beefs with Ma, around par for the course for a whole summer but way too many for a couple of weeks in, and not even Fourth of July yet.
Worst, worst, if you can believe this, I had a few, two maybe, beefs with the old man, and having a beef with him with Ma the official flak-catcher meant things were tough, too tough to stay around.
Sure, I know, how tough can it be at sixteen to stay put waiting for the summer heat to break and maybe have some clean clear wind bring in a change of fortune. But don’t forget, don’t ever forget when I’m telling you this story that we are talking about a sixteen year old guy, with no dough and plenty of dreams, always plenty of dreams, whatever color they turned out to be.
I threw a few things together in an old green, beaten to hell knapsack, you know enough to get by until things break, that stuff and about three dollars, and I headed out the door like a lot of guys headed out that same kind of door before me in search of fame and fortune.
I hit the main street with a swagger and immediately start thumbing as if my life depended on it. Right away a car, I didn’t see where it had come from before it came into my view, a late model car, looked like a 1961 Ford, slowed down, the driver rolled down his passenger side window and asked where was I heading.
I said “west, I guess,” he said “I’m heading up to Maine to work. Too bad I can’t help you.” As he readied to make tracks I say, “Hey, wait a minute, I‘ll take that ride, North or West it’s all the same to me.”
This guy, if you are thinking otherwise, turned out to be pretty interesting, he wasn’t any fruit like a lot of guys who stop when they see a young guy with a dour, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders pan like mind, and are ready to pounce on that fact.
Seems that Kenny, Kenny of a thousand ships, his name was, worked the boats, the ferries out of Portland and Bar Harbor over to Nova Scotia and filled the time we traveled with stories about different funny things that happened on the trips back and forth.
And there was this one story that I didn’t think anything about when he told it. He was going on a bit about how one time out in the misty mist his uncle, Captain Cob, Captain Caleb Cob, some old swamp Yankee, whom he served under in some boat saved a bunch of people off an island ferry, off of Portland Light, got them to shore, and went back out looking for more.
Well, he is telling his stories, and I am telling mine about this and that, but mainly about my love of the sea, and about going west to see the Pacific when I get tired of the Atlantic.
Suddenly, Kenny says out of the blue, “Hey, if you’re gonna bum around I’ll leave you off at Old Orchard Beach, right at the beach, there’s plenty of places to sleep without being bothered."
See, though this guy, Kenny, was so good, such a good guy, that when we get there he doesn’t just let me off on Route One and so I have to thumb another ride into town like most guys would do but takes me right down to the pier, the amusement park pier.
Then he says you know it is probably better to get away from this crowded area, let me take you down Route 9 to the Saco jetty where you can set yourself up in an empty boat.
Okay, that sounds right and besides it’s won’t be dark for hours yet and it’s not dark enough for me to make my big teenage city boy moves.
I could see right away that Kenny was right, this place was quiet and there were many rows of boats just waiting to be used for housekeeping purposes. But, what got my attention was, maybe fifty yards away, the start of the longest jetty in the world, or so I thought.
Hey, I have walked a few jetties and while you have to be careful for the ill-placed boulders when you get to the end you are feeling like the king of the sea, and old Neptune better step aside. I started walking out,
Christ this is tough going I must be a little tired from all the travel. Nah it’s more than that, the granite slaps are placed helter-skelter so you can’t bound from one to another and you practically have to scale them. After about a hundred yards of scraping my hands silly, and raw, I say the heck with this and head back.
But put sixteen, hunger for adventure, and hunger to beat old fellaheen king Neptune down together and you know this is not the end. I go around looking at my boat selection just exactly like I am going to rent an apartment. Except before I set up housekeeping I am going to take an old skiff out along the jetty to the end. So I push one off the sand, jump in and start rowing.
