Robbing The Rich To Give To The Poor-The Real Story Behind The Robin Hood Legend-With Errol Flynn’s “The Adventures Of Robin Hood” (1938) In Mind

Robbing The Rich To Give To The Poor-The Real Story Behind The Robin Hood Legend-With Errol Flynn’s “The Adventures Of Robin Hood” (1938) In Mind      

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

The Adventures Of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Haviland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, 1938

Some legends are all baloney, so much hot air. The legend of Robin Hood (who worked under many aliases a few of which have come down in history depending on what scam he was working out and which seem verifiable-Bob Sherwood, Robert Wood, John Hood, Jack Woodson) is the max daddy of one strain of the legend genre. The “rob from the rich, give to the poor” stuff which has had many progenies since his time coming through John of Gaunt to Jim Wiggins to Sam Portage down to Pretty Boy Floyd made famous by Woody Guthrie (and debunked by no less a “New West” authority than Larry McMurtry) to Pretty James Preston in the early 1960s. As usual, and the case of Pretty James Preston, comes to mind since he robbed banks and other places in broad daylight, near the hometown where I grew up, this is all hogwash. Oh, Pretty James might have left a fifty- cent tip at some diner (probably his dead ass way to impress some sullen waitress) or given his used clothing to Goodwill or the Salvation Army (both places where he was well known when he was down on his luck) but the lies that he paid rents for people who lived in the projects, a place where he grew up, brought hundreds gallons of milk for the kids at the elementary school he had gone to, or bought an automobile for the priests up at Sacred Heart are just that. Lies. A fairy tale made up by Scott Lewis a writer for the North Adamsville Ledger who knew Pretty James and essentially acted as a press agent for him.              

Let’s get back to the max daddy, this Robin Hood, or whatever his name was which considering this is all the stuff of legend probably is not his real name although a Sir Robert Woodson did own a lot of land and was some honcho after helping Richard II aka the Lion-Hearted take back his throne way back in the 12^th century around the time the legend got started. The Woodson tax rolls and home court records are still extant, and they show he taxed his peasant land-holders, his “employees” more heavily than other landowners in the area. Had more of these peasants on the rack for simple crimes than any other, more than a guy named Sir Guy Gilroy who was supposedly the local bad baron before Robert took over. Since we can date the legends from this time and this location it is not far-fetched to say no way that this guy was giving to the poor anything but cold porridge and steel. In short, a rather fitting forbear for Pretty James Preston.    

As everybody knows, or should know, legends become legends through repetition, usually oral but in the modern ages through print and eventually through film which is where we are today. This film review of Errol Flynn’s 1938 portrayal of this Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood is a classic modern case of puffing up this “good guy” legend for modern generations just as Woody Guthrie gussied up the murderous Pretty Boy Floyd back in the 1930s as well. Here is how the thing spirals out of control for yet another time.  

King Richard II of England, nominally a Christian, was seriously into leading crusades against the infidels, the Moslems, in the Middle East as much for the bounty as for the faith (sound familiar). On his way back from this trip he was taken prisoner by some geek king in Vienna, an enemy. That detention led his younger brother Prince John, played by Claude Rains last seen in this space walking arm and arm with Humphrey Bogart into the mist looking for a beautiful friendship after letting Victor Lazlo with wife Ilsa leave on the last plane to Lisbon to lead the anti-fascist struggle in Europe, to plot to take his shot at the empty throne. Naturally he needed allies, allies like Sir Guy Gilroy, played by Basil Rathbone last seen in this space smoking high-grade dope with his dear friend Doc Watson in the endless 1940s Sherlock Holmes film series, who were not going along for free. The needed money coming from the hides of every peasant free-holder, tradesmen or servant.    

