The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967-The “Blues Mama” Of “The Generation Of ‘68”- The Music Of Janis Joplin

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967-The “Blues Mama” Of “The Generation Of ‘68”- The Music Of Janis Joplin

Zack James’ comment June, 2017:

Sometimes you just have to follow the bouncing ball like in those old time sing along cartoons they used to have back in say the 1950s,the time I remember them from, on Saturday afternoon matinees at the old now long gone Stand Theater in my growing up town of North Adamsville. Follow me for a minute here I won’t be long. Earlier this spring my oldest brother, Alex, took attended a conference in San Francisco which he has done periodically for years. While there he noticed an advertisement on a bus for something called the Summer of Love Experience at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. That ad immediately caught his attention he had been out there that year and had participated in those events at the urging of his friend Peter Paul Markin who was something of a holy goof (a Jack Kerouac term of art), a low rent prophet, and a street criminal all in one. When Alex got back to the East after having attended the exhibition he got in contact with me to help him, and the still standing corner boys who also had gone out West at Markin’s urging to put together a tribute booklet honoring Markin and the whole experience.

After completing that project, or maybe while completing it I kept on thinking about the late Hunter S. Thompson who at one time was the driving force behind gonzo journalism and had before his suicide about a decade ago been something of a muse to me. At first my thoughts were about how Thompson would have taken the exhibition at the de Young since a lot of what he wrote about in the 1960s and 1970s was where the various counter-cultural trends were, or were not, going. But then as the current national political situation in America in the Trump Age has turned to crap, to craziness and straight out weirdness I began to think about how Thompson would have handled the 24/7/365 craziness these days since he had been an unremitting searing critic of another President of the United States who also had low-life instincts, one Richard Milhous Nixon.

The intertwining of the two stands came to head recently over the fired FBI director James Comey hearings where he essentially said that the emperor had no clothes. So I have been inserting various Thompson-like comments in an occasional series I am running in various on-line publications-Even The President Of The United States Sometimes Must Have To Stand Naked-Tales From The White House Bunker. And will continue to overlap the two-Summer of Love and Age of Trump for as long as it seems relevant. So there you are caught up. Ifs not then I have included hopefully for the last time the latest cross-over Thompson idea.           

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Zack James comment, Summer of 2017                

Maybe it says something about the times we live in, or maybe in this instance happenstance or, hell maybe something in the water but certain things sort of dovetail every now and again. I initially started this commentary segment after having written a longest piece for my brother and his friends as part of a small tribute booklet they were putting together about my and their takes on the Summer of Love, 1967. That event that my brother, Alex, had been knee deep in had always interested me from afar since I was way too young to have appreciated what was happening in San Francisco in those Wild West days. What got him motivated to do the booklet had been an exhibit at the de Young Art Museum in Golden Gate Park where they were celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the events of that summer with a look at the music, fashion, photography and exquisite poster art which was created then just as vivid advertising for concerts and “happenings” but which now is legitimate artful expression.

That project subsequently got me started thinking about the late Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, the driving force behind a new way of looking at and presenting journalism which was really much closer to the nub of what real reporting was about. Initially I was interested in some of Thompson’s reportage on what was what in San Francisco as he touched the elbows of those times having spent a fair amount of time working on his seminal book on the Hell’s Angels while all hell was breaking out in Frisco town. Delved into with all hands and legs the high points and the low, the ebb which he located somewhere between the Chicago Democratic Convention fiasco of the summer of 1968 and the hellish Rollins Stones Altamont concert of 1969.     

Here is what is important today though, about how the dots get connected out of seemingly random occurrences. Hunter Thompson also made his mark as a searing no holds barred mano y mano reporter of the rise and fall, of the worthy demise of one Richard Milhous Nixon at one time President of the United States and a common low-life criminal of ill-repute. Needless to say today, the summer of 2107, in the age of one Donald Trump, another President of the United States and common low-life criminal begs the obvious question of what the sorely missed Doctor Gonzo would have made of the whole process of the self-destruction of another American presidency, or a damn good run at self-destruction. So today and maybe occasionally in the future there will be some intertwining of commentary about events fifty years ago and today. Below to catch readers up to speed is the most recent “homage” to Hunter Thompson. And you too I hope will ask the pertinent question. Hunter where are you when we need, desperately need, you.       

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Zack James comment, Summer of 2017 

You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist who broke the back, hell broke the neck, legs, arms of so-called objective journalism in a drug-blazed frenzy back in the 1970s when he “walked with the king”’ is not with us in these times. (Walking with the king not about walking with any king or Doctor King but being so high on drugs, your choice, that commin clay experiences fall by the way side. In the times of this 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious West Coast-based Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place, where many walked with the king, if you prefer, and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there in the high tide, when it looked like we had the night-takers on the run and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later although that did not stop him from developing the quintessential “gonzo” journalism fine-tuned with plenty of dope for which he would become famous before the end, before he took his aging life and left Johnny Depp and company to fling his ashes over this good green planet. He would have “dug” the exhibition, maybe smoked a joint for old times’ sake (oh no, no that is not done in proper society, in high art society these days) at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period showing until August 20^th of this year.   