Now I am an ocean guy, no question. And I know my way around boats, a little, so I don’t think much of anything except that I will go kind of slow as I work my way out. Of course a skiff ain’t nothing but a glorified rowboat, if that. It’s all heavy lifting and no “hi tech” like navigation stuff or stuff that tells you how far the end of jetty is. Or even that there is a heavy afternoon fog starting to roll in on the horizon. Yah, but intrepid that’s me.
Hey, I’m not going to England just to the end of the jetty. I said that as the fog, the heavy dark fog as it turned out, enveloped the boat and its new-found captain. I started rowing a little harder and a little more, I ain’t afraid to say it, panic-stricken.
See I thought I was rowing back to shore but I know, know deep somewhere in my nautical brain, that I am drifting out to sea. I’m still rowing though, as the winds pick up and rain starts slashing away at the boat.
Of course, the seas have started swelling, water cresting over the sides. Christ, so this is the way it is going to finish up for me. What seemed like a couple more hours and I just plain stopped rowing, maybe I will drift to shore but I sure as hell am not going to keep pushing out to sea. Tired, yah, tired as hell but with a little giddy feeling that old Neptune is going be seeing me soon so I decide to put my head down and rest.
Suddenly I am awakened by the distinct sound of a diesel engine, no about six diesels, and a big, flashing light coming around my bow. I yell out, “over here.” A voice answers, “I know.”
Next thing I know an old geezer, a real old geezer decked out in his captain’s gear, is putting a rope around the bow of my boat and telling me to get ready to come aboard.
After getting me a blanket, some water and asking if I wanted a nip of something (I said yes) he said I was lucky, lucky as hell that he came by. Then he asked what I was doing out here in the open sea with such a rig, and wasn’t I some kind of fool boy.
Well, I told my story, although he seemed to know it already like he made a daily habit of saving sixteen year old city boys from the sea, or themselves. So we swapped stories for a while as we headed in, and I had a nip or two more.
As we got close to Saco pier though he blurted out that he had to let me off before the dock because he had some other business on the Biddeford side.
Here is where it gets really weird though. He asked me, as we parted, did I know the name of his boat (a trawler, really). I said I couldn’t see it in all the fog and swirling sea. He told me she was the “S.S. Blue-Pink Night.”
I blurted out, “Strange name for a boat, what is it a symbol or something?”
Then he told me about how he started out long ago on land, as a kid just like me, maybe a little older, heading to California, and the warm weather and the strange blue-pink night skies and the dreams that come with them. I said how come you’re still here but he said he was pressed for time.
Here is the thing that really threw me off. He gave me a small dried sea shell, a clam shell really, that was painted on its inner surface and what was painted on it was a very intricate, subliminally beautiful scene of what could only be that blue-pink California sky.
I stepped to the counter and told the waitress, no, I asked politely just in case this was a joke, whether this old clam shell from the captain of the“Blue-Pink Night” got me a meal, or just a call to take the air.
All of a sudden the whole place, small as it was, went quiet as guys put their heads down and pretended that they didn’t hear or else though the joint doubled up as a church.
I asked my question again and the waitress said, “What’ll you have?”
Then she said did I know anything about the captain, and how did he look, and where did he meet me, and a whole bunch of questions like this was some mystery, and I guess maybe there was at that.
Then the waitress told me this (and I think every other guy in the room by the loudness of her voice),“A few years back, yes, about six or seven years ago, there was a big storm that came through Portland Light, some say a perfect storm, I don’t know, but it was a howler. Well, one of the small ferries capsized out there and somehow someone radioed that there were survivors clinging to the boat. Well, the old captain and his first mate, I think, started up the old “Blue-Pink Night” and headed out, headed out hard, headed out full of whiskey nips, and one way or another, got to the capsized boat and brought the survivors into shore and then headed out again.
And we never saw them again.
And here is the funny part; when he was unloading his passengers he kept talking, talking up a perfect storm about seeing the blue-pink night when he was out there before and how maybe it was still there. I guess the booze got the best of him. But hear me son, old captain was square with everyone in this place, he used to own it then, and some of his kin are sitting right here now. He was square with them too. So, eat up kid, eat up on the house, ‘cause I want you to save that old clam shell and any time you’re on your uppers you can always get a meal here. Just remember how you got it.”