Of course the money kept rolling in but as to be expected the masses took unkindly to this gouging. Including a free-booter, a border ruffian, a robber, who has come down to us as Robin Hood, played by Errol Flynn who has never before graced this publication. He and his gang played havoc with the roads around Sherwood Forest and gained a pretty penny from whoever passed by-there are no records however to show what he did, or did not do with the dough, other than later when he got his land grants and other rights from the king and gouged his peasants as savagely as Prince John and Sir Guy ever did. Made them take it too since he was a “liberator”

This Robin Hood though made a serious decision that would in the end pay off-go with Prince John and face the hangman or some such unpleasantries or wait on the possible return of King Richard II. He opted for the latter and essentially waged guerilla warfare against Johnny, his barons and their hangers-on.  Made Johnny scream bloody murder and put the swash-buckling blade to Sir Guy. Both events paved the way to getting Richard his throne back, paved the way for Robin Hood to become the richest and greediest landowner in England maybe Wales too. Of course, there is no church record of such a marriage but in the movie Robin weds and beds some ward of the king, Lady Marian, played by Olivia de Haviland also gracing these pages for the first time. That my friends is the stuff of legends and here is the hard part to take-the legend is so engrained that no matter what anybody does to refute the stuff it is in vain. Still Robin Hood’s reputation is all hooey.        

Marxism and Insurrection

Workers Vanguard No. 1118 22 September 2017 TROTSKY LENIN Marxism and Insurrection (Quote of the Week) In a letter written in mid September 1917 to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, V.I. Lenin underlined that conditions had become ripe for the seizure of power by the proletariat in Russia. The Bolsheviks had widespread support within the working class in the cities as well as growing support in the countryside, where peasants were seizing land. That month, the Bolsheviks had obtained a majority in the Petrograd and Moscow Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviets (councils). These councils were organs of proletarian power that had arisen alongside the capitalist Provisional Government after the February Revolution that had overthrown the tsarist monarchy. As Petrograd faced the threat of a bloodbath by German imperialism in the First World War and the suppression of the revolution, Lenin initiated the fight in the Bolshevik leadership to put workers insurrection on the order of the day. To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class. That is the first point. Insurrection must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people. That is the second point. Insurrection must rely upon that turning-point in the history of the growing revolution when the activity of the advanced ranks of the people is at its height, and when the vacillations in the ranks of the enemy and in the ranks of the weak, half-hearted and irresolute friends of the revolution are strongest. That is the third point.... All the objective conditions exist for a successful insurrection. We have the exceptional advantage of a situation in which only our victory in the insurrection can put an end to that most painful thing on earth, vacillation, which has worn the people out; in which only our victory in the insurrection will give the peasants land immediately; a situation in which only our victory in the insurrection can foil the game of a separate peace directed against the revolution—foil it by publicly proposing a fuller, juster and earlier peace, a peace that will benefit the revolution. Finally, our Party alone can, by a victorious insurrection, save Petrograd; for if our proposal for peace is rejected, if we do not secure even an armistice, then weshall become “defencists,” we shall place ourselves at the head of the war parties, we shall be the war party par excellence, and we shall conduct the war in a truly revolutionary manner. We shall take away all the bread and boots from the capitalists. We shall leave them only crusts and dress them in bast shoes. We shall send all the bread and footwear to the front. And then we shall save Petrograd. —V.I. Lenin, “Marxism and Insurrection” (September 1917)

The Kornilov Coup and the Bolsheviks’ Fight for Power (Quote of the Week)

The Kornilov Coup and the Bolsheviks’ Fight for Power (Quote of the Week)

Workers Vanguard No. 1117	8 September 2017

TROTSKY

LENIN

The Kornilov Coup and the Bolsheviks’ Fight for Power

(Quote of the Week)

In August 1917, Russian general Lavr Kornilov launched a military coup to overthrow the bourgeois Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky and sweep away the soviets (workers, soldiers and peasants councils). Both the soviets and the Provisional Government emerged following the February Revolution that toppled the tsarist monarchy amid the interimperialist First World War. In a letter to the Bolshevik Central Committee, V.I. Lenin underlined that in mobilizing to stop Kornilov’s forces, the Bolsheviks must not give any political support to the Provisional Government, which included leading members of the Mensheviks and petty-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionaries. Lenin’s struggle was essential to winning the mass of the proletariat to the fight for soviet power and the victory of the October Revolution.

