In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-*Coming Of Age, Period- '50s Style-An Encore

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-*Coming Of Age, Period- '50s Style-An Encore

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-Coming Of Age, Period- '50s Style-An Encore

CD Review

Oldies But Goodies, Volume One, Original Sound Record Co., 1986

I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question that those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that your parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.

Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.

So what still sounds good on this CD compilation to a current AARPer and, and perhaps some of his fellows who comprise the demographic that such a 1950s compilation “speak” to. This volume is, more than some of the other volumes in this series (fifteen in all), loaded up with classics. Of course, Earth Angel, the 50s seemed to be a time for “angel’ laments from the classic Teen Angel on, the theme being irrevocable lost and learning about such heartbreak at an early age. Eddie My Love, a tale of longing from the female side that I nevertheless even today still find myself singing in the shower. And, on that same line Confidential the lyrics and theme hit a chord. Naturally, in a period of classic rock numbers, Chuck Berry’s Maybellene (or, virtually any other of about twenty of his songs from that period).

But what about the now inevitable end of the night high school dance song (or maybe even middle school) that seems to be included in each CD compilation? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to , mumbly-voice, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar). Here the classic Paul Anka hit, Put Your Head On My Shoulder fills the bill. Hey, I didn’t even like the song, or the singer, but she said yes and this was what you waited for so don’t be so choosey. And, yes, I know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?

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


THE FONTANE SISTERS lyrics - Eddie My Love

Eddie my love, I love you so-o
How I've waited for you you'll never know-o
Please Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Eddie please write me one li-ine
Tell me your love is still only mi-ine
Please Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie since you've been gone

Eddie my love where can you be-ee
I pray the angels find you for me-ee
Please Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Please Eddie, don't make me wait too long

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

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

From The Pen Of Bart Webber  

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See I didn’t take too long, right.             

Psycho Alley-Ida Lupino’s “Roadhouse”( 1948)-A Film Review

Psycho Alley-Ida Lupino’s “Roadhouse”( 1948)-A Film Review   

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

Roadhouse, starring Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Richard Widmark, 1948

There are a lot of whackos in the world, have been for a long time and are not some modern contrivance. Take the bad guy Jefty in this film under review, Roadhouse, a film released in 1948 long before Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s psycho Norman Bates made half of my growing up generation afraid to take showers without an armed guard in the bathroom. This Jefty, played by Richard Widmark who had recently had an Oscar nomination for his role as the sicko hitman gangster who you also would be in need armed guard, but everywhere, in Kiss Of Death so he was primed for the part, is kindred although no one from my parents’ generation would have needed an armed guard after viewing this production-although wise advise to stay far away from this guy was in order.

Here’s the play as my old friend Sam Lowell from this site now out to pasture as that feisty film critic emeritus would say. Jefty ran an aptly enough named roadhouse out in Podunk inherited from his father so he never had to spent much time working hard labor to get where he was-that fact if one checked with a psychiatrist would yield some interesting results. This roadhouse complete with bar, club, bowling alleys and who knows what else was going on in those little side rooms where lots of deep moans were often heard made Jefty the cat’s meow around town although he was nothing but a wanderlust playboy if left to his own devices. The real work, the heavy lifting, the day to day management of the operations was Pete, played by dashing Cornel Wilde, a 1940s heart throb according to my late mother, at least to her. But Jefty made it clear Pete was nothing but indispensable hired help.

On a trip to the Windy City, to Chi town, Jefty picked up Lily, played by doe-eyed Ida Lupino last seen in this space when Sam Lowell reviewed her as gangster Roy Earle’s doll in High Sierra uttering the word breakout when they finally wasted the guy out in the hills, a third-rate singer, maybe had been a B-girl, done a little off-hand whoring she never let on much except what she wanted anybody to know. That kind of dame. (These post-Code films for a long time left the professional attributes of women with a past rather vague by current standards.) A warbler, and as it turned out one with not much left of a voice but they was she dug down deep into some Johnny Mercer (One More For My Baby) and Cochran-Newman tunes it didn’t really matter whether she could hold the high white note or not. One of the characters in the film, Susie, Pete’s soon to be ex-girlfriend noted maybe enviously that she got a lot of mileage out of that ragtag voice and even Pete who initially was skeptical, saw her as just another one of Jefty’s wayward tramps, saw how she held an audience and brought in dough. A keeper.