“Thanks, ma’am,” I said.
Then I slowly, like my soul depended on it, asked, “Oh, by the way what was that old captain’s first mate's name?” and I said it in such a way that she knew, knew just as well as I did, that I knew the answer.
“Kenny, Kenny Cob, bless his soul.”
Workers Vanguard No. 1012
9 November 2012
Free the Class-War Prisoners!
27th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal
(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)
This year marks the 27th Holiday Appeal for class-war prisoners, those thrown behind bars for their opposition to racist capitalist oppression. The Partisan Defense Committee provides monthly stipends to 16 of these prisoners as well as holiday gifts for them and their families. This is a revival of the tradition of the early International Labor Defense (ILD) under its secretary and founder James P. Cannon. The stipends are a necessary expression of solidarity with the prisoners—a message that they are not forgotten.
Launching the ILD’s appeal for the prisoners, Cannon wrote, “The men in prison are still part of the living class movement” (“A Christmas Fund of our Own,” Daily Worker, 17 October 1927). Cannon noted that the stipends program “is a means of informing them that the workers of America have not forgotten their duty toward the men to whom we are all linked by bonds of solidarity.” This motivation inspires our program today. The PDC also continues to publicize the causes of the prisoners in the pages of Workers Vanguard, the PDC newsletter, Class-Struggle Defense Notes, and our Web site partisandefense.org. We provide subscriptions to WV and accompany the stipends with reports on the PDC’s work. In a recent letter, MOVE prisoner Eddie Africa wrote, “I received the letters and the money, thank you for both, it’s a good feeling to have friends remembering you with affection!”
The Holiday Appeal raises the funds for this vital program. The PDC provides $25 per month to the prisoners, and extra for their birthdays and during the holiday season. We would like to provide more. The prisoners generally use the funds for basic necessities: supplementing the inadequate prison diet, purchasing stamps and writing materials needed to maintain contact with family and comrades, and pursuing literary, artistic, musical and other pursuits to mollify a bit the living hell of prison. The costs of these have obviously grown, including the exponential growth in prison phone charges.
The capitalist rulers have made clear their continuing determination to slam the prison doors on those who stand in the way of brutal exploitation, imperialist depredations and racist oppression. We encourage WV readers, trade-union activists and fighters against racist oppression to dig deep for the class-war prisoners. The 16 class-war prisoners receiving stipends from the PDC are listed below:
* * *
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.” Last December the Philadelphia district attorney’s office announced it was dropping its longstanding efforts to execute America’s foremost class-war prisoner. While this brings to an end the legal lynching campaign, Mumia remains condemned to spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence.
Mumia was framed up for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and was initially sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Mountains of documentation proving his innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner, have been submitted to the courts. But from top to bottom, the courts have repeatedly refused to hear the exculpatory evidence.
The state authorities hope that with the transfer of Mumia from death row his cause will be forgotten and that he will rot in prison until he dies. This must not be Mumia’s fate. Fighters for Mumia’s freedom must link his cause to the class struggles of the multiracial proletariat. Trade unionists, opponents of the racist death penalty and fighters for black rights must continue the fight to free Mumia from “slow death” row in the racist dungeons of Pennsylvania.
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’s frame-up for the 1975 deaths of two marauding FBI agents in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation, shows what capitalist “justice” is all about. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 68-year-old Peltier is still locked away. Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions and is incarcerated far from his people and family. He is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another 12 years!
Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 35th year of prison. They were sentenced to 30-100 years after the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, 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. After more than three decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings. None have been released.
Lynne Stewart is a radical lawyer sentenced to ten years for defending her client, a blind Egyptian cleric imprisoned for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. For this advocate known for defense of Black Panthers, radical leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state, her sentence may well amount to a death sentence as she is 73 years old and suffers from breast cancer. Originally sentenced to 28 months, her resentencing more than quadrupled her prison time in a loud affirmation by the Obama administration that there will be no letup in the massive attack on democratic rights under the “war on terror.” This year her appeal of the onerous sentence was turned down.