Even now we must not support Kerensky’s government. This is unprincipled. We may be asked: aren’t we going to fight against Kornilov? Of course we must! But this is not the same thing; there is a dividing line here, which is being stepped over by some Bolsheviks who fall into compromise and allow themselves to be carried away by the course of events.

We shall fight, we are fighting against Kornilov, just as Kerensky’s troops do, but we do not support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose his weakness. There is the difference. It is rather a subtle difference, but it is highly essential and must not be forgotten....

It would be wrong to think that we have moved farther away from the task of the proletariat winning power. No. We have come very close to it, not directly, but from the side. At the moment we must campaign not so much directly against Kerensky, as indirectly against him, namely, by demanding a more and more active, truly revolutionary war against Kornilov.... We must relentlessly fight against phrases about the defence of the country, about a united front of revolutionary democrats, about supporting the Provisional Government, etc., etc., since they are just empty phrases. We must say: now is the time for action; you S.R. and Menshevik gentlemen have long since worn those phrases threadbare. Now is the time for action; the war against Kornilov must be conducted in a revolutionary way, by drawing the masses in, by arousing them, by inflaming them (Kerensky is afraid of the masses, afraid of the people). In the war against the Germans, action is required right now; immediate and unconditional peace must be offered on precise terms. If this is done, either a speedy peace can be attained or the war can be turned into a revolutionary war; if not, all the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries remain lackeys of imperialism.

—V.I. Lenin, “To the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.” (30 August 1917)

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO-THE FOUNDATION OF MODERN COMMUNISM-A Book Review

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO-THE FOUNDATION OF MODERN COMMUNISM-A Book Review

BOOK REVIEW

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, KARL MARX AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS, PENQUIN CLASSICS: NEW EDITIONS, NEW YORK, 2002

If you are a revolutionary, a radical or merely a liberal activist you must come to terms with the theory outlined in the Communist Manifesto. Today’s political activists are obviously not the first to face this challenge. Radicals, revolutionaries and liberals have had to come to terms with the Manifesto at least since 1848, when it was first published. That same necessity; perhaps surprisingly to some given the changes in the political landscape since then, is true today. Why surprisingly? On the face of it, given the political times, it would appear somewhat absurd to make such a claim about the necessity of coming to terms with the overriding need for the revolutionary overturn of the capitalist order outlined in the Manifesto. It, however, is.

With the collapses of the Soviet Union and the Soviet-influenced Eastern European states about fifteen years ago, which were supposedly based on Marxist concepts, one would think that Marxism was a dead letter. But hear me out. Even the less far-sighted apologists for the international capitalist order are now worrying about the increasing gap between rich and poor, not only between the so-called first and third worlds but also within the imperial metropolitan centers themselves. Nowhere is that more evident that in the United States where that gap has dramatically increased over the last thirty years. Thus, despite the carping of the ‘death of communism’ theorists after the decisive capitulation of international Stalinism in the early 1990’s, an objective criterion exists today to put the question posed by the ongoing class struggle and of the validity of a materialist concept of history back on the front burner.

Whether one agrees with the Marxian premises about the need for revolution and for a dialectical materialist conception of the workings of society or not one still must, if for no other reason that to be smart about the doings of the world, confront the problem of how to break the stalemate over where human history is heading. 'Globalization' has clearly demonstrated only that the 'race to the bottom' inherent in the inner workings of capitalism is continuing at full throttle. Moreover, the contradictions and boom/bust cycles of capitalism have not been resolved. And those results have not been pretty for the peoples of the world.

Experience over the last 160 years has shown that those who are not armed with a materialist concept of history, that is, the ability to see society in all its workings and contradictions, cannot understand the world. All other conceptual frameworks lead to subjectivist idealism and utopian concepts of social change, at best. One may ultimately answer the questions posed by the Manifesto in the negative but the alternatives leave one politically defenseless in the current one-sided international class war.

