***The "Max Daddy” Blues Shootout- Alan Lomax’s "Blues At Newport 1966"-Take Four

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Above A YouTube Film Clip Of Skip James Doing "Devil Got My Woman" At The Newport Folk Festival In 1966. Wow!

 

 

 

Son House

Howlin'Wolf

Bukka White

Reverend Pearly Brown

 

 Based on a DVD review of the documentary Devil Got My Woman: Blues At Newport 1966

 

I remember once, long ago, maybe around the time when I first met him on a fateful night at a rock and roll dance at the Surf Ballroom in 1964 in my hometown of Hullsville my old friend Peter Paul Markin (hereafter just Markin like normal guys) telling me all about his love for the blues. He would go on and on about how the blues, first country down in the South, down in the Delta plantation, picking cotton for some Mister and living under what he called Mister James Crow’s laws and then with the great northern migration of blacks to the cities and real jobs around World War II the blues got all electrified that those strands formed the basis, or one of them anyway, for rock and roll. He would then rattle off  

the names of all the then current groups, mostly British, mostly British invasion groups, who cut their teeth on the blues. Bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the like. At that time I was hot into rock and roll, hot into rock and roll in order to keep in step with what the girls (then, young women now) were interested in so I could have a word with them. Have something to say once I stepped up to some certain she that I had my eye on. The Markin world of folk (which he, alternately, went on and on about) and blues, what did he call it, yeah, roots music left me yawning. Then.

A number of years later, maybe the early 1970s I was out in San Francisco and ran into a number of women, young women, okay, who were crazy for the blues, for the likes of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, guys like that. I was working at the Café Noche where I worked for a while as I was drifting up and down the coast trying to find out once the flame of the 1960s stuff blew out what my little niche in life (life then being may the next three years, hell, maybe just one) would turn out to be. Then I caught the blues bug, caught it almost as bad as Markin (almost, okay). And I in my turn would spread the word to all who would listen about how the blues, country and then city, formed the basis, or one of the bases for our beloved rock and roll.

But by then many of the old time country blues singers like Mississippi John Hurt and city blues guys like Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf were either past their prime or had passed on and so, unlike Markin, I never really got a chance to see them in person. And so every once in a while when I would come across some old film footage of the blues kings and queens I would take note. Of course in the age of exponential developments in film preservation and reproduction technology and access to stuff via the Internet that task has been made easier, infinitely easier. One day Markin sent me a copy of the film documentary Devil Got My Woman: Blues At Newport 1966 and I flipped out. I got to see “live” some of the masters at work, or rather at play and just how they all bounced of each other.     

Here were representatives of the various trends in the blues tradition, including both the country blues and the later electrified urban sound most closely associated with places like Memphis and Chicago. And as I touted the film to others (including women, older women, okay) I pointed out in Markin fashion that it was fairly well known that country blues got its start down in the South during the early part of the 20th century (if not earlier) as a way for blacks (mainly) to cope with the dreaded, deadly work on the plantations (picking that hard to pick cotton). The electric blues really came of age in the post- World War I period and later when there was a massive black migration out of the south in search of the, now disappearing, industrial jobs up north (and to get out from under old Mister Jim Crow racial segregation). I guess I must have been paying attention after all.

In this film (and similarly in a couple of other previously reviewed volumes in this series) Stefan Grossman, the renowned guitar teacher and performer in his own right, had taken old film clips and segments from an Alan Lomax experiment at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966 of putting exemplars of both traditions together under one roof and had produced an hour of classic performances.

Let me set the stage on this one to give you a small, small sense of what an historic blues cultural occasion this was. Alan Lomax, the famous musicologist and folk performer, put the then recently "rediscovered" Skip James and Son House and the already well known and powerful voice of Howlin' Wolf together under one roof. Oh yes, and then added Bukka White and the Reverend Pearly Brown to the mix. The motif: an attempt to recreate an old fashioned "juke joint'" from back in the days on a Down South rural Saturday night complete with dancing and plenty of liquor. Watch out. Watch out for that rotgut liquor, watch out for your woman who is eying that brother who just came the door, worse, watch out for that other brother, hooch brave, eying your woman and making you think big thoughts about how glad you were that you had your knife handy, and wished to high heaven that you had brought your gun. But mostly watch (and watch out for too, watch out for your woman watch out once she starts swaying to the beat) those guys who are providing the night’s entertainment because they are on a roll.  

Needless to say anyone even vaguely familiar with the long and storied history of the early blues knows that this was indeed an historic, and fleeting, occasion. 1966 might have been one of the few years that such an event could have been put together as the old country blues singers were starting to past from the scene. But as fate would have it we got one last chance to look at these five performers going head to head, everyone one way or another a legend. With the partial exception of the Reverend Pearly Brown and his religiously- oriented country blues done in the shout and response style of the old Baptist churches reflecting the tradition made popular by the Reverend Blind Willie Johnson, all the other performers were members in good standing of one or another branch of the blues pantheon.

A few of the highlights. Skip James' rendition of his classic "I'd Rather Be The Devil That Be That Woman's Man" (also known by the title of this documentary "Devil Got My Woman"). Son House brought out his classic "Death Letter Blues" that I always go crazy over. Howlin' Wolf was, well, Howlin' Wolf as he almost inhales the harmonica on "How Many More Years" and did an incredible cover of the old Robert Johnson/Elmore James song "Dust My Broom". Reverend Brown does a very soulful rendition of the tradtional religious blues classic "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning." Bukka White too, of course, on Aberdeen Mississippi Woman”. Bukka had been a recent addition to my personal blues pantheon and I have spent some effort praising his work, especially his smoking guitar work on that old National Steel guitar that he makes hum. Hell, just like Markin I would have walked to Mississippi to hear that.

Best of all was the interplay between various players, some drinking off the hip, some glassy-eyed with that tell-tale marijuana glow that one could almost smell as thing got heated, some just letting their muse get them high. All taking the measure of each other, all trying to say “son, you thought you had something, watch this.” Yes indeed, this was the blues shootout to end all shootouts. If you wanted to know what it was like to see men play the blues for keeps that was the place to be.

 

 

***From The Archives (2008)- Allan Greenspan Walks The Plank-Or Should

Markin comment -2013  

Usually in politics, includng my brand of extra-parliamentary  street politics, it sometimes best to let sleeping dogs lie. And under normal circumstances I would follow that advise and let old Ayn Rand-ite Greenspan go off into the wilderness. Except he is planning ot write a book of his memoirs, about his "wisdom" as Federal Reserve Board Chairman. Jesus, will it never end.  


Allan Greenspan Walks The Plank- Or Should. Where Are Those Pirates of The Caribbean When You Need Them?

