Out In The B-Film Noir Night Where The Slippery Slide Sideways- Richard Basehart And Barry Sullivan’s “Tension” (1949)- A Film Review

Out In The B-Film Noir Night Where The Slippery Slide Sideways- Richard Basehart And Barry Sullivan’s “Tension” (1949)- A Film Review

DVD Review throat

By Sarah Lemoyne

Tension,   

I am feeling sky high today, feeling like I belong to the fraternity today, to the film critic circle (although my mentor the legendary journalist and reviewer Seth Garth has always made me painfully aware that in this cutthroat business you are only as good as your last review while your competitors sharpen their knives getting ready to take that big back stab if you stumble). As a cautionary tale Seth eternally mentions his old friend Sam Lowell, who I have locked horns with under his guidance, as the avatar of what he is talking about. Sam, when the deal went down, cast the deciding vote against retaining his old friend, their old friend, Allan Jackson as site manager on the simple idea that the place needed new blood. And this a guy whom Allan loves, and Sam loves him so Sam says. Point taken.

The reason I believe I belong, can give as good as I get is that in my last review, Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell’s noir-ish His Kind Of Woman, I was able to take a leaf from the film critic’s playbook for use when you have no “hook” to lure the reader in and came up smelling like roses. I went on my own to the old tried and true “boy meets girl” ploy which has saved a million movies and not a few reviewers. Seth was happy to read the review and texted congratulations since he was out of town trying to coax Allan Jackson to come back and do another set of Encore Introductions for a series he edited several years ago and so I was on my own. Even curmudgeon Sam Lowell let up for a minute, put away his saber and acknowledged that for a young gal, his term of endearment, what I did was pretty smart and savvy. Most of all Greg Green the site manager liked what I did and granted my request to do more film noir reviews and here I am reviewing another minor B-noir classic Tension. (I did not expect after only two reviews to get a crack at the major classics like Out Of The Past or L.A. Confidential but I am on my way up the challenging and ruthless food chain-watch your backs.)

During my on-going battles with Sam Lowell, helped as I have gladly expressed on more than one occasion by Seth, I have come to realize that my true calling is to be the 21^st century film noir diva (and other stuff too but that is enough for right now). Part of that realization was that Sam’s definitive The Life and Times of Film Noir:1940-1960 which the older writers bow down to does not stand up under 21^st century conditions. (Seth made me laugh one time when I asked him if he had actually read all 900 plus pages of the Lowell tome and he said with a smirk, his trademark smirk, was I kidding the thing as impossible to finish, a real snorer. Then he let the cat out of the bag and told me he had probably written half of it and he had mulled over the other half with Sam so he felt no compulsion to ever read the thing-to even consul it like half the other film critics did who wanted to crib some stuff with no heavy lifting). There are major flaws in the analysis, again for a modern audience too familiar with real life drama. Moreover, Sam never revised or updated after 1960 so there was, is plenty of room for me to make my nuggets with what is missing for the last half century.          

But now to B-noir-dom circa Sam’s volume time. In a funny way this is a police procedural which I think is the weakest link to the noir genre. The weakest part of Sam’s work as well since I will admit that he knows his noir private detectives but I don’t think he really had any sympathy for coppers, and neither did Seth, and so they both underplay any smart public coppers skills. The overriding premise of noir including obviously police procedurals is that crime does not pay and that the villains will get their just desserts, will face the eternal slammer or the big step-off, Seth and Sam’s term for state-sanctioned executions, even if the good guys don’t always fare that well. Naturally coppers, public coppers, would have you believe that they have solved every big case, every murder, one case with stealth, determination and perseverance. Baloney (courtesy of Seth). Most cases go to the deep cold case storage bin and only resurface as exploitative television series (and then are rarely solved there as well except when the perp in moral quandary and remorse shows up at the police station bleeding from all pores with guilt ready to face her or his maker-bullshit, me).  

This lead cop, Collier, who the hell came pronounce his last name and everybody called him Collier so that is what I will use, since he made lieutenant thought he had everything under control, could sweat the truth out of any situation by some ring around rosy strategy of putting the big squeeze, putting elastic-like tension on the whole operation until somebody cracks. Told us all how he had it wrapped up and delivered no sweat in the cameo intro all braggadocio and assorted bullshit. To prime us, to justify the camera look he took us through the notorious Quimby case, the subject of this noir (notorious since the wrong person went to the gas chamber, a woman, Claire, Quimby’s unfaithful wife, took the big step-off when Collier tricked her weak head playing on her weak knees for men into confessing after some lame ruse which we will get to below). Trouble was that Collier was long gone, had taken to the ashes, better had gone to sleep with the fishes from what I heard when some Claire hometown high school sweetie with more guts than good sense gutted him and dumped him in the briny Pacific near La Jolla to be washed clean by the Japan currents, before the information came out via Quimby’s girlfriend Mary, played by Cyd Charisse who was no mean dancer but did not go through her steps here, about who and who did not do what. The “did not” was that Claire had not killed her lover but was set up by Collier to play the patsy since she seemed the logical choice justified by his well-advertised introduction.   