Better yet he would have had this Trump thug bizarre weirdness wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. He would have gone crazy seeing all the crew deserting the sinking U.S.S. Trump with guys like fired FBI Director Comey going to Capitol Hill and saying out loud the emperor has no clothes and would not know the truth if it grabbed him by the throat. Every day would be a feast day. But perhaps the road to truth these days, in the days of “alternate facts” and assorted other bullshit would have been bumpier than in those more “civilized” times when simple burglaries and silly tape-recorders ruled the roost. Hunter did not make the Nixon “hit list” (to his everlasting regret for which he could hardly hold his head up in public) but these days he surely would find himself in the top echelon. Maybe too though with these thugs who like their forbears would stop at nothing he might have found himself in some back alley bleeding from all pores. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now  

CD REVIEW

Janis Joplin: 18 Essential Songs, Janis Joplin with Big Brother and The Holding Company, Columbia Records, 1995

It is virtually a truism that every generation has its own cultural icons, for better or worst. The 1960’s, the time of this reviewer’s “Generation of ‘68”, was no exception. Although there were no official creeds in the matter, in fact we scorned such thinking, a rough translation of what we thought we were about then could be summed up as follows- live fast, live young and live forever. Other, later generations have put their own imprint on that theme although I sense without our basically naïve and hopeful expectations of that phrase. All this is by way of saying that the artist under review, urban white blues and soul singer Janis Joplin, was one of our icons. That she crashed and burned well before her time, and well before forever, only adds poignancy to her fate.

The role of “blues mama” for a generation is certainly no task for the faint-hearted, as Janis’s life, life style, and fame attest to. That she was able to translate the black blues idiom and style of the likes of her idol “Big Mama” Thornton, of necessity, had to take its toll on that tiny hard scrabble Texas-raised body. But that is the fundamental tragedy (and beauty) of the blues. Not only must you ‘pay your dues’ but this genre cannot be faked. If you have not lived a hard scrabble existence, faced the depths of what society has to offer and come out swinging you flat-out cannot convey that message the way it is suppose to be done. Janis could. Other white women blues singers as fine performers as they are, like Tracey Nelson and Rory Block, approximate that sound but there is just a little too much “refinement” in the voice to pass this test.

So what did Janis (and her fellow musicians of Big Brother and The Holding Company who generally rose to the occasion and created great sounds to go with that Joplin voice) leave us? Well, as contained in this above average CD compilation of her work, most of the essential woman’s blues numbers of the 1960’s that will stand the test of time. Not bad, right? Start off, as always, with ‘Big Mama’s” “Ball and Chain” (that blew them away at the Monterrey Pops Festival). Move on to the classic Gershwin tune “Summertime”. Feast on her own “I Need A Man To Love” and “Kozmic Blues”. And close out with Kris Kristofferson’s 1960’s traveling anthem “Me And Booby McGee”. And in between a dozen more memorable tunes. I defy anyone to find a song in this compilation that is less than above average. And that kind of says it all. Janis Joplin’s star burned out far too quickly and those of us from her generation are now coming to terms with the fact that, despite our youthful beliefs, we will not live forever. Her music, however, will.

Ball And Chain lyrics

Sittin’ down by my window,
Honey, lookin’ out at the rain.
Oh, Lord, Lord, sittin’ down by my window,
Baby, lookin’ out at the rain.
Somethin’ came along, grabbed a hold of me, honey,
And it felt just like a ball and chain.
Honey, that’s exactly what it felt like,
Honey, just dragging me down.

And I say, oh, whoa, whoa, now hon’, tell me why,
Why does every single little tiny thing I hold on to go wrong ?
Yeah it goes wrong, yeah.
And I say, oh, whoa, whoa, now babe, tell me why,
Does every thing, every thing.
Hey, here you gone today, I wanted to love you,
I just wanted to hold you, I said, for so long,
Yeah! Alright! Hey!

Love’s got a hold on me, baby,
Feels like a ball and chain.
Now, love’s just draggin’ me down, baby,
Feels like a ball and chain.
I hope there’s someone out there who could tell me
Why the man I love wanna leave me in so much pain.
Yeah, maybe, maybe you could help me, come on, help me!

And I say, oh, whoa, whoa, now hon’, tell me why,
Now tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me why, yeah.
And I say, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, when I ask you,
When I need to know why, c’mon tell me why, hey hey hey,
Here you’ve gone today,
I wanted to love you and hold you
Till the day I die.
I said whoa, whoa, whoa!!

And I say oh, whoa, whoa, no honey
It ain’t fair, daddy it ain’t fair what you do,
I see what you’re doin’ to me and you know it ain’t fair.
And I say oh, whoa whoa now baby
It ain’t fair, now, now, now, what you do
I said hon’ it ain’t fair what, hon’ it ain’t fair what you do.
Oh, here you gone today and all I ever wanted to do
Was to love you
Honey you can still hear me rock and roll the best,
Only it ain’t roll, no, no, no, no, no.

Sittin’ down by my window,
Lookin’ out at the rain.
Lord, Lord, Lord, sittin’ down by my window,
Lookin’ out at the rain, see the rain.
Somethin’ came along, grabbed a hold of me,
And it felt like a ball and chain.
Oh this can’t be in vain
And I’m gonna tell you one more time, yeah, yeah!

And I say oh, whoa whoa, now baby
This can’t be, no this can’t be in vain,
And I say no no no no no no no no, whoa,
And I say whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa
Now now now now now now now now now no no not in vain
Hey, hope there is someone that could tell me
Hon’, tell me why love is like
Just like a ball
Just like a ball
Baaaaaaalllll
Oh daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy
And a chain.
Yeah.

Call On Me lyrics

Well, baby, when times are bad,
Now call on me, darling, and I’ll come to you.
When you’re in trouble and feel so sad,
Well, call on me, darling, come on call on me, and I’ll help you.
Yeah!

A man and a woman have each other, baby,
To find their way in this world.
I need you, darling, like the fish needs the sea,
Don’t take your sweet, your sweet love from me.

Baby, when you’re down and feel so blue,
Well, no, you won’t drown, darling, I’ll be there too.
You’re not alone, I’m there too,
Whatever your troubles, honey, I don’t care.

A man and a woman have each other, baby,
To find their way in this world.
I need you, darling, like the fish needs the sea,
Don’t take your sweet, sweet love from me!