Commentary

One of the least edifying aspects of this international capitalist meltdown is the rush to point fingers at who is to blame. In America most conservative commentators have fixated on (surprise) the Democrats and their long ago legislation concerning Freddie Mac and Fannie Mac or the Community Redevelopment Act. These actions, rather than traditional Wall Street greed (make that super-greed) are seen as the culprits. The Democrats want to blame (surprise) Wall Street, “the bad capitalists”, for being unregulated. Here again, race and class raise their ugly little heads in the background. Behind all of this palaver are the “little guys and gals” , that is the poor working people of every race but mainly black and Hispanic, who just wanted to have their own homes-not an irrational dream in America whatever this writer’s personal take on the wisdom of such a choice might be. You see the poor are the fall guys and gals because they were in over their heads and should not have pursued that road. Well, we will let that one rest for now because we have bigger fish to fry today.

On October 23, 2008 former Federal Reserve Chairman Allan Greenspan appeared before a Congressional committee investigating the causes of the international financial meltdown. During the course of the interchange between Greenspan and members of the committee he owned up to the fact that, as long time overseer of the capitalist markets, he had miscalculated (“found a flaw” to use his expression) concerning the effects that self-interest should have played in the markets- the so-called “invisible hand” that watches out and safeguards against irrational behavior. Thanks for that insight, Allan. However there is more to it than that. Greenspan’s economic policies reflected his adherence to the ultra-capitalist notions of one of Russian Revolution refugee, Ayn Rand. A lynchpin in that thinking is the belief that markets should regulate themselves with little (really no) oversight from “big brother” government. Well, at least that was the widely accepted “wisdom” before some eight trillion dollars of “paper wealth” in the market proved to be essentially “funny money”.

None of the back and forth between the concepts of liberal “welfare state” capitalism and conservative “free market” capitalism reflected in this investigation is to the point. To paraphrase an old presidential campaign slogan- “It’s the system, stupid”. That is the elephant in the room studiously ignored by Republican and Democrat alike. Private ownership of the means of production and its adjunct credit markets and other financial devises as defined by the long history of capitalist rule has produced one constant- the continuous need for profits. No just any rate of profits but the highest possible, to put it in a word- greed. Until that glorious day when greed is not the central driving force behind economic life and is replaced by rational international socialist planning that will continue to be true. Revolutions have convulsed societies over policies that caused far less damage to the social fabric than have occurred in the present meltdown. But until that time a few heads should roll. As a contribution to that end can anyone disagree that old Allan Greenspan should walk the plank? I think not.

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part 11, Section 1

Egyptian students demonstrate on February 21, 2012, to mark anniversary of 1946 student and worker uprising. Photo by Mai Shaheen / Ahram Online.

A people's history:
The movement to democratize Egypt

Part 11: 1945-1946 Period/Section 1 -- Worker and student struggles lead to general strike.

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / October 17, 2013

[With all the dramatic activity in Egypt, Bob Feldman's Rag Blog "people's history" series, "The Movement to Democratize Egypt," could not be more timely. Also see Feldman's "Hidden History of Texas" series on The Rag Blog.]

A September 1, 1945, report by M. Audsley -- the Labor Counselor at the UK Embassy in Egypt -- indicated what life for most Egyptian workers was like when the leaders of the Egyptian student movement were calling for the formation of a national committee to push for full Egyptian independence from the UK:

The Egyptian workers live in unhealthy and overcrowded dwellings -- they are so overcrowded in many areas that the workers occupy the dwellings in shifts as in a factory; they sleep in the streets and in any odd corner; servants and their families sleep under staircases, in sheds and in gardens or in the more modern buildings which are often not sanitary... Their level of wages is below the subsistence standard... There is no unemployment insurance, no provision for old age and similar state benefits...

Demanding full independence from the UK and the immediate evacuation of all British military forces from Egypt, the Egyptian student movement next called for and organized a massive general strike at a public meeting in Egypt on February 9, 1946, in support of these demands.

Selma Botman described in Egypt from Independence to Revolution, 1919-1952 what then happened on that date in Egypt’s history:

On February 9 [1946] students called a massive strike. They marched by the thousands...from the university grounds in Giza toward Abdin Palace, chanting: "Evacuation! No negotiation except after evacuation!" When they reached the Abbar Bridge, which they needed to cross to reach the palace, they clashed with the police. The police opened the bridge while students were crossing it, causing the deaths of over 20 students by drowning and 84 serious casualties. In protest against the police’s behavior, demonstrations erupted in parts of Mansura, Zagazig, Aswan, Shabiz al-Kom, Alexandria and Cairo...

Then in Cairo, on February 18, 1946, “40,000 demonstrators came together in Abdeen Square while 15,000 others grouped at the university, where pamphlets were distributed attacking British imperialism,” according to Tareq Y. Ismael and Rifa‘at El-Sa’id’s The Communist Movement in Egypt: 1920-1988; and “along with these demonstrations, representatives of both the workers and students met and formed the National Committee of Workers and Students [NCWS]....with the aim of leading the struggle against the imperialists and their agents.”

This committee then called for a general strike in Egypt on February 21, 1946, in support of the following three goals:

1. “to struggle for national independence and to combat the military occupation and economic, political, cultural and colonial domination";
2. “to eliminate the local agents of colonialism, i.e., feudalists and big financiers connected with foreign monopolies;” and
3. “to unite all the anti-colonialist nationalist forces to support mass demonstrations and strikes, and to forge contacts with international anti-colonialist democratic movements.”

The NCWS’s February 21, 1946, demonstration and general strike in Cairo began peacefully. But then the Egyptian “protesters were insulted by the behavior of British military personnel” when “several military cars came through the crowds,” according to Selma Botman’s The Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939-1970; and the British troops next “opened fire” on the Egyptian demonstrators, according to Egypt from Independence to Revolution, 1919-1952.

In response, “demonstrators attacked foreign shops, clubs, and the British military camp” and “at the end of the day, there were 23 dead and 125 wounded,” according to The Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939-1970. The dead Egyptian victims were “given martyrs’ funerals” while anti-imperialist nationalist demonstrations “spread to Giza, Shubra al-Khayma, Bab al-Sharqiyya, Misral-Jadrda, Abbasiyya, Helwan, Port Said, Ismailiya, Zagazig, Mansura, Zift, Mahasla al-Kubra and Tanta,” according to the same book.

The Egyptian student committee then decided to make February 25, 1946, “a day of general mourning for those who had been killed” on February 21; and on February 25, “a general strike took place” during which “clashes with the police led to the deaths of 28” more “demonstrators and the injury of 342” more, as well as “two British soldiers” also being killed and four UK soldiers being injured, according to The Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939-1970.

Another day of mourning was held in Egypt on March 4, 1946, to commemorate the additional anti-imperialist nationalist martyrs; and on March 4, 1946, “newspapers were not printed, coffee shops, stores, and factories were closed down, and schools and universities remained silent,” while “clashes in Alexandria left 28 more dead and hundreds wounded,” according to Egypt from Independence to Revolution, 1919-1952.