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. Their children were kidnapped at gunpoint by the Feds.
The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals during the Vietnam antiwar movement and by New Leftists who wrote off the possibility of winning the working class to a revolutionary program and saw themselves as an auxiliary of Third World liberation movements. 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 a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.
Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They 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. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now spent more than 40 years behind bars. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter and Mondo new trials despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a 911 audio tape long-suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.
Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, has been in solitary isolation for more than four decades. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole in 2009. Now in his 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious torture chamber, Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit in California, a focal point for hunger strikes against grotesquely inhuman conditions.
Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
The World Can't Wait Stop the
Crimes of Your Government
Today, Bradley Manning turns 25. It's his third
birthday in prison without trial (recent proceedings have still all been
pre-military commission). The unjust persecution and tortuous conditions Bradley
has been put through are horrible, but only further expose the government whose
crimes he showed the world.
Let Bradley know just how much it means to
all of us, throughout the world, that we have the truth about these wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan provided through WikiLeaks. Send him a card or a letter (read
about mail restrictions). Mail to:
You better open up honey it's your lover boy me that's a knockin'
You better listen to me sugar all the cats are at the High School rockin'
Honey get your boppin' shoes Before the juke box blows a fuse
Got everybody hoppin' everybody boppin'
Boppin' at the High School Hop
Boppin' at the High School Hop
Shakin' at the High School Hop
I've rollin' at the High School Hop
I've been movin' at the High School Hop
Everybody’s hoppin' Everybody's boppin'
Boppin' at the High School Hop
Come on little baby gonna rock a little bit tonight
Woooh I got get with you sugar gonna shake things up tonight
Check out the heart beatin' rhythm cause my feet are moving smooth and
Light
Boppin' at the High School Hop
Shakin' at the High School Hop
Rollin' at the High School Hop
Movin' at the High School Hop
Everybody’s hoppin' just a boppin' just a boppin'
Piano Solo!
Come on little baby let me give a piece good news good news good news
Jerry Lee is going to rock away all his blues
My hearts beatin' rhythm and my soul is singin' the blues
Oooooh Boppin' at the High School Hop
Shakin' at the High School Hop
Rollin' at the High School Hop
Gettin' it at the High School Hop
Everybody’s hoppin' Everybody's boppin'
Boppin' at the High School Hop
********
This is the back story, the teen listener back story if you like, going back to the primordial youth time of the mid to late 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billie, William James Bradley, the schoolboy mad-hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood. Yah, in those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days, every kid, including best friend Markin, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every one that we would recognize as our own.
Billie (not Billy, not some billy goat billy, not if you didn’t want more trouble than you bargained for from the king hell king of our corner night, no questions asked) and I spent many, many hours mainly up in his tiny bedroom, his rock heaven bedroom, walls plastered with posters of Elvis, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, somewhat later Jerry Lee Lewis, and of every new teen heartthrob singer, heartthrob to the girls that is, around, on his night table every new record Billie could get his hands on, by hook or by crook, and neatly folded piles of clothing, also gathered by that same hook or by crook, appropriate to the king hell king of the schoolboy rock scene, the elementary school rock scene between about 1956 to 1960. Much of that time was spent discussing the “meaning” of various songs, especially their sexual implications, ah, their mystery of finding-out-about-girls worthiness.
Although in early 1959 my family had started the process of moving out of the projects, and, more importantly, I had begun to move away from Billie’s orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe, I still would wander back there until mid-1960 just to hear his take on whatever music was interesting him at the time. These commentaries, these Billie commentaries, are my recollections of his and my conversations on the song lyrics in this series. But I am not relying on memory alone. During this period we would use my father’s tape recorder, by today’s standard his big old reel to reel monstrosity of a tape recorder, to record Billie’s covers of the then current hit songs (for those who have not read previously of Billie’s “heroics” he was a pretty good budding rock singer at the time) and our conversations of those song meanings that we fretted about for hours. I have, painstakingly, had those reels transcribed so that many of these commentaries will be the actual words spoken during those conversations (somewhat edited, of course). That said, Billie, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billie I’m still pulling for you. Got it.