Please! So baby, when times are bad,
Call on me, darling, just call on me.

I Need A Man To Love lyrics

Whoa, I need a man to love me.
Don’t you understand me, baby ?
Why, I need a man to love.
I gotta find him, I gotta have him like the air I breathe.
One lovin’ man to understand can’t be too much to need.

You know it
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be this loneliness
Baby, surrounding me.

No, no, know it just can’t be
No it just can’t be
There’s got to be some kind of answer.
No it just can’t be
And everywhere I look, there’s none around
No it just can’t be
Whoa, it can’t be
No it just can’t be, oh no!
Whoa, hear me now.

Whoa, won’t you let me hold you ?
Honey, just close your eyes.
Whoa, won’t you let me hold you, dear ?
I want to just put my arms around ya, like the circles going ‘round the sun.
Let me hold you daddy, at least until the morning comes.

Because it
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be this loneliness
Baby, surrounding me.
No, no, no it just can’t be.
No it just can’t be
Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby, just can’t be.
No, no, no
No it just can’t be

And why can’t anyone ever tell me, now ?
No it just can’t be
I wake up one morning, I realize
No it just can’t be
Whoa, it can’t be.
No it just can’t be
Now go!

Whoa, I need a man to love me
Oh, maybe you can help me, please.
Why, I need a man to love.
But I believe that someday and somehow it’s bound to come along
Because when all my dreams and all my plans just cannot turn out wrong.

You know it
Can’t be now Oh no
Can’t be now Oh no
Can’t be now Oh no
Can’t be now Oh no
Can’t be now Oh no
Can’t be just loneliness
Baby, surrounding me

No, no, no, it just can’t be
No it just can’t be
Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby, it just can’t be
No it just can’t be
And who could be foolin’ me ?
No it just can’t be
I’ve got all this happiness
No it just can’t be
Come, come, come on, come on, come on, and help me now.
No it just can’t be
Please, can’t you hear my cry ?
No it just can’t be
Whoa, help ...

Newly Found Photos Show Janis Joplin's Final Concert — 45 Years Ago At Harvard

sounds

• Written ByAmelia Mason
• PublishedAugust 11, 2015
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Peter Warrack’s photo of Janis Joplin performing at Harvard Stadium, Aug. 12, 1970. (House of Roulx)

The evening of Aug. 12, 1970, was a warm one. Harvard Stadium had been transformed into a concert arena with the addition of rows upon rows of seats onto the field. An estimated 40,000 spectators were crammed inside. After it was discovered that some sound equipment had been stolen, the show was delayed. According to several accounts, the crowd was restless, near rioting.
They were waiting for Janis Joplin.
“Oddly, while we were sitting there—and the crowd was getting into something, it became very smoky and sweet there, let’s put it that way—we could see, straight ahead, the open-scaffolding stage,” says Kevin McElroy, who was seated near the front with his boyfriend, Peter Warrack. “Janis was underneath. And she had a bottle of Southern Comfort, and she was just in a world of her own there. She just was doing what she wanted to do in the moment. After another hour-and-a-half or so—it was really quite a delay—she literally burst onto the stage. It was just electric.”

Peter Warrack’s photo of Janis Joplin performing at Harvard Stadium, Aug. 12, 1970. (House of Roulx)

Two months later, Joplin was dead. That near-disaster concert at Harvard Stadium, it turned out, was her last public performance.
It was a special night for Warrack as well. An amateur photographer who liked to photograph celebrities and collect autographs, he shot almost a whole roll of film from down in the front, a telephoto lens aimed upward at the star as she threw herself across the stage. Concerts weren’t documented as thoroughly back then as they are now, thanks to Instagram and Twitter and a camera on every smartphone, so those 24 black-and-white close-ups are, seemingly, some of the few existing relics of the historic concert.
The Liverpool-born Warrack died in 2008, but nearly his entire collection of photographs—around 15,000—remained unpublished during his lifetime. Until recently they languished in a vast collection of binders in several closets at McElroy’s residence in Boston’s South End. House of Roulx—a Danvers-based operator of an online boutique selling celebrity photos, reproductions of funny sci-fi art and copies of curious old photos—acquired the entire collection this year. Individual prints as well as a limited edition box set of the Joplin series are available for purchase on the House of Roulx website.

Peter Warrack’s photo of Janis Joplin performing at Harvard Stadium, Aug. 12, 1970. (House of Roulx)

“This wasn’t just a guy who was celebrity star-struck who snapped pictures, he was actually a really good photographer,” says House of Roulx’s Jared Gendron. “Because there’s a difference between someone who just runs around snapping pictures paparazzi-style in the 1970s, versus somebody who has that artistic eye.”
Taken together, Warrack’s photographs of Joplin are like a flip-book of the 27-year-old singer that capture a few fleeting, candid moments onstage. They are portraits, really, set against a black background, zoomed in close enough to count the bracelets on her wrist. In one shot, she holds a finger pensively to her lips. In another, she radiates, smiling as she looks over her shoulder. One photo captures her in motion, a blur of sweat and song.
“She was feeling no pain, literally,” says McElroy. “She was interacting with the audience in almost a—well, it wasn’t almost, it was, it was a sexual banter back and forth. They were calling up to her, they wanted her, and she wanted them. At one point in time she says, ‘Yeah, I’ll take you on. One at a time. One at a time.’ That was part of who she was.”