No question Claire was no lady, was a tramp, was what even young women of my generation call any man’s woman, a woman of easy virtue by Seth’s, always looking for the main chance, always looking for the best next thing as long as it was male and had money, lots of it. But that craven desire is no reason tramps, the hell with it lets call a thing by its real name whores, have to take the fall for some background dangler. The set-up was a beauty I have to admit. Everything worked out according to plan once Quimby, played by nerdish Richard Basehart, figured out how to commit the perfect murder. How to do murder, one and walk away. According to my sources this blonde as sin Claire, played by notorious femme, maybe better wannabe femme, Audrey Totter in the film, was working the docks in San Diego looking for some red hot sailors with plenty of dough from their exertions and no women for a while (we will not even get into the “girlfriend” stuff at sea as the sailors paired up in those seaborne bunks something Sam would not even dare mention when he was a reviewing All Aboard and totally missed the obvious guy who killed the “fairy,” the word used in the film, his shipside lover being of that prissy pre-Stonewall generation that took forever to speak about the “love that dare not speak its name,” speak of sodomy and the like).

Bingo along comes Walter Mitty, oops, sailor boy Quimby, with dough and big plans. She reeled him in, reeled him in good and made the cardinal mistake every tram makes-see what he has besides the bulging wallet (and bulging pants I thought I would put in to show I can be as salacious as the guys when I want to be even though I have my girlfriend Clara keeping me warm in other ways). Didn’t know that he had no jack, had big plans but no dough as they migrated north, married if you can believe that, to L.A. and Collier’s bailiwick. That was like lemmings to the sea for Claire once she got wise as she tried to make every man in town while humble pie Quimby was working like seven dervishes as manager of an all-night drugstore to make his scratch. To give her my grandparents’ post-World War II dream of a nice suburban home on a little space lot with maybe a garden, quiet and maybe kids and dogs galore, galore the kids part.                

Claire balked, balked and once she knew Quimby’s score grabbed every man in town until she hustled Barney with a Malibu address, nice suits and a big ass Buick which my grandfather said in his Nash Rambler world was the ticket to paradise. Took a hike on Walter, no, Warren sorry got mixed up on my too clever Walter Mitty description and never looked back, blew the stinking apartment hovel they lived in with a suitcase in hand and whatever sex toys would keep things interesting. (This is another thing guys like Sam, even Seth for that matter, balked on talking about when they were denigrating tramps, whores, refused to talk about the tools of the trade.) Naturally Warren took it hard, had many sleepless nights wondering how to get his dame back. Made the big, very big ninety-eight pound weakling mistake of cruising to that Malibu hideaway and confronting Claire and Barney out in their turf. All he got for his efforts was sand in his mouth from a Barney punch and a good laugh from kiss-off Claire.

I admit this is where I got a lot more respect for Warren when he responded to that series of insults with an idea-with a perfect plan to murder Barney for making him look like some cheapjack punk in front of his two-timing, at least two, wife. Decided to go the fake identity route that had worked plenty of times before when he researched the matter. Changed his appearance, name, occupation, address to Paul something, does a last name really matter since it was all smoke and mirrors anyway, and was off. What he intended to do was by stealth some dark moonless high tide night when Claire was at the movies or shacking up with her next best thing once Barney wouldn’t give her every fucking thing she wanted was to head to Malibu and do the dirty deed.

Warren went out there but just then things were kind of murky, said he had passed out and wasn’t sure what happened. He was relating this to his new girlfriend, that Mary mentioned before, whom he took up with as part of his cover. Had met her at the apartment complex where he was known as Paul, Paul something. Like I said this Mary was a looker, was nice. What Paul didn’t know, didn’t find out about until later was that behind that angelic smile Mary was running a high-end pornography “club” for rich clients with kinky tastes and the money to indulge them out of the apartment complex. With the landlady’s, Ma Geiger’s, blessing. Mary had taken over for Ma, whose husband Arthur had started the business in Bay City but had been wasted by his boyfriend on the orders of Eddie Mars the gangster who ran the operations, when she got too old to act as a front for the eye-candy hungry clientele.

