This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Mister James Dandy To The Rescue-With LaVern Baker In Mind
Mister James Dandy To The Rescue-With LaVern Baker In Mind
Mister James Dandy To The Rescue-With LaVern Baker In Mind
No question a lot of the classic works of rock and roll, say from the mid-1950s until the end of that decade were driven by those twangy guitars (hopefully provided by the genius of Les Paul and other pioneers working in their little garages in places like Nowhere, Texas trying to get more hyp out of that damn acoustic guitar, knowing, knowing like we all know now that whatever musical jail-break breeze was blowing was going to need plenty of electricity before it was through), those big blast sexy saxs blowing out to high heaven (think about that sax player who backed up Bill Halley on something like See You Later, Alligator andalmost inhaled that sax driving that be-bopping first touch of rock coming out of about six musical traditions), and big brush back beat drums. Driven mainly by guys, hungry guys, guys with huge wanting habits trying to run away from the farms and small towns trying to break free from that life of farmer’s son or small store hardware clerk. Guys like Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Jerry Lee, Warren, Carl and a lot more. But in that mix, maybe somewhat neglected, intentionally or not, maybe there was no room for lilting voices when the music got all sweaty and from jump street, were female performers like Wanda Jackson (who really could have held her own with the big boys and had a fetching look to boot), Ruth Brown and the Queen of the popping fingers, Miss LaVern Baker.
Strangely the rise of the “girl” singers in rock and roll, usually in groups, did not really get a jump until toward the end of the 1950s decade but I would argue that LaVern Baker is the “godmother” who set the latter grouping up with her sweet life rhythm which had us all snapping our fingers. It is no secret that a lot of young guys then, a lot of guys like me with two left feet, almost instinctively overcame our shyness, overcame our desire not to be made fools of when something like LaVern Baker’s Jim Dandy popped out of the school dance DJs hands and on to that creaky old record player in that sullen gymnasium which passed for a dance floor come Friday night keep the kids off the streets time. Or come last dance chance time and having broken the ice, and hopefully no ankles or toes of that eyed partner (as for possible damage imposed on yourself, well, we all, guys anyway, learned early on around our streets that it is a dangerous world and that is that), you closed out the evening with her soulful version of Lonnie Johnson’s Tomorrow Night. There is still a lot to be written about the women of early rock and roll but Miss Baker is definitely in the mix.
[Another thing that could use some addressing is the fate of those artists who had center stage for a minute and then faded from mass view when the next best thing came along but who continued to perform out in the back streets, out in the bandstand bowling alleys, out in the motel lounges, out in the road houses. In the mid-1990s long after her heyday 1950s I heard LaVern Baker in a jazz bar in Cambridge. She had just gotten out of “rehab” for a knee or hip replacement, I forget which, and performed in a wheelchair, performed a lot of her old stuff and the highlight of the performance was a rousing version of Jim Dandy. Still working, still popping. I know my youthful memory fingers were popping that night.
In Honor Of Troy Davis On The Fourth Anniversary Of His Execution By The State Of Georgia
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears Bury the rag deep in your face For now's the time for your tears."
last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll, another case of an injustice against black people. - Bob Dylan, 1963
Markin comment (posted September 22, 2011):
Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat.
On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward.
Additional Markin comment posted September 23, 2011:
No question the execution on September 21, 2011 by the State of Georgia of Troy Anthony Davis hit me, and not me alone, hard. For just a brief moment that night, when he was granted a temporary stay pending a last minute appeal before the United States Supreme Court just minutes before his 7:00 PM execution, I thought that we might have achieved a thimbleful of justice in this wicked old world. But it was not to be and so we battle on. Troy Davis shall now be honored in our pantheon along with the Haymarket Martyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and others. While Brother Davis may have not been a hard politico like the others just mentioned his fight to abolish the death penalty for himself and for future Troys places him in that company. Honor Troy Davis- Fight To The Finish Against The Barbaric Racist Death Penalty!
As The 100th
Anniversary Of World War I Enters Its Second Year-The Anti-War Resistance
Begins-Rosa Luxemburg-Letters from Prison to Sophie Liebknecht
The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War
before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers
and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense
of “pride” in having participated in such an epic adventure even if it did mow
down the flower of European youth from all classes) from the massive military
armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and
elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the
world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the
industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts (as foretold by the
blood-letting in the American Civil War and the various “small” wars in Asia,
Africa, and, uh, Europe in the mid to late 19th century once war
production on a mass scale followed in the train of other industrial
production). Also trampled underfoot in the opposing trenches, or rather thrown
in the nearest trash bin of the their respective parliamentary buildings were
the supposedly eternal pledges against war in defense of one’s own
capitalist-imperialistnation-state
against the working masses and their allies of other countries by most of the
Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations (Anarchists,
Syndicalists and their various off-shoots)representing the historic interest of
the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and
their hangers-on in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20th
century history. All those beautifully written statements and resolutions that
clogged up the international conferences with feelings of solidarity were some
much ill-fated wind once bullet one came out of gun one.
Other than isolated groups and individuals, mostly like
Lenin and Trotsky in exile or jail, and mostly in the weaker lesser
capitalistically developed countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of
most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting
stations to “do their duty” and prove their manhood. (When the first
international conference of anti-war socialists occurred in Switzerland in 1915
one wag pointed out that they could all fit in one tram [bus].) Almost all
parties assuming that the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everyone
could go back to the eternal expressions of international working-class
solidarity after the smoke had settled (and the simple white-crossed graves
dug). You see, and the logic is beautiful on this one, that big mail-drop of a Socialist
International, was built for peace-time but once the cannon roared then the
“big tent” needed to be folded for the duration. Jesus.
Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the first
months of the second year of the war although shrouded in obscurity early in
the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a
necessary nom de guerre in the hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to
send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s
NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian
Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the
Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not
for long because “Long Live The Communist International,” a new revolutionary international, would
become the order of the day in the not distant future), architect of the theory
of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in
Russia and Europe in the 19th century (including forbears Marx and
Engels), and author of an important, important to the future communist world
perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the
ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term
progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive
against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its
opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a
drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the
establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as
1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death
trap for the flower of the European youth.
Lenin also has a "peace"
plan, a peace plan of sorts, a way out of the stinking trench warfare stalemate
eating up the youth of the Eurasian landmass. Do what should have been done
from the beginning, do what all the proclamations from all the
beautifully-worded socialist manifestos called on the international
working-class to do. Not a simple task by any means especially in that first
year when almost everybody on all sides thought a little blood-letting would be
good for the soul, the individual national soul, and in any case the damn thing
would be over by Christmas and everybody could start producing those
beautifully worded-manifestos against war again. (That by Christmas peace
“scare” turned out to be a minute “truce” from below by English and German
soldiers hungry for the old certainties banning the barbed wire and stinking
trenches for a short reprieve in the trench fronts in France and played soccer
before returning to drawn guns-a story made into song and which is today used
as an example of what the lower ranks could do-if they would only turn the guns
around. Damn those English and German soldiers never did turn the damn things
around until too late and with not enough resolve and the whole world has
suffered from that lack of resolve ever since.)
Lenin’s hard-headed proposition: turn
the bloody world war among nations into a class war to drive out the
war-mongers and bring some peace to the blood-soaked lands. But that advanced
thinking is merely the wave of the future as the rat and rain-infested sinkhole
trenches of Europe were already churning away in the first year as a death trap
for the flower of the European youth.
The ability to inflict industrial-sized
slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the
American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their
way as did the various German-induced wars attempting to create one
nation-state out of various satraps almost could not be avoided in the early 20th
century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow
exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war
carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only
the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and
range and the increased rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by
the norms of the last wars. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race
to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried
to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain
a big hold in the Asia seas.
The deeply disturbing submarine warfare
wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other
such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred
years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers
and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched
fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or
nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt
before they began the damn thing among all those “civilized” nations who went
into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do
anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international
conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement
which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.
A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the
party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war
budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the
workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in
the Kaiser’sprisons) and Rosa Luxemburg
( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and
Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being
on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of
left-wing revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and
here in America “Big Bill” Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee
to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of
his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V.
Debs (who also went to jail, “Club Fed” for speaking the truth about American
war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920
out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell),were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of
honor in this space.
Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations
centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist
governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were
committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in
our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and
awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most
governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. Even my old
anti-war amigo from my hometown who after I got out of the American Army during
the Vietnam War marched with me in countless rallies and parades trying to stop
the madness got caught in the bogus information madness and supported Bush’s “paper
war” although not paper for the benighted Iraqi masses ever since (and plenty
of other “wise” heads from our generation of ’68 made that sea-change turn with
him).
At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11
when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to
be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a
little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to
begin the anti-war fight another day. “Be ready to fight” the operative words.
So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality
in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including
the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not
listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not
too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass
mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody
trenches and death.
Over the next period as we continue the
long night of the 100th anniversary of World War I and beyond I will
under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions
from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked
like, the struggle against its outbreak before the first frenzied shots were
fired, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in places
like Russia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the hodge-podge colonies all over
the world map, in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the
battlefields.
Rosa Luxemburg-Letters from Prison to Sophie Liebknecht
Written: July 1916–October 1918. First Published:Letters from Prison: by Rosa Luxemberg: with a portrait and a facsimile, Young International at Schönberg in Berlin, 1921–1923. Source: An exact reproduction by the Square One pamphlets series by the Independent Labour Party in 1972, the notes and translation being the same as in the original 1923 edition. Translated: (from the German) by Eden and Cedar Paul. Transcription/Markup: Ted Crawford and Brian Baggins, Public Domain: Luxemburg Internet Archive 2005. This work is completely free.
These letters are personal rather than political and in 1923, all the proceeds went to the support of Liebknecht’s widow and children. A few of the letters were republished in a new English translation in 1998 by Humanities Press in The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, edited by Bronner. Two letters, that of May 2 1917 and that of mid-December 1917 were published in The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, Monthly Review, 2004, that of May 2 1917 being a new translation, that of mid December the 1923 one.
Present At The Creation-Who Put The
Rock In Rock And Roll-LaVern Baker’s Tweddle
Dee (1955)
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Deep in the dark red scare Cold War
night, still brewing then even after Uncle Joe fell down in his Red Square
drunken stupor one night and never came back, so yeah still brewing after he
kissed off in his vast red earth, still brewing as a child remembered in dark
back of school dreams about Soviet nightmares under Uncle Joe wondering how the
kids got through it, and still brewing too when Miss Winot in her pristine
glory told each and every one of her fourth grade charges, us, that come that
Russkie madness, come the Apocalypse, come the big bad ass mega-bombs (of
course being pristine and proper she did not dig down to such terms as “big bad
ass” but let’s face it that is what she meant) that each and every one of her
charges shall come that thundering god-awful air raid siren call duck, quickly
and quietly, under his or her desk and then place his or his hands, also
quickly and quietly, one over the other on the top of his or her head, a small
breeze was coming to the land.