But let’s back up to that Susie the soon to be ex-girlfriend statement because that will tell the tale. See Jefty’s idea in bringing Lily back from Chi town was to marry her, marry this dame unlike any other dame he had run around with. Problem, no, two problems. Lily obviously could care less about Jefty except as a high-end meal ticket. What would make that a problem was that Jefty did not like his well-laid plans to be busted up by a simple thing like a dame giving him the dust-off. Next, from the get-go, from about scene number one in the club while Lily was singing and Pete was watching with his tongue hung out you know that they will dance around each other, will be getting under the, unseen, silky sheets before long.

Jefty will definitely not like that scenario. And has the evil genius and half-crazed social pathology to screw things up. Simple, our boy Jefty framed Pete for grand larceny, for grabbing the daily take rather than putting it in the night deposit box. Yeah, get rid of Pete for say two to ten in the state pen and he was home free with the now free Lily. As an old corner used to say-nice moves. But remember this Jefty was a long gone daddy, had the weirdest psycho chuckle seen on screen until that time. He was going to bait the bait but good. He got Pete paroled to him, an outstanding citizen in many small town eyes so he could taunt Pete enough to maybe attempt to murder him and face the big step-off. Well you know as well as I do that if you play with fire like our man Jefty you are going to be burned and one of the characters in the end does kill the bastard. See the film to see which one. But also see it to see Ida Lupino hold your attention with her sad weary eyes and croaky voice despite yourself when she is at the cigarette scarred, hers, piano. Just like she did to me. Enough said.                             

On The Sixtieth Anniversary Of Her Death-Lady Day-Billie Holiday- She Took Our Pain Away Despite Her Own Pains- *Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit"

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Billie Holiday performing Strange Fruit.

February Is Black History Month


*FromThe Torch Singer's Torch Singer-Billie Holiday- American Left History blog, June 9, 2008


DVD REVIEW

Billie’s Best, Polygram Records, 1992

In my book, and I am hardly alone on this, Billie Holiday is the torch singer's torch singer. Maybe it is the phrasing on her best songs. That well-placed hush. Maybe it is the unbreakable link between her voice when she is on a roll and the arrangements. Hell, maybe in the end it was the dope but, by Jesus, she could sing a modern ballad of love, lost or both like no other. And if it was the dope, let me say this- a `normal' nice singer could sing for a hundred years and never get it right, the way Billie could get it right when she was at her best. Dope or no dope. Was she always at her best? Hell no, as the current compilation makes clear. These recordings done between 1945 and her death in 1959 for Verve show the highs but also the lows as the voice faltered a little and the dope put the nerves on edge toward the end.

Many of the songs on the current compilation are technically sound, a few not, as is to be expected on such re-mastering. You will like Come Rain or Come Shine, Stars Fell On Alabama and Stormy Blues. A tear will come to your eye with Some Other Spring and East of the Sun. The surprise of the package is Speak Low, a sultry song with tropical background beat. That one is very good, indeed.

One last word- I have occasionally mentioned my love of Billie Holiday's music to younger acquaintances. Some of their responses reflecting, I think, the influence of the movie version of her life (Lady Sings the Blues with Diana Ross) or some unsympathetic black history 'uplift' type views on her life have written her off as an 'addled' doper. Here is my rejoinder- If when I am blue and need a pick me-up and put on a Billie platter (CD)and feel better then, my friends, I do not give a damn about the dope. Enough said.