Enter the police, enter bozo Collier, or first enter Claire who came back home to Warren and his dull night manager of the something out of Edward Hopper Nighthawk lame drugstore since her Barney had been killed, murdered. Now enter the cops who have already put a target on Claire’s back and give her the third degree. Claire “lived” out there nobody else had been seen around, Claire had a gun permit and so they wrapped that baby up no problem. Until Mary looking for her man, looking for missing Paul, yeah, Paul somebody went to the coppers and they really do put two and two together once they get a photograph of him from Mary (not naked, okay remember this was 1940s Hollywood in uptight 1940s Cold War America) and realize, wow, the two guys are one. Immediately Warren was targeted as the fall guy, the patsy.

Collier had put a big bull’s eye on Warren’s photograph although he never gave up hope that he could snag Claire for the crime since she would not give him a tumble even when he had threatened to have her locked up for prostitution. Old Barney had been killed by a gun and he had no gun, had asked Warren if he owned a gun and he said no. Satisfied with that answer he went back to Claire, Claire and her missing gun. Played her like a violin telling her that without a gun he would not be able to nail Warren. That got her thinking, thinking wrongly but thinking that she could get out from under the murder wrap by framing Warren with a big frame. See Claire had had an argument with Barney that night Warren had showed up earlier and had been in a fog, really overwrought nerves from the idea of killing a man. He had threatened her over her weak knees for men-other men and she had shot him, had thought she had shot him, shot him dead, very dead as Seth would say. Collier figured that she was guilty of something and if he ever expected to make captain he had better have a collar on this case. Claire was built for the frame and it fit, fit snugly when he pulled the tense elastic on her feeble brain.

Yeah, Claire took the big step-off for no other reason that her whole freaking rotten but murder-free life led her down that back alley. Collier did make captain although little good it did him when that hometown Claire sweetheart found out the real story. Warren never got over Claire’s execution despite all of Mary’s charms-and the dough rolling in from the “dirty pictures” clubs once Eddie Mars gave her the franchises for Southern California. Warren wound up a homeless junkie over in the Bunker Hill district of L.A. and died a few years after that. Mary on her own deathbed told her confessor, her priest what had happened. The night Warren, Claire and she were in Barney’s Malibu digs she noticed that Warren was too chicken, was too much the ninety-eight pound weakling to crush Barney and he had fled the scene in panic and lightheadedness. Claire had that altercation with Barney and went bang-bang. Claire had fled as well, panicked, dropping the gun. All Mary did was provide the extra bang before Claire regained her wits and went back for the vagrant gun. So sweet and nice Mary walked. When the dust settled the only one still standing beside Mary was public copper I think his name was Conrad something who just chuckled a knowing cop chuckle.                            

As The Anniversary Of The Execution Of Sacco and Vanzetti Approaches (1927)-Sacco's Letter To His Son-The Case That Will Never Die

As The Anniversary Of The Execution Of Sacco and Vanzetti Approaches (1927)-Sacco's Letter To His Son-The Case That Will Never Die

 


SACCO AND VANZETTI- THE CASE THAT WILL NOT DIE NOR SHOULD IT



DVD REVIEW



SACCO AND VANZETTI, PETER MILLER, 2006



I have used some of the points mentioned here in previous reviews of books about the Sacco and Vanzetti case.



Those familiar with the radical movement know that at least once in every generation a political criminal case comes up that defines that era. One thinks of the Haymarket Martyrs in the 19th century, the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930's, the Rosenbergs in the post-World War II Cold War period and today Mumia Abu-Jamal. In America after World War I when the Attorney General Palmer-driven ‘red scare’ brought the federal government’s vendetta against foreigners, immigrants and militant labor fighters to a white heat that generation's case was probably the most famous of them all, Sacco and Vanzetti. The exposure of the raw tensions within American society that came to the surface as a result of that case is the subject of the film under review.



Using documentary footage, reenactment and ‘talking head’ commentary by interested historians, including the well-known author of popular America histories Howard Zinn, the director Peter Miller and his associates bring this case alive for a new generation to examine. In the year 2007 one of the important lessons for leftists to be taken from the case is the question of the most effective way to defend such working class cases. I will address that question further below but here I wish to point out that the one major shortcoming of this film is a lack of discussion on that issue. I might add that this is no mere academic issue as the current case of the death-row prisoner, militant journalist Mumia-Abu-Jamal, graphically illustrates. Notwithstanding that objection this documentary is a very satisfactory visual presentation of the case for those not familiar with it.