Maybe nobody saw it coming although the
more I think about the matter somebody, some bodies knew something, not those
supposedly in the know about such times, those who are supposed to catch the
breezes before they move beyond their power to curtain them. Take guys like my
older brother Franklin and his friends, Benny and Jimmy, who were playing some
be-bop stuff up in his room. (Ma refused to let him play his songs on the
family record player down center stage in the living room or flip the dial on
the kitchen radio away from her tunes of the roaring 1940s, her and my father’s
coming of age time, so up his room like some mad monk doing who knows what
because I was busy worrying about riding bicycles or something). Here’s the
real tip-off though he and his boys would go out Friday nights to Jack Slack’s
bowling alleys not to bowl, although that was the cover story to questioning
mothers, but to hang around Freddie O’Toole’s car complete with turned on amped
up radio (station unknown then but later found to be WMEX) and dance, dance
with girls, get it, to stuff like Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 (a great song tribute to a great automobile which nobody
in our neighborhood could come close to affording so reduced to cheapjack Fords
and Plymouths), and guys who even today I don’t know the names of despite YouTube
archival vaults giving everybody with every kind of musical inclination a blast
to the past ticket. Or, how about the times we, the family would go up to
Boston for some Catholic thing in the South End at Holy Cross Cathedral and
smack across from the church was the later famous Red Hat Club where guys were
blasting away at pianos, on guitars and on big ass sexy saxes and it was not
the big band sound my folks listened to or cool, cool be-bop jazz either but
music from jump street, etched in the back of my brain because remember I’m
still fussing over bikes and stuff like that. Or how about every time we went
down Massachusetts Avenue in Boston as the sun went down, the “Negro” part
before Huntington Avenue (an area that Malcolm X knew well a decade before) and
we stopped at the ten billion lights and all you would hear is this bouncing
beat coming from taverns, from the old time townhouse apartments and black guys
dressed “to the nines,” all flash dancing on the streets with dressed “to the
nines” good-looking black girls. Memory bank.
So some guys knew, gals too don’t
forget after all they had to dig the beat, dig the guys who dug the beat, the
beat of out of some Africa breeze mixed
with forbidden sweated Southern lusts if the thing was going to work out. And
it wasn’t all dead-ass “white negro” hipsters either eulogized by Norman Mailer
(or maybe mocked you never knew with him but he sensed something was in the
breeze even if he was tied more closely to an earlier sensibility) or break-out
“beats” tired of the cool cold jazz that was turning in on itself, getting too
technical and losing the search for the high white note or lumpens of all
descriptions who whiled away the nights searching their radio dials for
something that they while away the nights searching their radio dials for
something that they could swing to while reefer high or codeine low. If you,
via hail YouTube, look at the Jacks and Jills dancing they mostly look like
very proper well-dressed middle class kids who are trying to break out of the
cookie-cutter existence they found themselves but they still lookedpretty well-fed and well-heeled so yeah,
some guys and gals and it wasn’t always who you might suspect that got hip, got
that back-beat and those piano riffs etched into their brains.
Maybe though the guys in the White
House were too busy worrying about what Uncle Joe’s progeny were doing out in
the missile silos of Minsk, maybe the professional television talkers on Meet The Press wanted to discuss the
latest turn in national and international politics for a candid world to hear
and missed what was happening out in the cookie-cutter neighborhoods, and maybe
the academic sociologists and professional criminologists were too wrapped up in
figuring out why Marlon Brando was sulking in his corner boy kingdom (and
wreaking havoc on a fearful small town world when he and the boys broke out),
whyJohnny Spain had that “shiv” ready
to do murder and mayhem to the next midnight passer-by, and why well-groomed
and fed James Dean was brooding in the “golden age” land of plenty but the
breeze was coming.
(And you could add in the same brother
Franklin who as I was worrying about bikes, the two pedal two kind getting
“from hunger” to get a Brando bike, a varoom bike, so this girl, Wendy, from
school, would take his bait, a girl that my mother fretted was from the wrong
side of town, her way of saying a tramp but she was smart as hell once I found
out about her a few years later after she, they had left town on some big ass
Norton but that is after the creation so I will let it go for now.)
And then it came, came to us in our
turn, came like some Kansas whirlwind, came like the ocean churning up the big
waves crashing to a defenseless shoreline, came if the truth be known like the
“second coming” long predicted and the brethren, us, were waiting, waiting like we had been waiting
all our short spell lives. Came in a funny form, or rather ironically funny
forms, as it turned out.
Came one time, came big as 1954 turned
to 1955 and a guy, get this, dressed not in sackcloth or hair-shirt but in a
sport’s jacket, a Robert Hall sport’s jacket from the off the rack look of it
when he and the boys were “from hunger,” playing for coffee and crullers before
on the low life circuit, a little on the heavy side with a little boy’s regular
curl in his hair and blasted the whole blessed world to smithereens. Blasted
every living breathing teenager, boy or girl, out of his or her lethargy, got
the blood flowing. The guy Bill Haley, goddam an old lounge lizard band guy who
decided to move the beat forward from cool ass be-bop jazz and sweet romance
popular music and make everybody, every kid jump, yeah Big Bill Haley and his
Comets, the song Rock Around The Clock.