*********
“Who are you taking to the hop? Come on now, tell me, tell me, your old buddy Billie, who you asked? Was it Theresa? Was it Donna? Was it Karen?” That was the incessant bugging by my old elementary school boy compadre, Billie, William James Bradley if you didn’t know already, every time a school sock hop came up. But you know, or you should know, that was just a little way that he had to bait me about my shyness, or rather my awkwardness around girls. Around girls that he, king hell king of the late 1950s rock night “discarded” and left for the rest of us, especially for me.
And he knew, he knew damn well that I had not gotten up the nerve to ask any of those three ex-flames, or any girl, to the dance coming up in a few days. For one thing because, as king hell king of the rock night, and therefore king, crowned or uncrowned, of the sock hop he had all the configurations, combinations, set-ups, and, and, no-go bust-ups all computed out, no, not on some machine memory depot but in his head. For another because he didn’t know that I had decided just to go to the dance alone and maybe getting lucky there. Heck, I had done it before, a few times, although not with any great success but if there is any rhyme or reason to youth it is around the possibilities of getting lucky. Of course, old Billie had “selected” Laura as his escort, no awkwardness in Billie, although I had heard, heard from more than one budding teenage source that she “liked me,”(don’t ever tell him this though for I will deny it on seven stacked bibles). Or liked my seriousness, and my clowny, get in the way bookishness. So I am going “stag” on the hope, the hell or high water hope that Billie will let his old buddy, his old amigo, his, well you know, have a dance with his escort to see if I have some “magic.”
Now, and ever since I heard about her opinion of me, I have been wracking my brain to figure out this question. How could she “like me,” or not like me for that matter, I do not know because although I had looked over in her direction in class dreamily (yes, dreamily) more than somewhat I had never said word one to her, or her to me. Now this Laura, if you want a description is not drop-dead beautiful, at least by Billie-Markin defined drop-dead beautiful, twelve and thirteen year old girl beautiful, but she has something else that I would not (and Billie definitely would not) figure out how to say for many years, she was fetching. Definition: nice figure, meaning having a shape, if you really want to know, because when you think about it, boy or girl, twelve and thirteen year old boy or girl, any girl that had a shape (meaning had womanly contours, hips, breasts, nicely-formed legs) rather than a stock stick figure tomboy-like girl was bound to get ahead in that be-bop night, and probably now too.
But more than that, for me, if not for Billie, she didn’t giggle, silly giggle like the other girls when a boy said something stupid-funny (and the twelve and thirteen year old boy universe is more than somewhat filled with stupid-funny stuff done by eons of clueless guys, trying, trying just like me, and just like Billie if he could have ever been honest about it, to figure out the key to the girl-charm thing, yes, there is plenty of room in that universe even now for the stupid-funny) and, she carried herself in a way, sometimes with a certain thoughtful look, sometimes by a thing she did by putting her fingers to her lips, and maybe the most important, that she knew she was a girl and was content with that knowledge. She would lack for no dates or admirers, ever. Oh, yah she was also smart, not Billie street smart, not Markin two-thousand facts smart but asking and answering teacher smart, without being crazy smart about it that you also knew every boy, or almost every boy, in the twelve and thirteen year old boy universe did not like in girls then, and maybe now for all I know. It only gets sifted out later.