A case like that of Sacco and Vanzetti, accused, convicted and then executed in 1927 for a robbery and double murder committed in a holdup of a payroll delivery to a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1920, does not easily conform to any specific notion that the average citizen today has of either the state or federal legal system. Nevertheless, one does not need to buy into the director’s overall thesis that the two foreign-born Italian anarchists in 1920 were railroaded to know that the case against them 'stunk' to high heaven. And that is the rub. Even a cursory look at the evidence presented (taking the state of jurisprudence at that time into consideration) and the facts surrounding the case would force the most mildly liberal political type to know the “frame” was on.



Everyone agrees, or should agree, that in such political criminal cases as Sacco and Vanzetti every legal avenue including appeals, petitions and seeking grants of clemency should be used in order to secure the goal, the freedom of those imprisoned. This film does an adequate job of detailing the various appeals and other legal wrangling that only intensified as the execution neared. Nevertheless it does not adequately address a question that is implicit in its description of the fight to save the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti. How does one organize and who does one appeal to in a radical working class political defense case?



The film spends some time on the liberal local Boston defense organizations and the 'grandees' and other celebrities who became involved in the case, and who were committed almost exclusively to a legal defense strategy. It does not, however, pay much attention to the other more radical elements of the campaign that fought for the pair’s freedom. It gives short shrift to the work of the Communists and their International Red Aid (the American affiliate was named the International Labor Defense and headed by Communist leader James P. Cannon, a man well-known in anarchist circles and a friend of Carlos Tresca, a central figure in the defense case) that organized meetings, conferences and yes, political labor strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti, especially in Europe. The tension between those two conceptions of political defense work still confronts us to day as we fight the seemingly never-ending legal battles thrown up since 9/11 for today’s Sacco and Vanzetti’s- immigrants, foreigners and radicals (some things do not change with time). If you want plenty of information on the Sacco and Vanzetti case and an interesting thesis about its place in radical history, the legal history of Massachusetts and the social history of the United States this is not a bad place to stop. Hopefully it will draw the viewer to read one or more of the many books on the case. Honor the Memory of Sacco and Vanzetti.

Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s Song Of The Same Name In Mind

Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s Song Of The Same Name In Mind   

By Fritz Taylor 

[Sam Lowell and I have known each other for a long time, since a time back in the 1970s when our paths met at an anti-war veterans’ conference in New York (a conference which would wind up setting up a Vietnam Veterans Against the War [VVAW] chapter in his hometown area in Boston and mine in my hometown Atlanta, Georgia area. We would see each in places we were protesting one or another egregious acts of the American government, the American military against some poor benighted country that got caught in the cross-hairs of some fool president. Later, after the ebb tide of the anti-war, the Vietnam anti-war had happened we connected in other ways via our veteran connection and I would, at his request, write something veteran-related that he could not put a handle on. Something that Allan Jackson, who was the editor then when this publication was in hard-copy form, would accept and for when I needed some ready cash.

The subject matter of this piece, Sam’s not being at peace with himself is done with his permission since it is such a personal and emotional matter. None of us men from the Vietnam era, soldier or civilian, political activist or not, have been as forthcoming as the younger men who have come after us, our children and now grandchildren (I dare not say great-grandchildren but I know some of us ae in that category). We were all about change and seeking a newer world as a guy named Markin, also a vet, who didn’t make it through used to say but we were more like our World War II fathers when it came to speaking of personal matters. A shame. This piece while not a breakthrough since we have been mulling things over the past few years, is a big step for Sam and me, Sam to narrate and me to write about such matters.

The conversations we had around putting this piece together actually happened a couple of years ago just after, as will be noted below, his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, not wife, for he had had three of those and they both agreed they were better off just living together since she had been married twice had left their house (Sam had made us laugh one time when he mentioned that it was cheaper too between alimony and child support). This piece was, is something of a therapy session for Sam’s angst at Laura’s leaving and his inability to put out the fire in his head. We decided to put it aside for a while until it made sense to publish the results of those conversations. Better Sam and Laura have been talking again since both recognized that the bonds between them were very strong and they both, frankly, my frankly, missed each other’s company. Sam is really sending Laura a bouquet on this one.  And I am glad to play the florist. Fritz Taylor]       