Peter Warrack’s photo of Janis Joplin performing at Harvard Stadium, Aug. 12, 1970. (House of Roulx)

When Joplin died on Oct. 4, 1970, Reuters ran an obituary that spent as much time detailing her boozy, contentious persona as her actual musicianship. In the years since, she has become something of a feminist icon, in addition to a bona fide rock ‘n’ roll legend. Her voice—that gravelly, SoCo-soaked voice—epitomizes the capacity of a rare kind of greatness to translate pain into art.
“I think people today might not understand—you know, Janis was young, she was only 20-odd, and she was one of our current rock stars,” says McElroy. “She was just somebody who was touring, and somebody who was good, and somebody you wanted to see. Over the last 45 years, Janis has become something else, in a way most people who die young do become. And I think young people today would look at Janis and not see her in the same light that we did.”
In McElroy’s telling, Warrack’s work was driven by a fascination with both the glamour of celebrity as well as the humanity behind it. The photographs of Joplin, he says, show a side of her that has been largely erased by her iconic status and all that she symbolizes now.
“I think we see something different when we look back,” says McElroy. “I don’t think we see just Janis herself. [That night] was just Janis, performing. It was wonderful.”

Peter Warrack’s photo of Janis Joplin performing at Harvard Stadium, Aug. 12, 1970. (House of Roulx)

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-A Rosalie Sorrels Potpourri- Utah Phillips,Idaho, Cafe Lena, Childhood Dreams and Such

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-A Rosalie Sorrels Potpourri- Utah Phillips,Idaho, Cafe Lena, Childhood Dreams and Such

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like  who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.

(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)

Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.  

Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)

Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughst of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

CD REVIEWS

Music For The Long Haul

If I Could Be The Rain, Rosalie Sorrels, Folk-Legacy Records, 2003 (originally recorded in 1967)

The first paragraph here has been used in reviewing other Rosalie Sorrels CDs in this space.

“My first association of the name Rosalie Sorrels with folk music came, many years ago now, from hearing the recently departed folk singer/storyteller/ songwriter and unrepentant Wobblie (IWW) Utah Phillips mention his long time friendship with her going back before he became known as a folksinger. I also recall that combination of Sorrels and Phillips as he performed his classic “Starlight On The Rails” and Rosalie his also classic “If I Could Be The Rain” on a PBS documentary honoring the Café Lena in Saratoga, New York, a place that I am also very familiar with for many personal and musical reasons. Of note here: it should be remembered that Rosalie saved, literally, many of the compositions that Utah left helter-skelter around the country in his “bumming” days.”

That said, what could be better than to have Rosalie pay an early musical tribute (1967) to one of her longest and dearest folk friends, her old comrade Utah Phillips, someone who it is apparent from this beautiful little CD was on the same wavelength as that old unrepentant Wobblie as well as a few of her own songs. I have reviewed Rosalie’s recent (2008) tribute CD to the departed Utah “Strangers In Another Country” elsewhere in this space. Here Rosalie takes a scattering of Utah’s work from various times and places and gives his songs her own distinctive twist. Those efforts include nice versions of “If I Could Be The Rain”, “Goodbye To Joe Hill” and “Starlight On The Rails”. From her own work “One More Next Time” and “Go With Me” stick out. And here is the real treat. Rosalie’s voice back in the old days was just as strong as it was in 2008 on “Strangers”. Nice.

If I Could Be The Rain-"Utah Phillips"

Everybody I know sings this song their own way, and they arrive at their own understanding of it. Guy Carawan does it as a sing along. I guess he thinks it must have some kind of universal appeal. To me, it's a very personal song. It's about events in my life that have to do with being in love. I very seldom sing it myself for those reasons.


If I could be the rain, I'd wash down to the sea;
If I could be the wind, there'd be no more of me;
If I could be the sunlight, and all the days were mine,
I would find some special place to shine.

But all the rain I'll ever be is locked up in my eyes,
When I hear the wind it only whispers sad goodbyes.
If I could hide the way I feel I'd never sing again;
Sometimes I wish that I could be the rain.

If I could be the rain, I'd wash down to the sea;
If I could be the wind, there'd be no more of me;
If I could hide the way I feel I'd never sing again;
Sometimes I wish that I could be the rain.

Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips


THE TELLING TAKES ME HOME
(Bruce Phillips)

Let me sing to you all those songs I know
Of the wild, windy places locked in timeless snow,
And the wide, crimson deserts where the muddy rivers flow.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.

Come along with me to some places that I've been
Where people all look back and they still remember when,
And the quicksilver legends, like sunlight, turn and bend
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.

Walk along some wagon road, down the iron rail,
Past the rusty Cadillacs that mark the boom town trail,
Where dreamers never win and doers never fail,
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.

I'll sing of my amigos, come from down below,
Whisper in their loving tongue the songs of Mexico.
They work their stolen Eden, lost so long ago.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.

I'll tell you all some lies, just made up for fun,
And the loudest, meanest brag, it can beat the fastest gun.
I'll show you all some graves that tell where the West was won.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.

And I'll sing about an emptiness the East has never known,
Where coyotes don't pay taxes and a man can live alone,
And you've got to walk forever just to find a telephone.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.

Let me sing to you all those songs I know
Of the wild, windy places locked in timeless snow,
And the wide, crimson deserts where the muddy rivers flow.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STARLIGHT ON THE RAILS
(Bruce Phillips)

I can hear the whistle blowing
High and lonesome as can be
Outside the rain is softly falling
Tonight its falling just for me

Looking back along the road I've traveled
The miles can tell a million tales
Each year is like some rolling freight train
And cold as starlight on the rails

I think about a wife and family
My home and all the things it means
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams

A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time
A man who spends his life just rambling
Is like a song without a rhyme

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)-Jack Kerouac- On The Road To “On The Road”-“Maggie Cassidy”

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60^th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)-Jack Kerouac- On The Road To “On The Road”-“Maggie Cassidy”

By Book Critic Zack James

To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just kicks, stuff, important stuff has happened on some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the men New York streets, mean very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world, called the “beat” generation.  Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, dead beat, run out on money, women life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified like saintly and all high holy Catholic like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings. Hell they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the mean streets of New York, Chi town, North Beach in Frisco town).