But enough of Laura, of Billie, christ of Markin as well, of pre-sock hop arrangements, derangements and dreamily kid in the night be-bop stuff let us get to the sock hop. Hey, wait a minute, you know what sock hops are, or you heard from your parents or grandparents what sock hops are, right? Back in the fifties, yes, the1950s (and a little bit into the 1960s but the term had kind of died out by then, at least for “non-squares”). If you don’t then I’ll fill you in quickly now, but you’ll see you really know about all of this because it is nothing but a “primitive,” maybe Stone Age when you hear it, version of any school dance scene since they started making teenagers a separate social category in the world, the whole wide world even. Okay the idea was to hem in this mad dash, this mad craze to dance, and dance guys with girls and vice versa, that kids have been into since the radio and jukebox came on the scene, maybe back in that Stone Age now that I think about it.
So dear mother and father, you name the generation, figured out if you can’t beat them join them, and the schools (and churches later) were in cahoots. So every once in a while to keep three eyes on this stuff (and to avoid the feared, seriously feared, basement or “family room”-launched “petting parties”if kids are left to their own devices), maybe a few times a month they would throw a sock hop (the sock part comes from the fact, the hard fact, that most girls, most twelve and thirteen year old girls, wore ankle socks. Yah, no nylons, etc. If you don’t believe me look it up on Wikipedia, or something). Now, most times, this was nothing but some parent or teacher acting as dee-jay and "spinning platters” (records) in some dank, well-lighted, too well-lighted school gym or church basement, christ more than once in the school cafeteria when the gym was being used for other purposes that night. Yes, the night, the night in those days being from seven to about ten in the evening so you would have to think pretty hard about not going, stag or dated up, to the dance if for no other reason than to be able to get out of the house, the cramped, nowhere project house (really apartment) for a few hours un-cramped freedom.
This night, this night that Billie kidded me about, this Billie and Laura night, though somehow, although I am vague on the details of how they were brought in, we are not reduced to cranky, scratchy records but a real live local band, a band that prided itself, I heard, on doing covers of the “hot” new singers and groups we knew from American Bandstand (an afternoon television show that had Philly kids, older Philly kids, dancing and swaying to whatever dee-jay Dick Clark, is he still around?, decided was wholesome and fit for the ears of America’s afternoon rock obsessed youth). So this is a time you definitely did not want to miss. And to truth to tell I went early, nervously early if you must know, to see what was up and watch the band set up.
Now this is not just any time in the 1950s, although the sock hop thing, the worried parent, worried about those “petting party” things(and more, much more, about sex things) and this wild and woolly rock obsessed thing their no understand what kids are into could have been anytime from about 1955 on, from the time that Elvis exploded onto the scene with those swiveling hips, that jumping girl guitar, that unkempt hair (yah, unkempt to them), and that permanent sneer came onto the scene.
No, this is 1958 when the Elvis thing had died down a little now that he was dead, or we thought he was dead, and for a fact he might have well have been dead in the constant teen chew-up of rock talent from the kind of music and movies he was into after giving us such great stuff like Jailhouse Rock,Good Rockin’ Tonight, Heartbreak Hotel and One Night With You. Yah, the king was dead, long live the king, and let’s move on, okay. Billie and I talked about it, about how guys, rock guys that is, seen to have a short shelf-life, but as Billie knew, knew from his own bumpy rock “career,” that’s show biz. So this night we were wondering, wondering like crazy, how the band would work out and whose music they will cover.
Like I said I got there early and watched the band set up, including a piano besides the guitar and drums so I figure maybe they will do some Little Richard or Fats Domino stuff. Seven o’clock comes and here comes Billie with Laura. Wow, Billie has on a nice jacket, wide lapels like all the rock guys are wearing these days (I’ll tell you about how he got it sometime but you can figure that a projects boy didn’t get it as a birthday present from Ma and Pa). Really sharp. But double wow on Laura who has on a cashmere sweater, some wide skirt and, can you believe this, nylons, to show off her nice legs. Oh yah, and just a hint of smile on her face like she is here with the king of the rock night, crowned or uncrowned, and she has staked out the territory as queen, demure queen, but queen nevertheless.