Came a little more hep cat too, came
all duck walk and sex moves, feet moving faster than Robert Hall-clad Bill
could ever do, came out of Saint Loo, came out with a crazy beat. Came out in
suit and tie all swagger. Came out with a big baby girl guitar that twisted up
the chords something fierce and declared to the candid world, us, that
Maybelline was his woman. But get this, because what did we know of “color”
back then when we lived in an all-white Irish Catholic neighborhoods and since
we heard what we heard of rock and rock mostly on the radio we were shocked
when we found out the first time that he was a “Negro” to use the parlance of
the times, a black man making us go to “jump street.” And we bought into it, bought
into the beat, and joined him in saying Mister Beethoven you and your brethren
best move over.
Came sometimes in slo-mo, hey remember
this rock and roll was an ice-breaker with a beat you didn’t have to dance close to with your partner and
get all tied up in knots forgetting when to twirl, when to whirl, when to do a
split but kind of free form for the guys (or gals but mainly guys) with two
left feet like me could survive, maybe not survive the big one if the Russkies
decided to go over the top with the bomb, but that school dance and for your
free-form efforts maybe that she your eyeballs were getting sore over would
consent to the last chancelast dance
that you waited around for in case she was so impressed she might want to go
with you some place later. But before that “some place later” you had to
negotiate and the only way to do was to bust up a slow one, a dreamy one to get
her in the mood and hence people have been singing songs from time immemorial
to get people in the mood, this time Earth
Angel would do the trick. Do the trick as long as you navigated those toes
of hers, left her with two feet and standing. Dance slow, very slow brother.
Came sometimes in very slo-mo if you
could believe my older brother Franklin and the stories that he would tell us
younger guys, not in 1955 remember we were worried about two-wheel bikes then
but later when we came of age and were salaciously curious about the girl
scene, what made them tick, about how he scored with this or that girl, put the
moves on this way or that on some other one and some girl’s panties came
tumbling down as if by magic. Although I should have been a little suspicion of
Franklin’s big sky talk because when my time came the problem of garter belts
and girdles would make that quick panties coming down a little suspect, no,
very suspect when I had a hard enough and cumbersome enough time unhooking some
silly training bra. Jesus.
But here is the big truth, the skinny. See
Franklin was not, most guys were not including me, very honest about sex and
about sexual conquests when guys got together on the corners at Jack Slack’s or
Doc’s Drugstore or in the guy’s gym locker room or in the school’s boys’ lav
Monday morning. No guy wanted to seem to be “light on his feet” one of the kinder
expressions we used for gay guys in the days when “fag-baiting” was something
of a rite of passage so guys would lie like hell about this or that score.
Later when you would find yourself doing the very same thing you would find
that about sixty to seventy percent, maybe more, of what guys said about
conquests was b.s.
In any case one time Franklin was hot
after this girl, Betsy Sanders, who even when I wasn’t that into girls (before
I came of age, not that “light on my feet” if that is what you are thinking)
was “hot,” definitely pretty and smart and just plain nice. She had a
reputation, according to Franklin, of being an “ice queen,” no go, but he said
that only made him want to go after her more. One high school dance night,
maybe the Spring Frolic of 1955, Franklin went stag, although stag with six or
seven other guys, as did a lot of guys because that kind of dance was set up by
the school to have everybody mix and mingle unlike the prom let’s say which was
strictly couples or stay home and wait by the midnight phone for some lost
Janey or Jack. Of course Betsy was there, with a few of whatever they call a
cohort of single girls, looking at hot as hell, all flouncy full length dress
and some smell to drive a man wild, jasmine Franklin thought.
These school dance things like I said
were held occasionally by the school to keep an eye on what was happening to
their charges with this rock and roll craze beginning to stir up concerns (the
churches also held them for the same reason). Basically a “containment” policy
of “if you can’t fight them, keep two eyes on each and every one of them” copied
I presume from the Cold War foreign policy wonks like George Kennan who ran the
anti-Soviet establishment in Washington. So the thing was chaperoned unto
death, had some frilly crèche paper decorations to spice up the woe begotten
gym which didn’t really work, some refreshments to cool out the tranced dancers
periodically, and a lame DJ, a young goof teacher recruited because he could
“relate” to the kids who “spun” the platters (records for the unknowing) on a
dinky turntable with an equally woeful sound system. None of that meant a thing
because all that mattered was that there were boys and girls there, maybe
somebody for you and music, music to dance to. Yeah.
Now as Franklin weaved his story it
seems that the usually reserved Betsy was in high form (according to Franklin
she looked like maybe she had had a couple of drinks before the dance not
unheard of but usually that was guys but we will let that pass), dancing to
every fast dance with lots of guys, not hanging with any one in particular,
getting more and more into the dancing as the night went on. Franklin
approached her after intermission to dance Bill Haley’s latest big one, Rock Around The Clock, the one that
everybody went to the Strand Theater up the Square to see that really lame
movie about J.D.s, Blackboard Jungle, just
to see him and the Comets blast away and she accepted. Danced very
provocatively from what Franklin said, gave moves only the “fast” girls, the
known school tramps threw into the mix and that was that until the end of the
night when last chance last dance time came.