From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-War and the Marxists: Socialist Theory and Practice in Capitalist Wars, Volumes One and Two -A Book Review

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forebears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
**************
Reviews

S.F. Kissim, War and the Marxists: Socialist Theory and Practice in Capitalist Wars, Volumes One and Two, Andre Deutsch, London, 1988 and 1989, pp291 and 262, £17.96 each

The programmatic reason for the great split in the international working class movement was the issue of war, and, more particularly, the attitude to the First World War. It was not the other topics, such as colonialism or immigration, which divided the Second International at the Stuttgart conference of 1907, let alone the future organisation of the economy under a Socialist government, which was never discussed, that foreshadowed this great schism, while the issues of war and militarism were also the main topics at both the Copenhagen and Basel congresses that followed Stuttgart. It is therefore most welcome that the late Siegfried Kissin’s scholarly and well written study of this area has now been published. It consists of two volumes, the first being the attitude taken by the Socialist movement up to the final split in the International at the end of the ‘First Great War for Civilisation’ while the second takes the story up to the end of the Second World War and, among other things, deals with the debates in the Trotskyist movement on that issue.

The contents of the first volume should be almost unreservedly welcomed by the readers of Revolutionary History. Kissin tells us of the positions taken up by Marx and Engels on various nineteenth century conflicts and the debates among Socialists both before and during the First War. Marx and Engels had a very much more flexible and less intransigent view of the many wars in their time than we are now accustomed to think of as ‘Marxist’. They were seldom defeatist, and since many of us are only familiar with the later debate from a rather one-sided Leninist polemic, much of the material that Kissin introduces will be fresh and new. The position of the Founding Fathers in any particular case depended on an assessment of the effects of victory or defeat for the prospects of Socialism in a world context. Later the differences amongst those denounced by Lenin – differences which at the time might have appeared more important to the participants than those which divided the centre and moderate left from the Bolsheviks – are clearly brought out, and add a good deal to our understanding of the flavour and context of the dispute at the time. A final, if controversial piece looks at the differences between Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin on the 1914-18 war, where Kissin seems to come down on Luxemburg’s side. Even in the First World War case, however, Kissin argues that in the parliamentary democracies of England and France it was not necessary to work actively for and desire the defeat of one’s own government, though he would denounce the ‘social-patriots’’ belief that the war meant a truce in the class struggle.

One fascinating aspect with contemporary echoes is his account of the debate on the Boer War, which for me has parallels with the Falklands campaign. Kissin makes the point that defeatism, as in the Boer War example, does not have to be revolutionary and that there maybe cases (Britain in the Falklands war was surely one), where the defeat of one’s own side would merely lead to a change from a conservative to a slightly more left wing government at the next election, rather than a revolution. This is nearly always the case in colonial wars where the nation’s existence is not perceived to be imperilled. In this event, as he says, there may well be liberals and pacifists who are thorough defeatists, though none of this makes the defeatist position incorrect. And just as it could be argued – as it was by Hyndman – that a British defeat would leave the South African Blacks enslaved by the Afrikaners, so, I suppose, it could be argued that in the Falklands British victory was a great benefit to the Argentine, if not to the British working class. In the event, the Blacks were enslaved anyway, and the end of the Junta has seen an even further fall in Argentine living standards. As the First World War showed, there could be more than one honest opinion on this. Indeed, one impression from reading Kissin about the German SPD in 1914 is how naive many of them were about their own government and how ‘wet’ they appear, faced with dissimulating noblemen who clearly did believe in the class war, made little distinction between the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ enemy and saw these nice SDP deputies as adversaries to be tricked and beaten like foreign foes. Distant Lenin saw far more clearly than the German Socialists what the game was about.

