When The Blues Was Dues-With The Film “Cadillac Records” In Mind

When The Blues Was Dues-With The Film “Cadillac Records” In Mind

By Si Landon

[The film Cadillac Records chronicles the rise and fall of the blues label the Chicago-bound House of Chess, a guy from the villages in Poland, so a white guy, who nailed the whole trajectory of the switch from the old timey country blues sung in the acoustic “juke joints” that could be found out in the rural un-electrified South, the South of share-croppers, plantation workers just like in the ante bellum times, and the benighted land of one Mister James Crow to the electrified urban sounds of those who jumped bail on Mister and headed north up the Mississippi and faced some of the same stuff-segregation(with some stopping along the  This is the background about how a wise Polish boy, a Polish Jewish boy, who took a bunch of young black men, and later a black woman and created a sound that lasted-a sound that sounds good today just like when they sweated those blues in some Chicago tavern practically eating the microphone.(I am not kidding on that score. Check out Howlin’ Wolf playing the harmonica down at the Newport Folk Festival in the early sixties on YouTube if you need visual proof).

Sam Phillips down river in Memphis with his white-bread boys (who were very aware of black-etched rhythm and blues from gospel to the juke joints and the street corner singers) and Brother Chess with his stable of black and night blues men-and a woman pretty well wrap up in a bow the genesis of rock and roll. Rock and roll the music that shaped Jack Reardon and Bart Webber, working class guys who hailed from Riverdale about forty miles west of Boston and who lived and died for the music-and the girls that the music snagged. S.L.]             

****

“Wasn’t that a time,” Jack Reardon mentioned to Bart Webber his old high school friend who was a late-comer to the study of the roots of rock and roll or really the same thing-came to the blues late one night a few nights after he had seen the film Cadillac Blues on his television via the beauties of NetFlix (he had seen the film when it had first come out but was in what he would call a “when blues is dues.” Bart had not seen the film so he asked Jack to give him a short run-down on the film to see if Lana, his lovely wife of many years, mighty grab that selection from NetFlix and they would watch it as well. So as they settled into their chairs in the den of Bart’s house with a drink in hand Jack was happy to chat away about his growing up music-the music that he had “hipped” all his guys around the corner of Benny’s Drug Store over on Ripon Road in downtown Riverdale to before that genre caught on with rock and roll devotees.

[Funny Jack had come to the blues quite by accident-the accident of modern technology-in this case the invention, the savior invention, as any generation of ‘68er, anybody who came of musical age in the 1950s, would be glad to tell you of the transistor radio which was basically a small portable radio run by batteries that you could put to your ear and listen to stations like WMEX where the latest rock songs were being played without having to be hassled by irate parents telling you that you were going to hell in a hand-basket and more importantly not to have to listen to their tinny music. One errant Sunday when the winds were up, say 1957, 58 he could not get the signal for the local rock station, WJDA, for Bill Mathers’ Rock Hour but instead picked up in the late night WABC out of Chicago where he heard this bad-ass beat that seemed kind of familiar, not a rock beat but kind of like it, a little more sweaty if he had been pressed to tell what his ear picked up on Little Milton’s Blues Blast. The song, Big Ike Turner’s Rocket 88. He was hooked.]                     

“It’s funny how some great movements in music history started out “from hunger.” That really is the start of Chess Records (the real name of the label-the Cadillac of the film is just an acknowledgement that one had arrived in the great golden age of the “boss” car of the 1950s.That was the pay-off for success for both Chess and the bluesmen). Chess was hustling a junkyard job but with a hunger to get out, to become an impresario. The first big star of his label Muddy Waters was down in some forlorn cotton field dreaming about heading north, north to the bright lights of the city, dreaming “from hunger” dreams too. That first combination that hit was when Muddy worked the streets and tossing that old acoustic guitar to the garbage can (not literally such instruments were life-blood remember-and remember too you might be back on cheap street soon and in need of that old thing for your new daily bread) and threw some electric cord and amped up. (Maxwell Street the most famous street for bluesmen to bring their acts along, maybe get noticed too, maybe nurse a few drinks to keep the devil away too.)

The movie threads it way up and down through Muddy always in the background, always the guy who made the whole thing work-until rock and roll swamped the canoe. Along the way they pick up the greatest harmonica player who ever played that key blues instruments, Little Walter.           