This last chance last dance as I know
from personal experience is a very dicey thing, especially if you have been
eying a girl all night and she says “no”-end of evening. See this was a slow
one so you could maybe make a last minute pitch or negotiate what was what
after the dance. Franklin said he went up to Betsy and asked her for that dance
when Mister Miles, that lame DJ I told you about already, announced that the
Moonglows’ Sincerely a song he really
liked. Here’s her answer-“Yes.” And
so they danced and while dancing she allegedly wondered out loud why he had not
asked her to dance other dances that night, she expected him to do since she
had heard through the super-reliable “grapevine” that he was interested in her.
Bingo. The rest of the dance consisted of negotiations about her getting her
cloak, about giving the guys and gals they respectively came with the heave-ho and
heading toward old Adamsville Beach in Franklin’s Hudson, really our father’s car
borrowed for the evening. Down there while he did not go into all the juicy
details about what they did, or didn’t do, she let him have his way with her
(that “panties came tumbling down” business). Of course that kind of stuff
happened all the time with good boys and girls, and bad but when Franklin asked
Betsy what stirred her up she said the music and dancing got her going, made
her all loose and everything she couldn’t explain it all but she got all warm.
Enough, okay.
Enough except what always bothered me
about what parents, the authorities, hell, even older guys on the street,
thought about rock and roll as the devil’s music came to mind. Some communist
plot to “brainwash” the youth of America and make them Kremlin stooges was hard
to figure when a girl like Betsy, an All-American girl if there ever was one,
who later in life ran for Congress, unsuccessfully, as a Republican, got all
warm when the drums started rolling the intro and the guitars built up that
back-beat. Hard to make sense of the idea that maybe the Moonglows should have
been brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee of the times or
something for singing a doo wop classic like Sincerely, a last chance last dance song. Yeah, that has always
bothered me.
Came in very, very slo-mo for some
guys, guys like me who even with big brothers to guide the way were after all
is said and done rather clumsy picking up the first few tips (well “half guide
the way” since a lot of what Franklin said about the ease of girl conquests was
so much hot air, same with other guys but worse, worse than the hot air was the
bad, plain wrong information about sex, sexual activity, which he, they had
learned like everybody else from the streets, certainly not out of up-tight “asexual”
parents who were not telling us anything, nor the churches and definitely not
at school although some teachers would allude to stuff but you had to be pretty
slick to pick it up. All this information, misinformation really, was far more
dangerous that just plain ignorance as Franklin, and I, almost learned the hard
way, very closely indeed).
Who knows when you get that first
inkling, you know the exact date, when those last year’s girls who were nothing
but sticks (that was our dividing line then, “sticks” and “shapes”) and
bothered you endlessly when you were just trying to ride your bike or
something, maybe reading a book in school turned into being well kind of
interesting and had something to say after all. It wasn’t necessarily coming of
age time, puberty, but close when all the confusion started, all the little
social graces began to count. So, yeah, in fifth grade, toward the end of the
year, I was smitten, smitten by Theresa Wallace, my first flamed out flame. So
Theresa and rock and roll kind of go hand in hand in my mind since around that
time I also started getting that rock beat in my head that Franklin kept
telling me that would come at some point.
Naturally with no social graces to
speak of the whole heart-throbbing thing with Theresa was a source of endless
confusion. Of course as probably is true of half the guys and gals in the world
I kept my feelings to myself, would moon, pine, twist, turn, and whatever else
a smitten person does without quite knowing what to do about the feelings.
Except to kind of be surly toward her in class, and, and, endlessly walk by her
house at all hours, all kid hours, in the hopes that I might see her and she
might wave, or something. Yeah, no social graces. Then one day the logjam
broke, she spoke to me, asked me if I wanted to go to her birthday party the
next week. Yes. Although the abruptness going from nowhere to being invited to her
house kind of startled me (later I had heard that Slim Jackson, a friend of
mine, whom I casually mentioned to that Theresa seemed nice told some girl that
fact and it eventually got through the super-speed teen grapevine that I
“liked” her).
And so the party was be held in the
family room down in the basement of her house (which in the specific case of
her house also served as the air raid shelter with signs, supplies, and defense
materials which made me realize that I would rather take my chances above
ground when I saw that included in the supplies were a record player and
records of Patti Page, Frank Sinatra, Harry James, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller
and the crowd, yeah, I would definitely take my chances above ground with that
scenario) and was to be unchaperoned meaning no adults would be in the room
(although present, very present upstairs). I don’t know about now, about the
customs of the young in these matters now, but then these pre-teen parties were
called “petting parties” where somehow the first fresh bout of serious kisses
were to be bestowed, or at least the first few innocent kisses. I was scared,
scared two ways first that I would not be able to do the “deed” and secondly
that if I was close to a girl how my grooming fit in, how I smelled and looked,
something like that before we all got wise to mouthwash, deodorant and hair
oil.
