*****A Voice From The Left-The Latest From The Steve Lendman Blog

*****A Voice From The Left-The Latest From The Steve Lendman Blog

                                  Henry Wallace 1948

 A link below to link to the Steve Lendman Blog

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Over the years that I have been presenting political material in this space I have had occasion to re-post items from some sites which I find interesting, interesting for a host of political reasons, although I am not necessarily in agreement with what has been published. Two such sites have stood out, The Rag Blog, which I like to re-post items from because it has articles by many of my fellow Generation of ’68 residual radicals and ex-radicals who still care to put pen to paper and the blog cited here, the Steve Lendman Blog.  The reason for re-postings from this latter site is slightly different since the site represents a modern day left- liberal political slant. That is the element, the pool if you will, that we radicals have to draw from, have to move left, if we are to grow. So it is important to have the pulse of what issues motivate that milieu and I believe that this blog is a lightning rod for those political tendencies. 

I would also add that the blog is a fountain of rational, reasonable and unrepentant anti-Zionism which became apparent once again in the summer of 2014 when defense of the Palestinian people in Gaza was the pressing political issue and we were being stonewalled and lied to by the bourgeois media in service of American and Israeli interests. This blog was like a breath of fresh air then. Still is.

An additional Jackman comment (Fall 2014):

The left-liberal/radical arena in American politics has been on a steep decline since I was a whole-hearted denizen of that milieu in my youth somewhere slightly to the left of Robert Kennedy back in 1968 say but still immersed in trying put band-aids on the capitalist system. That is the place where Steve Lendman with his helpful well informed blog finds himself. It is not an enviable place to be for anyone to have a solid critique of bourgeois politics, hard American imperial politics in the 21st century and have no ready source in that milieu to take on the issues and make a difference (and as an important adjunct to that American critique a solid critique of the American government acting as front-man for every nefarious move the Israeli government makes toward increasing the oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank). 

Of course I had the luxury, if one could call it that, which a look at Mr. Lendman's bio information indicates that he did not have, was the pivotal experience in the late 1960s of being inducted, kicking and screaming but inducted, into the American army in its losing fight against the heroic Vietnamese resistance. That signal event disabused me, although it took a while to get "religion," on the question of the idea of not depending on bourgeois society to reform itself coming out of Democratic Party left-liberal politics, especially falling in love with Robert Kennedy’s idea of “seeking a newer world.” On specific issues like the fight against the death penalty, the fight for the $15 minimum wage, immigration reform and the like I have worked with that left-liberal/ radical milieu, and gladly, but as for continuing to believe against all evidence that the damn thing can be reformed that is where we part company. Still Brother Lendman keep up the good work and I hope you find a political home worthy of your important work.                  

A Jackman disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out was the freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. Those jackboot theories, mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power, were theories that I earnestly adhered to sometimes more than one at the same time. Nevertheless by our exclusionism we were replicating the worst habits of the old Old Left (those who came of political age and fought the great class battles of the 1930s when kept their generation above water for a long time but which now despite the importance of studying have run out of steam). That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

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 various blogs and other networking media. 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. So read on.  

A View From The Left-Forum-NYC-September 24th-Elections 2016:Racist Bigots And Imperialist War Hawks

A View From The Left-Forum-NYC-September 24th-Elections 2016:Racist Bigots And Imperialist War Hawks

  

Support Freedom For Class War Prisoners-Join And Support The Partisan Defense Committee

Support Freedom For Class War Prisoners-Join And Support The Partisan Defense Committee   

 

Take Your Baby To The Carnival On A Saturday Night-Adventureland (2009)-A Film Review

Take Your Baby To The Carnival On A Saturday Night-Adventureland (2009)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Adventureland, starring Kristie Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, 2009

Not every film by this reviewer has to have a serious social message (although it helps) or be so gripping that he had to see the thing over and over again as it becomes one of filmdom’s classic pieces like Sunset Boulevard. Sometimes, and the film under review Adventureland exactly fits this category, he just needs film to ward of the willies. Usually a comedy of some sort will fill the bill and in this case it is a romantic comedy that has calmed his nerves.     

No question it never hurts that the locale of this comedy was located in Adventureland, in an amusement park, run down though it might be, since he has been enthralled by the “magic” of the neon lights and its swarm of grifters, drifters, goofs and midnight sifters at amusement parks and carnivals since early childhood. Still does consider himself an above average hand at Skee and its coupon-laden kewpie doll prizes. Actually, and he has written about the fact elsewhere, had run away with the carnival for a couple of days in his youth before being reined in by fearful and angry parents. So he has a pedigree of sorts in what the lure of the bright lights, tumultuous array of sounds, and smells from hot dogs to cotton candy brings to the even the normally sedate.   