In Kissin’s three page conclusion in Volume One, he attempts to forecast what attitude Marx and Engels would have taken to the events in the early twentieth century, and here he sets them up in opposition to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Of course, this is not the first time that this has been done, but at least he makes a good job in arguing his case. A more basic reservation that I have is that Kissin sees the issues of war and conflict in rather static terms, so that he approvingly quotes Luxemburg’s forecast of German nationalist revival and another war as a consequence of Germany’s defeat. But this was surely not an inevitable result of such a defeat, and it was a close-run thing between revolution and counter-revolution.

The second volume continues the story with a description of the positions taken on the many pre-Second World War conflicts by left wingers from both the Social Democratic and Communist traditions. Kissin tests the later Stalinist wrigglings against the classical Leninist position with damning conclusions. Finally, in the last part of the book he discusses the Trotskyists and, by printing a paper he submitted to the Edinburgh WIL in 1943, he makes his own position on the Second World War clear. He was an unabashed defencist, as he thought that the war was not primarily a national one, but a European civil war between the working class allied to a section of the bourgeoisie against Fascism, and the other bourgeois fraction. So, just as left wingers in Spain had supported Azana against Franco, in Britain they should stand with Churchill against Hitler. They should, of course, maintain a programme distinct from that of the conservative and Stalinist patriots. Such a programme would include the demand for independence for India and the colonies, constant fraternal appeals to the German workers and a guarantee of no vindictive Versailles peace, but a promise to integrate Germany into a peaceful Europe after the overthrow of the Nazis, together with demands for workers’ control of war production, election of officers tend so on. Such a position had much more in common with ‘Proletarian Military Policy’ of the SWP or the WIL than the RSL and other more pacifistic and abstentionist Trotskyists who were inclined to see the war as a re-run of 1914-18. He argues that victories for Hitler meant the smashing of all the gains from working class struggle, and the imposition of Fascist and authoritarian regimes in the occupied countries. In the event he was correct, as there was a greater left wing movement among the people of the Allied countries as a result of victory than among the populations of the defeated Axis.

The great value of the book is the immense range of evidence that Kissin has collected to illustrate his theme. There are some splendid choice items from the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact – in particular some statements by the late unlamented Walter Ulbricht and a fascinating account of how in 1939 the Labour Party leadership, which had started by declaring that the enemy was Hitler, not the German people, ended up in 1945 with a much more social-patriotic line which was only slightly more civilised than that of the Communists. The Labour lefts like Bevan stand out for their decency on this issue.

There are a number of omissions and inaccuracies in the book, above all in the final section on the Trotskyists, which probably arose as he seems to have researched it in isolation, perhaps not realising that there were a number of other people honestly seeking to understand this period. He does not seem to have been aware of Bornstein and Richardson’s War and the International, or of the debates in the United States between the Workers Party and the SWP on the problem of the war with Japan, which was much more purely an inter-imperialist conflict than the war in Europe. Indeed, Kissin thinks that the Workers Party quickly disappeared after the 1940 split, which was by no means the case. Neither has he read Guérin's analysis of Trotsky’s political evolution at the beginning of the war though this analysis has considerable similarities with his own. Furthermore, he does not mention the tiny group of French defeatists led by Barta, though today those in that tradition around the paper Lutte Ouvrière seem to be the largest Trotskyist tendency in France.

These are, however, minor blemishes. For those on the left who seek to understand the history of war and the Marxist attitude to it, and whatever disagreements one might have with the author’s judgements, these two volumes will be an invaluable source of information.

Ted Crawford

From The Twisted End Of Art World Archives-Honor Whistler's Mother (Sonata In Grey And Beige)-Yeah, That Whistler’s Mother

From The Twisted End Of Art World Archives-Honor Whistler's Mother (Sonata In Grey And Beige)-Yeah, That Whistler’s Mother

By Laura Perkins

I have made no bones that I do not like the artist James McNeil Abbot Whistler, Jimmy to his friends, or maybe friend is better in 19^th century London where he fled in a nick of time before the New York City coppers put a very big dent in his head. If you don’t know Jimmy ‘s work or who he is then think Whistler’s Mother and that should tip you. I am mad at him for piecing off his mother like that, more later but what got me really pissed off was his The White Woman (sometimes called Sonata in White and White in the period when he was hitting the hookah too much and started to claim that everything was just table scrapes color ideas, maybe only the essence of colors at that) and the real reason he painted the piece that nobody knew about for years.        