See it wasn’t only in sex matters that
my parents were deficient but grooming and health matters as well what with
five growing boys and nothing going my mother just didn’t give us the word. I
know one guy at school said I smelled funny one day. And I probably did
although I don’t know the why of it, maybe not washing under my underarms or
something. So one of the things that Franklin was straight on was hygiene which
he got from a friend of his when he was my age who had told him that he smelled
and hipped him to what guys had to do to keep from being rogues. He clued me in
on showering (really just an attached hose to the bathtub in our house), a
little deodorant (nobody told me I smelled after that), a little Listerine (although
the first time I used it I almost threw up since I used about half a bottle)
and Wild Root Crème Oil for my always cowlick-driven unruly hair. I was off,
thanks that one time Franklin (there would be other later times when I lent him
money, cars, and other stuff that I never got back when I would curse his name,
still do)
If you think that party of Theresa’s
was some big Mayfair swell debutante affair well you know right now you are
wrong but it was okay. About a dozen or fifteen kids, a couple more girls than
boys but that was alright then (maybe now too), all dressed up and clean
smelling presided over by Theresa who had a pretty dress on and who when she
greeted me (and everybody else so don’t make a big deal out of it) smelled like
I don’t know what, not perfume I don’t think but some exotic bath soap. Nice.
The party itself was the standard music, guys and girls dancing (sometimes two
girls dancing together but never guys remember that ‘light on your feet” jab),
a little nice food, party food, kid party food, finger food and of course the
cake, the birthday cake and Happy Birthday song. What was different, at least
for me were these two little remembrances as this. Every few records when
people were not dancing the lights would go out. That was the cue, although at
first I was clueless, for everybody to grab somebody of the opposite sex to
give a kiss to, an innocent kiss okay. Some girl, and I still am not sure who
but it was not Theresa of the exotic bath soap smells, gave me my first
official opposite sex boy-girl kiss. I bridled a little at first since I didn’t
realize that was what was going on but it was okay, yeah, okay. So that was one
thing. The other was toward the end of the party Theresa came up to me and a
little coquettishly (although I didn’t know such a word or what it meant then)
asked me to save the last dance for her. No problem. And the last dance, well
you know what it was if you have paid attention to the title of this piece The
Platters’ Only You. Only You and the
lights went out during the song and Theresa planted a long kiss on my chaste
lips, yeah, nice. We were an “item” for a while, maybe a month a long time as
such things went then and then a new guy came into town, some tow-headed kid
that all the girls went crazy over and I was reduced to sitting by the lonely
midnight phone waiting in vain for some call to come my way.
Came in, well how should I put it, in
awkward ways, ways around the way the world whirled, the American world in that
cold, cold war night where lots of things were hidden from view. Things like
race, class gender that are upfront and talked about in a usually rational
manner today. Here’s what I mean as race, maybe class too, intersects with rock
and roll, with who put the rock in rock and roll. And that is not a rhetorical
question, or not only a rhetorical question because sixty years out it is still
relevant as least in an historical perspective. We found out the hard way, or
my best friend, Steve Malloy, in elementary school down in the Carver projects
where we grew up at least until we came of age found out the hard way. And I
learned my lesson from him.
See when that rock beat got into our
heads, got in like my older brother Franklin said in one of the few times he
was absolutely right about something, something important, it came in our heads
listening to the radio, car, family living room (although not much in my family
since Ma forbade it and I, we, would only play the radio, WMEX, of course when
she and Pa were out), later, have mercy on our private up-in-our-rooms
transistor radios so what we heard was what we knew about. The sounds all had a
classic beat, at least the serious rock beat one, whoever was singing played
to. I don’t know that we were all that curious about what the singers looked
like at that point, except maybe Elvis who we did know what he looked like from
seeing him on the Ed Sullivan Show (a
variety acts show popular on Sunday nights then). I don’t think so, it was
really the music that moved our souls.
In any case lots of guys, guys who
could sing, not me, guys like Steve Malloy were always crooning away, always
trying to sing like one, or more of the voices that we heard on the radio.
Steve was particularly interested in those imitations because he really did
have a great voice and if you closed your eyes you could almost heard the
similarities. He was also like the rest of us in the projects, from hunger. He,
once he got the Elvis rags-to-riches story down (and lots of girls too), was
driven by the idea that he would be the next big thing in rock, or if not the
next big thing then soon.
And that idea was not as fantastic as
it sounded because in those days a lot of record companies and radio stations
were sponsoring rock talent shows like they did back in the 1920s when they
were looking for new talent to fill the airwaves. So one night WJDA, the local
rock station (at least they played one show for four hours in the afternoon
with DJ Tommy Swirl spinning the platters), staged a talent show up in the
center of town looking for the next best thing that maybe they could latch
onto, or at least expand their listening audience to the young in order to sell
soda, soap, and sundries. So Steve was pumped, thought this would be the first
break-through minute for him. But what to sing, whose style to project. He,
even I knew this, that there would for guy singers be a ton of Elvis-imitators,
and since he didn’t particular like Elvis at that moment since he had lost a
girl to a guy who that girl said looked all dreamy like Elvis he decided on Bo
Diddley who was all the craze with his song Bo Diddley that had this great beat
to it.
So the night of the talent show Steve
and maybe twenty other guys and maybe fifteen girls of all ages, all young
ages, showed up to perform with a few obviously looking like Elvis imitators
what with the long sideburns and slick backed hair in his style.Steve told me as we walked in that he felt
pretty good about his chances and that he was glad he chose Bo to separate
himself out. Steve was about number eight on the list and so we fidgeted
through the first seven acts, a few pretty good but most awful. Then it was
Steve’s turn, Steve dressed in his best (and only) sport’s jacket looking like
any teenage kid from Carver in those days, and he started to sing Bo’s song.