************    

Sam Lowell was, is a queer duck, an odd-ball kind of guy who couldn’t stop keeping his head from exploding with about seventeen ideas at once and the determination to do all seventeen come hell or high water. And not seventeen things like mowing the lawn or taking out the rubbish but what he called “projects” which in Sam’s case meant political projects and writings and other things along that line. Yeah, couldn’t put out “the fire in his head” the way he told it to his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, one night at supper after she had confronted him with her observation, and not for the first time, that he was getting more irritable, was more often short with her of late, had seemed distant, had seemed to be drifting into some bad place, a place where he was not at peace with himself. That not “at peace” with himself an expression that Laura had coined that night to express the way that she saw his current demeanor. That would be the expression he would use in his group therapy group to describe his condition when they met later that week. Would almost shout out the words in despair when the moderator-psychologist asked him pointedly whether he felt at peace with himself at that moment and he pointed responded immediately that he was not. Maybe it was at that point, more probably though that night when Laura confronted him with his own mirror-self that told Sam his was one troubled man.  

Yea, it was that seventeen things in order and full steam ahead that got him in trouble on more than on occasion. The need to do so the real villain of the piece. See Sam had just turned seventy and so he should have been trying to slow down, slow down enough to not try to keep doing those seventeen things like he had when he was twenty or thirty but no he was not organically capable of doing so, at least until the other shoe dropped. Dropped hard.      

It was that “other shoe” dropping that made him take stock of his situation, although it had been too little too late. One afternoon a few days after that stormy group therapy session he laid down on his bed to just think through what was driving him to distraction, driving that fury inside him that would not let him be, as he tried to put on the fire in his head. That laying down itself might have been its own breakthrough since he had expected, had fiercely desired to finish up an article that he was writing on behalf a peace walk that was to take place shortly up in Maine, a walk that was dedicated to stopping the wars, mostly of the military-type but also of environmental degradation against Mother Nature. 

Sam, not normally introspective about his past, about the events growing up that had formed him, events that had as he had told Laura on more than one occasion almost destroyed him. So that was where he started, started to try to find out why he could not relax, had to be “doing and making” as Laura called it under happier circumstances, had to be fueling that fire in his head. Realized that afternoon that as kid in order to survive he had learned at a very young age that in order to placate (and avoid) his overweening mother he had to keep his own counsel, had to go deep inside his head to find solace from the storms around his house. For years he had thought the driving force was because he was a middle child and thus had to fend for himself while his parents (and grandparents) doted on respectively his younger and older brothers. But no it had been deeper than that, had been driven by feelings of inadequacy before his mother’s onslaught against his fragile head.        

As Sam traced how at three score and ten he could point to various incidents that had driven him on, had almost made him organically incapable of not ever having an active brain, of going off to some dark places where the devils would not let him relax, that kept him going around and around he realized that he was not able to relax on his own, would need something greater than himself if he was to unwind. Laura had emphatically told him that he would have to take that journey on his own, would have to settle himself down if he was to gain any peace in his whole damn world. Sam suddenly noticed after Laura had expressed her opinion that she had always been the picture of calm, had been his rock when he was in his furies. Funny he had always underestimated, always undervalued that calmness, that solid rock. He, in frustration, at his own situation asked Laura how she had maintained the calm that seemed to follow her around her world.         

Laura, after stating that she too had her inner demons, had to struggle with the same kind of demons that Sam had faced as a child and that she still had difficulties maintaining an inner calm, told Sam that her daily Buddha-like meditations had carried her to a better place. Sam was shocked at her answer. He had always known that Laura was drawn to the spiritual trends around their milieu, the “New Age stuff” he called her interest since it seemed that she had taken tidbits from every new way to salvation outside of formal religion (although she had had bouts with that as well discarding her Methodist high heavens Jehovah you are on your own in this wicked old world upbringing for the communal comfort of the Universalist-Unitarian brethren). He had respected her various attempts to survive in the world the best way she could but those roads were not for him, smacked too much of some new religion, some new road that he could not travel on. But he was also desperate to be at peace, a mantra that he was increasing using to describe his plight.    

Then Laura suggested that they attend a de-stress program that was being held at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as part of what was billed as HUB-week, a week of medical, therapeutic, technological and social events and programs started by a number of well-known institutions in the Boston area like MGH, Harvard, MIT and others. Sam admitted to being clueless about what a de-stress program would be about and had never heard of a Doctor Benson who a million years before had written a best-selling book about the knot the West had put itself in trying to get ahead and offered mediation as a way out of the impasse. Sam was skeptical but agreed to go.