Of course the amusement park motif is just so much backdrop for the real boy-meets-girl angle behind this and more than half the films ever created. Here’s the play. James, played by Jesse Eisenberg, is an aspiring graduate student, Columbia School of Journalism no less, with downwardly mobile parents who cannot afford to spring for a promised  grand tour of Europe and hence the summer job at Adventureland, the fate of many liberal arts graduates of late. As he gets the hang of the job after about two minutes, basically as long as it takes a co-worker to fill him of the grift, the scams that make the suckers pay for cheapjack stuff and like it, he becomes friendly with plenty of the co-workers. The usual cross-section of guys and gals who work the carny/theme park scene down at the edges of society.       

One of those co-workers, Emily, played by fetching Kristie Stewart last seen in this space working her magic on the guys who played Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac in the film adaptation of the latter’s On The Road, catches his eye and we are off to the races. Naturally it would be a very short film if the obvious attraction they had for each other had them immediately go off into the blissful sunset. Problem number one was that James was by choice, by discriminating choice, if you can believe this in this day in age, a virgin and was not sure whether he wanted to commit to Emily and wind up “doing the do” with her, a sexually experienced woman. Problem number two alienated from her parents Emily was in a hush-hush sexual relationship with the park’s married handyman. Don’t worry because in the end after some serious talking and smoking some serious weed they do wind up going hand and hand into the sunset, wind up “doing the do.”         

By the way it never hurts either in a film on youthful confusion about life to have a soundtrack that features the late Lou Reed’s Pale Blue Eyes and other songs done with the Velvet Underground.    

Chelsea Manning Ends Hunger Strike; Army Agrees To Gender-Affirming Surgery(Yeah, But President Obama Pardon Chelsea Now!)

Chelsea Manning Ends Hunger Strike; Army Agrees To Gender-Affirming Surgery

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September 14, 20164:43 AM ET

Doreen McCallister

Pfc. Chelsea Manning poses for a photo in 2010. AP hide caption

toggle caption AP

Pfc. Chelsea Manning poses for a photo in 2010.

AP

Chelsea Manning, a transgender soldier imprisoned for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, says she is ending a hunger strike after the U.S. Army agreed to allow her to get medical treatment for her gender dysphoria.
She began the hunger strike last week to protest her treatment at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., vowing to persist until she was treated better.
The medical treatment will begin with the surgery that was recommended by her psychologist in April, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.
To date, the ACLU says no transgender individual has received gender-affirming surgical treatment in prison despite medical recommendations for such care in prisons across the country.
Army officials have not commented.
Manning said in a statement released by the ACLU:

"I am unendingly relieved that the military is finally doing the right thing. I applaud them for that. This is all that I wanted — for them to let me be me. But it is hard not to wonder why it has taken so long. Also, why were such drastic measures needed?"

In 2014, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense over its refusal to treat Manning's gender dysphoria.
"This is a monumental day for Chelsea, who can now enjoy some peace knowing that critically needed medical care is forthcoming," ACLU attorney Chase Strangio said in a statement.
The length of Manning's hair continues to be an issue. In 2014, recommendations were made to allow her to have longer hair.
Strangio's statement continues:

"It is nonetheless troubling that the government continues to insist that they will enforce the male hair length standards against her and subject her to a disciplinary board over administrative charges related to her suicide attempt in July, which was precipitated by the government's refusal to adequately treat her for gender dysphoria. Given the recognition of Chelsea's health care needs, we hope that she is immediately permitted to grow her hair consistent with the standard for female military prisoners and that all charges related to her suicide attempt and the investigation that followed are
dropped."

Supporters have launched a petition drive calling for the charges to be dropped.
In 2013, a military court convicted Manning, who was arrested as Bradley Manning, of leaking more than 700,000 classified military and Department of State documents to Wikileaks.
Manning is serving a 35-year sentence.

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*****Down At Duke’s Place-With Duke Ellington In Mind

Once Again -Down At Duke’s Place-With Duke Ellington In Mind

 

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber  

One night Sam Eaton was talking on his cellphone to his old friend from high school (Carver High, Class of 1967), Jack Callahan about how his grandson, Brandon, the oldest grandson of his daughter Janice from his first marriage (first of three all ending in divorce but that is merely a figure for the Census Bureau and not germane to what follows so enough) had beguiled him recently with his arcane knowledge of classical jazz (the jazz from the age of King Oliver say until the death of the big bad swings bands which died in the late 1940s for the most part giving way to cool ass be-bop and what followed).