About half way through though, Jack Kelly, an older guy from the projects, who
was known as nothing but a hoodlum yelled out “Hey the kid is trying to sing a
n----r jungle voodoo song.” That broke the whole mood, Steve barely
finished.
Needless to say Steve did not win (and
probably would not have as three sisters stole the show with some Connie
Francis cover) but after that he “got back in line” doing Elvis stuff since he
knew Elvis was white. But his heart was no longer in it, and a while later his
voice changed and he lost whatever rock energy he had. But he, we learned the
hard way about the vagaries of race, learned the very hard way how important
the black sound that even Elvis was stealing from was to what put the rock in
rock and roll.
Came in different flavors too, had
different root as we would call it now all messed together to give a different
beat. You had the rhythm and blues which drove a lot of the early stuff you
know the Ike Turner Rocket 88 stuff,
Big Joe Turner swinging and swaying that big ass of his to beat the band on Shake,
Rattle and Roll, had guys like Jimmy Preston way back in the late 1940s putting
in a bid to go into history as the “first rock and roll” song although you can
see stuff going all the way back, going back to certain riffs (not whole songs
I would say) in the 1920s with Furry Lewis, Lonnie Johnson guys like that who latter
guys, Elvis (think Tomorrow Night,
That’s When Your Heartache Begins)especially would cover with their own
twists and step up the beat for the whole song.
Or take something like Rockabilly which
a whole lot of good old boys, white boys okay, from places like Tennessee and
Mississippi from hunger farm boys and small town kids would speed up some Les
Paul riffs throw a few Saturday night barroom brawl Sunday morning confess all
to Preacher Jack and get the girls to come around, come close if they looked
good and has some sassy ass licks in and some Rock and Roll Ruby was born. So
those big time sounds mixed and mended together to give a great new sound.
But get this, there were other sounds
that mixed and matched, Bo Diddley of slurred memory mentioned above down in my
growing up town with a definite Afro-Carib thing that bounced a little showing
some other possibilities. Cajun too. Down in sweat filled Lafayette and Lake
Charles where another of my high school friends, corner boys really, Rene
Dubois, was born, where he learned to say pretty things like Jolie Blon in
blasphemous crooked French and the girls down there, the cheris’ he called them
went wild over him. (Not so in old Carver where his father had been transferred
to as an oilrig guy when Nantucket Sound was being fished for oil exploration
and Rene was taken for a redneck, a good old boy from the sticks, this in a
town where half the population one way or the other was connected to the
cranberry bog for which it was known, boggers for crying out loud and rednecks there
were as thick as thieves). But Rene was not just into the Cajun stuff because
his father, since he had spent a great deal of time fishing for oil in the Gulf
of Mexico would take Rene with him when he went to New Orleans. Would take him
to the joints down in Frenchtown, down on the avenue.
I don’t think the story held up from
what I was able to gather (for one Fats name was not Jack Reed and depending on
when he said he had been there Lenny’s would not have been open)by the time he changed it about sixteen
times. But if it did happen then thanks Fats, thanks for the big ass piano addition
to rock, our homeland rock and roll. And sorry about how Katrina took all your
archives down the river.
Came in funny ways too. You know, like
I said about my boyhood friend Steve Malloy and his wake-up call trying to
imitate Bo Diddley, guys, young guys like us, me, were always trying to imitate
whoever we saw or heard about, even though my voice then was too reedy and I
had no basic sense of rhythm (which hurt later when I discovered the blues,
straight blues and tried to play them on guitar to no avail, sounded like some
third rate white bread boy from nowhere).
Still as little invested as I was in
success as a way to get out of the projects, get out of cheap street, Steve
wasn’t the only one who tried to cover somebody’s song, tried for the brass
ring, or maybe more correctly get an in with the girls who seemed a lot more
interesting than before the rock storm blew in (maybe the wiggle and gyrations
evoked some primitive sexual tom-tom but that is too much speculation some
sixty years out. I tried too, a little, in the period before Steve’s fatal stab
at fame mentioned above. Like I said in those days some radio station, locally
WJDA no question, some record company, some independent company like Ducca or the
Chestnut labels, were sponsoring talent shows to see if they could latch onto
the need big thing coming down the rock pipeline.
In my case though it was the town
fathers who were sponsoring the talent show, for their own nefarious reasons as
I found out later when I got the political bug and such details interested me.
See those harried town fathers (and it was mosyly male then) were as concerned
as the guys in the White House, as J. Edgar Hoover over in FBI, that rock and
roll was getting out of hand and that it softened up America against the
hard-boiled red menace, or worse, made their own kids, made their own daughters
susceptible to the “s-x” word and so they sponsored weekly dances, usually on
Saturday nights at the town hall auditorium to, like the schools and churches,
keep an eye or three on the doings of the young. One of the town fathers came
up with the idea of the talent show as a way to draw crowds to the dances and
keep the kids occupied during intermission. Furthermore, the draw to entry for
money hungry “from hunger” kids who probably never had seen so much dough at
one time was a prize of fifty dollars and, more importantly, especially to guys
like Steve but the idea filtered down to the rest of us, that you would get to
sing a few songs as the feature at the next dance, or an upcoming one. So a lot
of kids, me, signed up for the thing and put out our stuff for prizes and
glory.