When the British government announced on March. 8, 1946, “their intention to evacuate the Cairo, Alexandria, and Delta zones” of Egypt “and set up military camps only in the region of the Suez Canal, the NCWS, with the rest of the [Egyptian] left, took this proclamation as their victory over the forces of imperialism,” according to The Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939-1970.

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Victory To The BART (SF Bay Area)Workers!! 

***** 

BART strike reveals tech, transit worker divide

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via Urbanrail.net

The BART strike has laid bare a tricky cultural divide in the Bay Area, between traffic-weary tech workers who drive the local economy, and blue collar transit workers who feel left behind.

by Krissy Clark

Marketplace Morning Report for Thursday, July 4, 2013

• Story

Why Silicon Valley can't end world poverty

Ready, fire, aim: Why Silicon Valley shoots from the hip

When thousands of BART workers went on strike this week over salaries, benefits, and safety concerns and shut down the San Francisco Bay Area’s main public transit system, the news made national headlines.
The strike also laid bare a tricky cultural divide in the Bay Area, between traffic-weary tech workers who drive the local economy, and blue collar transit workers who feel left behind.

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Tech workers bring lots of change to San Francisco Twitter headquarters has lured other companies to a stretch of Market Street. The city's economy is growing, but not everyone benefits.

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A BART worker's base salary is about $60,000 a year. Sounds pretty good, but it’s less than the $74,341 a family of four needs to get by in the pricey Bay Area, according to a recent study by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, based in Oakland.
BART train operator Eddie Turner, who was picketing earlier this week, said as the local tech industry booms and drives up the cost of living, workers like him, who haven’t gotten a raise since 2009, should get a boost too.
“BART is running a surplus,” Turner said. “This system works and we are the people who make it work.”
But plenty of the people who depend on the BART system to get to work, see things differently.
Richard White is the CEO of a San Francisco tech company called UserVoice. He was on a plane somewhere over Arkansas when he emailed me a recording he’d made on his iphone (a surreal feat made possible thanks in large part to Bay Area tech innovations), describing his feelings about the strike.
He called it a fiasco, snarling traffic and wasting hours of dozens of his staff's time. And while he said he had sympathy for BART workers not getting a raise in four years, he didn’t have that much sympathy.
“One of the guys on our team said he's putting in his two-weeks notice once he found out what he could make working for BART,” White said, joking. His solution to address those disgruntled BART workers? “Get ‘em back to work, pay them whatever they want, and then figure out how to automate their jobs so this doesn't happen again.”

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Transportation Nation Marketplace's ongoing coverage of transportation issues around the nation are part of the Transportation Nation public radio project.

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Sarah Lacy, founder of tech news site Pando Daily, which is based in San Francisco, said “If I had more friends who were BART drivers, I would probably be very sympathetic to their cause, and if they had more friends who were building companies they would probably realize we’re not all millionaires, and we’re actually working pretty hard to build something.”
She said the BART strike exacerbated what she sees as a philosophical divide in the Bay Area. “People in the tech industry feel like life is a meritocracy. You work really hard, you build something and you create something, which is sort of directly opposite to unions.”
But BART worker Kay Wilson, who was on strike this week, said she was doing what made sense for any working person, in a tech job or a transit job -- trying to make a living in an expensive region. "I make no apologies for wanting to go to work, do my job well, and get paid for that," she said.

Gramsci: Everything that Concerns People

The Latest From The British Leftist Blog-Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism-Gramsci: Everything that Concerns People

Click below to link to the Histomat:Adventures in Historical Materialism blog

http://histomatist.blogspot.com/

Markin comment:

While from the tenor of the articles, leftist authors featured, and other items it is not clear to me that this blog is faithful to any sense of historical materialism that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin or Leon Trotsky would recognize I am always more than willing to "steal" material from the site. Or investigate leads provided there for material of interest to the radical public-whatever that seemingly dwindling public may be these days.

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the“remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.

***********

 

Friday, October 18, 2013

Gramsci: Everything that Concerns People

She Stoops To Conquer- With The 1950s Film Some Like It Hot Painfully In Mind   

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

He, John Samson to give him a name although his condition could apply to many more than one would think, did not think he could keep going on that way, keep on living a lie. Keep on letting the whole wide world think he was just a reclusive oddball, a quirky nut- case, especially when old time friends, high school guys or guys at work tried to date him up with women, usually but not always their sisters, or their sisters’ friends. But what was person like him to do in the year 1961 with the whole world arrayed against him, and his kind. His kind being a, uh, cross-dresser, a transvestite, a flaming drag queen. His instinct, his survival instinct said keep your head down, keep to your secret world, keep the wolves of society away, and mainly to keep his parents in the dark for as long as possible.

That secret world of his was caught up in midnight dates with guys who liked to swing with drag queens, got their kicks that way, or at least keep them company in anonymous locations, usually far from his North Adamsville digs. Or putting on titter shows for strangers down in closed door social clubs in the South End of Boston, occasional trysts in New York City, mainly the Village, and in summer, sweet summer down in Provincetown with all its delights. No, he could not keep going on that way. His parents were becoming increasingly suspicious, suspicious enough to inquire incessantly every time they could about why he didn’t settle down with some nice girl. They were suspicious that he has no girlfriends, and they would be crushed to know that he had no interest in girls and no freaking desire to be interested in girls unlike to of his brothers who were raising broods to terrorize an unknowing world. What he was interested in was cross-dressing, wearing female attire and to be, frankly, admired as a girl, as a woman, to be a femme as he liked to call himself in his lonely minutes. So no girls, nice or evil, as his parents called them were to be treated as competition, or to be asked for beauty tips, stuff like that.

His parents with whom he had lived at home off and on the previous several years since he had graduated from high school in 1957, usually after some unsuccessful affair went sour, or he got kicked out of some digs for being, well, odd were beginning to speak to neighbors and relatives that Johnnie was “different” from their three other sons. Those blooming brood-growing sons. Although the youngest, a college kid, Albert, and maybe a little more worldly-wise that his parents and other brothers having broken out of the cloistered small town mainly Irish Catholic enclave, seemed to sense what John was all about, although he never said anything about it to him.     

[We will hereafter use not this male name John, or Johnnie, bestowed, no what do they call it now, assigned at birth to him by his family and convention in the year of our lord 1939, the year of his birth, but his secret world name, Jackie, and use feminine pronouns to avoid any further confusion on that point.]