But all musics have their ups and downs and so the big moment falls back with the onslaught of rock and roll brought to the Chess label via Chuck Berry and his vaunted duck walk (to lose his fame and freedom  via some bullshit crackerjack stuff with Mister’s women). And they all ride on his back as they attempt to figure out how they are going to fit into the new wave. Then Etta James comes along and does a female version of the guys who brought the music north. Of course there are the romances (Muddy with his stable, Chess with Etta), the drugs (and alcohol, stuff that would help do Little Walter in), the tensions between the various blues persona-Muddy versus the Wolf. With that lead-in Bart knew that even if he was a late-comer to the blues he was going to see the movie come hell or high water-or Lana.        

Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Malvina Reynolds' "The Little Generals"

Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Malvina Reynolds' "The Little Generals"


In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.

*************


The Little Generals

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1962 by author. a.k.a. "It's Hard to Get a War These Days."


All the little generals are running out of war,
Oh, my, It's enough to make you cry;
They've all these little khaki colored guns and tanks,
And all the money waiting in the U.S. banks,
But when they start an action, people say "No thanks",
And it's hard to get a war these days.

All the little generals are running out of war,
Oh, my, It's enough to make you cry;
They're sitting on their build-up till they get a pain,
They march the soldiers up the hill and down the hill again,
But logistics they get rusty when they're standing in the rain,
And it's hard to get a war these days.

All the little generals are running out of war,
Oh, my, It's enough to make you cry;
They paddle out to Cuba and get drowned in the bay,1
They start a thing in Laos, but the folks don't want to play,
And even up in Holy Loch, the kids cry, "Go away!"
And it's hard to get a war these days.

All the little generals are running out of war,
Oh, my, It's enough to make you cry;
They take the mighty atom bombs and tie them up with bows,
And Teller puts on perfume so they smell just like a rose,
But they smell like Hiroshima when the fall-out blows,
And it's hard to get a war these days.

Thank Heaven--It's hard to get a war these days.


Malvina Reynolds songbook(s) in which the music to this song appears:
---- [none]

Other place(s) where the music to this song appears:
---- Broadside No. 13 (September 1962)

Malvina Reynolds recording(s) on which this song is performed:
---- [none]

Additional Note:
1. On the lead sheet, this line is "It looked like fun in Cuba but the missiles went away,".


* * * * *

http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/MALVINA/mr215.htm
This page copyright 2006 by Charles H. Smith and Nancy Schimmel. All rights reserved.

Dearest Mommy Can’t Dance-Or Sing-Joan Crawford And Clark Gable’s “Dancing Girl” (1933)-A Film Review

Dearest Mommy Can’t Dance-Or Sing-Joan Crawford And Clark Gable’s “Dancing Girl” (1933)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Dancing Girl, starring Francot Tone, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, 1933

[New Introduction-Sometimes things happen for a reason, for the fates, maybe a portent, at least that is what Seth Garth, my grandfatherly mentor here of late has told me (that “grandfatherly” put in to cut off what is becoming an ugly insinuation that there is some kind of undercurrent romance going on between us which is far from the truth as I have mentioned before but which bears repeating since this workplace has a history of older writers taking their stringers under their wings, despite age, marital status, religion or race for nefarious purposes again according to Seth). This review was supposed to appear several months ago when I first viewed it and turned in my draft review.

Somehow, between Greg Green’s undivided attention on doing the encore edition of a rock and roll series entitled The Roots Is The Toots which the previous site manager (or administrator, I think he was called but don’t quote me on that since that was before I started here), Allan Jackson put together over several years and trying to get a handle of a couple of new series this one fell through the cracks. That is important because now that the dust has settled on that rock and roll series Greg asked me to get it in shape for publication. The happens to have dove-tailed with a “dispute” I am entwined in with occasional reviewer Sam Lowell who old, senile and wizened as he is still thinks he can write reviews, if he ever did in the past which is open to question, serious question.

I have been informed, and I did the research to prove it, that Sam after he got his precious by-line had stringers, mostly Leslie Dumont before she moved on to bigger and better things and Minnie Moore who I don’t know what happened to her and Seth didn’t know either, write his reviews and pass them in and/or he used studio publicity department press releases and just chopped off the top and sent them in from whatever watering hole or backdoor hotel he was hanging out in.