Jack braced himself for the deluge, got very quiet and did not say word one, since lately the minute Sam mentioned, maybe even thought about mentioning the slightest thing connected with jazz he knew he was in for it, in for a harangue of unknown duration on the subject. Sam, recently more conscious that Jack, who hated jazz, hated it worse when as a child of rock and roll as Sam was, his father would endlessly play Count this, King that, Duke the other thing and not allow the family record player centered in the family living room to be sullied (his father’s word) by heathen stuff like Roll Over Beethoven or One Night With You, would go silent at the word “jazz” said not to worry he would only say a few words from his conversation with Brandon:        

No, Jack, my man, this will not be a screed about how back in the day, back in the 1950s the time of our complete absorption into rock and roll, when be-bop jazz was the cat’s meow, when cool was listening to the Monk trip up a note, consciously trip up a note to see if anybody caught it and then took that note to heaven and back, and worked it out from there or Dizzy burping then hitting the high white note all those guys were struggling against the limits of the instruments to get, high as hell on tea, you know what we called ganja, herb, stuff like that.


Frankly I was too young, you too but I knew how you felt since I couldn’t listen to rock in my house either as the 1940s Andrews Sisters/Perry Como/Frank Sinatra/Peggy Lee cabal were front and center in our living room and I was reduced to listening on my transistor radio, way too young to appreciate such work then and I only got the tail end, you know when Hollywood or the popular prints messed the whole be-bop jazz “beat” thing up and we got spoon-fed Maynard G. Krebs faux black and white television beatnik selling hair cream oil or something like that, and ten thousand guys hanging around the Village on Saturday night in full beret and whatever they could put together for a beard from the outreaches of Tenafly, New Jersey (sorry but Fort Lee was out) and another ten thousand gals, all in black from head to toe, maybe black underwear too so something to imagine at least from Norwalk, Connecticut milling around as well. Square, square cubed.



No, this will not be some screed going back further in the hard times of the Great Depression and the slogging through World War II when “it did not mean a thing, if you ain’t got that swing” when our parents, the parents of the kids who caught the end of be-bop “swang,” did dips and twirls to counts, dukes, earls, princes, marquises even leading big band splashes to wash that generation clean. Come on now that was our parents and I wasn’t even born so no way I can “screed” about that. And, no, no, big time no, this will not be about some solitary figure in some dank, dusty, smoke-filled café, the booze flowing, the dope in the back alleys inflaming the night while some guy, probably a sexy sax player, blows some eternal high white note out against some bay, maybe Frisco Bay, and I was hooked, hooked for life on the be-bop jazz scene.

No, it never even came close to starting out like that, never even dreamed such scenes. Unlike rock and roll, the classic kind that was produced in our 1950s growing up time and which we have had a life-long devotion to or folk music which I came of age, political and social age to, later in the early 1960s, jazz was a late, a very late acquisition to my understanding of the American songbook. Oh sure I would hear a phrase, a few bing, bang, bong notes blowing out the window, out the door, sitting in some bar over drinks with some hot date, maybe hear it as backdrop in some Harvard Square bookstore when I went looking for books (and, once somebody hipped me to the scene, looking for bright young women who also were in the bookstore looking for books, and bright young men were looking for them but that scene is best left for another time), or at some party when the host tired of playing old-time folk music had decided to kick out the jams and let the jazz boys wreak their havoc. But jazz was, and to a great extent still is, a side bar of my musical tastes.          

About a decade ago, a little more, I got seriously into jazz for a while. The reason: the centennial of the birth of Duke Ellington being celebrated when I was listening to some radio show which was commemorating that fact and I heard a few faint bars which required me to both turn up the volume and to listen to the rest of the one hour tribute. The show played a lot of Duke’s stuff from the early 1940s when he had Ben Webster, Harry Carney, and Johnny Hodges on board. The stuff blew me away and as is my wont when I get my enthusiasms up, when something blows me away, I grabbed everything by the Duke and his various groupings and marveled at how very good his work was, how his tonal poems reached deep, deep down and caught something in me that responded in kind. Especially when those sexy saxs, when Johnny or Cootie blew me away if they let it all hang out.

Funny though I thought at the time that I hadn’t picked up on this sound before, this reaching for the soul, for the essence of the matter, since there are very definitely elements of the blues in Brother Duke’s work. And I have been nothing but a stone blown blues freak since the early 1960s when I first heard Howlin’ Wolf hold forth practically eating that harmonica of his on Little Red Rooster and Smokestack Lightnin’. Moreover I had always been a Billie Holiday fan although I never drew the connection to the jazz in the background since it usually was muted to let her rip with that throaty sultry voice, the voice that chased the blues, my blues, away.