They, her parents, Delores and Paul to give them names, would say that she had always been sort of a loner, sort of liked to look at the world differently from the other boys. Always had her nose in a book, unlike the sports-driven other boys. Those books and her secret hide-away public library visits from such things are what saved her lots of harassment on that score although she was not particularly interested in academics and had been a middling student, at best. Little did Delores and Paul know as well how different Jackie was from her siblings. How early on Jackie was fascinated by her girl cousins’ things, frilly girl things, when they came to visit or she went there and, naturally, her mother’s things, rummaging through her bureaus when she was home alone,  and abhorred sports, dirty boy talk, and male swagger in general. That hit home to her at first when she had, secretly in downtown Boston, seen Some Like It Hot, and almost had an orgasm when she saw Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dressed in drag even those they were just using it as a ruse. (She would see that film several more times at that time and have that same reaction).  Moreover little did they know what she himself had begun to realize that she liked, really liked, to dress like a girl (woman) hard as that was for her to understand at first. She would always be confused by those feelings because while she loved to dress up she didn’t necessarily feel like a girl (later woman) like some of her friends, her secret friends, who were almost praying they could be women and were always talking about some kind of operation to just that that was being performed over in Europe some place.   

She had Georgette (birth name, George Sampas) to thank for breaking down her confusion about her feelings. Jackie had previously thought she was just weird, weird even by South End, Village, Provincetown conventions, when she wanted to assert her girl-ness without dreams of being transformed like some fairy tale princess into a woman. Most of the homosexuals she knew turned her down when they found out her inclinations, couldn’t understand why she was not attracted to them like other men in a manly man to man way. That misunderstanding had exploded in her last relationship when Clip (she preferred not to use his real name so Chip) flipped out when Jackie started to see a straight man occasionally who was willing to treat her like a woman, treat her like the real woman she felt inside even though no science, no medical advances could help align her body with her soul. Once she met Clint he knew that her affair with Chip, who never really accepted her girl-ness except when it came to sex, would soon be over although she really could have used a friend and a place to stay so she wouldn’t have to move back home and face that whole “different” song and dance. But see Clint was dependent on his wife’s money and that wife would flip out and divorce him if she ever found out about his relationship with Jackie. Would take the kids, the house, the dough and all. So while Jackie clung to him (and he to her) she would have to make her own way in the world.                             

That is where Georgette came in and kind of saved her, kind of made her more comfortable with her feelings. They had met at Sally’s down in the Village (Sally, the owner,  of course being not some girl Sally but Salvatore Domino) where Georgette sat at a table one night by herself in high fashion- pompadour blonde wig, fluttering eyelashes, ruby red lips, and a gorgeous dress from one of the better New York fashion houses. She was in short in full drag regalia as befitted a queen of the night. Jackie, still too shy to go all out in drag, went up to her and remarked on her attire. Georgette maybe with a few too many drinks in her kind of snickered at that and asked what the hell Jackie thought she was doing looking like some housewife from Jersey (where Georgette was from so she knew) in Sally’s.  From that moment Georgette took charge, for good or evil. And that started their friendship.                

After a couple of weeks Jackie was comfortable enough to wear fashionable dresses and accessories out in the streets, the hard bitten early 1960s New York streets (although not alone but always in Georgette’s company). That done though she, they had hit a wall. They had no dough, no prospects of dough and a landlord who was not happy, and made his unhappiness well known, to have two drag queens mooching off of him. That is when Georgette put together the idea of a drag sister singing act since as it turned she had a great female voice and Jackie was not bad on harmony. And so for several years in all the drag haunts of New York City, P-town, Frisco town and some foreign ports they had a following and kept the wolves from their door. But like all fashion, or all beauty for that matter, things fade and as they got older they were in less demand and eventually abandoned the act and opened a small bar in Frisco. And it is still there, Jackette’s, in that golden town although under new management.

The new management part was not accidental. About fifteen years ago Georgette passed away and Jackie ran the place herself for a while. Then she too passed away a few years later. The way I can across this story though was that my old time high school friend, Peter Paul Markin (although we always called him just Markin, forget that upper-crust Peter Paul stuff), grew up across the street in North Adamsville from the Samsons. Although Markin  was several years younger he had heard stuff about a Jackie Samson, the famous drag queen,  who had lived right across the street and investigated it some later . ( Funny how times have changed I remember, and Markin does too, when our mothers would warn us away from The Shipwreck  a bar located on a cove on the outskirts of my hometown, Hullsville, because drag queens performed there like it was some kind of disease.) One time a few years before Jackie died when Markin was in Frisco he went into Jackette’s and introduced himself. They chatted for a couple of hours and Jackie invited Markin over to her apartment. That night they watched Some Like It Hot, a favorite of Markin’s as well. What do you think of that my friends.          

From The Marxist Archives-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The John Brown-Led Raid On Harpers Ferry-Only Workers Revolution Will Put an End to Capitalist Crises  

STRIKE THE BLOW-THE LEGEND OF CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN

Reclaiming John Brown for the Left

BOOK REVIEW

JOHN BROWN, ABOLITIONIST, DAVID S. REYNOLDS, ALFRED A. KNOPF, NEW YORK, 2005
From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harpers Ferry. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a prior existence as a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they headed south. I was then, however, neither familiar with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the struggle against slavery. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery. Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was executed,I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Almost 150 years after his death this writer is proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown.

That said, it is with a great deal of pleasure that I can recommend Mr. Reynolds’s book detailing the life, times and exploits of John Brown, warts and all. Published in 2005, this is an important source (including helpful end notes) for updating various controversies surrounding the John Brown saga. While I may disagree with some of Mr. Reynolds’s conclusions concerning the impact of John Brown’s exploits on later black liberation struggles and to a lesser extent his position on Brown’s impact on his contemporaries, particularly the Transcendentalists, nevertheless on the key point of the central place of John Brown in American revolutionary history there is no dispute. Furthermore, Mr. Reynolds has taken pains to provide substantial detail about the ups and downs of John Brown’s posthumous reputation.

Most importantly, he defends the memory of John Brown against all-comers-that is partisan history on behalf of the ‘losers’ of history at its best. He has reclaimed John Brown to his proper position as an icon for the left against the erroneous and outrageous efforts of modern day religious and secular terrorists to lay any claim to his memory or his work. Below I make a few comments on some of controversies surrounding John Brown developed in Mr. Reynolds’s study.

If one understands the ongoing nature, from his early youth, of John Brown’s commitment to the active struggle against slavery, the scourge of the American Republic in the first half of the 19th century, one can only conclude that he was indeed a man on a mission. As Mr. Reynolds’s points out Brown took every opportunity to fight against slavery including early service as an agent of the Underground Railroad spiriting escaped slaves northward, participation as an extreme radical in all the key anti-slavery propaganda battles of the time as well as challenging other anti-slavery elements to be more militant and in the 1850’s, arms in hand, fighting in the ‘proxy’ wars in Kansas and, of course, the culmination of his life- the raid on Harpers Ferry. Those exploits alone render absurd a very convenient myth by those who supported slavery or turned a blind eye to it and their latter-day apologists for his so-called ‘madness’. This is a political man and to these eyes a very worthy one.