At the event which lasted about two hours various forms of meditative practice were offered including music and laughter yoga. Sam in his skeptical mind passed on those efforts. The one segment that drew his attention, the first segment headed by this Doctor Benson had been centered on a simple technique to reduce stress, to relax in fact was called the relax response. Best of all the Doctor had invited each member of the audience to sample his wares. Pick a word or short phrase to focus on, close your eyes, put your hands on your lap and consecrate, really try to concentrate, on that picked term for five minutes (the optimum is closer to ten plus minutes in an actual situation).          

Sam admitted candidly to Laura that while attempting fitfully focusing on one thing, in his case the phrase “at peace,” he had suffered many distractions but that he was very interested in pursuing the practice since he had actually felt that he was getting somewhere before time was called. Laura laughed at Sam’s response, so Sam-like expecting to master in five minutes a technique that she had spent years trying to pursue and had not been anywhere near totally focused yet. He asked her to help him to get started and they did until Sam felt he could do the procedure on his own.

We now have to get back to that “other shoe” dropping though. Although Sam had expressed his good intentions, had felt better after a while Laura had felt that he needed to go on his journey without her. She too now felt that she had to seek what she was looking for alone in this wicked world despite how long they had been together. So Laura called it quits, moved out of the house that she and Sam had lived in for years. Sam is alone on his journey now, committed to trying to find some peace inside despite his heartbreak over the loss of Laura. Every once in a while though in a non-meditative moment he curses that fire in his head. Yeah, he wished he could have put out that fire in his head long ago.       

The Magnificent Seven- Potshot-A Spenser Crime Novel by Robert B. Parker-A Review

The Magnificent Seven- Potshot-A Spenser Crime Novel by Robert B. Parker-A Review 

Book Review

By Sam Lowell

Potshot, Robert B. Parker, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2001 

Of late I have been on something of a Spenser crime detection novel run, you know those sagas of the Boston-based P.I. with the big burly  physique and the no nonsense grit and determination to see a case through to the end, the bitter end if necessary, written by the late Robert B. Parker. I started out several reviews of those books by explaining that most of the year when I review books I review high-toned literary masterpieces or squirrelly little historical books fit for the academy. I also said that come summer time you never know will turn up on your summer reading list and why. So blame this run on the summer heat if you must.  I confessed that like any other heated, roasted urban dweller I was looking for a little light reading to while away the summer doldrums. Then I went into genesis about how I wound up running the rack, or part of the rack, after all there were some forty Spenser books in the series before Parker passed away in 2010.  I will get to the review of his 2001 effort Potshot in a minute after I explain how I came to read yet another Parker crime novel for crying out loud.

See, as I have mentioned elsewhere of late in reviewing some of the other Parker-etched books every year when the doldrums come I automatically reach for a little classic crime detection from the max daddy masters of the genre Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett from my library to see the real deal, to see how the masters worked their magic, in order to spruce up (and parse, if possible) my own writing. This summer when I did so I noticed a book Poodle Spring by Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker. This final Philip Marlowe series book was never finished by Chandler before he died in 1959. Parker finished it up in 1989.

Robert B. Parker, of course, had been a name known to me as the crime novel writer of the Spenser series of which I had read several of the earlier ones before moving on to others interests. That loss of interest centered on the increasingly formulistic way Parker packaged the Spenser character with his chalk board scratching to my mind repetition of his eating habits, his culinary likes and dislikes, his off-hand racial solidarity banter with his black compadre Hawk, his continually touting Spenser’s physical and mental “street cred” toughness and his so-called monogamous and almost teenage-like love affair with Susan. They collectively did not grow as characters but became stick figures serving increasingly less interesting plots.

Checking up on what Parker had subsequently written in the series to see if I had been rash in my judgment I noticed and grabbed another Chandler-Parker collaboration or sorts reviewed in this space previously  Perchance To Dream: Robert B. Parker’s Sequel To Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Since I was on a roll, was being guided by the ghost of Raymond Chandler maybe, I decided to check out Spenser again. And because we still have several weeks left of summer and crime novels have the virtue of not only being easy on the brain in the summer heat but quick reads I figured to play out my hand a little and read a few other Parker works. Now we are all caught up on genesis.