So, yes, count me among the guys who are searching for the guys who are searching for the great big cloud puff high white note, guys who have been searching for a long time as the notes waft out into the deep blue sea night. Check this out. Blowing that high white note out into the surly choppy Japan deep blue seas foaming and slashing out into the bay the one time I was sitting in fog-bound Frisco town, sitting around a North Beach bar, the High Hat maybe, back when Jimmy La Croix ran the place and a guy with a story, or a guy he knew could run a tab, for a while, and then settle up or let the hammer fall and you would wind up cadging swigs from flea-bitten raggedy- assed winos and sterno bums.

On Monday nights, a slow night in every venue you can name except maybe whorehouses and even then the business would  fall off only a little since guys had to see their wives or girlfriends or both sometime, Jimmy would hold what is now called an “open mic” but then, I forget, maybe talent search something like that but the same thing. The “Hat” as everybody called it was known far and wide by ex hep-cats, aging beats, and faded flower child ex-hippies who had not yet got back to the “real” world once those trends petered out but were still looking, as I was, looking for something and got a little solace from the bottle and a dark place to nurse the damn thing where you could be social or just hang out was the place around North Beach where young talent took to the boards. Played, played for the “basket” just like the folkies used to do back in the 1960s when that genre had its heyday, and probably get a few dollars from the mostly regular heavy drinker crowd that populate any gin mill on Monday, whether they have seen their loved ones or not.


Jimmy would have Max Jenny on drums and Milt Bogan on that big old bass that took up half the stage, if you remember those guys when West Coast jazz was big, to back-up the talent so this was serious stuff, at least Jimmy played it that way.
 

Most of the stuff early on that night was so-so some riffs stolen from more famous guys like Miles Davis, Dizzie, Coltrane, the cool ass jazz from the fifties that young bud talent imitates starting out, maybe gets stuck on those covers and wind up, addled by some sister habit, down by the trolley trains on Market Street hustling dollars from weary tourists waiting to get up the damn hill. So nothing that would keep a steady drinker, me, from steady drinking in those days when I lifted low-shelf whiskeys with abandon. Maybe half a dozen other guys spread out around bar to prove they were there strictly for the drinking and chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes to fill up Jimmy’s ashtrays and give Red the bartender something to do between pouring shots (otherwise the guys hungry for women company would be bunched near the dance floor but they must have had it bad since Monday night the serious honeys were not at the “Hat” but home getting rested up for the long week ahead of fending guys off).
 

Then I turned around toward the stage, turned around for no particular reason, certainly not to pay attention to the talent, when this young guy, young black guy, barely out of his teens, maybe sixteen for all I know and snuck out of the house to play, Jimmy wasn’t taking ID cards in those days and if the kid wasn’t drinking then what did it matter, to get play to reach the stars if that is what he wanted, slim a reed, dressed kind of haphazardly with a shiny suit that he probably wore to church with grandmother, string tie, clean shirt, couldn’t see his feet so can’t comment on that, maybe a little from hunger, or had the hunger eating him up. Kind of an unusual sight for ‘90s Frisco outside of the missions. But figure this, figure his eyes, eyes that I know about from my own bouts with sister, with the just forming sad sack yellow eyes of high king hell dope-dom and it all fit.

The kid was ready though to blow a big sexy tenor sax, a sax as big as he was, certainly fatter, blew the hell out of one note after another once he got his bearings, then paused, paused to suck up the universe of the smoke filled air in the place (a whiff of ganja from the back somewhere from some guy Jimmy must have known since usually dope in the place was a no-no), and went over to the river Jordan for a minute, rested, came back with a big blow that would get at least to Hawaii, rested again, maybe just a little uncertain where to go like kids always are, copy some somebody and let it go at that for the Monday crowd or blast away, but even I sensed that he had something going, so blew up a big cloud puff riff alternating with pauses hard to do, went at it again this time to the corner of paradise.


Stopped then, I thought he was done, he looked to hell like he was done, done in eyes almost closed, and then onward, a big beautiful dah, dee, dah, dee, dah, dee, blow, a “max daddy” blow then even an old chattering wino in a booth stopped to wonder at, and that big high white note went ripping down Bay Street, I swear I could see it, on into the fog-bound bay and on its way, not stopping until Edo, hell maybe back to Mother Africa where it all started.  He had it, that it means only “it” and if he never blew again he had that “it” moment. He left out the back door and I never saw him at the “Hat” again so maybe he was down on Mission or maybe he went somewhere, got some steady work. All I know was that I was there when a guy blew that high white note, yeah, that high white note. So yeah count me too among Duke’s boys, down at Duke’s place where he eternally searched for that elusive high white note.