So what is the shouting over Marxism, pro and con, all about? In the middle of the 19th century, especially in Europe, it was not at all clear where the vast expansion and acceleration of industrial society was heading. All one could observe was that traditional society was being rapidly disrupted and people were being uprooted, mainly from the land, far faster than at any time in previous history. For the most part, political people at that time reacted to the rise of capitalism with small plans to create utopian societies off on the side of society or with plans to smash the industrial machinery in order to maintain an artisan culture (the various forms of Ludditism). Into this chaos a young Karl Marx stepped in, and along with his associate and co-thinker Friedrich Engel, gave a, let us face it, grandiose plan for changing all of society based on the revolutionary overthrow of existing society.

Marx thus did not based himself on creation of some isolated utopian community but rather took the then current level of international capitalist society as a starting point and expanded his thesis from that base. Now that was then, and today still is, a radical notion. Marx, however, did not just come to those conclusions out of the blue. As an intellectual (and frustrated academian) he took the best of German philosophy (basically from Hegel, then the rage of German philosophical academia), French political thought and revolutionary tradition especially the Great French Revolution of the late 1700’and English political economy.

In short, Marx took the various strands of Enlightenment thought and action and grafted those developments onto a theory, not fully formed at the time, of how the proletariat was to arise and take over the reins of society for the benefit of all of society and end class struggle as the motor force of history. Unfortunately, given the rocky road of socialist thought and action over the last 160 years, we are, impatiently, still waiting for that new day.

In recently re-reading the Manifesto this writer was struck by how much of the material in it related, taking into account the technological changes and advances in international capitalist development since 1848, to today’s political crisis of humankind. Some of the predictions and some of the theory are off, no question, particularly on the questions of the relative staying power of capitalism, the relative impoverishment of the masses, the power of the nation-state and nationalism to cut across international working class solidarity and the telescoping of the time frame of capitalist development but the thrust of the material presented clearly speaks to us today. Maybe that is why today the more far-sighted bourgeois commentators are nervous at the reappearance of Marxism in Western society as a small but serious current in the international labor movement. Militant leftists can now argue- Stalinism (the horrendous distortion of Marxism) never again, to the bourgeois commentators' slogan of - socialist revolution, never again.

As a historical document one should read the Manifesto with the need for updating in mind. The reader should nevertheless note the currency of the seemingly archaic third section of the document where Marx polemicized against the leftist political opponents of his time. While the names of the organizations of that time have faded away into the historical mist the political tendencies he argued against seem to very much analogous to various tendencies today. In fact, in my youth I probably argued in favor of every one of those tendencies that Marx opposed before I was finally won over to the Marxian worldview. I suggest that not only does humankind set itself the social tasks that it can reasonably perform but also that when those tasks are not performed there is a tendency to revert to earlier, seemingly defeated ideas, of social change. Thus the resurgent old pre-Marxian conceptions of societal change have to be fought out again by this generation of militant leftists. That said, militant leftists should read and reread this document. It is literarily the foundation document of the modern communist movement. One can still learn much from it. Forward.

Revised September 26, 2006

Yeah, Talk To Me Of Mendocino-The Voices From Up North The Music Of The McGarrigle Sisters

Yeah, Talk To Me Of Mendocino-The Voices From Up North The Music Of The McGarrigle Sisters   

By Zack James

“Jesus, Seth did you hear that Kate McGarrigle of the McGarrigle Sisters had passed away,” lamented Jack Callahan to his old-time high school friend and fellow folk music aficionado Seth Garth. Seth replied that since he no longer wrote music reviews for anybody, hadn’t since The Eye the newspaper that he had written for had gone out of business that he did not always keep up with the back stories of those who were still left standing in the ever decreasing old-time folk performer world. Jack’s sad information though got Seth to thinking about the times back in the early 1970s when he and Jack had gone out to Saratoga Springs to visit a cousin of Sam Lowell, also an old time friend and part-time folk aficionado, who lived in nearby Ballston Spa and had invited them to go to the Caffe Lena to listen to a couple of young gals from Canada who would make the angels weep for their inadequate singing voices by comparison. In those days Seth was free-lancing for The Eye so he had called Oakland, California where the newspaper then had its offices to see if they would spring for a review, a paid review of the performance. They agreed although there was the usual haggling over money and whether they would actually use the sketch.            