In a recent review of Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba’s Molly’s Game, a good film by the way which Sam essentially panned for no other reason than hubris on this fast-paced and intricate film (and probably had his longtime companion Laura Perkins who watched it with him and liked it write the review and sent it in), he challenged my research. Not the truth of it but a couple of lame excuses about how every stringer here had in those days, all female according to Seth who admitted that his stringers were usually female as well, the hots for him and/or everybody was doing the studio press release stuff on dog day films, his expression but actually about right. I have not had time to get back to Leslie, or to check the stringer employee records or see how many times Sam “mailed it in” with studio press releases (he says a couple but who knows until we get the stats). What is interesting is that the introduction I wrote below several months ago when Sam was beginning his sabotage campaign to get the coveted Hammer Productions series from the 1950s and 1960 reads like it was written by me this week. That says it all and so I will keep it- More later I am sure-Sarah Lemoyne]          

******

[In my very first film review after being hired here by site manager Greg Green I mentioned that this was my first real job in journalism and that I was going to use the introductory space to talk about myself and not go off on some tangent like some of the older writers do rather than deal with the subject at hand. Which I did. I also noted that not being wise to the various “traditions” in the profession like starting out as a stringer I had a lot to learn. Well I am here to bitch just like the older writers this time and to let one and all know that I am a quick learner once the rug has been pulled out from under me by one nasty old has-been Sam Lowell.   

The source of my wrath is centered on Sam, who is supposed to be retired and write an occasional review to let younger and fresher voices come to the fore, who let it be known to Greg Green that he was interested in doing the Hammer Production series originally assigned to me. The series that had six psychological thriller in it from the early 1960s mainly of which I had already done two which have been published here Cash On Demand and The Snorkel. It seems that as a remnant of the “good old boys” network that existed here under previous site manager Allan Jackson that older writers meaning mainly those good old boys got “first dibs” at any decent material. Sam, Judas-goat Sam by the way according to what I heard about the faction fight that led to Jackson’s demise (although he is here still puffing away at some nostalgia rock and roll thing that nobody under about sixty cares one whit about) invoked that privilege and now not only will he complete the series but will give an alternate review to the two that I did have published. That sucks.

Worse if what Leslie Dumont said is true about her time here when she was a stringer before she got that big push of a by-line at Women Today many years ago I will probably be writing the damn reviews while Sam gets on his bong pipe or whatever dope keeps him from toppling over in his dotage or runs away on some tryst with his flame Laura Perkins leaving me here to save his sorry ass. In that first introduction I was, admittedly, naïve enough to take Sam as a kindly old sot but like I said I am a fast learner, very fast. In the meantime I have this dog of a film to review about creeps I never heard of except maybe Clark Gable who my grandmother swooned over whenever his name was mentioned about a million years ago. Sarah Lemoyne]  

****

My good friend Seth Garth, who has given me some good advice, told me that the 1930s and 1940s, my grandmother’s time, was the golden age of musicals, musicals based on Broadway shows or done with the music of well-known Broadway lyric and melody writers like Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, the Gershwin Brothers and Barton Lane. Those names provided by Seth since I only knew George Gershwin’s name from Porgy and Bess. He had me watch Babes On Broadway with him which he was reviewing at the time and which has since been published as an example of real talent lighting up the Great White Way with Mickey Rooney and especially Judy Garland in the top roles. I could take my cue from that film and the two others which made up the trilogy and throw in a couple of other Rooney-Garland collaborations and would have the gold standard for the genre. (Bart Webber said throw in the motherlode of Fred-Astaire and Ginger Rogers song and dance flicks and you would not be steered wrong.)

Then there is this dog of film Dancing Lady which must have been produced by lead actress Joan Crawford’s lover or she had something on him that his wife should not know about because however earnest Joan might have been she could neither sing nor dance. Especially not dance with all her flailing arms and out of synch motions which left me wondering what the heck was going on. Of course the plotline (and star power Clark) would have indicated that maybe this would be a better film than it turned out to be.  

  

I have already moaned and groaned about the poor song and dance (hell even Fred Astaire brought in probably from desperation couldn’t make dear Mommy pop) so all we have left is the story behind the story. Joan, from nowhere, meaning probably Hoboken, dreamed the big dream of being a dancing fool on the Great White Way, on Broadway but like a million other well-intentioned young women didn’t make a dent although that did not stop her, or them, from needing food and shelter. Hence, she started out down in the dumps, down in dime a dance, roller rink, burlesque where she was “discovered by a young, wealthy Mayfair swell, played by Francot Tone who didn’t want her to perform but to marry him.