See I didn’t take too long, right.             

  

 

*Clinch Mountain Sweethearts, Indeed!- Ralph Stanley And Friends

In Honor Of The Late Ralph Stanley- Clinch Mountain Sweethearts, Indeed!- Ralph Stanley And Friends

A YouTube's Film Clip Of Ralph Stanley Doing "Oh Death".



CD Review

Clinch Mountain Sweethearts, Ralph Stanley and Friends, Rebel Records, 2001



In a recent DVD review of the now mountain music movie classic, George Clooney's "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?", I mentioned in passing the name of the artist under review here, Ralph Stanley. I also noted that this grand master of mountain music as it derived from The Carter Family strain was eminently worthy of a separate review on his own merits. I make amends here. I think that this settles all debts by all parties.



That said, the following excerpt from that above-mentioned review can be used here to set the tone for a look at Ralph Stanley's work here:



"Sometimes a revival of a musical form, like the "talking blues", that highlighted the urban folk revival of the early 1960's is driven by a social need. In that case it was to provide a format for the "glad tidings" that a new political and social movement was a-bornin'. In the case of the revival several years ago of what is called "mountain music" it was the films "The Song Catcher" and, more importantly, the very popular movie starring George Clooney " O Brother, Where Art Thou?" The CD under review is a compilation of music from that movie, a not unnatural tie-in in the modern entertainment business. The movie deserves a separate review, however, this CD can stand on its own as a very nice cross section of "mountain music", some familiar most not so.



Without straining credulity "mountain music" is the music of the simple folk of Appalachia, those who worked hard in the coal mines, on the hard scrabble farms and in the isolated mills of the region. This was their Saturday night entertainment and with the advent of radio was a unifying cultural experience. The songs "speak" of hard and lonely lives, the beauty of the then pristine countryside, the usual vagaries of love and lost and the mysterious ways of a very personal, if arbitrary, god. Throw in a few upbeat tunes reflecting the love of "corn" liquor, women and the sometimes funny side of coping with life's trials and tribulations and you have the mountain version of the folk experience. Sound familiar? Sure it does, except, it is done with simple guitar, a blazing fiddle and, hopefully, a full-bodied mandolin."



After that introduction it would seem hardly necessary to do more than list the outstanding tracks on this CD. Except one thing. Ralph has gathered around his "good old boy" self a virtual who's who of female country singers, female folk singers, female folk rock singers, female rock folk singers and ..., well you get the drift. Most of the names here have popped up in other reviews, or will do so in the future. Start with my "Internet Sweetheart", Iris Dement on "Ridin' The Midnight Train" and "Trust Each Other". Folk legend Joan Baez on "Weeping Willow". Maria Muldaur, early on from the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and now a "blues mama" extraordinaire in her own right, on "This Memory Of Yours". Melba Montgomery on the classic country song " You Win Again". Lucinda Williams on "Farther Along". And last but not least Gillian Welch on the Stanley national anthem "Oh Death". Did I kid you? This as an All-Star A-list (excepting only Emmylou Harris and Bonnie Raitt). How did the old coot do it? Enjoy.




Ralph Stanley — Daddy's Wildwood Flower lyrics


INSTRUMENTAL INTRO



Mama was his Wildwood Flower, my Daddy used to say,
And to prove to her he loved her, he'd play it every day.
Mom would look at him and smile, she'd say, "God bless my man,
I don't regret one single time that I gave him my hand."

REFRAIN
The Wildwood Flower
(The Wildwood Flower)
Was his favorite song,
And when he played for Mama,
Her house became a home.

INSTRUMENTAL BREAK

Mom took sick and passed away, this was his darkest hour.
He came home that very day and he played the Wildwood Flower.
Time went by and he grew old, he'd sit and play for hours,
Mem'ries of Mom on his old guitar, he'd play the Wildwood Flower.

REFRAIN

INSTRUMENTAL BREAK

One night, as I walked by his house, I though I heard his song.
I heard Mama talkin', but Mom had long been gone.
I looked through the window and saw God's mighty power,
There sat Mom with Daddy, he was playin' the Wildwood Flower.

REFRAIN

INSTRUMENTAL BREAK

As he grew old, he could play no more, and his mind began to fail.
We'd often find him in the field, he seemed so old and frail.
One day, we couldn't find him, and after many days,
Found him lyin' with the wildwood flowers, up on Mama's grave.