I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50^th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well. So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind. These were the creation documents the latter which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life.              

Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother Alex’s name in to the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh, and a few others still alive recently had me put together tribute book for in connection with the Summer of Love, 1967.  Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer seeker who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before (and which nobody in the crowd paid attention to, or dismissed out of hand in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie  and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation them but of a very different world.

But above all Jack’s book, Jack’s book which had caused a big splash in 1957 and had ripple effects into the early 1960s (and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.     

Like I said above Alex was out two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely end.  With maybe this difference from today’s young. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly from hunger working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some   hot chick’s pants as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.

What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley the “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan that was for smooth as silk Frankie to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.

The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into, still doesn’t, that genre despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Dylan above all else) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using a term from the times, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital.   

Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell a working class town very much like North Adamsville and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. So it was through Markin via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60^th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.           

Markin comment:
Every year, in October, in Jack Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts a Jack Kerouac Festival is presented to keep his be-bop working class fellaheen memory alive. The link is http://www.lowellcelebrateskerouac.org/lck-2010


Book Review

Maggie Cassidy, Jack Kerouac, Penguin Books, New York , 1993

As I have explained in another entry in this space in reviewing the DVD of “The Life And Times Of Allen Ginsberg”, recently I have been in a “beat” generation literary frame of mind. I mentioned there, as well, and I think it helps to set the mood for commenting on Jack Kerouac’s lesser work under review here, “Maggie Cassidy”, where the action takes place in his hometown, that it all started last summer when I happened to be in Lowell, Massachusetts on some personal business. Although I have more than a few old time connections with that now worn out mill town I had not been there for some time. While walking in the downtown area I found myself crossing a small park adjacent to the site of a well-known mill museum and restored textile factory space. Needless to say, at least for any reader with a sense of literary history, at that park I found some very interesting memorial stones inscribed with excerpts from a number of his better known works dedicated to Lowell’s ‘bad boy’, the “king of the 1950s beat writers”.

And, just as naturally, when one thinks of Kerouac then, “On The Road”, his classic modern physical and literary ‘search’ for the meaning of America for his generation which came of age in post-World War II , readily comes to mind. No so well known is the fact that that famous youthful novel was merely part of a much grander project, an essentially autobiographical exposition by Kerouac in many volumes, starting from his birth in 1922, to chart and vividly describe his relationship to the events, great and small, of his times. The series, of which the book under review, “Maggie Cassidy”, about the trials and tribulations, the inevitable schoolboy quests for love and the “meaning of the universe” of his high school days in Lowell and a little about his prep school days is part, bears the general title “The Legend Of Duluoz”. So that is why we today, in the year of the forty anniversary of Kerouac’s death, are under the sign of “Maggie Cassidy”.

I have mentioned in a note to a review of “On The Road” after a recent re-reading of that master work that Kerouac ‘s, not unexpectedly for a novelist of the immediate post- World War II generation, worldview was dominated by what today would be regarded as deeply, if not consciously, sexist impulses. Moreover, the whole “beat” experience of which he was “king” was, with a few exceptions, a man’s trip. All of the books that I have read of his have that flavor. They may be, some of them, great literature but they are certainly men’s books.

Also, not unexpectedly, for a shy, sly, French-Canadian (with a little Native American thrown in) working class athletic youth from Lowell, Kerouac’s escapades center in this book on his high school male bonding experiences with his “corner” boys. And being, from all reports and a quick glance at his youthful photographs a handsome man, his exploits with young women. And here enters the sultry Maggie Cassidy, the Irish colleen dream of every heterosexual youth. Although the dramatic tension of this book is not exactly gripping, after all despite some very grand, descriptive narration about Lowell, about the neighborhood, about the beauties of the Merrimack River, and above all, about women, the episodes here clearly fall under the category of high school hi-jinks which have had a long literary exposition. Still, this is a nice little trip down memory lane and I can visualize some of the same streets and same building that he refers in this book from those long ago connections that I mentioned above

Note to Jack Kerouac wherever you are: Damn, you should have ‘talked’ to me about Maggie before you got involved. I grew up in a part of a town that while not “Little Dublin” was close enough to bear that title here in America. I knew a million Maggies (and Moe Coles) and I could have warned you that chandelier, lace curtain or shanty, these nice Irish Catholic girls will break your heart, or something else, every time. Now that I think about it though I never listened either. Farewell grand working class fellaheen.

Allen Ginsberg, beat generation, beat poets, beatniks, Gregory Corso, Jack Keroauc, Neal Cassady, post- World War II New York, william s.burroughs

A View From The Left (And Not Just The Left On This One-Texas Black Woman Jailed...for Voting

	Workers Vanguard No. 1133	4 May 2018

Texas

Black Woman Jailed...for Voting

The right to vote is said to be sacred in the “land of the free,” a cure-all for every injustice visited upon working people and the downtrodden. Every time a rotten contract is crammed down the throats of a unionized workforce by the bosses; every time a black youth is shot dead in the streets by racist police; every time an immigrant child is torn from his mother’s arms by Homeland Security, working people are peddled the lie that they can change things at the ballot box. But the entire history of this country proves that, for the bourgeoisie, the franchise was never meant for everyone, and that goes double for black people. Nowhere is this more evident than in the “Great State of Texas.” To this day, the political fabric of Texas is shaped by the 19th-century conspiracy whose purpose was to expand black chattel slavery into the Southwest by robbing Mexico of millions of acres of its territory.