An Encore Presentation-“Searching For The American Songbook” With New Introductions By Allan Jackson-Smokestack Lightning, Indeed- With Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf In Mind

An Encore Presentation-“Searching For The American Songbook” With New Introductions By Allan Jackson-Smokestack Lightning, Indeed- With Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf In Mind

Allan Jackson Introduction

I have been around the publishing, editing, writing business a long time so I know when the dime drops it can drop for thee. Know first-hand having been the subject of a vote of no confidence by the younger writers at this publication aided and abetted by my long-time hometown high school friend Sam Lowell who cast the deciding vote for my ouster based on his notion that “the torch had to be passed.”  Naturally I was pissed off although maybe in the end Sam was half-right to do what he did. In any case that is politics in this cutthroat business and it comes with the territory. After the purge and my exile Sam sent out an olive branch to me in what he too called my “exile” and got me back here to do a plum job doing the Encore Introductions to the very successful and sweated out The Roots Are the Toots rock and roll series which I fathered and which I claim was the best job of editing, cajoling, whipping, nagging, etc. I ever did in my long career.

That assignment though whetted my appetite to do more encore introductions (although definitely not looking to get back the site manager’s job which fell to Greg Green whom I actually brought in to do the day to day operation which I was heartily sick of and who wound up with the whole ball of wax) and I was fortunate enough to get Sam, now head of the Editorial Board put in place after my exile to ensure that there would not be a return to “one man” rule, to get me an assignment doing the encore intros for the Sam and Ralph Stories about the improbable life-long friendship and political activism of two very different working-class guys who met on the “battlefields” of the struggle against the Vietnam War.

 Then, apparently, I pressed my luck when I asked to do the encore presentations for the Film Noir series which really was my baby despite the fact that Sam Lowell did all the heavy lifting and Zack James most of the best of the writings. I tussled with both Sam and Greg over this to no avail. Sam for obvious reasons wanted to do what he considered his baby and Greg because I don’t think he though it was a good idea for me to be continuing to work here even as a contributing editor. I proved to be wrong and I should have slapped my hand to my head when I thought about it in this damn cutthroat business. Sam pulled rank, pulled his chair of the Ed Board card and Greg fell down and payed homage to his request. As the next best thing in the universe today I got this highly regarded assignment which Si Lannon was supposed to do but begged off of having been ill for a while and passed off to me.

Of course Searching for the American Songbook, the idea behind it anyway was, is very far from the devotion that we of the Generation of ’68, those who came of age in the mid-1950s paid to rock and roll, now called the classic age of rock and roll, the age begat by Elvis. Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and a ton of other talent that got us on our dancing feet. Frankly, as Sam mentioned in one of his introductions, we were rebelling, naturally rebelling looking back on the times, against our parents’ slogging through the Great Depression and World War II music from the likes of Frank Sinatra and the Andrews Sisters heard wafting (Sam’s forever-etched in the brain word) through the early 1950s house on the family radio). Having now gone through a couple of generations of changes in musical taste, guess what, those latter generations have up and rebelled against our “old fogie” music. What age and experience has taught though is that the mystical mythical American Songbook is a very big tent, has plenty for everyone. Even that music from our parents’ generation that sounded so “square” has made a big “comeback” even if the emotional roller-coaster for a lot of us who used that musical uprising as a big step toward our own understandings of the world have never quite calmed down, the battle of the generations never quite settled at anything but an “armed truce.” (Truth to tell the passing on of that parental generation has left many of us with things that now can never be resolved.)          

Which brings us to the idea behind the idea. This series for the most part was Bart Webber’s “baby” since he was the first guy to “break-out” of the classic rock and roll music we lived and died for in the 1970s. No, that is not true, not true as many things are not true in dealing with events and personalities of guys from the old neighborhood, the old Acre section of North Adamsville. The driving force toward the big tent look at the American Songbook was done by one Peter Paul Markin, forever known as the Scribe, who was the first guy out of the blocks to make the connection between ancient blues and the roots of rock and roll. Was the first guy who caught the whiff of that “folk minute” from the early 1960s and dragged some of us in his wake. All Bart did was expand of those understandings to visit jazz, Cajun music, Zydeco, be-bop, and a host of other musical genre including those World War II pop hits that used to drive us crazy. Two things you need to know going forward-the sketches will be very eclectic as the big tent idea implies and the reason that Bart Webber was tagged with this assignment originally was the still bitter fact that the Scribe had given up the ghost long ago murdered through his own hubris and delusions down in Mexico on a busted drug deal in the mid-1970s. A big fall from grace, a very big fall which we still mourn today.