REFRAIN



INSTRUMENTAL OUTRO

From The Gals And Guys Who Know The Face Of War Up Close And Personal-The Iraq And Afghan War Veterans

From The Gals And Guys Who Know The Face Of War Up Close And Personal-The Iraq And Afghan War Veterans

Frank Jackman comment:

In America there is an overweening respect for the military, for military officers mainly, the guys and gals who lead the bloody endless wars of this century. They look good on camera, all austere and all business as they lead the general population by the nose into the next ambush. But starting back in Vietnam, starting back in the war of my generation, soldiers, sailors, air personnel, regular rank and file guys (almost all guys then) started balking at their fate. Started to talk back, to say stop the madness. And if they could not do it when they were service-bound they certainly did after they got out. Formed an organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) that did a hell of a lot to bring the anti-war message home. See they had “street cred,”’ they had been in the hellholes and beyond, had come back to the “real world” a lot wiser than the kids who went in with dreams of glory and fistfuls of medals. The guys and gals who fought, and continue to fight don’t forget, the damn Iraq and Afghan wars have that same “street cred.” Listen up, please.   

An Encore -When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of The Late Folk-Singer Dave Van Ronk’s Time

An Encore -When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of The Late Folk-Singer Dave Van Ronk’s Time

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

 

Sometimes Sam Lowell and his “friend” (really “sweetie,” long time sweetie, paramour, significant other, consort or whatever passes for the socially acceptable or Census Bureau bureaucratic “speak” way to name somebody who is one’s soul-mate, his preferred term) Laura Perkins whose relationship to Sam was just described at the end of the parentheses, and righteously so, liked to go to Crane’s Beach in Ipswich to either cool off in the late summer heat or in the fall before the New England weather lowers its hammer and the place gets a bit inaccessible and too windswept to force the delicate Laura into the weathers. That later summer  heat escape valve is a result, unfortunately for an otherwise Edenic environment of the hard fact that July, when they really would like to go there to catch a few fresh sea breezes, is not a time to show up at the bleach white sands beach due to nasty blood-sucking green flies swarming and dive-bombing like some berserk renegade Air Force squadron lost on a spree captained by someone with a depraved childhood who breed in the nearby swaying mephitic marshes (mephitic courtesy of multi-use by Norman Mailer who seemed to get it in every novel- if you don't what it means look it up but think nasty and smelly and you will close-okay).



The only “safe haven” then is to drive up the hill to the nearby robber-baron days etched Crane Castle (they of the American indoor plumbing fortune way back) to get away from the buggers, although on a stagnant wind day you might have a few vagrant followers, as the well-to-do have been doing since there were the well-to-do and had the where-with-all to escape the summer heat and bugs at higher altitudes. By the way I assume that “castle” is capitalized when it part of a huge estate, the big ass estate of Crane, now a trust monument to the first Gilded Age, not today’s neo-Gilded Age, architectural proclivities of the rich, the guy whose company did, does all the plumbing fixture stuff on half the bathrooms in America including in the various incantations of the mansion. 

Along the way, along the hour way to get to Ipswich from Cambridge Sam and Laura had developed a habit of making the time more easy passing by listening to various CDs, inevitably not listened to for a long time folk CDs, not listened to for so long that the plastic containers needed to be dusted off before being brought along, on the car's improvised  CD player. And as is their wont while listening to some CD to comment on this or that thing that some song brought to mind, or the significance of some song in their youth.  One of the things that had brought them together early on several years back was their mutual interest in the old 1960s folk minute which Sam, a little older and having grown up within thirty miles of Harvard Square, one the big folk centers of that period along with the Village and North Beach out in Frisco town, had imbibed deeply. Laura, growing up “in the sticks,” in farm country in upstate New York had gotten the breeze at second-hand through records, records bought at Cheapo Records and the eternal Sandy's on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge and a little the fading Cambridge folk scene through breathing in the coffeehouse atmosphere when she had moved to Boston in the early 1970s to go to graduate school.     

One hot late August day they got into one such discussion about how they first developed an interest in folk music when Sam had said “sure everybody, everybody over the age of say fifty to be on the safe side, knows about Bob Dylan, maybe some a little younger too if some hip kids have browsed through their parents’ old vinyl record collections now safely ensconced in the attic although there are stirrings of retro-vinyl revival of late according a report I had heard on NPR."