For those who like their political heroes ‘pure’, frankly, it is better to look elsewhere than the life of John Brown. His personal and family life as a failed rural capitalist would hardly lead one to think that this man was to become a key historical figure in any struggle, much less the great struggle against slavery. Some of his actions in Kansas (concerning the murder of some pro-slavery elements under his direction) also cloud his image. However, when the deal went down in the late 1850’s and it was apparent for all to see that there was no other way to end slavery than a fight to the death-John Brown rose to the occasion. And did not cry about it. And did not expect others to cry about it. Call him a ‘monomaniac’ if you like but even a slight acquaintance with great historical figures shows they all have this ‘disease’- that is why they make the history books. No, the ‘madness’ argument will not do.

Whether or not John Brown knew that his military strategy for the Harper’s Ferry raid would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness of his scheme at Harper’s Ferry. Brown’s plan, however, was essentially a combination of slave revolt modeled after the maroon experiences in Haiti, Nat Turner’s earlier Virginia slave rebellion and rural guerrilla warfare of the ‘third world’ type that we have become more familiar with since that time. 150 years later this strategy does not look so foolhardy in an America of the 1850’s that had no real standing army, fairly weak lines of communications, virtually uninhabited mountains to flee to and the North at their backs.

The execution of the plan is another matter. Brown seemingly made about every mistake in the book in that regard. However, this is missing the essential political point that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by other abolitionists had become necessary. A few more fighting abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, and better propaganda work among freedman with connections to the plantations would not have hurt the chances for success at Harpers Ferry.

What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a true Calvinist avenging angel in the struggle against slavery and more importantly acted on that belief. In short, he was committed to bring justice to the black masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years. It is possible that if Brown did not have this, by 19th century standards as well as our own, old-fashioned Calvinist determination that he would not have been capable of militant action. Certainly other anti-slavery elements never came close to his militancy, including the key Transcendentalist movement led by Emerson and Thoreau and the Concord ‘crowd’ who supported him and kept his memory alive in hard times.

In their eyes he had the heroic manner of the Old Testament prophet. Now this animating spirit is not one that animates modern revolutionaries and so it is hard to understand the depths of his religious convictions on his actions but they were understood, if not fully appreciated, by others in those days. It is better today to look at Brown more politically through his hero (and mine, as well) Oliver Cromwell-a combination of Calvinist avenger and militant warrior. Yes, I can get behind that picture of him.

By all accounts Brown and his small integrated band of brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed, including Brown. These results are almost inevitable when one takes up a revolutionary struggle against the old order and one is not victorious. One need only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in 1871. One can fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the defeat of the German Revolution in the 1920’s. There other defeats that galvanize others into action. This is how Brown’s actions should be measured by history.

Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on Brown who reduce his actions to that of a ‘madman’ still cannot believe that his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and others have also misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy which led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming American military superiority. Needless to say, all these events continue to be revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political implications.

From a modern prospective Brown’s strategy for black liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately successful, reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown’s actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no program except the Chatham Charter which seems to have replicated the American constitution but with racial and gender equality as a cornerstone. Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political freedom. That is still our fight. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the reign of ‘Jim Crow’ and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities changed the character of black oppression in the U.S. from Brown’s time. Black people are now a part of "free labor," and the key to their liberation is in the integrated fight of labor against the current one-sided class war and establishing a government of workers and their allies. Nevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown (and of his friend Frederick Douglass). We need to complete the unfinished democratic tasks of the Civil War, not by emulating Brown’s exemplary actions but to moving the multi-racial American working class to power. Finish the Civil War.
**************

Workers Vanguard No. 982	10 June 2011

TROTSKY

LENIN

Only Workers Revolution Will Put an End to Capitalist Crises

(Quote of the Week)

In the depths of the Great Depression in 1934, and following Hitler’s taking power in Germany, fascists in France attempted a coup, which spurred the working class into political and strike action. Polemicizing against the false concept that capitalism would generate its own final crisis, Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky emphasized the need for the overthrow of the capitalist system by a class-conscious proletariat led by a revolutionary party.

Under the domination of industrial capital, in the era of free competition, the cyclical booms exceeded by far the crises: the first were the “rule,” the second the “exception.” Capitalism in its entirety was advancing. Since the war, with the domination of monopoly finance capital, the cyclical crises far exceed the upswings. We may say that the crises have become the “rule” and the booms the “exception”; economic development in its entirety has been going down and not up....

The revolutionary worker must, before all else, understand that Marxism, the only scientific theory of the proletarian revolution, has nothing in common with the fatalistic hope for the “final” crisis. Marxism is, in its very essence, a set of directives for revolutionary action. Marxism does not overlook will and courage, but rather helps them to find the right road.

There is no crisis that can be, by itself, fatal to capitalism. The oscillations of the business cycle only create a situation in which it will be easier, or more difficult, for the proletariat to overthrow capitalism. The transition from a bourgeois society to a socialist society presupposes the activity of living people who are the makers of their own history. They do not make history by accident, or according to their caprice, but under the influence of objectively determined causes. However, their own actions—their initiative, audacity, devotion, and likewise their stupidity and cowardice—are necessary links in the chain of historical development.

The crises of capitalism are not numbered, nor is it indicated in advance which one of these will be the “last.” But our entire epoch and, above all, the present crisis imperiously command the proletariat: “Seize power!” If, however, the party of the working class, in spite of favorable conditions, reveals itself incapable of leading the proletariat to the seizure of power, the life of society will continue necessarily upon capitalist foundations—until a new crisis, a new war, perhaps until the complete disintegration of European civilization.

—Leon Trotsky, “Once Again, Whither France?” March 1935, printed in Leon Trotsky on France (1979)

***Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Night- Bonnie And Clyde For Innocents-Farley Granger’s “They Lived By Night”

DVD Review

They Live By Night, starring Farley Granger, Catherine O’Donnell, Warner Brothers, 1948
Usually crime noir does not have an overriding social message, well, except the old chestnut that crime doesn’t pay, although for the rich a little maybe. Otherwise the genre back in the days, especially in the 1940s be-bop heyday of the genre, was pretty much police procedural stuff, and get the handcuffs out. Or maybe, every once in a while a stray femme fatale came carrying her scent and her sway across the room and turned some otherwise rational guy a little screwy. And anyone, any guy anyway, except maybe that screwy guy, will tell you that is just par for the course. And then get the handcuffs out. A film like the one under review, They Live By Night (a little over- the- top title by the way, bringing out visions of weird aliens, the space kind, or all night sex and drug romps), however, perhaps a little more melodramatically than necessary, tries to break some moral ground as well. And that proposition as presented in the film was none too pretty, then or now. Basically that once one runs down the criminal road, alone or with help, young or old, maybe even guilty or not guilty, the doors to salvation (read: rehabilitation in penal lingo) are closed. Ouch!