Yes, fetching (although we will agree between ourselves that I don’t know that word, or how to use it in relationship to describing girls and their charms just yet, alright). But here is where the sweetest part comes in when Billie and Laura make their royal entrance and come over to where I am standing when Billie introduces me, formally introduces Laura to me, she gives me this, well, I don’t care if I do wear out the word, fetching smile and says “I’ve seen you in class but you never seem to pay any attention to me. I thought that report you gave on Greek democracy in class was very well done.” Be still my heart, she actually remembered the report… and me. And here I am wearing some bedraggled (always bedraggled, always) striped (stripes, jesus) white collared shirt, ratty black pants, and old Thom McAn Easter-bought brown shoes. Well, she remembered my report, that’s a start, and it actually was a pretty good report because I went to the Thomas Crane Public Library right up in Adamsville Square to look the stuff up.
But enough of reports, and "be still my hearts" because the music is going on. A few covers of Little Richard and Fats as I expected, with that piano and all, some Buddy Holly that sounded a little tinny, a few other non-memorable odd and ends, including some Elvis that sounded, and I again swear on seven bibles, like old time parents’ music, like Frank Sinatra, or those guys. Then suddenly, the leader of the band said that he had a special guest on the piano for the next number. We all wondered what the song would be while they were setting the piano up closer to the front. I heard somebody say it was going to be something by a new guy, Jerry Lee Lewis. Whoa! I have only heard him once or twice but I thought his piano was smoking so maybe this guest guy could do a good cover on it.
Billie, Billie king hell king of the rock night, must have known something was up, and why (always why) because he brought Laura over and asked me if wanted to dance the next dance with her. Me, two left feet, or two right feet, stag, coming to the dance stag just hoping that I would get lucky with “discarded”Theresa, Donna, or Karen dance with fetching Laura. No way. The she said “but I really want to dance with you, you being Billie friend, and he says you are a good dancer,” and then turns a very whimsical smile on me.
Well what are you going to do when a woman (alright girl, but a girl with a shape) wants to dance with you, and had something nice to say about your school report, and, oh yes had that smile, that come hinter smile that leaves a man (okay, boy) anywhere from twelve to twelve hundred weak at the knees. Well, the music is starting so I say yes, okay yes.
And what does our guest pianist do but a cover, a hot cover by the way, of Jerry Lee Lewis’ latest, High School Confidential, which I had heard about but had not heard. Great. Laura and I are dancing away and she is doing nothing but give me meaningful smiles and, maybe that rumor about her “liking me” was true. I am just dancing away like crazy and people are looking at me like where did he learn how to do that. After the dance I returned Laura to Billie, a little miffed Billie but I could have been wrong on that. And then Theresa came over and asked if I wanted to dance. A few dances, a few Laura-less dances later the call for last dance came, and not feeling like watching Laura with Billie just then I headed home.
The next morning, a Sunday morning, if I recall, Billie came over to the house and was fuming/hangdog as we talked, talked obviously about the sock hop doings. Fuming because I had switched up on him. How? Well, apparently, Laura, sweet fetching Laura, had spent more than the allotted time talking about me, rather than about Billie’s virtues and he had used the dance, the Jerry Lee Lewis manic rock number that he had found out the band was going to play to make me look silly (his word, although mine when I heard it was more of an expletive). Hangdog because he felt bad now that he had done his best friend wrong, wrong over a girl although, in Billie fashion, he tried to step back and argue that maybe he did me a favor getting me out on the dance floor. See, though what he didn’t know (and don’t tell him either, if you know his whereabouts) is that I had been taking lessons from his slightly older sister, Carol, on how to dance this latest faster dance stuff.
So that is the end of the story, or almost the end. A few days later Laura knocked at our apartment door in the afternoon after school. My mother answered the door and invited her in, although she, my mother that is, said Laura was coming in no matter what from the look on her face. Laura was fuming, although as it turns out good fuming, because she said she had been smiling at me like crazy when we were dancing to give me the “hint” to ask her for the last dance, the last close to her dance. Sorry, Laura. And then she blurted out her command,“You and I are going to the next sock hop together and you had better not say no.” Well, when a woman (girl, are you happy) "insists” on something, almost anything like that, and on top of that had that kind remark about that school report, and that shape, what is a boy, a boy of the twelve and thirteen year old universe to do but say yes. So at the next dance I won’t be dancing with Billie “discard” Theresa, Donna, or Karen although they are okay but with fetching Laura. So there Billie, we are even. And if anybody asks you, like they asked me once-Elvis or Jerry Lee? Jerry Lee, long live the king.