Some of that over 50 crowd and their young acolytes would also have known about how Dylan, after serving something like an apprenticeship under the influence of Woody Guthrie in the late 1950s singing Woody’s songs imitating Woody's style something fellow Woody acolytes like Ramblin’ Jack Elliot never quite got over moved on, got all hung up on high symbolism and obscure references. Funny guys like Jack actually made a nice workman-like career out of Woody covers, so their complaints about the "great Dylan betrayal, about moving on, seen rather hollow now. That over 50s crowd would also know Dylan became if not the voice of the Generation of ’68, their generation, which he probably did not seriously aspire in the final analysis, then he would settle for the master troubadour of the age.

Sam continued along that line after Laura had said she was not sure about the connection and he said he meant, “troubadour in the medieval sense of bringing news to the people and entertaining them by song and poetry as well if not decked in some officially approved garb like back in those olden days where they worked under a king’s license if lucky, by their wit otherwise but the 'new wave' post-beatnik flannel shirt, work boots, and dungarees which connected you with the roots, the American folk roots down in the Piedmont, down in Appalachia, down in Mister James Crow’s Delta, and out in the high plains, the dust bowl plains. So, yes, that story has been pretty well covered.”  

Laura said she knew all of that about the desperate search for roots although not that Ramblin’ Jack had been an acolyte of Woody’s but she wondered about others, some other folk performers whom she listened to on WUMB on Saturday morning when some weeping willow DJ put forth about fifty old time rock and folk rock things a lot of which she had never heard of back in Mechanicsville outside of Albany where she grew up. Sam then started in again, “Of course that is hardly the end of the story since Dylan did not create that now hallowed folk minute of the early 1960s. He had been washed by it when he came to the East from Hibbing, Minnesota for God’s sake (via Dink’s at the University there), came into the Village where there was a cauldron of talent trying to make folk the next big thing, the next big cultural thing for the young and restless of the post-World War II generations. For us. But also those in little oases like the Village where the disaffected could pick up on stuff they couldn’t get in places like Mechanicsville or Carver where I grew up. People who I guess, since even I was too young to know about that red scare stuff except you had to follow your teacher’s orders to put your head under your desk and hands neatly folded over your head if the nuclear holocaust was coming, were frankly fed up with the cultural straightjacket of the red scare Cold War times and began seriously looking as hard at roots in all its manifestations as our parents, definitely mine, yours were just weird about stuff like that, right, were burying those same roots under a vanilla existential Americanization. How do you like that for pop sociology 101.”

“One of the talents who was already there when hick Dylan came a calling, lived there, came from around there was the late Dave Van Ronk who as you know we had heard several times in person, although unfortunately when his health and well-being were declining not when he was a young politico and hell-raising folk aspirant. You know he also, deservedly, fancied himself a folk historian as well as musician.”    

“Here’s the funny thing, Laura, that former role is important because we all know that behind every  'king' is the 'fixer man,' the guy who knows what is what, the guy who tells one and all what the roots of the matter were like some mighty mystic (although in those days when he fancied himself a socialist that mystic part was played down). Dave Van Ronk was serious about that part, serious about imparting that knowledge about the little influences that had accumulated during the middle to late 1950s especially around New York which set up that folk minute. New York like I said, Frisco, maybe in small enclaves in L.A. and in precious few other places during those frozen times a haven for the misfits, the outlaws, the outcast, the politically “unreliable,” and the just curious. People like the mistreated Weavers, you know, Pete Seeger and that crowd found refuge there when the hammer came down around their heads from the red-baiters and others like advertisers who ran for cover to “protect” their precious soap, toothpaste, beer, deodorant or whatever they were mass producing to sell to a hungry pent-up market.  



"Boston and Cambridge by comparison until late in the 1950s when the Club 47 and other little places started up and the guys and gals who could sing, could write songs, could recite some be-bop deep from the blackened soul poetry even had a place to show their stuff instead of to the winos, rummies, grifters and con men who hung out at the Hayes-Bickford or out on the streets could have been any of the thousands of towns who bought into the freeze.”     

“Sweetie, I remember one time but I don’t remember where, maybe the Café Nana when that was still around after it had been part of the Club 47 folk circuit for new talent to play and before Harry Reid, who ran the place, died and it closed down, I know it was before we met, so it had to be before the late 1980s Von Ronk told a funny story, actually two funny stories, about the folk scene and his part in that scene as it developed a head of steam in the mid-1950s which will give you an idea about his place in the pantheon. During the late 1950s after the publication of Jack Kerouac’s ground-breaking road wanderlust adventure novel, On The Road, that got young blood stirring, not mine until later since I was clueless on all that stuff except rock and roll which I didn’t read until high school, the jazz scene, the cool be-bop jazz scene and poetry reading, poems reflecting off of “beat” giant Allen Ginsberg’s Howl the clubs and coffeehouse of the Village were ablaze with readings and cool jazz, people waiting in line to get in to hear the next big poetic wisdom guy if you can believe that these days when poetry is generally some esoteric endeavor by small clots of devotees just like folk music. The crush of the lines meant that there were several shows per evening. But how to get rid of one audience to bring in another in those small quarters was a challenge."