On March 28, a vindictive Texas state judge sentenced 43-year-old Crystal Mason, a black woman, to five years behind bars for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential elections. That November, after her mother insisted that she drive in the rain to the polls, Mason voted in southern Tarrant County near Fort Worth. Mason had already been on federal supervised release for a year following the completion of a five-year prison term for a minor tax fraud conviction. According to Texas law, convicted felons are barred from voting until they have completed their sentences, including probation or parole. But Mason had never been told by anyone that she could not vote. She is out on bail and has filed a motion for a new trial. Drop all charges against Crystal Mason!

Mason’s provisional ballot was rejected and her vote never counted in the first place. In her appeal, her lawyer asserts that the state election statute is ambiguous with regard to federal supervised release, which differs substantially from parole. Mason says she may never vote again. Indeed, that is the point and the intended effect of her outrageous sentence, meant as a message to all black people and everyone else the rulers want to exclude from the “political process.”

In February 2017, another Texas woman, 37-year-old Rosa Maria Ortega, was sentenced to eight years in prison for voting in the 2012 and 2014 elections. Ortega is a permanent U.S. resident of Mexican descent who grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. A working-class mother of four teenagers, all U.S. citizens, Ortega did not realize that green card holders are not allowed to vote. “I thought I was doing something right for my country,” Ortega told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (13 February 2017). Having voted Republican, she is now the poster child for Trumpian claims of rampant ballot fraud. She is currently out on bond pending an appeal of her sentence. After Ortega’s conviction, the vicious Texas attorney general Ken Paxton gloated: “This case shows how serious Texas is about keeping its elections secure, and the outcome sends a message that violators of the state’s election law will be prosecuted to the fullest.”

It is a bitter irony that Ortega faces prison and deportation from Texas, a state formed on land that the U.S. stole from Mexico. Between 1848 and 1928, at least 232 people of Mexican descent were lynched in Texas. Under a system known as “Juan Crow,” Mexican Americans were banned from restaurants and deprived of basic democratic rights. In addition to targeting black voters, the attacks on voting rights in Texas today are also aimed at disenfranchising Mexican Americans and other Latinos, who make up 40 percent of the state’s population.

Everyone who lives in this country should have full and equal democratic rights. We oppose any restrictions on the rights of prisoners and released felons to vote. As part of our fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, we call for full voting rights for all immigrants, whether legal or “illegal.” These non-citizens who live under the class dictatorship of America’s rulers and their laws make up 7 percent of the total population—i.e., millions of people are denied full political rights.

The U.S. was built on the notion that “the people who own the country ought to govern it,” as the first Chief Justice, John Jay, put it. Originally, the franchise was restricted to property-owning white men. The bloody system of chattel slavery was enshrined in the Constitution. The deal that specified that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person when it came to determining representation gave the Southern slaveowners control of Washington. It took decades of struggle to expand the vote to poor white men, the Civil War to smash slavery and extend the franchise to black men, and it wasn’t until 1920 that women got the vote.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed under the pressure of the mass civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. Black youth and working people, along with white activists, displayed enormous courage and succeeded in getting the racist rulers to grant some formal democratic rights, such as the right to vote and an end to official legal segregation in the South. The Act was expanded in 1975 to address racist discrimination against Mexican Americans, not least in Texas.

In 2013, the Supreme Court took a knife to the Voting Rights Act, using the absurd rationale that racism in the U.S. had been largely overcome. In an article at that time, we called this decision “nothing but a punch in the face to black people” (“Supreme Court Spits on Black Rights,” WV No. 1027, 12 July 2013). The Fifteenth Amendment granting voting rights regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” was ratified in 1870. But following the defeat of Reconstruction, it became a dead letter in the states of the old Confederacy, which employed poll taxes, literacy tests and other dirty tricks—backed up by the lynch rope terror of the Ku Klux Klan and local police (often intertwined)—to keep black people from casting ballots. The assaults on black voting rights today are the latest incarnation of this old song.

Since the 2013 Supreme Court ruling, Texas, along with other former Confederate states, has been spearheading a campaign to restrict voting rights. The state’s early attempts at crafting a voter photo ID law were so blatantly discriminatory against black people and Latinos that a 2016 federal appellate court ruling required the state to soften it. A similar law in North Carolina was struck down in 2016 because it targeted black voters with “almost surgical precision,” in the words of the judge’s decision. In 2017, the Supreme Court refused to reinstate the North Carolina law. Texas, however, kept on tweaking its restrictions and was finally rewarded on April 27, when a Fifth Circuit panel upheld the newest version.

In this era of mass incarceration, the disenfranchisement of convicted felons is a transparent device for blocking large numbers of black people and Latinos from exercising basic democratic rights. Some 6 million Americans have lost the right to vote due to felony convictions. A 2015 study reported that 2.2 million black adult U.S. citizens were prohibited from voting; nationally, more than one in eight voting-aged black men were ineligible to cast a ballot in the 2014 elections.

The assault on the right to vote has mainly been carried out by Republican governors and legislators in the name of preventing “voter fraud” and safeguarding election “integrity.” For their part, Democratic politicians went along with laws restricting voting rights for felons, though in recent months a few Democrats have called for easing them—in mainly Republican states. As for voter ID laws, the Democratic Party’s opposition to these measures is centered on swing states, whose importance is highlighted by the upcoming midterm elections. The in-your-face racist bigotry of the Republicans allows the Democrats to take support from black people for granted, without having to actually do anything for them.

There is, of course, real voter fraud. On April 23, Tarrant County justice of the peace Russ Casey, a Texas Republican, pleaded guilty to rigging his own election by turning in fake signatures to secure a place on a March 6 primary ballot. While Mason is looking at five years behind bars and Ortega has been sentenced to eight, Casey’s penalty was five years of probation. And it’s not just Republicans—Texas Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson was just as good at rounding up dead people to cast ballots and stealing elections as the notorious Chicago machine of former mayor Richard J. Daley.