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From The Pen Of Bart Webber   

Sometimes a picture really can be worth a thousand words, a thousand words and more as in the case Howlin’ Wolf doing his Midnight Creep (the capitals no accident since we always reverently used that term once we had heard in one of his songs) in the photograph above taken from an album of his work but nowadays with the advances in computer technology and someone’s desire to share also to be seen on sites such as YouTube where you can get a real flavor of what that mad man was about when he got his blues wanting habits on. In fact I am a little hesitate to use a bunch of words describing Howlin’ Wolf in high gear since maybe I would leave out that drop of perspiration dripping from his overworked forehead and that salted drop might be the very thing that drove him that night or describing his oneness with his harmonica because that might cause some karmic funk.

So, no, I am not really going to go on and on about his midnight creep but when the big man got into high gear, when he went to a place where he sweated (not perspired) profusely, a little ragged in voice and eyes all shot to hell he roared for his version of the high white note. Funny, a lot of people, myself for a while included, used to think that the high white note business was strictly a jazz thing, maybe somebody like the “Prez” Lester Young or Duke’s Johnny Hodges after hours, after the paying customers had had their fill, or what they thought was all those men had in them, shutting the doors tight, putting up the tables leaving the chairs for whoever came by around dawn, grabbing a few guys from around the town as they finished their gigs and make the search, make a serious bid to blow the world to kingdom come. Some nights they were on fire and blew that big note out in to some heavy air and who knows where it landed, most nights though it was just “nice try.” One night I was out in Frisco when “Saps” McCoy blew a big sexy sax right out the door of Chez Benny’s over in North Beach when North Beach was just turning away from be-bop “beat” and that high white note, I swear, blew out to the bay and who knows maybe all the way to the Japan seas. But see if I had, or anybody had, thought about it for a minute jazz and the blues are cousins, cousins no question so of course Howlin’ Wolf blew out that high white note more than once, plenty including a couple of shows I caught him at when he was not in his prime.         

The photograph (and now video) that I was thinking of is one where he is practically eating the harmonica as he performs How Many More Years (and now like I say thanks to some thoughtful archivist you can go on to YouTube and see him doing his devouring act in real time and in motion, wow, and also berating the father we never knew Son House for showing up drunk). Yes, the Wolf could blast out the blues and on this one you get a real appreciation for how serious he was as a performer and as blues representative of the highest order.

Howlin’ Wolf like his near contemporary and rival Muddy Waters, like a whole generation of black bluesmen who learned their trade at the feet of old-time country blues masters like Charley Patton, the aforementioned Son House who had his own personal fight with the devil, Robert Johnson who allegedly sold his soul to the devil out on Highway 61 so he could get his own version of that high white note, and the like down in Mississippi or other southern places in the first half of the twentieth century. They as part and parcel of that great black migration (even as exceptional musicians they would do stints in the sweated Northern factories before hitting Maxwell Street) took the road north, or rather the river north, an amazing number from the Delta and an even more amazing number from around Clarksville in Mississippi right by that Robert Johnson-spooked Highway 61 and headed first maybe to Memphis and then on to sweet home Chicago.  

They went where the jobs were, went where the ugliness of Mister James Crow telling them sit here not there, walk here but not there, drink the water here not there, don’t look at our women under any conditions and on and on did not haunt their every move (although they would find not racial Garden of Eden in the North, last hired, first fired, squeezed in cold water flats too many to a room, harassed, but they at least has some breathing space, some room to create a little something they could call their own and not Mister’s), went where the big black migration was heading after World War I. Went also to explore a new way of presenting the blues to an urban audience in need of a faster beat, in need of getting away from the Saturday juke joint acoustic country sound with some old timey guys ripping up three chord ditties to go with that jug of Jack Flash’s homemade whiskey (or so he called it).

So they, guys like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Magic Slim, Johnny Shines, and James Cotton prospered by doing what Elvis did for rock and rock and Bob Dylan did for folk and pulled the hammer down on the old electric guitar and made big, big sounds that reached all the way back of the room to the Red Hat and Tip Top clubs and made the max daddies and max mamas jump, make some moves. And here is where all kinds of thing got intersected, as part of all the trends in post-World War II music up to the 1960s anyway from R&B, rock and roll, electric blues and folk the edges of the music hit all the way to then small white audiences too and they howled for the blues, which spoke to some sense of their own alienation. Hell, the Beatles and more particularly lived to hear Muddy and the Wolf. The Stones even went to Mecca, to Chess Records to be at one with Muddy. And they also took lessons from Howlin’ Wolf himself on the right way to play Little Red Rooster which they had covered and made famous in the early 1960s (or infamous depending on your point of view since many radio stations including some Boston stations had banned it from the air originally).

Yes, Howlin’ Wolf and that big bad harmonica and that big bad voice that howled in the night did that for a new generation, pretty good right.