They go on and on about the matter but to his frustration and her sometimes annoyance she is committed to her art. One way or another she used him to make a few contacts on the street, on the Great White Way, and thus enter Patch, played by Clark Gable, who is the primo musical director on Broadway. Needless to say they don’t get along for a while until he sees her as his savior with her dancing and singing skills. Let me tell you though old Patch is no judge of either such skills and the real deal is that at the end after finally dumping Mayfair swell boyfriend and making a smash hit on Broadway they become lovers-fade out.           

I wish I could swear in a review like Seth Garth or even Sam Lowell do when they have a stinker or something that they cannot understand or make heads nor tails out of but I am a lowly stringer working my way up the food chain as Bart Webber said he used to say when he was moving up. But probably the only way I can swear is when Sam Lowell, pretty please, asks me to do one of his Hammer Production film reviews for him. You know I will then.

The Centennial Of The Birth Of Film Actor, Noir Film Actor, Robert Mitchum (2017) -Hats Off!

The Centennial Of The Birth Of Film Actor, Noir Film Actor, Robert Mitchum (2017) -Hats Off!

Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell comment:

No question I am despite my putting myself "out to pasture" more than happy to do a short guest appearance to pay tribute to the centennial of the birth of film actor Robert Mitchum. The headline speaks of a film noir actor although he did many more types of films from goof stuff like the Grass Is Greener to truly scary can’t go to sleep at night stuff like Cape Fear to the pasty/fall guy in The Friends Of Eddie Coyle. But to my mind his classic statement of his acting persona came in the great performance he did in Out Of The Past where between being in the gun sights of an angry gangster played by Kirk Douglas and the gun sights of a gun crazy femme played by Jane Greer damn did he have his hands full.

Yeah, that film kind of said it all about a big brawny barrel-chested guy who had been around the block awhile, had smoked a few thousand cigarettes while trying to figure out all the angles and still in the end got waylaid right between the eyes by that damn femme. All she had to do was call his name and he wilted like some silly schoolboy. I like a guy who likes to play with fire, likes to live on the edge a little but our boy got caught up badly by whatever that scent, maybe jasmine, maybe spring lilac but poison that he could never get out of his nostrils once she went into over-drive.

You know, seriously, that he should have backed off right away when he was snooping for a bigtime Reno gangster (that before Vegas and Bugsy came down the road) looking for a wayward dame who took him for some dough, for forty thou, maybe not big money now but then yes. Should have known that whoever took some dough from a mob guy was in trouble big time good-looking and smelling or not. Like a later guy said though take the ticket, take the ride. Yeah, that was a role fit for a guy like Robert Mitchum. Live hard, fall hard.            

More later but check this little clip out as a sampler.     

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- *The "Big Tent" Folk Revival Of The 1960s- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Malvina Reynolds's performing her classic Little Boxes.

CD Review

The Folk Hits: The Golden Age Of American Popular Music, Ace Records, 2008


I have reviewed in this space more folk revival of the 1960s music that one could shake a stick at. I have gone through the litany of folk artists from that period, male and female, one song Johnnies and Janies to enduring fixtures like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. I have reached down deep into the bag of tunes from earlier times (especially Harry Smith's anthological work) that formed their early play lists. I have also reached down into the Appalachian, Cajun, and Western traditions. In short, I have covered plenty of ground in the folk milieu of that period.

That said, I still adhere to a certain conception of the folk revival, at least as to my personal preferences. Those preferences weigh heavy on the side of protest songs, political songs, wanna-be political songs and songs of hard times and struggles. Oh sure, I had room for ballads and love songs, bitter and sweet, but the core of what got me interested in the first play, and drew me away for a time from 1950s-driven rock and roll was that politicized element. I was not alone.

The above is a kind of roundabout way of saying that while I heard much folk music, live in concerts and coffeehouses, on television (black and white in those days, for the most part), on the street corners and elsewhere I did not have a “big tent” conception of the folk revival. The folk compilation under review, needless to say, has just that conception behind it. Although I am no stranger to any of the songs in the compilation most of them struck me then, and still do today, as folk musak.