The ballot is a fundamental democratic right that we tenaciously defend, but fundamental change will not come through voting. It was not by the ballot that slavery met its demise. Union rights did not come from Congress. All the gains working and black people have made came through their seizing them from the racist rulers by mass struggles on the battlefields, in the factories and on the streets.

When black people are declared to have no rights that others are bound to respect, it paints a target on the back of every black man, woman and child in this country. A serious defense of those rights demands resolute struggle against the capitalist system and opposition to the political parties that uphold its rule. The fight for the rights of the oppressed contributes to the struggle of the working class for its own liberation from capitalist exploitation through socialist revolution.

In Boston- Together and free March and rally against family separation

Together and free March and rally against family separation

 

Fellow indivisible members and friends,

From the border to Boston and all over the country, families are being torn apart by a government that criminalizes, detains, and deports them. Recently the Trump administration escalated its racist attacks on immigrants by separating children from their parents at the border and putting them in cages. After public outcry, their “solution” was to keep families together... in detention centers. But jailing families is not a solution.

Families deserve to be together and free, but Trump is also keeping people from majority Muslim countries from being reunited with their families in the United States. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the Muslim Ban this week and we need to let them know they have to overturn it once and for all.

This goes beyond Trump and this administration. Now is the time to be clear: this is about putting an end to criminalization, detention, and deportations in our immigrant communities.

Mass Peace Action is cosponsoring, supporting and uplifting our immigrant allies. Join us for a march & rally on June 30th at 11 a.m. as part of a National Day of Action to stand against family separation. Here’s a link to the Boston FB  and Springfield events

Springfield event:  https://www.facebook.com/events/2062048730703835/?ti=icl

Boston event : https://www.facebook.com/events/249291692492398/?ti=icl

- Kick off rally at Boston City Hall at 11 a.m. and marching to Boston Common

- Rally will start on the Common at 12:30 p.m.

There will be a speaking program where we will hear from those impacted and organizers on the front lines. Please don't forget to RSVP.

https://actionnetwork.org/events/rally-against-family-separation-2?clear_id=true

Want to do More than March? We need volunteers to help marshal or peace keeper. No experience necessary we’ll train you sign up below

  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScgu9kPm3JirJ3dpHlZ5_LixDcnkIewnTLHqEj9I19tb_Y1BQ/viewform

Can’t make it but still want to help?  Donations will help us make our goal to put on a successful event and help our immigrant neighbors! Donate here: 

https://www.gofundme.com/boston-against-family-separation

In addition here is Accessibility information in English and Spanish:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C0ioaAsmKy2J3Yax0ujpb2XBOjvfPufpv4e-K64nG8E/mobilebasic

And a list of What not to bring in English and Spanish: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1keQ6-HnlTML8dfRT42F4WJbZzs4zmTEHWDkwfRU7Nn0/mobilebasic

Remember to bring plenty of water, sunscreen and good will, hope to see you then!

When The Blues Was Dues-Howling At The Moon-When Howlin’ Wolf Held Forth

When The Blues Was Dues-Howling At The Moon-When Howlin’ Wolf Held Forth  

  

 From The Pen Of Bart Webber

One night when Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris were sitting in the now long gone  Johnny D’s over in Somerville, over near the Davis Square monster Redline MBTA stop sipping a couple of Anchor Steam beers, a taste acquired by Sam out in Frisco town in the old days on hot nights like that one waiting for the show to begin Ralph mentioned that some music you acquired naturally, you know like kids’ songs learned in school. (The Farmer in the Dell, which forced you a city kid although you might not have designated yourself as such at that age to learn a little about the dying profession of family farmer and about farm machinery, Old MacDonald, ditto on the family farmer stuff and as a bonus the animals of the farm kingdom, Humpty Dumpty, a silly overweight goof who couldn’t maintain his balance come hell or high water although you might not have thought of that expression or used it in the high Roman Catholic Morris household out in Troy, New York where Ralph grew up and still lives, Jack and Jill and their ill-fated hill adventure looking for water like they couldn’t have gone to the family kitchen sink tap for their needs showing indeed whether you designated yourself as a city kid or not you were one of the brethren, etc. in case you have forgotten.)

Music embedded in the back of your mind, coming forth sometimes out of the blue even fifty years later (and maybe relating to other memory difficulties among the AARP-worthy but we shall skip over that since this is about the blues, the musical blues and not the day to day getting old blues).

Or as in the case of music in junior high school as Sam chimed in with his opinion as he thought about switching over to a high-shelf whiskey, his natural drink of late, despite the hot night and hot room beginning to fill up with blues aficionados who have come to listen to the “second coming,” the blues of James Montgomery and his back-up blues band. That “second coming” referring to guys like Montgomery and Eric Clapton, now greying guys, who picked up the blues, especially the citified electric blues after discovering the likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Magic Slim and James Cotton back in their 1960s youth, made a decent living out of it and were still playing small clubs and other venues to keep the tradition alive and to pass it on to the kids who were not even born when the first wave guys came out of the hell-hole Delta south of Mister James Crow sometime around or after World War II and plugged  their guitars into the next gin mill electric outlet in places off of Maxwell Street in Chicago, nursing their acts, honing their skills.  

