***Out In The 1940s Noir Night- With Blonde Ice In Mind-Take Two

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Les Lewis, who knew her best, who had been her benighted back door lover, probably summed her up best, summed up the late Claire Summers, when he said he didn’t really know her at all, that he had no idea what made her tick, if anything. He added that as time went on and he got more of a sense of her outrageousness, of her outrageous demands and her wanting habits he realized that she had no moral compass, no moral core at all. That was the point where he started using the term Blonde Ice when speaking of her, although that did not stop him from being entrapped, ensnared, and enthralled by her. No way, not even when the bodies, male bodies, started piling up before his eyes. What did he say, oh yah, she went through her men so fast she didn’t have time to have her initials embroidered on their sets of towels. Yah, Claire, Blonde Ice, take your pick, had a good run while it lasted, a damn good run. Maybe, though it’s best to go through the story so you will know how close, if you were a man, you were to falling in her clutches.               

Claire’s story, the story she told anyway, to her fellows in the Frisco Gazette newsroom where she held forth as the society page editor, was that she was from nowhere USA like a lot of young people who migrated West after the war, World War Two for those who are asking. She added that she was from hunger, from the cheap mean streets of that from nowhere that she had come from. She made it plain, plain as day, to everybody, no, to every guy in the place, and elsewhere that the from hunger thing was strictly in the past and that if anybody wanted to keep company with her they had better have dough, big dough, and connections to the Mayfair swells, or leave her alone. That didn’t stop anybody, any guy, in the newsroom from copy boy to city editor, or elsewhere either from taking a run at her, a hard run. See she was blonde, young, with a good shape, and pleasing, publicly pleasing, like a kitten. A kitten that would scratch you, scratch your eyes out if it came to that, as soon as look at you but that came later. Later when she got her wanting habits into high gear, and when the male population of the West Coast seemed to be dropping daily.    

Here is how Claire operated, operated up front and in public to give you an idea of what she was capable of when she had her wanting habits on. Les Lewis who we have already met was the editorial page writer, you might have seen his by-line if you got the Gazette and as we also know was, well, let’s call it smitten by her, and she by him in a calculating sort of way. So while she was waiting for the next best thing they stuck together. Hell he was happy with that arrangement as long as he could be with her.  But she made clear only for that amount of time. A while later, maybe six, eight, months later this Carl Castle, a self-made millionaire took a run at her. He didn’t have to run hard, not hard at all because all she saw was dollar signs. So she dumped Les, forthwith, and married Carl and his money. But see here is where she, hell, maybe all dames, went screwy. She wanted to keep Les around as a stand-by, keep him around for those nights when Carl was away on business, or she just wanted an off-hand romp.  Needless to say a guy who was a self-made millionaire didn’t get that kale by being a stooge, even for a dame. So when Carl caught on to Claire’s  act, caught on during their honeymoon for chrissakes, he dropped her like a hot potato. 

Or rather he would have if he had had the chance. But Claire, clear-eyed Claire, was not giving up the gravy train after what she had been through and so she wasted him, wasted him before he could cut her out. Here is the beauty of it though she set the scene up like Carl had committed suicide. Nice touch. And that kept the wolves, the legal wolves, away for a while. And here is a nicer touch she took right up with Les like nothing had happened. And he was so gone on her that he bought into her fantasy.

Of course Les for Claire was just a safe harbor until she could snare something else, and you know she did. That is how strong her wanting habits were. So the next best that came along was a high-priced lawyer, Stan Lewin, yes, that Stan Lewin the big corporate lawyer for Ajax Consolidated up inSan Francisco. The guy who saved them millions winning that big anti-trust case the government ran against them. So Les was out the door, or half-way out the door, again. Poor sap, he had it bad, as bad as man could have it for a woman and still be on two feet. Maybe he was getting just a little wise, because around that time he started referring to her as Blonde Ice around the office. Little good it did him once Stan announced that he and Mrs. Castle were to be wedded. 

Those wedding plans though were Claire’s undoing. Somehow someone had gotten to Stan and put a bug in his ear about Claire’s virtue and so he called the whole thing off. Mistake, Stan mistake, a big one. See you couldn’t do something like that to Claire once she had her plans set, set in stone apparently. And so Stan went underground, six feet under.  And here again is the beauty of her mind she let Les take the fall for it. Set him up for the big step- off up in Q. And didn’t bat an eyelash. Evil, sheer evil.        