In that sense these songs, for the most part represented an attempt, a legitimate attempt, to reach a broader audience than those who hung around North Beach, Harvard Square and Washington Square. And the attempt might have succeeded except for the swamping of all this kind of music by the British invasion (mainly the Beatles and the Stones, but others as well) by 1964, or so. Then folk was left about where it stands today, for the aficionados. There are a few stick-outs here include a stirring (as always) rendition of We Shall Overcome (political) by Joan Baez, Johnny Cash’s cover of Bob Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe (non-political) and Pete Seeger’s cover of Malvina Reynolds’ Little Boxes (somewhat political).

************


Little Boxes

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1962 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1990. Malvina and her husband were on their way from where they lived in Berkeley, through San Francisco and down the peninsula to La Honda where she was to sing at a meeting of the Friends’ Committee on Legislation (not the PTA, as Pete Seeger says in the documentary about Malvina, “Love It Like a Fool”). As she drove through Daly City, she said “Bud, take the wheel. I feel a song coming on.”


Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.


Malvina Reynolds songbook(s) in which the music to this song appears:
---- Little Boxes and Other Handmade Songs
---- The Malvina Reynolds Songbook
---- There's Music in the Air: Songs for the Middle-Young

When Winter Soldiers Were Needed-From The Archives Of Veterans For Peace

By Fritz Taylor

Recently in a short archive caption about the Bath Iron Works in Maine where many of the top-of-the line and billion-dollar expensive destroyers are built I mentioned, as a little background for knowing about the place that I am a Vietnam Veteran. I also mentioned in an earlier archive caption while I hate the NRA I favor my Second Amendment right to bear arm. But whatever vestiges I have of my growing up in Fulton County, Georgia I “got religion” on the questions of war and peace through the hellhole of Vietnam experience. Not right away, certainly not right away since I come from a long, a very long line of military people and not completely at first since I initially mistook being anti-war with pacificism which I was, am uncomfortable with. Now though I am comfortable with the twenty plus years I have spent screaming (if necessary) against the endless wars, the bloated military budgets and the glorification of the fog war creates in the public, and among soldiers and politicians.

Now I was strictly Army, Fourth Division so you know I saw some hellish action in Vietnam, particularly when we were sent to re-enforce up in the Central Highland and I can tell you plenty about that branch of the service, the waste and the like. You can always learn sometime new though in this struggle against war and endless budgets. I certainly did the year I went up to Maine to walk the walk Peace Walk then held annually about quiet Bath and its well-oiled shipbuilding capacity.  Each year they organizers, more about them in a minute, try to gather in a theme that speaks to the militarization of our country, of the world, the particular role Maine plays in that process and of course from our perspective some alternatives. In 2016 that was around creating the environment for a sustainable future, very much more in doubt in the few years since that walk, which meant a serious frontal attack on the role the military plays in not making the future world sustainable. I should have mentioned before that leaflets are passed out with messages along that line along the line of march, the sites selected like Bath Iron Works where things need to be changed and evening programs at the various nightly stopping points dealing with the overall theme message.  

I noted in the last archival caption that I have been doing these walks for a few years even though I had my fill of marches in the Army. Moreover, I had my doubts whether such a walking program over a couple of weeks would do anything for the cause, still have questions.

Enter the great equalizers.  I started, kicking and screaming at first about doing this trek once my friends Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris went up to Maine to help out in the annual Maine Peace Walk sponsored by the Maine chapter of Veterans for Peace and other local activist peace groups. Ralph and Sam pointed out that even a few VFP dove-encrusted flags on the march would ensure that some message was getting through. Having seen that flag business work a million times before I bought in -for part of the trek.  

Of course if you had read the previous caption you know that “helping out” entailed walking half the freaking state of Maine at least on the oceanside, the side where U.S. Route One slithers down the coast. Over a period of several days. I had started up in Brunswick, up at Bowdoin College where I met walkers who had started up I believe in Rangeley which I do not have a clue where that is except it is pretty far north in Maine with plenty left before you reach the Canadian border. (As it turned out Sam and Ralph who started their own treks there were clueless when I asked where the place was except the military has a tracking station there which links that nowhere Maine town with the American’s military’s globalization of their forces in many fields. I said good work brothers for starting there, yes, good work indeed.    