And the plot line and unfolding characterizations as the story proceeds go a long way toward driving that hard, if perhaps questionable, premise home. Bowie (played with a studied unworldly naiveté and socially immature confusion by a young Farley Granger) is a young lifer, the details of his imprisonment, except that he came from a broken home and was on his own early in life, do not concern us except to form the underlying basis for his eternal damnation. Wrong step number one. He broke, and was consciously broken, out of the big house along with and by a couple of very nasty career criminals. Wrong step number two. In gratitude, and frankly because he had developed a certain criminal panache while in stir, he aided the pair as the driver of the getaway cars when they went, naturally since they were not going to work in some diner for dimes and doughnuts, on a robbery spree to keep them in clover. And he got his share of the take, no questions asked. Not much to be sympathetic about. So far.

Here is where things get dicey. During the getaway part of the great jail break-out the trio was helped by one of the career banditos’ brothers (said bandito played by Howard DaSilva, a guy you do not want to cross, ever, especially if unarmed. Yes, especially if unarmed). And the brother, of course, had a daughter, Kee Kee (played just a little too naively and dreamily by Catherine O’Donnell), a young daughter a little unworldly in the world of fringe lumpen crime. Alone with a two-bit drunken father (and long gone mom) Naturally a young, good-looking and spirited criminal guy (who does those bank jobs just to get some dough to get himself straight with the law as he tells it to her later) and a young naïve, kind of tomboyish girl (although through the magic of cinema she gets to be pretty fetching by the end of the film), both socially immature and both desperate to find their place, some place, some small happy place in a world that they did not make, are “made” for each other. And that is where the moral part of the story comes.

By a process of elimination by the middle of the film Bowie and Kee Kee are trying, trying fitfully but trying, to break out of the old crime wave pattern and have little white picket fence existence, if not here maybe down Mexico way where the living is cheap, once Bowie gets straight with the law. But that fantasy was not to be. Bowie was forced (remember what I said about Howard DaSilva) to do that one hold-up job too many and the pair had to go on the lam. Wrong step number three. You already know what that means. They had dough, and each other, but the cards were stacked against them as no one will help them slip down Sonora way.

In the end, the lonely end, one of the banditos’ kin (on the other bandito’s side) “dimes” on him. There is more background to it like the kids getting off-handedly married, a no bells and whistles ceremony by the way, learning about sex enough in their wanderings to conceive a child, and desperately try to hang onto their cardboard dreams of a normal life. But the fate sisters were not kind, not this trip. Like I said, a little on the melodramatic pledging eternal love every other minute high side but a story that I could relate to having come within about two minutes of such a fate myself. Actually make that about one minute.

***At The Birth Of Modern Revolutions- Professor Ashton’s “Civil War In England: Conservatism and Revolution 1603-1649”

Click below to link to a Wikipedia entry for the 17th century English Revolution as background for this review.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War
 
Book Review

The Civil War In England:Conservatism and Revolution-1603-1649, Robert Ashton, W.W. Norton&Co., 1978 No question for the modern radical movement the French Revolution of the 18th century is more important as a source of historical examples than the subject of the book, EnglanThe Civil War In d:Conservatism and Revolution- 1603-1649, under review. However, equally true, and especially for those of us readers in America, particularly New England, the mid-17th century English holds many important examples and lessons. Those lessons center on the various plebeian movements, religious and secular, Levellers, Diggers, shakers, quakers, ranters and chanters, and the like. And the preeminent authority in the field on those matters was the valuable work of Professor Christopher Hill. Also kudos to Professors Brailsford, Tawney and, grudgingly to Professor Trevor-Roper.

Those movements, however, while historically important for later movements, were other than for a brief period, and under trying circumstances, not decisive to the events that drove the English revolution. And that premise, while it would probably not have been palatable to Professor Hill, as Professor Ashton acknowledged, is what drives the narrative here, the very fluent and smooth-running narrative of this book. Professor Ashton traces some general trends from the rise of the House of Stuart in England under James I in 1603 to the execution of his son, Charles I, in 1649. Some of those trends included the intensified struggle between Parliament and the royal line to control the political terrain. Other trends like the shifting relationship between “court and country,” the escalation of foreign entanglements (especially the continental wars and the relations with the Scots), the ever present issue of religious toleration and state church authority, the conflicting attempts to extend the authority of the central government (royal or parliamentary, as the case may be), and an analysis of the issues that divided English society up to the start of the civil war get full coverage.

For my money though the real value of Professor Ashton’s book is the period of actual civil conflict, arms in hand, from roughly 1642 to that fatal 1649 date. He does an excellent analysis of the conflicts between the various social, parliamentary and religious factions (sometimes one and the same personnel), the shifting of the factions over time as new and thorny issues of governmental authority arose, the rise and fall of King Charles’ fortunes, and other details that make this a smooth flowing and informative narrative. The highlights are the various faction fights over how and when to treat with the king, his perfidious (and self-defeating) policies and the almost fatalistic drive to the execution. Moreover the section of the relationship between the various factions in the New Model Army (and their civilian Leveller supporters) provided some useful information not previously known to this reviewer.

As usual with an academic specialty book there are plenty of propositions presented that are subject to scholarly challenge as well as subjects, for example, the weight of New Model Army chaplains (many itinerant) and their followers in the political struggles from 1647 to the execution that can be expanded on. An extensive bibliography and many pages of useful footnotes will also aid in those efforts.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1930s Night, Maybe- William Kennedy’s “Quinn’s Book- A Book Review

Quinn’s Book, William Kennedy, Viking Press, New York, 1988
Recently, in reviewing an early William Kennedy Albany-cycle novel, “Ironweed” I mentioned that he was my kind of writer. I will let what I stated there stand on that score here. Here is what I said:

“William Kennedy is, at least in his Albany stories, my kind of writer. He writes about the trials and tribulations of the Irish diaspora as it penetrated the rough and tumble of American urban WASP-run society, for good or evil. I know these people, my people, their follies and foibles like the back of my hand. Check. Kennedy writes, as here with the main characters Fran Phelan and Helen Archer two down-at-the- heels sorts, about that pervasive hold that Catholicism has even on its most debased sons and daughters, saint and sinner alike. I know those characteristics all too well. Check. He writes about that place in class society where the working class meets the lumpen-proletariat-the thieves, grifters, drifters and con men- the human dust. I know that place well, much better than I would ever let on. Check. He writes about the sorrows and dangers of the effects alcohol on working class families. I know that place too. Check. And so on. Oh, by the way, did I mention that he also, at some point, was an editor of some sort associated with the late Hunter S. Thompson down in Puerto Rico. I know that mad man’s work well. He remains something of a muse for me. Check.”

That said, this little novel is placed from an earlier time in the Albany novel cycle, the earliest period thus far in my reading of the cycle. This is a story of the hard period in America for those “famine- ship Irish” (my forbears on my mother's side) who were driven to seek a new life in the new world against their collective wills. But, certainly out of sheer economic necessity and desperation. For the most part the snippets of character detailed here, including the earliest generations of names that are familiar from later generations in Kennedy’s books, do not suggest that they were driven out due to some criminal activity, political or not, against old “Mother “England”.