That night after Lena’s introduction (Lena the legendary, now legendary owner and operator of the coffeehouse) the McGarrigle Sisters did two sparking sets, a few songs in French, since they were steeped in the increasing bilingual Quebec culture which was demanding French language equality in the heated nationalist period when many Frecnh-speakers were looking for independence. They also did a wonderful cover of their  Heart Like A Wheel, a song that Linda Rhonstadt had had a hit with. But the song that Seth found his hook on, the one that he would center on to insure that his piece was published (and paid for) was Talk To Me Of Mendocino, their homage to Lena who desired to go out and see the place along the rocky ledges of Northern California, land’s end. (Whether Lena ever went out there subsequently Seth was not sure but he rather thought not since she was totally committed to the club in those days, was something of a homebody and perhaps wanted the memory more than the actual experience.)    

Seth mentioned to Jack that night that the sisters had evoked just the right mournful tone in presenting the song, and recalled how majestic they had thought they place was when they and their wives (Seth’s first  wife, first of three, all failed, Martha, and Jack’s one and only Kathy) had gone from San Francisco up the Pacific Coast Highway and basically stumbled on the place with its sheer rock formations, fierce ocean waves beating against the rocks and the then quaint and unadorned town that sat just off the rocks then. So Seth was able to close his eyes and envision travelling from the overheated, over-crowded over-wrought East and pinpoint a map to head out West “where the rocks remain.” The rocks, the ocean, our mother and some solitude in world gone mad with having to run away from what it had built. Seth was sorry that he had not been back there in many years. Hoped that Lena did get to go out to the rocks and glad that Kate and Anna McGarrigle spoke of the place, made it immortal in song.    

President Trump Pardon Whistleblower And Veteran Reality Leigh Winner-We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind

Courage to Resist<refuse@couragetoresist.org>

9/17/2018 3:41 PM

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Pardon Whistleblower Reality Winner Hi Alfred. On June 3, 2017, NSA contractor Reality Leigh Winner was arrested and charged under the Espionage Act for providing a media organization with a single five-page top-secret document that analyzed information about alleged Russian online intrusions into U.S. election systems. Reality, who has been jailed without bail since her arrest, has now been sentenced to five years in prison. This is by far the longest sentence ever given in federal court for leaking information to the media. Today, she is being transferred from a small Georgia jail to a yet-unknown federal prison. Several months before her arrest, the FBI’s then-Director James Comey told President Trump that he was (in the words of a subsequent Comey memo) “eager to find leakers and would like to nail one to the door as a message.” Meanwhile, politically connected and high-level government officials continue to leak without consequence, or selectively declassify material to advance their own interests. Join Courage to Resist and a dozen other organizations in calling on President Trump, who has acknowledged Winner’s treatment as “so unfair,” to pardon Reality Winner or to commute her sentence to time served. Sign the petition ~ Read more ~ StandWithReality.org D O N A T E towards a world without war Upcoming Events Feds holding last public hearing on draft registration Los Angeles, California Thursday, September 20 At California State University Los Angeles More info 50th anniversary events of the Presidio 27 mutiny San Francisco, California Panel discussion on Saturday, October 13 Commemoration on Sunday, October 14 At the former Presidio Army Base More info D O N A T E to support resistance

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What’s The Matter With Kansas-1950s Style?-With Kim Novak And William Holden’s “Picnic” (1955) In Mind

What’s The Matter With Kansas-1950s Style?-With Kim Novak

And William Holden’s “Picnic” (1955) In Mind

DVD Review

By Guest Writer Bartlett Webber

Picnic, starring Kim Novak, William Holden, Rosalind Russell, Susan Strasberg, from the play by William Inge, 1955

Maybe it was the first scene where Hal, played by William Holden, jumps off the hobo freight train that set me up to like this film under review, the film adaptation of William Inge’s play Picnic. Ever since my old time growing up days in North Adamsville whenever the trains came by and some dusty local hoboes, tramps or bum (and there are distinctions between them recognized by the whole wandering nation) or passers-through hopped the skids I have been entranced by this whole scene. Spent back in Summer of Love days when I (and an assortment of guys who I hung around with in high school) headed west to see what was up in San Francisco many a night myself on the rattlers (well-named when the hours passed and all you heard out in the prairie was that freaking rattling). So I saw Hal as a wild-eyed spirited forbear.     