Yeah, that hormonal bust out junior high weekly music class with Mr. Dasher which made Sam chuckle a bit, maybe that third bottle of beer sipping getting him tipsy a little, as he thought about the old refrain, “Don’t be a masher, Mister Dasher” which all the kids hung on him that time when the rhyming simon craze was going through the nation’s schools. Thinking just then that today if some teacher or school administrator was astute enough to bother to listen to what teenage kids say amongst themselves, an admittedly hard task for an adult, in an excess of caution old Mister Dasher might be in a peck of trouble if anyone wanted to be nasty about the implication of that innocent rhyme.  Yeah, Mr. Dasher, the mad monk music teacher, who wanted his charges to have a well-versed knowledge of the American and world songbooks so you were forced to remember such songs as The Mexican Hat Dance and Home On The Range under penalty of being sent up to the front of the room songbook in hand and sing the damn things. Yes, you will remember such songs unto death. (Sam and his corner boys at Doc’s Drugstore found out later that Dasher  was motivated by a desperate rear-guard action to wean his charges away from rock and roll, away from the devil’s music although he would not have called it that because he was too cool to say stuff like that, a struggle in which he was both woefully overmatched by Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck, Bo, and the crowd and wasting his breathe as they all lived for rock and roll at Doc’s Drugstore after school where he had a jukebox at his soda fountain.)  

Ralph agreed running through his own junior high school litany with Miss Hunt (although a few years older than Sam he had not run through the rhyming simon craze so had no moniker for the old witch although now he wished he had and it would not be nice either). He added that some of the remembered music  reflected the time period when you were growing up but were too young to call the music your own like the music that ran around in the background of your growing up house on the mother housewife radio or evening record player which in Ralph’s case was the music that got his parents through his father’s soldierly slogging on unpronounceable Pacific islands kicking ass and mother anxiously waiting at home for the other shoe to fall or the dreaded military officer coming up to her door telling her the bad news World War II. You know, Frank (Sinatra, the chairman of the board, that all the bobbysoxer girls, the future mothers of Sam and Ralph’s generation swooned over), The Andrew Sisters and their rums and coca colas, Peggy Lee fronting for Benny Goodman and looking, looking hard for some Johnny to do right, finally do right by her, etc. Other music, the music of their own generation, classic rock and rock came more naturally since that is what they wanted to hear when they had their transistor radios to their ear up in their bedrooms.

That mention of transistor radios got them yakking about that old instrument which got them through many a hard teenage angst and alienation night. That yakking reflecting their both getting mellow on the sweet beer and Ralph thinking that they had best switch to Tennessee sipping whisky when the wait person came by again if they were to make it through both sets that night. This transistor thing by the way for the young was small enough to put in your pocket and put up to your ear like an iPod or MP3 except you couldn’t download or anything like that. Primitive technology okay but life-saving nevertheless. Just flip the dial although the only station that mattered was WJDA, the local rock station (which had previously strictly only played the music that got all of our parents through their war before the rock break-out made somebody at the station realize that you could made more advertising revenue selling ads for stuff like records, drive-in movies, drive-in restaurants, and cool clothes and accessories than refrigerators and stoves to adults).

Oh yeah, and the beauty of the transistor you could take it up to your bedroom and shut out that aforementioned parents’ music without hassles. Nice, right. So yeah, they could hear Elvis sounding all sexy according to one girl Sam knew even over the radio and who drove all the girls crazy once they got a look at him on television, Chuck telling our parents’ world that Mr. Beethoven and his crowd, Frank’s too, that they all had to move over, Bo asking a very candid question about who put the rock in rock and roll and offering himself up as a candidate, Buddy crooning against all hope for his Peggy Sue (or was it Betty Lou), Jerry Lee inflaming all with his raucous High School Confidential  from the back of a flatbed truck, etc. again.

The blues though, the rarified country and electric urban blues of the likes of Son House, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, James Cotton, and Howlin’ Wolf was an acquired taste. Acquired by Sam through listening to folk music programs on that very same transistor radio in the early 1960s after flipping the dial one Sunday night once he got tired of what they claimed was rock music on WJDA and caught a Boston station. The main focus was on other types of roots music but when the show would take a break from down home mountain music, western swing ballads, and urban protest music the DJ would play some cuts of country or electric blues. See all the big folkies, Dylan, Tom Rush, Dave Van Ronk, people like that were wild to cover the blues in the search for serious roots music from the American songbook. So somebody, Sam didn’t know who, figured if everybody who was anybody was covering the blues in that folk minute then it made sense to play the real stuff.  (Sam later carried Ralph along on the genre after they had met down in Washington, D.C. in 1971, had been arrested and held in detention at RFK Stadium for trying to shut down the government if it did not shut the Vietnam War, had become life-long friends and Ralph began to dig the blues when he came to Cambridge to visit).

The real stuff having been around for a while, having been produced by the likes of Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf going back to the 1940s big time black migration to the industrial plants of the Midwest during World War II when there were plenty of jobs just waiting. But also having been pushed to the background, way to the background with the rise of rock and roll (although parts of rock make no sense, don’t work at all without kudos to blues chords, check it out). So it took that combination of folk minute and that well-hidden from view electric blues some time to filter through Sam’s brain.

What did not take a long time to do once Sam got “religion” was going crazy over Howlin’ Wolf when he saw him perform. Once Sam had seen him practically eat that harmonica when he was playing that instrument on How Many More Years. There the Wolf was all sweating, running to high form and serious professionalism (just ask the Stones about that polished professionalism when he showed them how to really play Little Red Rooster which they had covered early on in their career as they had covered many other Chess Records blues numbers, as had in an ironic twist a whole generation English rockers in the 1960s) and moving that big body to and fro to beat the band and playing like god’s own avenging angel, if those angels played the harmonica, and if they could play as well as he did. They both hoped that greying James Montgomery, master harmonica player in his own right, blew the roof off of the house as they spied the wait person coming their way and James moving onto the stage getting ready to burn up the microphone. Yes, that blues calling is an acquired taste and a lasting one.