That snippet of character reference above also can be used as a point that makes this novel a little different from others in this cycle. The narrator, Daniel Quinn, a teenage boy-man orphan (nice touch) with plenty of spunk and ambition, as is usually the case, gets plenty of character build-up throughout. However this novel is driven more by the plot than by character development than prior Kennedy reads. And that plot, centered on the “golden quest” to win the hand of the “teen angel,” Maud, come hell or high water. Along the way, we are taken on a Kennedy version of “magical realism,” 19th century Albany Irish- style, of the famine Irish, the old Dutch squirarchy, the American racial and political scene in the pre-Civil War period, and much else. That “much else” sometimes gets in the way of the “golden quest,” but as almost always with Kennedy he gives us a good read, if not a great one here.

***Laura’s Song-With Patsy Cline's I Fall To Pieces In Mind

A YouTube film clip of Patsy Cline performing her classic I Fall To Pieces.
“Frank, I am going to put my voice exercises CD in the player so be quiet, alright,” Laura explained, a little crack in her voice as usual when she was getting ready to perform, as I started up the car in our driveway on that cold clear February Saturday night a couple of years ago. I could almost feel my teeth grinding at the thought of being held captive while Laura went up, down, around, double-back, and did a reverse twist through the scales and other little riffs with some hysterical instructor in order to loosen up her “instrument,” her voice. I can listen almost endlessly to that voice, occasionally being stopped in my tracks by it when she hits some angelic thing,  up in her study, her “music and meditation room” she calls it, but this CD thing is from hell. Yikes! Well at least it was to be a short ride over to the church in Lakeville that night unlike when she decided to go full bore on one of our now very occasional rides back to her growing up home in Centerville. That’s in farm country, upstate New York farm country. And I am a guy who gets jittery when there is only one street light every few feet. Jesus.

That night though I was actually in a forgiving and tolerant mood because it was to be Laura’s singing debut, in public anyway. The event, a members’ concert, was to held in the ever-generous and forgiving Lakeville Universalist-Unitarian church assembly hall (the U-U circuit we laughingly call it, and it exists in almost that form throughout the Northeast with a few Methodist and Congregationist places thrown in to complete the circuit) and sponsored by the Lost Art Folk Society to which she belongs. (Sadly getting that way, lost, as I have bemoaned many times since those ehady folk minute days back in the ealry 1960s)  As the name of the group indicates these are old folkies from back in the 1960s who never gave up that folk minute, or perhaps did not know that it had passed by. Or maybe were holding out despite the hard world
in front of them. We had been to others such concerts in the past and while that nostalgic moment might have passed these aficionados, for the most part, know their stuff.

And that was why Laura was going full bore, do, re mi, all the way to the hall to make sure her voice would hold. Naturally she was nervous, despite that great voice and intense preparation, in be in front of peers who knew the good from the bad, and the off note from the true one. She was also just afraid of crowds for a whole bunch of reasons that need no explanation here and now. Moreover Laura was not performing solo but as part of a three women group, dubbed Three Is A Crowd. So she was fretting in between la, la, las about whether Ellie, the “max mamma” (if there is such a thing in the universe) harmonica player, had remembered to set her alarm so she would arrive on time (or, maybe, arrive at all) and Dotty, the main guitar player, had not danced off into space somewhere. All that fretting was for naught because as we approached the church we could see the pair of folk refugees emerging from Ellie’s 1973 Volkswagen bus. Yah, it was that kind of crowd.

No sooner had the three “sisters” greeted each other than they immediately ran off to “practice” before their turn. Leaving me to wander in, pay my admission, and “save” seats. I was a regular “roadie” that night. I should explain the set-up. The way this Lost Art Folk members’ concert works, maybe the only way it could works, is that each act gets one song, or poem, bag-pipe playing (for real), juggling act, or whatever. Done.

See everybody is looking for their fifteen minutes of glory but since the concert is only presented once a year the whole tribe shows up, at least those who survived the sixties, and lived to tell about it. So there are maybe twenty-five or thirty acts listed. Since everybody has to be out by eleven so god, or his kindred, can rest up for Sunday morning mass, or is it service, one to a customer is the only way to go. Except, naturally, human nature, ego, or just love of the music, can play tricks on the agenda. Like Jim Beam can juggle by himself in one act , play the accordion as Aztec Two-Step in a second, play the kazoo with Maria’s band in a third, sing bass with the Midnight Singers (they get two songs, by the way) and still only be counted as one act. Nice, huh, if you have the energy, or the chutzpah.

Three Is A Crowd in deference to Laura and her jitters was strictly working the one- act theme for real that night. Except they would also all sing with the Midnight Singers at the end of the night but then half the audience would be too, and the other half would chime in from their seats as I knew from past experience. Yah, like I said it was that kind of crowd, aficionados. The other thing is that the order of battle is random. As it turned out that night Three Is A Crowd was number fourteen in the first set (out of eighteen). Then there would be a little intermission complete with home-made bakery goods and drinks sold to help defray expenses and put funds together to get some "real" folk-singer like Geoff Muldaur to perform, perform cheaply, at their monthly coffeehouse concerts, and then a second set to conclude the evening. No good, not good for Laura’s jitters but that was the deal. The only thing to do was enjoy the acts and keep counting down. Oh yah, and hold her hand once in a while in one of those "saved " seats.

Like I say these people may have stepped out a time warp but most of them could perform, perform like crazy. Things like old time hills and hollows Appalachian mountain ballads, old country (Britain, Scotland Child ballad old country) , some American Carter Family country stuff, a few self-written poems, sea chanties, a couple of churchy things, a vaudeville number or two. The mix of the world songbook that you don’t hear about too much anymore except on a night like that. Some more modern stuff too for those not totally stuck in the sixteenth century. Then number fourteen was called by the MC. That folks is Three Is A Crowd in case you forgot.

As Ellie, Dotty, and Laura made their way up to the makeshift stage (used on Sunday for the pulpit service area, I think) I started to get nervous. Nervous because Laura was nervous, nervous that her throat would hold up, nervous, well just nervous. And nervous to hear which song they had selected to play. That was the point of that pre-performance practice. To see which one was working that night. Once they were set up I immediately put my head down so I could “really” listen to Laura’s voice. And hide any blushing.

As it turned out they decided to perform the old Hank Ballard tune from the 1950s made famous by the late Patsy Cline, I Fall To Pieces. Good choice. After a little harmonica intro (that Ellie is a space-shot but she can wail that thing when she gets going) they started singing. Good, good harmony, and then… Somewhere around the lines “you want me to find someone else to love,” yah right around there Laura’s voice just meshed the three together so well that it almost brought a tear to my eye.

It was the kind of moment like, maybe, when Patsy had a good night getting it just right, not too slick, not too sentimental. A moment like probably happened way back when somebody first decided that human voices could collectively be greater than the sum of their parts if you could just get that one meshing voice. Hey, I am just a music fan not a scholar, okay. But don’t take my word for it. After the show some guy , some guy who heard the same ethereal thing I heard and who I know knows his stuff, came up to Laura and said,” You did Patsy proud.” And she did.