I set the headline up the way I did, asking rhetorically what the matter of Kansas was, for a purpose. No, not today’s more political purpose when many are asking what happened to convert one of the reddest states in the nation back in the day (“red” then meaning socialist red) to today’ Republican conservative red but why is everybody in this film ready to heave-ho the old time prairie small town values to get the hell to somewhere else (even if only the next town or next state over).       

  

Here’s the play and you figure out why, okay? That first scene Hal, the muscular brawny hobo saint who shows plenty of 1950s “beefsteak” to an appreciative 1950s female audience), when he lands in this small Podunk town was no accident. He, long weary and without current prospects, expects an old rich father college buddy, Alan, to help him out, get him a fresh start. (Hal obviously had been on hard times since the days when he flunked out of college for lack of study even though he had had it made as the college football hero.) At first it looked his reconnection with that college buddy idea was going to get him back on his feet. But then he spied her. Spied Madge, played by a young and fetching Kim Novak. Moreover Madge spied him and then the dance of dances began. 

All of this taking peeks got its big workout at the town’s annual Labor Day picnic where Madge, know universally for her good looks and apparently not much else, was to under Alan’s guidance be crowned Queen of the May. Hal and Madge are still looking though as they all, Alan, Hal, Madge, Madge’s brainy younger sister Millie, played by a young Susan Strasberg, Madge’s mother and an older neighbor woman head to the picnic and the fun-filled activities that usually go along with such small town festivities, maybe a big town’s too. Then the night falls and the stars seem to be aligned. And for anybody who doesn’t get that idea then you have missed probably the closest thing a 1950s film gets to the act of intimate sexual attraction, of an explicit sexual scene except unlike now with clothes on, when to the strains of Moonglow they dance the dance most of us have all been through.

From there though as can be expected of a guy like Hal who was all fire and motion things go downhill. Alan, as expected, was in a rage that Hal stole his girl and put the rich father-friendly local cops on him for “stealing” his car. Hall gets into a beef with the coppers so we know why he will be on lam (to next state Tulsa). Millie who is eternally humiliated for being a “plain jane” compared to big sister Madge swears she is going to New York and become a great writer once she gets the dust of small town Kansas out of her system. In a side story an “old maid” schoolteacher, played by Rosalind Russell,   desperate to get married and flee her fate gets hitched and blows the burg. And Madge? Well Madge despite those golden prospects with Alan, despite her mother’s admonitions that she can do better than hobo Hal and with little sister’s blessing blows that small town as well (to next state Tulsa as well).           

See this film if only for that “dance” scene which will make you sit up and take notice even in today’s jaded explosive screen sex world. Oh yeah, if you are a guy start practicing those jazzy hip William Holden dance moves. If a gal check out Kim Novak’s “come hither” moves that had even an old guy like me thinking funny thoughts.    

Towards a World Without War...It Is Time To Resist The Next War Now Courage to Resist