Les, and his fellows, by this point were no fools and could see a certain pattern to Claire’s behavior, and so they were ready to move heaven and earth to get Les out from under a murder rap. However they were saved the effort by a very strange occurrence. Apparently back in nowhere Claire had been married, a child-bride it seemed, to some farmer in Utah, or someplace like that. This farmer, Clyde Smythe read about Carl Castle’s demise and accompanying picture of his widow, his own dear runaway wife. He headed to Frisco, armed, armed and filled with righteous indignation. And that righteous indignation put one Blonde Ice on ice. RIP.      

Oh yah, it later came out that Claire had killed a couple of other guys on her way up. One, a guy who had been pimping her off doing tricks on the cheap streets of Reno and she blasted him one night when he was wasted from his dope habit that required her out on the streets. The newsies figured that was when she developed the taste for the rooty-toot-toot to solve her problems. The other guy was a guy from Vegas who knew that she had wasted her pimp and was trying to blackmail her. Bad idea, very bad.  So maybe she did have her comeuppance when Clyde showed up to even things out for mankind before it ran out of men. But don’t tell Les that, okay. He goes out to Garden Grove Cemetery every week to visit her grave. Some guys have it bad, real bad, and some dames, good or evil, make them that way.  

 

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-

 

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin       

 

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-

Blind Lemon Jefferson-Bad Luck Blues

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots- Cotton Mill Blues

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-

 

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin       

 

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots- Little Old Sod Shanty

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-Big Bill Broonzy-Starvation Blues

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-Dave McCarn-Cotton Mill Colic

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-Big Joe Williams-Providence Help The Poor People

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-Boll Wevill

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots- Weave Room Blues

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots- Bo Carter-Times Is Tight Like That

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-Carolina Tarheels-Farm Girl Blues

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***SongsTo While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots- Earl Johnson - Ain't Nobody's Business

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots- The Arkansas Sheik

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Out In The Be-Bop Noir Night -The Red Wind-Take Two

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

 

Old sailors, old tars who have roamed all the seas, seven at last count, who have been in every port, been in every port gin mill, whorehouse and greasy spoon, claim that the red wind, a blood red wind coming from the land not that blue pink goodnight ocean sky wind  means nothing but trouble, trouble with a big T. Of course they assume all their troubles are land-bound but that is a separate question. Their take is this, and maybe they are right, that those red winds, the winds coming out of some Santa Ana enclave make people jittery, make them nervous, make them ready to do each and every thing they would not dream of doing in calmer times. Make Walter Mitty-types feisty ready to give hell and brimstone class war to their bosses (in their dreams anyway), make docile children rise up like Cain slayed Abel (and create mother pick-up messes worthy of such titantic struggles, make sweet mother home-makers reach for some rolling pin to level a miscreant, fill- in- the- blank. Make a woman practice with her trigger finger maybe at that same fill-in-the-blank. Just in case.

Yes that ill-wind, that hell wind seemingly from the bowels of the earth makes the citizenry of the city of angels, L.A. town, do screwy foul things right up to and including murder if need be. Philip Marlowe, the tough old gumshoe, the seedy, has-been private eye, the shamus, found reason to believe those old seadogs were on to something when the winds, the red winds, no question, blew across his city of angels, disrupted the old time Los Angeles night, his night, one October week back in 1939, back before the war made the whole town crazy with or without winds.        

Hell, to think of it, who would have thought that going out for a few cold ones, a few brews, to take the ever present swirling dust off the night at a newly opened corner bar in the neighborhood, the old Bunker Hill neighborhood where Marlowe called home would lead to murder. He had sat on his stool there minding his own business nursing his second beer when this guy Warden came in, came in looking for a dame. No, not some bar girl or some street tart but an upscale woman looking like something out of Vanity Fair and smelling, well, smelling of sandalwood. If anybody was asking, just a faint whiff of sandalwood behind the ears just like it is supposed to be applied. He asked the bar- tender and then Marlowe if they had seen such a twist (his term). They answered no, although Marlowe wished just then that he had. For his efforts in trying to meet that dame, for coming out of the red wind night howling outside, old brother Warden was waylaid and shot point blank by a guy also nursing a few drinks at one of the tables. That scene made no sense under normal circumstances but in the blood red night something was breezing ill. 