"Presto, if you wanted to clear the house just bring in some desperate “from hunger” snarly nasally folk singer for a couple, maybe three songs, and if that did not clear the high art be-bop poetry house then that folk singer was a goner. A goner until the folk minute of the 1960s where that very same folk singer probably in that very same club then played for the 'basket.' You know the 'passed hat' which even on a cheap date, and a folk music coffeehouse date was a cheap one in those days like I told you before and you laughed at cheapie me and the 'Dutch treat' thing, you felt obliged to throw a few bucks into to show solidarity or something.  And so the roots of New York City folk according to the 'father.'

Laura interrupted to ask if that “basket” was like the buskers put in front them these days and Sam said yes. And then asked Sam about a few of the dates he took to the coffeehouses in those days, just out of curiosity she said, meaning if she had been around would he have taken her there then. He answered that question but since it is an eternally complicated and internal one I having to do with where she stood in the long Sam girlfriend  pecking order (very high and leave it at that unless she reads this and then the highest) have skipped it to let him go on with the other Von Ronk story.


He continued with the other funny story like this-“The second story involved his [Von Ronk's] authoritative role as a folk historian who after the folk minute had passed became the subject matter for, well, for doctoral dissertations of course just like today maybe people are getting doctorates in hip-hop or some such subject. Eager young students, having basked in the folk moment in the abstract and with an academic bent, breaking new ground in folk history who would come to him for the 'skinny.' Now Van Ronk had a peculiar if not savage sense of humor and a wicked snarly cynic’s laugh but also could not abide academia and its’ barren insider language so when those eager young students came a calling he would give them some gibberish which they would duly note and footnote. Here is the funny part. That gibberish once published in the dissertation would then be cited by some other younger and even more eager students complete with the appropriate footnotes. Nice touch, nice touch indeed on that one, right.”

Laura did not answer but laughed, laughed harder as she thought about it having come from that unformed academic background and having read plenty of sterile themes turned inside out.       

As Laura laugh settled Sam continued “As for Van Ronk’s music, his musicianship which he cultivated throughout his life, I think the best way to describe that for me is that one Sunday night in the early 1960s I was listening to the local folk program on WBZ hosted by Dick Summer, who was influential in boosting local folk musician Tom Rush’s career and who was featured on that  Tom Rush documentary No Regrets we got for being members of WUMB, when this gravelly-voice guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, sang the Kentucky hills classic Fair and Tender Ladies. It turned out to be Von Ronk's version which you know I still play up in the third floor attic. After that I was hooked on that voice and that depth of feeling that he brought to every song even those of his own creation which tended to be spoofs on some issue of the day.”

Laura laughed at Sam and the intensity with which his expressed his mentioning of the fact that he liked gravelly-voiced guys for some reason. Here is her answer, “You should became when you go up to the third floor to do your “third floor folk- singer” thing and you sing Fair and Tender Ladies I hear this gravelly-voiced guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, some Old Testament Jehovah prophet come to pass judgment come that end day time.”

They both laughed. 

Laura then mentioned the various times that they had seen Dave Von Ronk before he passed away, not having seen him in his prime, when that voice did sound like some old time prophet, a title he would have probably secretly enjoyed for publicly he was an adamant atheist. Sam went on, “ I saw him perform many times over the years, sometimes in high form and sometimes when drinking too much high-shelf whiskey, Chavis Regal, or something like that not so good. Remember we had expected to see him perform as part of Rosalie Sorrels’ farewell concert at Saunders Theater at Harvard in 2002 I think. He had died a few weeks before.  Remember though before that when we had seen him for what turned out to be our last time and I told you he did not look well and had been, as always, drinking heavily and we agreed his performance was subpar. But that was at the end. For a long time he sang well, sang us well with his own troubadour style, and gave us plenty of real information about the history of American folk music. Yeah like he always used to say-'when the tin can bended …..and the story ended.'

As they came to the admission booth at the entrance to Crane’s Beach Sam with Carolyn Hester’s song version of Walt Whitman’s On Captain, My Captain on the CD player said “I was on my soap box long enough on the way out here. You’re turn with Carolyn Hester on the way back who you know a lot about and I know zero, okay.” Laura retorted, “Yeah you were definitely on your soap-box but yes we can talk Carolyn Hester because I am going to cover one of her songs at my next “open mic.” And so it goes.