The key to understanding this career felon really is figuring why he fled to London. That should have been the tip-off because unlike say Singer Sargent a fellow artist or the novelist Henry James who took exile in London voluntarily Jimmy was fleeing the states like a rat.  Just ahead of the coppers proving once again that except in rare cases people don’t leave their countries of origin unless they have run out of room, are on the run. Of course Jimmy’s various addictions, the opium being the least of it, added up and a guy who was broke, who smoked up his dreams needed some ready, some cash quick to stay afloat. So, not without some internal sources, Jimmy painted his ass off to complete The White Girl using his housekeeper, wink, wink in Victorian England, mistress as the model. He painted this beauty not though for selling the painting but to advertise her “wares.” Now this is subtle stuff in stuffy England but what Jimmy did was have a wolf’s head and fur painted beneath her feet. No big deal you would think and the art critics of the day never caught on. Caught on to the fact that he was pimping his mistress for filthy lucre. How? That wolf’s head (and critical fur) has been the calling card for whores since the time of the Whore of Babylon. Not pretty stuff but you can see why I hate this debased junkie with a passion.     

Now comes the “discovery” of an advanced sketch that Jimmy drew of his mother in preparation for her world- famous portrait. No, Jimmy didn’t try to pimp her off how could he have done that with some old hag but something worse in a way. He forced this poor arthritic woman to sit for hours, days at a times until he finished the damned thing. With major touch-ups he make her look human and well beloved. The real story though is in the recently discovered sketch where the misshapen old hag is reduced to the title grey and beige, the title that he had originally put on the final painting until Lord Grenwood cried bloody murder. I hope you too begin to hate degenerate Jimmy a little after this shocking expose.       

  

Stop The War-Makers-Stop The Weapons-Makers-Stop Arms Sales To the Saudis

Stop The War-Makers-Stop The Weapons-Makers-Stop Arms Sales To the Saudis 

By Fred Macklin, Committee Against Saudi Weapons Sales

“Fuck the Saudis, their oil and their demented abuse of women and anybody who doesn’t agree with their program from out of 8^th century some place. Fuck them and damn them for what they are doing to Yemenis, especially women and kids,” bellowed Philly Price toward a couple of guys as the cars were coming into the Raytheon Parking lot. Philly Price (not his real name since he is of Saudi descent and not of the majority Wahabi sect faith and longtime political opponent of the butchers at home) had been spending years protesting at this very site because of the almost incestuous relationship between Raytheon’s advanced weapons-making capacities on this site and the Saudis overweening desire (and ability through the accident of huge oil reserves) to purchase them- and of late use them. The dire situation in Yemen and the murder of the Washington Post reporter by the goons of the kingdom had set his teeth on edge and he was determined to make some noise about it.          

He and odd selection of righteous Quakers had been weekly or bi-weekly protesting the relationship between Raytheon (Massachusetts’ biggest employer and beneficiary of many tax breaks and sweetheart deals) and the Saudis but he felt he needed to reach out to other groups interested in protesting some aspect of this relationship. He knew that Code Pink had a year-long, nation-wise campaign to highlight the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) with Raytheon the “poster child” of the efforts. He reached out to them and their network which included Veterans Peace Action. That organization also committed to a year-long campaign against the local Raytheon operations provided the extra bodies Philly Price needed. Naturally Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris answered the call and organized the veterans, flags furling making a huge statement to the passing motorists.       