Towards a World Without War...It Is Time To Resist The Next War Now 

Courage to Resist<courage@riseup.net>

6/8/2018 6:01 PM

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It's time to resist the next war now Hi Alfred. You probably know that Courage to Resist has been at the center of the most significant anti-war campaigns of the post-9/11 era, from leading the campaign to free military intel analyst Chelsea Manning (2010-2017) all the way back to defending Lt. Ehren Watada (2006-2007), the first military officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. President Trump seems to toy with the idea of new wars daily, from Iran and North Korea to Syria. The only thing that's certain is that we need to be ready to support the next wave of military resistance to endless war, but we need your help today to do so. Together we need to raise $25,000 by the end of July. We have $1,000 in matching challenge donorsto double your impact today! Thank you to Anonymous (Grandmother for peace, Miami, FL) $500, Matt Lou (Vietnam veteran, Daly City, CA) $250, and Mary Albertson (Seattle, WA) $250. Are you able to be a matching challenge donor, either publicly identified or anonymously, of $100 or more? If so, please contact anya@couragetoresist.org D O N A T E towards a world without war Are we worth fighting for? Don't take our word for it "I would urge people to support Courage to Resist in whatever way they can. I can think of nothing more important in stopping the war ..." —Howard Zinn, author, historian, activist (1922-2010) "One of the best decisions Chelsea Manning Support Network ever made was hooking up with Courage to Resist. They are amazing. I can't sing their praises enough. In fact I became a regular donor." —Rainey Reitman, Director of Activism, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) D O N A T E to support resistance

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It Do Not Mean A Thing If You Ain’t Got That Swing-With Swing-master Benny Goodman In Mind

It Do Not Mean A Thing If You Ain’t Got That Swing-With Swing-master Benny Goodman In Mind

CD Review

By Zack James

[This is an on-going conversation between several aging males who back in the day were corner boys together growing up in the poor working class Acre section of Riverdale some miles outside of Boston. The theme of the remembrances is related to rock and roll and other musical influences and the exact date, place and scenario where certain seminal experiences occurred-Listen in- Z. J.]

“Jesus, now that you mentioned Mr. Lawrence, our seventh grade music teacher, I am starting to remember some other stuff about the guy, about what a creep he was trying to break us from our unbreakable bond with rock and roll,” Seth Garth said to Jack Callahan as they both hoisted their three, or was it fourth, double scotch with water chaser, an old habit for both of them since the chaser made the drink last longer in the old days when they were short of dough and were sipping their drinks to stretch out the evening. The gist of what Seth had told Jack was in response to Jack’s remembering the very first time that they had heard Woody Guthrie and what song they had learned first. That gist of talk was based on Seth, an old time folk music critic, mainly for The Eye out on the West Coast having recently seen in a folk magazine the announcement that the Smithsonian/Folkway operation was finally putting out a treasure trove in four CDs of some Woody Guthrie songs recorded by Moses Asch during World War II. Seth for the life of him could not remember what song he had heard and when of Guthrie’s and so he had called upon Jack to meet him at their favorite watering hole the Erie Grille in Riverdale where they both were now residing (and after varying absences had grown up in the town). Jack had answered that it had been in Mr. Lawrence’s seventh grade music class and the song had been the alternative national anthem-This Land Is Your Land. 

The method to Mr. Lawrence’s madness, to ween the kids off of rock and roll, had gone beyond trying to foist silly folk music off on them but to drown them in any other kind of music he could think to distract, or attempt to distract them with, especially during lunch when they played their transistor radios and drove him crazy with their rock and roll. A few times, if you could believe this he tried to get them interested in jazz, in swing music, what each and every one of them considered the music that their parents listen to and which had driven them to the transistors in the first place. Worse, worse of all he had tried to get his charges interested in the music of Benny Goodman, the so-called “king of swing.” That was all Seth needed to hear as he blurted out in front of the class “My mother and father dance to that pokey stuff on Saturday nights and they are barely moving when they dance. I am not going to listen to that here.” Needless to say Seth stayed after school a number of afternoons for his transgression. But he felt vindicated in what he had uttered and took the punishment like a soldier.

Still it did no good as Mr. Lawrence played something called Blue Skies which was his parents’ “their song.” Something else by a guy named Cole Porter that Benny Goodman made famous. It got no better when Mr. Lawrence played stuff with Peggy Lee because to his mother’s chagrin his father had “crush” on old Peggy and Seth had to secretly admit that she was kind of sexy looking at that.  

But that was then. A few nights after Seth and Jack were cutting up old touches, after drinking themselves to melancholia, Seth went to the library and picked up an old Benny Goodman CD with plenty of American Songbook stuff on it. Guess what old Seth, old rock and roll devotee Seth with an overhang of folk, blues, and a little mountain music started to pop his fingers to the beat, started laughing to himself that he know knew what they meant when they said “it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing.” And they were right. Just ask Benny,