I Confess, starring Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Karl Malden, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Warner Brothers, 1953
Apparently the late British thriller film director Alfred Hitchcock did not have a high regard for the capacities of the police to do more than cursory investigations of crimes, pick a suspect at random, a nearby suspect, frame him (or occasionally her), let the chips fall where they may and go out for coffee and crullers, oh, yah, after giving that suspect, that nearby suspect, the third degree down at the station house just for chuckles. At least that is the way it seemed to this reviewer after having recently reviewed Hitchcock’s 1956 B-film thriller The Wrong Guy, oops The Wrong Man, where a totally innocent citizen of New York City, a second-rate musician named Manny, was framed, signed, sealed and delivered, for a series of armed robberies around the neighborhood and only got off, barely, because the real wrong-doer, the real wrong gee, was found out up to his old tricks. That same sloppy police work is at play here, except this time the nefarious police work is done up in La Belle Province, up in Quebec City.
Here is the lay of the land. A post-World War II German refugee (maybe Nazi, maybe no, but his demeanor and actions said that was at least a possibility) who landed up in Quebec working as a handyman at a church rectory with his housekeeper wife can’t live another day seeing her youth fading away doing hard labor so he plans to rob a sleazy lawyer about town who had some off-hand dough laying around using a priest’s cassock as disguise. Things went awry, as they sometimes do with amateurs in over their heads, especially those eaten up with rage about wifely faded beauty, and the lawyer winds up dead, very dead. Said handyman in remorse, maybe, decided to confess his sin to one of the parish priests, Father Logan (played by Montgomery Clift), in the privacy of the confessional. That act created the drama of the film since it is well known that such confessions cannot be divulged to anybody, not even the law, the cops, you know the priest-penitent rule.
That is where the nifty police work comes in, comes in the in person of one pug-nosed pugnacious (is that combination possible?) anglo detective, played by Karl Malden, who while investigating the murder came up with the bright idea that a priest did the deed, end of story. Well, not quite, because he had to figure out which priest in 1950s Gallic old-style Roman Catholic priest-ridden Quebec with a church on every block did the deed. And so he grabs onto the nearest priest, Father Logan of course. And the good father is made to order for the frame because, as we find out by a series of flash backs, it turned out that his pre-priesthood old flame, his married, very married old flame, Ruth (played by fetching Anne Baxter) confessed to the cops (in order to give Logan an alibi) she was being blackmailed by the sleaze lawyer (and that she was still in love with her good-looking priest friend), she had sought the good father’s help, and so his actions on her behalf took on a sinister note. And don’t forget that old confession rule.
So beat daddy cop Karl had a slam-dunk and could join the other guys down at Chez somebody’s for coffee and crullers. Father Logan took the heat like a man, went on trial for murder, and just barely avoided stepping off the big step by a jury (all men) who seemingly figured he was fooling around with the good madame the night of the murder. Not guilty he might be legally but not innocent according to the town’s mores as his alleged unpriestly actions were over the top and in reaction they threatened him as he came out of the courthouse. The murderous handyman’s fading beauty housekeeper wife (who also knew of her man’s act but who would have pled the married exception against her husband in court I guess if it came to that) broke down and declared the good father’s innocence. The handyman, further unhinged, shoots her, runs away and then later dies in a shoot-out while still looking for the good father’s forgiveness as he dies in his arms. Here is the beauty of the tale though that lying handyman was the star witness against old Father Logan and so the cops took his word for everything right down the line, without a murmur. Yah, Alfred, your right, cops.