Ralph Morris and I are Vietnam veterans, Sam didn’t serve because he was the sole surviving son of a mother who had four young daughters to raise after Sam’s drunken father passed away of a heart attack in 1965. It took me a while, took me a while as it did to “get religion” on the issues of war and peace, and to get over the false division between anti-war activity and working with avowed pacifists to accept Sam as a brother. Hell as a winter soldier although I already knew from Ralph that as early as 1971 in Washington on May Day where they “met” after being arrested in Robert F. Kennedy football stadium where they had with their respective groups attempted to stop the war by stopping the government that Sam was some old righteous Puritan angel avenger out of the John Brown mold. Took a while but knew deep in my bones that this guy was for real, that when he said something you could depend on him. Yeah, now in 2019 we are in desperate need of winter soldiers. And if you don’t know, are not familiar with that term then think about that small band of stalwarts was held firm at Valley Forge come fight against the British and their hirelings. The defenders of the republican idea when that was very dicey indeed. Like now.        

From The Archives Of The Maine Peace Walk-2016-And Sore Feet

By Fritz Taylor

Recently in a short archive caption about the Bath Iron Works in Maine where many of the top-of-the line and billion-dollar expensive destroyers are built I mentioned, as a little background for knowing about the place that I am a Vietnam Veteran. I also mentioned in an earlier archive caption while I hate the NRA I favor my Second Amendment right to bear arm. But whatever vestiges I have of my growing up in Fulton County, Georgia I “got religion” on the questions of war and peace through the hellhole of Vietnam experience. Not right away, certainly not right away since I come from a long, a very long line of military people and not completely at first since I initially mistook being anti-war with pacificism which I was, am uncomfortable with. Now though I am comfortable with the twenty plus years I have spent screaming (if necessary) against the endless wars, the bloated military budgets and the glorification of the fog war creates in the public, and among soldiers and politicians.

Now I was strictly Army, Fourth Division so you know I saw some hellish action in Vietnam, particularly when we were sent to re-enforce up in the Central Highland and I can tell you plenty about that branch of the service, the waste and the like. You can always learn sometime new though in this struggle against war and endless budgets. I certainly did the year I went up to Maine to walk the walk Peace Walk then held annually about quiet Bath and its well-oiled shipbuilding capacity.  Each year they organizers, more about them in a minute, try to gather in a theme that speaks to the militarization of our country, of the world, the particular role Maine plays in that process and of course from our perspective some alternatives. In 2016 that was around creating the environment for a sustainable future, very much more in doubt in the few years since that walk, which meant a serious frontal attack on the role the military plays in not making the future world sustainable. I should have mentioned before that leaflets are passed out with messages along that line along the line of march, the sites selected like Bath Iron Works where things need to be changed and evening programs at the various nightly stopping points dealing with the overall theme message.  

I noted in the last archival caption that I have been doing these walks for a few years even though I had my fill of marches in the Army. Moreover, I had my doubts whether such a walking program over a couple of weeks would do anything for the cause, still have questions.

Enter the great equalizers.  I started, kicking and screaming at first about doing this trek once my friends Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris went up to Maine to help out in the annual Maine Peace Walk sponsored by the Maine chapter of Veterans for Peace and other local activist peace groups. Ralph and Sam pointed out that even a few VFP dove-encrusted flags on the march would ensure that some message was getting through. Having seen that flag business work a million times before I bought in -for part of the trek.  

Of course if you had read the previous caption you know that “helping out” entailed walking half the freaking state of Maine at least on the oceanside, the side where U.S. Route One slithers down the coast. Over a period of several days. I had started up in Brunswick, up at Bowdoin College where I met walkers who had started up I believe in Rangeley which I do not have a clue where that is except it is pretty far north in Maine with plenty left before you reach the Canadian border. (As it turned out Sam and Ralph who started their own treks there were clueless when I asked where the place was except the military has a tracking station there which links that nowhere Maine town with the American’s military’s globalization of their forces in many fields. I said good work brothers for starting there, yes, good work indeed.    

As noted before and it bears repeating when you mention Brunswick you really automatically mention Bath as I found out. In little old out of the way Bath, which is a pretty town along the river and close to the ocean, you have the very large Bath Iron Works which despite its benign name is the main producer of the Navy’s destroyer fleet, the modern one which goes for billions a pop. Needless to say the organizers planned a serious stop at that location along the route to protest these ships being built (and proposing as an alternative something like a Green New Deal to keep the citizenry usefully employed). The place crawls with plenty of possibilities along that line.