For some reason that year I had been
waylaid when I heard Miss La Verne Baker doing her Tweddle Dee, a tune that was a big hit for her in 1955 but which I
had only hear later as I picked the rock bug properly. That song in her version
had been very jumped up and also was great to dance to. More to the point that
I had in my head constantly during that time. Plus, get this for teen insight,
I figured that since I was covering a female singer on a song that really
either sex could sing (later I heard both Big Walter Sidney and Manny Gold do
great versions of the song with a little slower tempo) I would get some points
for novelty.
The night of the dance/talent show I am
talking about I was ready after several hours of practice and some coaching by
Steve (who really did have a great native music sense and if thing had turned
out better, if he had played his musical hand out instead of getting into that
crime time scene he might have blossomed into something). I wanted to look good
too for my big first show and in those days that meant wearing a sports jacket
and shirt and tie. I was okay on the shirt and tie since that is what I wore to
Mass each Sunday morning but our family being poor as church mice, maybe
poorer, I didn’t have a sports jacket since we had with five boys a tradition
of brother hand-me-downs and I was not big enough then to fix into any older
brother’s jacket without looking like a hobo. I moaned and groaned to Ma, and
after she said “no” I even moaned and groaned to Pa and you didn’t moan and
groan to him unless it was a big deal.
He said, which was true, that we did
not have money for a sports coat for a one night gig, or maybe for any reason,
I forget, but he would spring for material at the cheap-jack Bargain Center,
the local Wal-Mart of its day, if my mother would make one. Now my mother was
no seamstress but she agreed to do so and that Saturday night I had a
presentable sports jacket on although I couldn’t say much for the beige color. I
had tried it on as she was workingon
the material and earlier that night and the fit seemed okay.
I was number six on the list and so
like all performers I was sitting there fretting during the first set of DJ
record shuffling waiting impatiently for the intermission to arrive to strut my
stuff. I felt pretty good even though I knew that Steve, who was on at number
two, would do much better that me, which he did doing a nice version of a song
that I forget what it was, some ballad, maybe Love Me Tender. Then in my turn I got up, went to the make-shift
stage and started to sing and the crowd when they realized what the song was
started chapping along. Then the other shoe fell off. This is what I found out
later when I asked my mother about the jacket. She had gotten busy doing some
family things and so only quickly sewed the sleeves to the body of the jacket
figuring that would be good enough. Like I said before the jacket looked and
felt good enough to me so there was no reason to say anything or ask any
questions about it. That night though about half way through my act as I was
making some motions, some odd-ball gyrations, responding to the crowd’s
clapping one of the sleeves came off, then a few minutes later the other came
off. They flew right into the crowd, mostly to the girls in front. The place
went wild. They all figured that this stunt was part of the act. Well I
finished, barely, and was finished. A girl singing some Fontaine Sisters’ song,
maybe Sincerely I was so fluttered I
just kind of head my head down to avoid dealing with reality, won, Steve second
and my career was over. Over because of what happened that night which I had no
desire to repeat but over also because like Steve not too long after my voice
changed and it was not a good change for singing even if it did sound more
manly.
Get this though, at school the next
week, Monday the girls, including one of
the girls who caught one of the sleeves, were all around me, thinking my act
had been cool, and for a time I was basking in that glory. Ah, wasn’t that a
time.
Despite all these great hits that came
our way that first big rock and roll year when it kind of came out from the
underground here is the funny thing, funny since we were present at the
creation, present in spite of every command uttered by Miss Winot against it,
declaring the music worse than that Russkie threat if you believed her (a few
kids, girls mainly, did whether to suck up to her since she would take their
entreaties although boys were strictly “no go” and I know having spent many a
missed sunny afternoon doing some silly “punishment” for her). We were just too
young to deeply imbibe the full measure of what we were hearing. See this
music, music we started calling rock and roll once somebody gave it a name
(super DJ impresario Alan Freed as we found out later after we had already
become “children of rock and roll”) was meant, was blessedly meant to be danced
to which meant in that boy-girl age we who didn’t even like the opposite sex as
things stood then were just hanging by our thumbs.
Yeah, was meant to be danced to at
“petting parties” in dank family room basements by barely teenage boys and
girls. Was meant to be danced to at teenage dance clubs where everybody was
getting caught up on learning the newest dance moves and the latest “cool”
outfits to go along with that new freedom. Was meant to serve as a backdrop at
Doc’s Drugstore’s soda fountain where Doc had installed a jukebox complete with
all the latest tunes as boys and girls shared a Coke sipping slowly with two
straws hanging out in one frosted glass. Was meant to be listened to by corner
boys at Jack Slack’s bowling alley where Jack eventually had set up a small
dance floor so kids could dance while waiting for lanes to open (otherwise
everybody would be still dancing out in front of O’Toole’s “boss” car complete
with amped-up radio not to Jack’s profit). Was meant to be listened to as the
sun went down in the west at the local drive-in while the hamburgers and fries
were cooking and everybody was waiting for darkness to fall so the real night
could begin, the night of dancing in dark corner and exploring the mysteries of
the universe, or at least of Miss Sarah Brown. Was even meant to be listened to on fugitive
transistor radios in the that secluded off-limits to adults and little kids
(us) where teens, boys and girls, mixed and matched in the drive-in movie night
(and would stutter some nonsense to questioning parents who wanted to know the
plot of the movies, what movies, Ma).
Yeah, we were just a little too young
even if we can legitimately claim to have been present at the creation. But we
will catch up, catch up with a vengeance.