That morning, the idea was to catch the in-coming employee traffic (a traffic which knew very well what was happening at the gate entrances since the smaller group had been doing their actions for years) and point out the obvious relationship between the supplier and purchaser. Some people held signs calling for conversion to some form of New Green Deal to keep the employees gainfully employed but the bulk of the protesters were there to express outrage at the Saudi war crimes against humanity in Yemen. And in the lead was one Philly Price dressed in his native dress complete with robes and headdress to make a point that not all Saudis supported the government and that he was mad as hell about the turn of events. It was to Sam and Ralph that he made his remarks at the beginning of this archival caption. They had known him, seen him around the generic peace movement for years as a quiet and rather staid protester. This was something very different. In maybe more political language, both agreed though-Stop the massacre in Yemen-Stop selling weapons to the Saudis.        

Films To While Away The Time By- Humphrey Bogart’s “In A Lonely Place”

Films To While Away The Time By- Humphrey Bogart’s “In A Lonely Place”

DVD Review





In A Lonely Place, starring Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Columbia Pictures, 1950

I admit, admit up front, that I am partial to rugged windmill-chasing Humphrey Bogart roles like him as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon trying to get a little rough justice in this wicked old world and not afraid to take a beating for the cause, or bust up some wrong gee dreams in the process (although admittedly getting a little thrown off the tracks by a whiff of Mary Astor’s perfume, but that is to be expected). Or another windmill-chaser, Rick, in Casablanca when he knows, knows deep in his soul that the troubles of three love-stuck people in that wicked old World War II Nazi world didn’t amount to a “hill of beans” against the darkening night (although there too he was thrown off by that damn dame perfume). And what about his role in To Have And Have Not when he is again forced, as Captain Harry Morgan, to step it up a notch in that still wicked old World War II world (that time, come to think of it, he too got thrown off the tracks by a woman, by a whistler of all things).

After that big manly, windmill-chasing build-up, complete with cigarette, unfiltered, of course, Luckies probably, in hand it is hard to see old Bogie as kind of troubled, well, dope. A guy who can’t handle his emotions, or his fists, when some little breeze problem come s through the door. Against friend of foe, against some Johnny Rico or some frail. However that is exactly the problem before us as Bogie plays a troubled screen writer (aren’t they all, troubled that is, having to write some pretty tough stuff to earn their dollar a word).

Maybe I had better give you the “skinny” here so you’ll get my drift. Dix (Bogie) is a maybe “has been” writer who is in a dry spell. He invites a hat- check girl from the club home (what club? any club, any gin joint in the world) to give him the story line of a book that he is supposed to do the screenplay for. And that is all he wants. (Ya, I know that “come on” is weak but there it is). The problem: early next morning she is found dead, very dead, in some arroyo road side ditch. And Dix is primo suspect numero uno. Enter one lovely blond alibi, Lauren (played by Gloria Grahame), who had seen Dix sent the hat check girl off alone. Dix is still not off the hook though since downtown (the cops, okay) are not convinced that Dix didn’t do it. This unlikely pair begins an affair. The story then gets tense as Lauren (and others) begin to believe Dix did do it after he exhibited extreme anger (and violent acts) at the accusations. Well, Dix didn’t do it but he lost Laurel by his mad man American Psych 101 demeanor. And so he walks alone at the end, a contrite but broken man.

See, no foggy airfield sent-offs amid the clamor of war next fights, no fast boat get-aways to Free French territory and the fight continues, and no wacko stuff of dreams busted wiser man here, just alone. Bogie alone. Jesus.

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-To An Old Unrepetant Wobblie- Rosalie Sorrels' Farewell To Utah Phillips

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-To An Old Unrepetant Wobblie- Rosalie Sorrels' Farewell To Utah Phillips

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

By Music Critic Bart Webber

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

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

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

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

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

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

CD REVIEW

Farewell To An Unrepentant Wobblie

Strangers In Another Country, Rosalie Sorrels and various artists, Red Barn records, 2008

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

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

That said, what could be better than to have Rosalie pay musical tribute to one of her longest and dearest folk friends, her old comrade Utah Phillips, someone who it is apparent from this beautiful little CD was on the same wavelength as that old unrepentant Wobblie. Here Rosalie takes a wide scattering of Utah’s work from various times and places and gives his songs and storytelling her own distinctive twist.