***Keeping The Blues/Folk Lamp Burning- Les Sampou's "Lonesomeville"

A YouTube's Film Clip On Les Sampou.

CD Review

Lonesomeville, Les Sampou, Flying Fish CD, Rounder Records, 1996
The substance of this review was originally used in the review of Les Sampou’s “Borrowed And Blue” album. I have revised that review and most of the points made apply to the other three CD’s reviewed in this space as well.

The name Les Sampou most recently came up in this space, in passing, as part of a review of blues/folk stylist/ songwriter Rory Block’s work. I made the point there that Rory (and Les, Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur and precious few others) were performing a great service by keeping the female blues- singer tradition alive (and, for that matter, male-witness the songs covered by all four). Along the way doing the same for the more amorphous contemporary folk tradition with their own fair share of masterful songwriting efforts. Since I placed Les Sampou in such august company it was, thus, only a matter of time before I got around to giving her a few kudos of her own. The following paragraph from the Rory Block review can serve here for Les as well:

“But more than that, thanks for this great album of country blues classics some famous, some a little obscure and known only to serious aficionados but all well worth placing in the album with the quirky little Rory Block treatment that makes many of the songs her own. Oh, did I also mention her virtuoso strong guitar playing. Well, that too. I have gone on and on elsewhere in this space about the old time women blues- singers, mostly black, like Bessie Smith, Victoria Spivey and Ida Cox. I have also spilled some ink on more modern, mainly white, women blues- singers like Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur and a local talent here in Boston, Les Sampou, and their admirable (and necessary) efforts to carry on this proud tradition. Rory belongs right up there with these women.”

As For “Lonesome” here is the ‘skinny’:

I will make the same point I made in reviewing the “Les Sampou” album because that same spirit pervades this effort. There are a lot of way to be “in” the contemporary folk scene. One way is to write some topical songs of love, longings for love, maybe, a little politics thrown in and maybe some snappy thing about the vacuity of modern life. Yes, that is the easy stuff and Les can, if the occasion calls for it, summon up some very powerful lyrics to make those points. Witness “Holy Land ” and “Home Again”. But, something more is going on here. This is a woman who has been through the emotional wringer, and survived. Listen up.

***Buddha Swings- Benny Goodman On The Air-1937-38

A YouTube film clip of Benny Goodman his band performing, well, performing swing music, what else.

CD Review

Benny Goodman On The Air-1937-38, Benny Goodman and the 1937-38 version of his band, Columbia Records, Sony Music, 1993
Delores LeBlanc had had just enough of Elizabeth (Betty) La Croix and her tangled love life with Delores’ brother, Jean. Every other week, it seemed, Betty was breaking up with him over one question. Let me give you a hint. Betty and Delores are seniors at Olde Saco (Maine) High School in this year of our lord 1937. Let me add that they are both dark-haired French-Canadian American beauties, dewy roses like only those with forbears from the north up in Quebec can be. So sex is naturally in the equation, in the eternal boy-girl, Betty-Jean, equation. And for Delores too, since about fourteen when she learned that she could, with just a little effort, get the guys stirring, stirring over thoughts about dewy roses and other material matters. But this is strictly, well almost strictly, a Betty-Jean story so we will leave the Delores-smitten guys to stew.

The friction between Delores and Betty, or rather Delores’ momentary wrath at Betty, is centered on the hard fact that in a few months the girls will be having their senior prom, always a highlight in the Olde Saco calendar year, for those who graduate and those who, for one reason or another don’t. And, graduation or not, the next step is marriage. That is just the established working- class and religious ethos of the town, the Gallic-inspired culture, and the times. Get out of the parents’ overburdened house and into your own small flat, maybe over on Fourteenth Street by the river, and dream of your own small white picket fence future house, maybe on Atlantic Avenue toward the ocean. And that cycle has been established for a long while. Right this minute though, this Delores fed-up moment, the sex and marriage, or really marriage and sex, question revolves around Betty and Jean.

It seems that although Betty and Jean have been an “item” for only a few months that Betty had Saturday night had her fifteenth, no sixteenth, and never make-up with dear Jean fight. And whether the year is 1037, 1537, or like now, 1937 the issue, to put it delicately, was sex, or rather to use the latest craze saying “doing it.” Or, the real crux of the matter, why she wanted to wait until that cold- water flat marriage, and not before, no way before, to give in to one Jean Claude LeBlanc. Needless to say All-American boy, really all All-American French-Canadian boy and former star of the Olde Saco High football team, the one that beat Auburn for the state title a couple of years back, Jean, was all for “doing the do” right now as a test run for marriage, or so that is how he presented it to Betty Saturday (and many a previous Saturday night) down in the dunes of Olde Saco Beach as they watch old Neptune do his ocean magic. And Jean had almost made the sale, except by the time Betty decided yes, she was so anxious and the hour was so late that she wasn’t in the mood any longer. Jesus.

And what does all this young love in podunk among the hard-working mill-hand classes, French-Canadian American variation, have to do with Benny Goodman, king of swing-ness, sultan of the be-bop 1930s radio listening nights, complete with wicked finger-snapping clarinets, sexy saxes, Gabriel blow your horn trumpets and sassy drums? Well where have you been? Okay, let me go by the numbers. Boy (really man since Jean has already graduated from Olde Saco and been working as a high-grade machine mechanic at the MacAdams Textile Mill over on Main Street for a while now. That defines man in these parts) meets girl. Boy (man) takes girl here and there in his new, well fairly new, Studebaker and they cap the night off watching the fishes swim down at the close-by beach (at the secluded far end, the Squaw Rock end, known by one and all as, well just known for being secluded, okay). Girl successfully holds off boy (man). Got it.

But how do you think our boy Jean, champion football mover but a little bashful in the sex department when he came right down to it, tried to get one Betty La Croix in the mood. Take one guess. Backing up the ocean swells and moonlight in the mood department is one Benny and his gang on that car radio, providing that heavenly deep beat-pacing clarinet that sets those drums a rolling, those trumpets blowing to Gabriel’s heaven, and sets those sexy saxes on fire to blow the walls of Jericho down that I mentioned before. A little Buddha Swings at the right moment will go a long way.

So one can see Delores' point, a little, when Monday morning at school a crying Betty is yet again looking for some sympathy. Delores was almost ready to just tell her to just surrender. See here is the funny part. Delores was having her own sexual dilemmas with one Jean Jacques La Croix (yes, Betty’s brother, it’s that kind of town and that kind of clannishness). See, one night she let sweet boy Jean Jacques go a little farther than she should have while they were down at those dunes of Olde Saco Beach in his father’s Hudson while The Benny Goodman Hour was on the radio. But don’t tell Betty that.