That year’s walk was quite an experience, learned some stuff but what was, is really important is that over the past few years a number of mainly Maine citizens have taken it upon themselves to protest by acts of civil disobedience every time some new destroyer is launched (and by extension no money is allocated for sustainable future programs). Hats off to the sister and brothers of that branch of the resistance struggle. My kind of people. Hats off to Sam and Ralph and Maine VFP and others for doing this tough work.

Finally, Hats off to me for not bitching too badly about my poor aching from that freaking hundred- mile walk. Even in the Army I had troubles with blisters, corns, and every other type of foot problem, including a seriously sprained left ankle trying like hell to avoid a almost too late seen land mine. I supposed compared to some of that stuff, now a little fog of war misty a few blisters and assorted troubles are a small price to pay to make a very big statement.         

From The Golf Archives-When Lex Armour Learned To Be A Champion

From The Golf Archives-When Lex Armour Learned To Be A Champion

By Seth Garth

Recently I did an unusual for me “slice of life” profile about some scumbag golfer who though by sandbagging, essentially cheating on his accumulated scores so he could win five dollars from his weekend partners and eventually against champion Lex Armour who took him down about twelve pegs, assuming that he could beat a very good champion-level  golfer by trickery. Naturally the bum of the month, this slimy Sandbagger Johnson, got his comeuppance and lost some serious money for his efforts.

As beautiful fate, courtesy of the three sisters, would have it the champion, Lex Armour, who I notice is now starting to make a name for himself from what avid golfer Sam Lowell tells me in advanced circles was staying for an extra day where he had beaten this holy goof named, rightly named, now that I know why, Sandbagger Johnson. Sandbagger, still smarting from his previous day’s lost would not leave well enough alone and challenged Lex to a match- stroke play match they call it for the twelve hundred dollars he had lost the previous day. This stroke play business is counting each person’s score, figuring in the handicap, Lex, zero, Sandbagger twenty-two and whoever is lowest wins. Lex, as always, said “bet.”               

Since only about three or four people under forty or so know about golf I had taken the liberty in that previous article to, via Sam’s direction, explain what is going on in this mad monk game. And explain why in the end, now that Lex has won yet again against the miserable cur Johnson why beating some backwoods farmer taught him more about how to be a champion than say beating a real deal champion like Tiger Woods or Jeff Logan. It is about grace under pressure and about not feeling sorry for some stew-ball who thought he could cheat his way to the top without anybody noticing. Jesus, what a way for some Farmer Brown to learn a lesson.    

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- *Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Malvina Reynolds' "Carolina Cotton Mill Song"

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.

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Carolina Cotton Mill Song

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1976 Schroder Music Company, renewed 2004.


Oh I love to get into my clean bed
With its sheets so fair and white,
And when I am in my clean bed,
I sleep thru most the night,
And my dreams are hardly troubled
By the worrying of my mind
For the workers who die of the brown lung
In the mills of Caroline.

Chorus:
Oh the mystical people, they think they are wise,
With the smooth on their faces and stars in their eyes,
But the truths of this system are spoken and sung
By the workers who bear the brown lung.

Oh it's Burlington and Cannon
And the names we wives know well,
Who advertise the sheets and towels
And give us the old soft sell,
And they'd rather buy the government men
With promotions here and there,
Than pay out company profits
For to clean the cotton mill air.

(Chorus)

Oh some people talk of the yin and yang
And walk in a kharma daze,
As though the influence of the stars
Could change mill owners ways,
But the people who work in the cotton mills
They know how the world is run,
And they need some help of an earthly kind
To live their time in the sun.

(Chorus)

Oh the mystics they wear the blue jeans
But their heads are in the stars,
For they do not know how the denim is made
Nor the years of workers' wars.
And my place is not in an ivory tower
Or seeking some power divine,
But it's out on the bricks with the union folks
At the mills in Caroline.

(Chorus)


Malvina Reynolds songbook(s) in which the music to this song appears:
---- The Malvina Reynolds Songbook

Malvina Reynolds recording(s) on which this song is performed:
---- Mama Lion
---- Ear to the Ground

Recordings by other artists on which this song is performed:
---- Rosalie Sorrels and Utah Phillips: Worker's Doxology (Cold-drill, 1992) [same material as next entry]
---- Rosalie Sorrels and Utah Phillips: The Long Memory (Red House Records RHR CD 83, 1996)
---- Joe Uehlein: Groundwork: Songs of Working People (Worker Records, 1979)


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