For example? Well, right from the first song “Starlight On The Trail” about being adrift in America in the later part of the 20th century with its prologue taken from some thoughts on the writings of author Thomas Wolfe (of “You Can’t Go Home Again” fame). Or the stirring “He Comes Like The Rain” a fair description of Utah himself if one thinks about it. Or to get political (and worry about the next generations) “Enola Gay”. And political memory about the forgotten “pre-mature anti-fascist” heroes of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades that fought in Spain when it counted in “Eddie’s Song”. Finally, how about the appropriate ‘Ashes On The Sea” complete with Kate Wolf/Woody Guthrie story. If there were more than a five star spot here I would click it. Utah, rest easy, Rosalie did good, she did very good by you here. Adieu, old working class warrior.


If I Could Be The Rain-"Utah Phillips"

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


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

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

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

Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips


THE TELLING TAKES ME HOME
(Bruce Phillips)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Memories of North Adamsville-With The 250th Anniversary Of The Birth Of John Quincy Adams In Mind (2017)

Memories of North Adamsville-With The 250^th Anniversary Of The Birth Of John Quincy Adams In Mind (2017)

By Jack Callahan 

WTF. Normally I could give, as we used to say in the old Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville, a rat’s ass about the birth of a long gone President of the United States (POTUS in the new newspeak of early 21^st century America just to show I am not out of the loop on some things). Even a President, John Quincy Adams, number six, who the town where I grew up was named after, or at least he was a member of the family the town was named after. Maybe it was his father also a President, John, number two or some other damn Puritan brethren even before him. I could care less about old time Puritans who gave my forebears, the Irish who came over on the “famine ships” a hard time when they moved from Boston, South Boston really, to the Acre as a way of creating their upwardly mobile version of the pot of gold after they landed here back in the day.               

Like I said if left to my own devises I would have ignored as I have for my whole existence I think the celebration JQ’s 250^th birthday except for one reason, for one thing, for one person if you need to know. That person my old long gone friend and a guy who I first met in Miss (Ms.) Sullivan’s third grade class Pete Markin (whose mother always called him Peter Paul which he hated and who was known from junior high school on as “the Scribe” after our acknowledged leader Frankie Riley dubbed him that one night after he had written a glowing article in the school newspaper, The Magnet, laying it on about some Frankie exploit).

The Scribe you see was a history nut, or maybe better to call him a guy who needed, and I mean this, needed to know about then thousand facts or he could not operate in the world. He was crazy to know about guys like JQ, about his father and about his mother Abigail. One time in sixth grade I think it was he told me that he needed to know all that information in case some girl wanted to know something and that would give him his lead-in but I think it was deeper than that silly idea. I think he really was a curious guy, was really full of wonder about where the next fact might lead him. 

The Scribe was a funny mix in a way. He was almost a chemically pure corner boy, a guy like me and Frankie and a bunch of other guys who were too poor to do much else except hang around Harry’s Variety Store and plot ways to get dough any way we could up to and including various forms of larceny. The Scribe was the guy who would think up the schemes but after one night when we almost got thrown in the slammer because Pete didn’t remember to put a look-out in front of the house Frankie Riley ran the operations.

But the Scribe was also a book crazy guy as you could imagine of a guy who needed to have plenty of facts in his arsenal and spent a lot of time at the library. The summer between sixth and seventh grade we didn’t see much of the Scribe because he had decided after getting into all kinds of trouble at school and having a couple of bouts in juvenile court that he would lay low. That is when he started reading if you can believe this biographies about various members of the Adams family. And at night when we were hanging out later in the school year he would bore us to tears with all kinds of stuff especially I remember about mother Abigail (John’s wife) who he thought was the smartest and most interesting one of the lot. From now on though whenever I think about my old lost comrade I will also think about one John Quincy Adams and how the Scribe loved to talk about him and his crowd as well. Happy birthday JQ.    

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-Coming Of Age, 50s Style-Another Encore

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-Coming Of Age, 50s Style-Another Encore

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-Coming Of Age, 50s Style-Another Encore

CD Review

Oldies But Goodies, Volume Two, Original Sound Record Co., 1986

I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question that those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that your parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.

Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music.  Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.

So what still sounds good on this CD compilation to a current AARPer and, and perhaps some of his fellows who comprise the demographic that such a 1950s compilation “speak” to. Of course, Danny and The Juniors, At The Hop, one of the first rock songs that I heard (and heard over and over again) on the local radio stations. Naturally an “angel” song, this time on a happier note, Pretty Little Angel Eyes. Naturally, in a period of classic rock numbers, Fats Domino’s Blueberry Hill (or, like Chuck Berry from this period, virtually any other of about twenty of his songs).

But what about the now, seeming mandatory to ask, inevitable end of the night high school dance song (or maybe even middle school) that seems to be included in each CD compilation? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumbly-voice, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar). Here the classic Goodnight My Love fills the bill. Hey, I didn’t even like the song, or the singing, but she said yes (a different she that the one from the Volume One review, oh fickle youth) this was what you waited for so don’t be so choosey. And, yes, I know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?

***********

Blueberry Hill-Fats Domino Lyrics

I found my thrill
On Blueberry Hill
On Blueberry Hill
When I found you

The moon stood still
On Blueberry Hill
And lingered until
My dream came true

The wind in the willow played
Love's sweet melody
But all of those vows you made
Were never to be

Though we're apart
You're part of me still
For you were my thrill
On Blueberry Hill

The wind in the willow played
Love's sweet melody
But all of those vows you made
Were never to be

Though we're apart
You're part of me still
For you were my thrill
On Blueberry Hill

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-*Coming Of Age, 50s Style-One More Time

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-*Coming Of Age, 50s Style-One More Time

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-*Coming Of Age, 50s Style-One More Time


CD Review

Oldies But Goodies, Volume Four, Original Sound Record Co., 1986

I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question that those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that your parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.

Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music.  Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.

So what still sounds good on this CD compilation to a current AARPer and, and perhaps some of his fellows who comprise the demographic that such a 1950s compilation “speak” to (and here some early 60s songs as well). Of course, Bob Dylan’s It Aint Me Babe. Carl Perkins original Blue Suede Shoes (covered by and made famous by, and millions for, Elvis). Or the Hank William’s outlaw country classic I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. Naturally, in a period of classic rock numbers, Buddy Holly’s Peggy Sue (or, like Chuck Berry and Fat Domino from this period, virtually any other of about twenty of his songs).

But what about the now, seeming mandatory to ask, inevitable end of the night high school dance song (or maybe even middle school) that seems to be included in each CD compilation? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumbly-voice, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar). Here the classic A Teenage Prayer (although what we were praying for, and why will be very different for each rememberer) fills the bill. Hey, I didn’t even like the song, or the singing, but she said yes this was what you waited for so don’t be so choosey. And, yes, I know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?

********
Teenage Prayer Lyrics

My friends all know it
How I adore him
I whisper to angels
What I'd do for him
He is the answer
To a teenage prayer

He won't go steady
The crowd has told me
But I keep waiting
To have him hold me
Why won't you listen
To a teenage prayer?

I await by the window at seven
And chill when my thrill passes by
His kiss could send me to heaven
Into his arms I would fly

My girlfriend Betty tells me he's lazy
But i know Betty loves him like crazy
He is the answer
To a teenage prayer

Yes
He is the answer
To a teenage prayer