Naturally, after the police, the cops, in the person of one hard-nosed Homicide Detective Smythe who had no love for private dicks as he called them, especially Marlowe since the good detective had gotten his nose bent out of shape in the Gilbert murder case, finished rumbling him up, practically calling him the perpetrator, or in cahoots with the hard guy, our boy Marlowe was up for anything that would shed like on what the hell had happened before his eyes. See, not only did that lamster plug Warden but he wanted to put two between the eyes of one Philip Marlowe (and the newly minted bar- owner too) to erase any witnesses to his dastardly deed. Just for the record that barroom killing was nothing but a settling of old scores by a guy, Detroit Red, who believed, and believed correctly as it turned out that Warden had dropped a dime on him back East. A dime which sent him to Sing Sing for a nickel on an armed robbery rap and is of no further interest to us.

Except this, Marlowe, for professional pride, and rightly so, took umbrage at that notion that he could be rubbed out for drinking a friendly beer in his own damn neighborhood. He moreover was taken with the intriguing idea that some femme, some femme with that essence of sandalwood surrounding her was out in the red wind night. Maybe needing help, maybe needing windmill-chasing help, maybe needed some comfort between the sheets if it came to that. It was that kind of night, and he had those kinds of feelings. And so our boy traced Warden’s movements back from his entry into the barroom, back to his car, back to his apartment, and finally coming up with some clover, back to her.     

This is the way it went down. This Warden was nothing but a grifter, an ex-con with expensive habits, a dope thing. Inhaling more cocaine than he was selling, always a bad mix. He had landed in jail on some lightweight drug charge up in Oregon and did some time with Richard Baxter, yes, the Richard Baxter who controlled the whole political machine on the sunny slumming angels streets of the town. This Baxter, obviously did not want that hard fact of hard time known around town, among the many other little things that he wanted kept secret. Warden’s grift though was to get to Baxter through his wife Lola, the woman of the sandalwood night. See Baxter had picked her up on the rebound after her true love bit the dust down Mexico way flying stuff  (guess what stuff ) in and out.

That pilot love had been working off and on for Baxter as well until Baxter got wise to his old time flame relationship with Lola so wonder if you want to about the nature of that plane crash. No one, no one over the age of seven, would put it past Baxter. Warden, a resourceful sort in a crude way, stole a certain pearl necklace of Lola’s to grab some dough. In any case the pay-off to Warden was dough, big dough, for the pearl necklace that this fly boy had given Lola as sign of undying devotion. Lola was the woman Warden was looking to meet at the bar before he died in a hail of bullets.         

Lola, still without her necklace after the aborted meet with Warden, then hired Philip to retrieve the item and keep the recovery on the hush. Naturally Marlowe’s code of honor required that he adhere to that bargain, and find the necklace which he did. As well run a little off-hand romance with the lovely lonely, ethereal Lola. That dream about downy billows with that fragrance worked itself out nicely once she saw she could trust Marlowe. Baxter who had his tentacles everywhere in his domain found out about Lola and the pearls, the potential expose of his jail-bird time, and her little tryst with Marlowe and was determined to do something about the matter.

Men like Richard Baxter do not get where they wind up without walking over a pile of corpses and so he confronted Lola and Philip in her bedroom one night, gun in hand. Somehow Lola diverted Baxter’s attention long enough to let Marlowe to take a shot at him, a fatal shot, taking a couple of slugs herself in the melee. She died in Philip’s arms clutching that necklace. As for the necklace that old time fly boy love told Lola it had been worth big dough. Philip found out it was glass, worthless. Yes, Marlowe mused those navies were right, those dry red winds meant nothing but trouble, trouble with a big T.      

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-The Inkspots' I'll Get By 

 

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin       

 

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-Uncle Dev Macon -Wreck Of The Tennessee Gravey Train

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots- Bad Time Blues

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots- The Kofer Brothers- Keno,The Rent Man

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin