An Encore-Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Going To The Chapel Of Love In Mind

An Encore-Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Going To The Chapel Of Love In Mind

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

There were some things about Edward Rowley’s youthful activities, those that he thought would bring some small honor to his name, that he would rather not forget, things that defined his life, gave him that “fifteen minutes of fame,” if only to himself and his, that everybody kept talking about that everyone deserved before they departed this life. That “fifteen minutes of fame” business which he thought had been uttered by the Pop-artist Andy Warhol in one of his prankster moments, one of his New York high society put-downs, was fine by him even if it had been the result of some small honor thing.

The subject of that small honor done in the spurt of his youth that had defined a lot of what came later is what got him thinking one sunny afternoon in September about five years ago as he waited for the seasons to turn almost before his eyes about the times around 1964, around the time that he graduated from North Adamsville High School, around the time that he realized that the big breeze jail-break that he had kind of been waiting for was about to bust out over the land, over America. (His world view did not encompass the entire world or what was the same thing the "youth nation" part of that view but later after making plenty of international connections from here and there he could have said he was waiting for that breeze to bust out over the world.)

It was not like Edward was some kind of soothsayer, like some big think tank thinker paid well to keep tabs on social trends for those in charge so they didn’t get waylaid like they did with the “rebel without a cause” and “beat” phenomena or anything like that back in the 1950s that had them all scared like hell that society was going down in the ditch. No, it was like he could read tea leaves or tarot cards like some latter day Madame La Rue who actually did read his future once down at the Gloversville Fair when she had come to that location with her daughter, Gypsy Anne, one hot August week when he was about twelve. Madame that day read that he was made for big events. The big event that he was interested in just then was winning a doll, a stuffed animal or something like that for dark-haired, dark-eyed just starting to fill out  Gypsy Anne at the Skee game of which he was an expert at.

(For those clueless about Skee, have forgotten or have never spent their illicit youths around carnivals, small time circuses, or penny-ante amusement parks, the game is simplicity itself once you get the hang of it and play about 10,000 hours’ worth of games you roll small balls, which come down a chute once you pay your dough, or credit/debit card the way they have the machines worked nowadays, and you roll them like in bowling up to a target area like in archery and try to get a ton of points which gives you strips of coupons to win a prize depending on high your score is, and what you want. Like I say, simple.) 

And Edward did win his Gypsy Anne a stuffed animal, a big one, and got a very big long wet kiss for his heroics down by the beach when she gave her best twelve year old “come hither” look, not the last time he would be snagged by that look by her or any other women later (and by the way “copped a little feel” from that starting to fill out shape of hers and he finally solved, no, he solved for that one minute that budding girls turned to women were as interested in sex, or at least being “felt up” as the other guys around Harry’s Variety Store had told him  they were if approached the right way).  No way though that tarot reading when he was twelve left an impression, left him with that vague feeling about the big breeze coming, not then when his hormones drove his big thoughts, and not for a long while thereafter.

That big breeze blowing through the land thing had not been Edward’s idea anyway, not his originally although he swore by it once he thought about the possibilities of breaking out of Podunk North Adamsville, but came from “the Scribe,” the late Peter Paul Markin, a corner boy at Jack Slack’s bowling alleys on Thornton Street where he occasionally hung out in high school since he had been childhood friends with the leader of that crowd, Frankie Riley. Markin, despite a serious larcenous heart which would eventually do him in, read books and newspapers a lot and would go on and on about the jail-break thing on lonesome Friday nights when all the guys were waiting, well, just waiting for something to happen in woebegone North Adamsville where the town mainly went to sleep by ten, or eleven on Friday and Saturday night when Jack Slack’s closed late.  (For the younger set, Doc’s Drugstore, the place where he and Frankie hung in their younger days as well, the place where they all first heard rock and roll played loud on Doc’s jukebox by the soda fountain, every night was a nine o’clock close just when things were getting interesting as the shadows had time to spank vivid boy imaginations and you wonder, well, maybe not you, but parents wondered why their kids were ready to take the first hitchhike or hitch a freight train ride out of that “one-horse town” (an expression courtesy of the grandmothers of the town, at least the ones he knew, mostly Irish grandmothers with corn beef and cabbage boiling on their cast-iron stoves and smirks on their faces, if grandmothers could have smirks over anything, about how dear the price of everything was if you could get it a very big problem, including for Edward’s Anna Riley, where he first heard the words).

Here is where that big breeze twelve million word description thing Markin was talking about intersected with that unspoken trend for Edward (unknown and unspoken since the corner at Jack Slacks’ did not have a professional academic sociologist in residence to guide them since those “hired guns” were still hung up on solving the juvenile delinquency problem and so as usual were well behind the curve  and Markin, the Scribe as smart as he was, was picking his stuff up strictly from newspapers and magazines who were always way also behind the trends until the next big thing hit them in the face). Edward’s take on the musical twists and turns back then is where he had something the kids at North Adamsville High would comment on, would ask him about to see which way the winds were blowing, would put their nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukeboxes to hear based on his recommendations.

Even Markin deferred to him on this one, on his musical sense, the beat or the “kicks” as he called then although he, Markin, would horn in, or try to, on the glory by giving every imaginable arcane fact about some record’s history, roots, whatever which would put everybody to sleep, they just wanted to heard the “beat” for crying out loud. Edward did have to chuckle though when he thought about the way, the main way, that Markin worked the jukebox scene since he was strictly from poverty, from the projects, poorer even than Edward’s people and that was going some if you saw the ramshackle shack of a house that he and his four older brothers grew up in. The Scribe used to con some lonely-heart girl who maybe had just broken up with her boyfriend, maybe had been dateless for a while, or was just silly enough to listen to him into playing what he wanted to hear based on what Edward had told him.

But Markin was smooth in his way since he would draw a bee-line to the girl who just put her quarter in for her three selection on Jack Slack’s jukebox (Doc’s, sweet and kindly saint Doc whose place was a bee-hive after school for that very reason , had five for a quarter if you can believe that). He would become her “advisor,” and as the number one guy who knew every piece of teenage grapevine news in the town and whom everybody therefore deferred on that intelligence so he would let her “pick” the first selection, usually some sentimental lost love thing she could get weepy over, the second selection would be maybe some “oldie but goodie,” Breathless or At The Hop, which everybody still wanted to hear, and then on number three, the girl all out of ideas Markin would tout whatever song had caught his ear. Jesus, Markin was a piece of work. Too bad he had to end the way he did down in Mexico now lying in some unmarked grave in some town’s potter’s field back in the mid-1970s which guys from the old town were still moaning over.

That was Markin on the fringes but see Edward’s senses were very much directed by his tastes in music, by his immersion into all things rock and roll in the early 1960s where he sensed what he called silly “bubble gum” music that had passed for rock(what high priest Markin called something like the “musical counter-revolution” but he was always putting stuff in political bull form like that). Which, go figure, the girls liked, or liked the look of the guys singing the tunes, guys with flipped hair and dimples like Fabian and Bobby Rydell but was strictly nowhere with Edward. The breeze Edward felt was going to bury that stuff under an avalanche of sounds going back to Elvis, and where Elvis got his stuff from like Lonnie Johnson and the R&B and black electric blues guys, the rockabilly hungry white boys, and forward to something else, something with more guitars all amped to big ass speakers that were just coming along to bring in the new dispensation.

More importantly since the issue of jailbreaks and sea changes were in the air Edward was the very first kid to grasp what would later be called “the folk minute of the early 1960s,” and not just by Markin when he wrote stuff about that time later before his sorry end. Everybody would eventually hone in on Dylan and Baez, dubbed the “king and queen” of the moment by the mass media always in a frenzy to anoint and label things that they had belatedly found about out about and run into the ground.  But when folk tunes started showing up on the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner over on Latham Street where the college guys hung out and where families went to a cheap filling dinner to give Ma a break from the supper meal preparations it was guys like the Kingston Trio, the Lettermen, and the Lamplighters who got the play after school and some other girls, not the “bubble gum” girls went crazy over the stuff when Edward made recommendations.

He had caught the folk moment almost by accident late one Sunday night when he picked up a station from New York City and heard Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie songs being played, stuff that Mr. Dasher his seventh grade music teacher had played in class to broaden youthful minds, meaning trying to break the Elvis-driven rock and roll habit. So that musical sense combined with his ever present sense that things could be better in this wicked old world drilled into him by his kindly old grandmother, that Anna Riley with her boiling kettles and smirks mentioned before,   who was an old devotee of the Catholic Worker movement kind of drove his aspirations (and Markin’s harping with the political and so-called historical slant triggered by his own grandmother’s devotion to the Catholic Worker movement added in). But at first it really was the music that had been the cutting edge of what followed later, followed until about 1964 when that new breeze arrived in the land. 

That fascination with music had occupied Edward’s mind since he had been about ten and had received a transistor radio for his birthday and out of curiosity decided to turn the dial to AM radio channels other that WJDA which his parents, may they rest in peace, certainly rest in peace from his incessant clamoring for rock and roll records and later folk albums, concert tickets, radio listening time on the big family radio in the living room, had on constantly and which drove him crazy. Drove him crazy because that music, well, frankly that music, the music of the Doris Days, the Peggy Lees, the Rosemary Clooneys, the various corny sister acts like the Andrews Sisters, the Frank Sinatras, the Vaughn Monroes, the Dick Haynes and an endless series of male quartets did not “jump,” gave him no “kicks,’ left him flat. As a compromise, no, in order to end the family civil war, they had purchased a transistor radio at Radio Shack and left him to his own devises.

One night, one late night in 1955, 1956 when Edward was fiddling with the dial he heard this sound out of Cleveland, Ohio, a little fuzzy but audible playing this be-bop sound, not jazz although it had horns, not rhythm and blues although sort of, but a new beat driven by some wild guitar by a guy named Warren Smith who was singing about his Ruby, his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby who only was available apparently to dance the night away. And she didn’t seem to care whether she danced by herself on the tabletops or with her guy. Yeah, so if you need a name for what ailed young Edward Rowley, something he could not quite articulate then call her woman, call her Ruby and you will not be far off. And so with that as a pedigree Edward became one of the town’s most knowledgeable devotees of the new sound.

Problem was that new sound, as happens frequently in music, got a little stale as time went on, as the original artists who captured his imagination faded from view one way or another and new guys, guys with nice Bobby this and Bobby that names, Patsy this and Brenda that names sang songs under the umbrella name rock and roll that his mother could love. Songs that could have easily fit into that WJDA box that his parents had been stuck in since about World War II.

So Edward was anxious for a new sound to go along with his feeling tired of the same old, same old stuff that had been hanging around in the American night since the damn nuclear hot flashes red scare Cold War started way before he had a clue about what that was all about. It had started with the music and then he got caught later in high school up with a guy in school, Daryl Wallace, a hipster, or that is what he called himself, a guy who liked “kicks” although being in high school in North Adamsville far from New York City, far from San Francisco, damn, far from Boston what those “kicks” were or what he or Edward would do about getting those “kicks” never was made clear. But they played it out in a hokey way and for a while they were the town, really high school, “beatniks.”  So Edward had had his short faux “beat” phase complete with flannel shirts, black chino pants, sunglasses, and a black beret (a beret that he kept hidden at home in his bedroom closet once he found out after his parents had seen and heard Jack Kerouac reading from the last page of On The Road on the Steve Allen Show that they had severely disapproved of the man, the movement and anything that smacked of the “beat” and a beret always associated with French bohemians and foreignness would have had them seeing “red”). And for a while Daryl and Edward played that out until Daryl moved away (at least that was the story that went around but there was a persistent rumor for a time that Mr. Wallace had dragooned Daryl into some military school in California in any case that disappearance from the town was the last he ever heard from his “beat” brother).

Then came 1964 and  Edward was fervently waiting for something to happen, for something to come out of the emptiness that he was feeling just as things started moving again with the emergence of the Beatles and the Stones as a harbinger of what was coming.

That is where Edward had been psychologically when his mother first began to harass him about his hair. Although the hair thing like the beret was just the symbol of clash that Edward knew was coming and knew also that now that he was older that he was going to be able to handle differently that when he was a kid.  Here is what one episode of the battle sounded like:                   

“Isn’t that hair of yours a little long Mr. Edward Rowley, Junior,” clucked Mrs. Edward Rowley, Senior, “You had better get it cut before your father gets back from his job working on repairing that ship up in Maine, if you know what is good for you.” That mothers’-song was being endlessly repeated in North Adamsville households (and not just those households either but in places like Carver, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Ann Arbor, Manhattan, Cambridge any place where guys were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing hair a little longer than boys’ regular was the flash point) ever since the British invasion had brought longer hair into style (and a little less so, beards, that was later when guys got old enough to grow one without looking wispy, after they had taken a look at what their Victorian great-grandfathers grew and though it was “cool.” Cool along with new mishmash clothing and new age monikers to be called by after giving up their "slave" names.)

Of course when one was thinking about the British invasion in the year 1964 one was not thinking about the American Revolution or the War of 1812 but the Beatles. And while their music has taken 1964 teen world by a storm, a welcome storm after the long lonely mainly musical counter-revolution since Elvis, Bo, Jerry Lee and Chuck ruled the rock night and had disappeared without a trace, the 1964 parent world was getting up in arms.

And not just about hair styles either. But about midnight trips on the clanking subway to Harvard Square coffeehouses to hear, to hear if you can believe this, folk music, mountain music, harp music or whatever performed by long-haired (male or female), long-bearded (male), blue jean–wearing (both), sandal-wearing (both), well, for lack of a better name “beatniks” (parents, as usual, being well behind the curve on teen cultural movements since by 1964 “beat”  except on silly television shows and by “wise” social commenters who could have been “Ike” brothers and sisters, was yesterday’s news).

Mrs. Rowley would constantly harp about “why couldn’t Edward be like he was when he listened to Bobby Vinton and his Mr. Lonely or that lovely-voiced Roy Orbison and his It’s Over and other nice songs on the local teen radio station, WMEX (he hated that name Eddie by the way, Eddie was also what everybody called his father so you can figure out why he hated the moniker just then). Now it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a cranky-voiced guy named Bob Dylan that had his attention. And that damn Judy Jackson with her short skirt and her, well her… looks” (Mrs. Rowley like every mother in the post-Pill world refusing to use the “s” word, a throw-back to their girlish days when their mothers did not use such a word either and so everybody learned about sex is some strange osmotic way out in the streets, in the school boys' and girls' lavs Monday mornings before school when some Ben or Lisa would lie like crazy about their sex bouts weekend, and from older almost as clueless older brothers and sisters just like now.)     

Since Mrs. Rowley, Alice to the neighbors, was getting worked up anyway, she let out what was really bothering her about her Eddie’s behavior, "What about all the talk about doing right by the down-trodden Negros down in Alabama and Mississippi. And you and that damn Peter Markin, who used to be so nice when all you boys hung around together at Jimmy Jack’s Diner [Edward: corner boys, Ma, that is what we were and at Jack Slack’s alleys not Jimmy Jack’s that was for the jukebox and for checking out the girls who were putting dough in that jukebox] and I at least knew you were no causing trouble, talking about organizing a book drive to get books for the little Negro children down there. If your father ever heard that there would be hell to pay, hell to pay and maybe a strap coming out of the closet big as you are. Worse though, worse than worrying about Negros down South is that treasonous talk about leaving this country, leaving North Adamsville, defenseless against the communists with your talk of nuclear disarmament. Why couldn’t you have just left well enough alone and stuck with your idea of forming a band that would play nice songs that make kids feel good like Gale Garnet’s We’ll Sing In The Sunshine or that pretty Negro girl Dionne Warwick and Her Walk On By instead of getting everybody upset."

And since Mrs. Rowley, Alice, to the neighbors had mentioned the name Judy Jackson, Edward’s flame and according to Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talk, Judy’s talk they had “done the deed” and you can figure out what the deed was let’s hear what was going on in the Jackson household since one of the reasons that Edward was wearing his hair longer was because Judy thought it was “sexy” and so that talk of doing the deed may well have been true if there were any sceptics. Hear this:      

“Young lady, that dress is too short for you to wear in public, take it off, burn it for all I care, and put on another one or you are not going out of this house,” barked Mrs. James Jackson, echoing a sentiment that many worried North Adamsville mothers were feeling (and not just those mothers either but in places like Gloversville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where gals were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing their skirts a little shorter than mid-calf was the flash point) about their daughters dressing too provocatively and practically telling the boys, well practically telling them you know what as she suppressed the “s” word that was forming in her head. She too working up a high horse head of steam continued, "And that Eddie [“Edward, Ma,” Judy keep repeating every time Mrs. Jackson, Dorothy to the neighbors, said Eddie], and his new found friends like Peter Markin taking you to those strange coffeehouses in Harvard Square with all the unwashed, untamed, unemployed “beatniks” instead of the high school dances on Saturday night. And that endless talk about the n-----s down South, about get books for the ignorant to read and other trash talk about how they are equal to us, and your father better not hear you talk like that, not at the dinner table since he has to work around them and their smells and ignorance over in that factory in Dorchester.  

And don’t start with that Commie trash about peace and getting rid of weapons. They should draft the whole bunch of them and put them over in front of that Berlin Wall. Then they wouldn’t be so negative about America."

Scene: Edward, Judy and Peter Markin were sitting in the Club Nana in Harvard Square sipping coffee, maybe pecking at the one brownie between them, and listening to a local wanna-be folk singing strumming his stuff (who turned out to be none other than Eric Von Schmidt whose Joshua Gone Barbados and a couple of other songs would become folk staples and classics). Beside them cartons of books that they are sorting to be taken along with them when they head south this summer after graduation exercises at North Adamsville High School are completed in June. (By the way Peter’s parents were only slightly less irate about their son’s activities and used the word “Negro” when they were referring to black people, black people they wished their son definitely not to get involved with were only slightly less behind the times than Mrs. Rowley and Mrs. Jackson and so requires no separate screed by Mrs. Markin. See Peter did not mention word one about what he was, or was not, doing and thus spared himself the anguish that Edward and Judy put themselves through trying to “relate” to their parents, their mothers really since fathers were some vague threatened presence in the background in those households.)

They, trying to hold back their excitement have already been to some training sessions at the NAACP office over on Massachusetts Avenue in the Roxbury section of Boston and had purchased their tickets for the Greyhound bus as far as New York’s Port Authority where they will meet others who will be heading south down to Mississippi goddam and Alabama goddam on a chartered bus. But get this Peter turned to Edward and said, “Have you heard that song, Popsicles and Icicles by the Mermaids, it has got great melodic sense.” Edward made a very severe off-putting “no way” face. Yes, we are still in the time just before the sea change after which even Peter will chuckle about “bubble gum” music. Good luck on your journey though, young travelers, good luck.

Happy Birthday Jim Kweskin-The Max Daddy Of Jug- On Memphis Minnie's Birthday-In The Beginning There Was……Jug- Songstress Maria Muldaur Goes Back Home

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Maria Muldaur performing with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band back in the days.

CD Review

Maria Muldaur And Her Garden Of Joy, Maria Muldaur and the Garden of Joy Jug Band, Stony Plain, 2009

The last time that I featured the femme fatale blues torch singer reincarnate Maria Muldaur (at least that is the way that she, successfully, projected herself in her recent blues revival projects) was in a review of her 2007 CD tribute to the great singers of the 1920s and 1930s, Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie, Sippy Wallace and the like. I might add that I raved on and on about the value of her project, the worthiness of the singers honored and her own place in the blues pantheon. Of course, for those in the know about the roots of the folk revival of the 1960s at least, the name Maria Muldaur is forever associated with another closely-related branch of roots music-the jug band. Maria was the very fetching female vocalist for the old time revivalist Jim Kweskin Jug Band (and an earlier effort in her home town, New York City, by John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful fame, The Even Dozen Jug Band).

Well, hold the presses please, because the red hot blues mama has come back home in her latest project, the CD under review, “Maria Muldaur And Her Garden Of Joy”. And if Maria was kind of thrown in the background somewhat in those days by the strong presence of Jim Kweskin and that of her ex-husband Geoff Muldaur she is front and center on this effort. One of the virtues of jug music back in the day was that it was basically zany, funny, send-off kind of music and full of, usually, high-spirited if coded sexual innuendos. This, on occasion, was a welcome break from the heavy political message songs that were de rigueur or the traditional ballads filled with tales of thwarted love, duplicity and murder and mayhem. In this CD Maria brings back the energy and just plain wistfulness of that type of music. And she does it on her terms.

As fate would have it, or rather by a conscious act, I happened to see Maria and her very fine new jug band made up of younger, well, Jim Kweskin jug band-types (along with guest performer, now blues/ragtime guitar virtuoso John Sebastian) in Cambridge (one of her old stomping rounds and an important secondary center of the folk revival in the 1960s). And, like the last time I saw her a couple of years ago when she was that femme fatale blues singer, she did not disappoint. The woman carried the show with the energy of the old days (that you can get an idea of by going on "YouTube" in a click from 1966).

The line between jug music and flat out torch blues sometimes is not that wide and the switch over thus is not that dramatic. At least in Maria's hands. Witness her version of Mississippi John Hurt’s “Richland Woman” which she did jug-style at the concert (she did a more lowdown bluesy version on her “Richland Woman” album). The example on this album that comes to mind is the little known but, currently, very relevant 1929 song “Bank Failure Blues”. Also the classic jug tune “Garden Of Joy” and another one “Sweet Lovin’ Ol’ Soul” (also done blues-style on a previous album of the same name). This is good stuff but begs the question. Jim Kweskin is still performing. Geoff Muldaur is still performing. Geoff and Jim occasionally perform together. Wouldn’t it be a treat if...?

Blues Lyrics - Mississippi John Hurt Richland's Woman Blues

All rights to lyrics included on these pages belong to the artists and authors of the works. All lyrics, photographs, soundclips and other material on this website may only be used for private study, scholarship or research. by Mississippi John Hurt recording of 19 from

Gimme red lipstick and a bright purple rouge
A shingle bob haircut and a shot of good boo'
Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' your horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone
Come along young man, everything settin' right
My husbands goin' away till next Saturday night
Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' you horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone
Now, I'm raring to go, got red shoes on my feet
My mind is sittin' right for a Tin Lizzie seat
Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' you horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone
The red rooster said, "Cockle-doodle-do-do"
The Richard's' woman said, "Any dude will do"
Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' you horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone
With rosy red garters, pink hose on my feet
Turkey red bloomer, with a rumble seat
Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' you horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone
Every Sunday mornin', church people watch me go
My wings sprouted out, and the preacher told me so
Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' you horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone
Dress skirt cut high, then they cut low
Don't think I'm a sport, keep on watchin' me go
Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' you horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone __________

Note 1: a woman's haircut with the hair trimmed short from the back of the head to the nape; Note 2: nickname for the Model T Ford automobile (1915), a small inexpensive first time mass- produced early automobile.

From The Marxist Archives On The 100th Anniversary Year Of Their Deaths-For the Communism of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg

From The Marxist Archives On The 100th Anniversary Year Of Their Deaths-For the Communism of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg

Workers Vanguard No. 1147 18 January 2019 TROTSKY LENIN For the Communism of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg (Quote of the Week) One hundred years ago, on 15 January 1919, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered in Germany at the behest of the capitalist government run by the Social Democrats, which unleashed the fascistic Freikorps to crush a workers uprising. After receiving news of the assassinations, V.I. Lenin, leader of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, heaped further scathing condemnation on the social-democratic betrayers of the proletariat, including the wing led by Karl Kautsky, in the letter excerpted below. Upholding the revolutionary tradition of the early Communist International, this month we commemorate the “Three L’s”—Liebknecht, Luxemburg and Lenin himself, who died in January 1924. The foundation of a genuinely proletarian, genuinely internationalist, genuinely revolutionary Third International, the Communist International, became a fact when the German Spartacus League, with such world-known and world-famous leaders, with such staunch working-class champions as Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring, made a clean break with socialists like Scheidemann and Südekum, social-chauvinists (socialists in words, but chauvinists in deeds) who have earned eternal shame by their alliance with the predatory, imperialist German bourgeoisie and Wilhelm II. It became a fact when the Spartacus League changed its name to the Communist Party of Germany. Though it has not yet been officially inaugurated, the Third International actually exists.... Against Liebknecht are the Scheidemanns, the Südekums and the whole gang of despicable lackeys of the Kaiser and the bourgeoisie. They are just as much traitors to socialism as the Gomperses and Victor Bergers, the Hendersons and Webbs, the Renaudels and Vanderveldes. They represent that top section of workers who have been bribed by the bourgeoisie, those whom we Bolsheviks called (applying the name to the Russian Südekums, the Mensheviks) “agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement,” and to whom the best socialists in America gave the magnificently expressive and very fitting title: “labour lieutenants of the capitalist class.”... The foregoing lines were written before the brutal and dastardly murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg by the Ebert and Scheidemann government. Those butchers, in their servility to the bourgeoisie, allowed the German whiteguards, the watchdogs of sacred capitalist property, to lynch Rosa Luxemburg, to murder Karl Liebknecht by shooting him in the back on the patently false plea that he “attempted to escape” (Russian tsarism often used that excuse to murder prisoners during its bloody suppression of the 1905 Revolution). At the same time those butchers protected the whiteguards with the authority of the government, which claims to be quite innocent and to stand above classes! No words can describe the foul and abominable character of the butchery perpetrated by alleged socialists. Evidently, history has chosen a path on which the role of “labour lieutenants of the capitalist class” must be played to the “last degree” of brutality, baseness and meanness. Let those simpletons, the Kautskyites, talk in their newspaper Freiheit about a “court” of representatives of “all” “socialist” parties (those servile souls insist that the Scheidemann executioners are socialists)! Those heroes of philistine stupidity and petty-bourgeois cowardice even fail to understand that the courts are organs of state power, and that the issue in the struggle and civil war now being waged in Germany is precisely one of who is to hold this power—the bourgeoisie, “served” by the Scheidemanns as executioners and instigators of pogroms, and by the Kautskys as glorifiers of “pure democracy,” or the proletariat, which will overthrow the capitalist exploiters and crush their resistance. The blood of the best representatives of the world proletarian International, of the unforgettable leaders of the world socialist revolution, will steel ever new masses of workers for the life-and-death struggle. And this struggle will lead to victory. —V.I. Lenin, “Letter to the Workers of Europe and America” (21 January 1919)

Happy Birthday Jim Kweskin-The Max Daddy Of Jug- In The Beginning Was The Jug- The Jim Kweskin Jug Band

In The Beginning Was The Jug- The Jim Kweskin Jug Band

As told to Alex Radley

Who knows how it happened maybe somebody in the band looked up some songs in the album archives, or found some gem in some record store, an institution now on the ropes what with Amazon and every other on-line music site to tear into the very marginal profits of record store brick and mortar operations, that sustained many for hours back then in the cusp of the 1960s folk revival when there were record stores on almost every corner in places like Harvard Square and you could find some gems if you searched long enough. That is where Si Lannon found Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music (although sometimes the search was barren or, maybe worse, something by Miss Patti Page or Tennessee Ernie Ford stared you in the face and you got pissed off that those selections were even in a record store). From there they found, maybe Cannon’s Stompers, the Mississippi Sheiks or the Memphis Jug Band, saw they could prosper going back to those days if they kept the arrangements simple, and that was that.

See, everybody then was looking for roots, American music roots, old country roots, roots of some ancient thoughts of a democratic America before the robber barons and their progeny grabbed everything with every hand. And that search was no accident, at least from the oral history evidence, from Si Lannon in this case, having grown up with rock and roll and restless for something new, found in that minute that genre wanting.  Some went reaching South to the homeland of much roots music and found some grizzled old geezers who had made a small name for themselves in the 1920s when labels like RCA and Paramount went out looking for talent in the hinterlands.

So there was history there, certainly for the individual members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim, Geoff Mulduar, Mel Lymon, Maria Muldaur, Fritz Richmond , all well-versed in many aspects of the American Songbook (hell, I would say so, even old tacky Tin Pan Alley Irving Berlin and Cole Porter got a hearing), history there for the taking. All they needed was a jug, a good old boy homemade corn liquor jug giving the best sound and so they were off, off to conquer places like Harvard Square, like the Village, like almost any place in the Bay area. (That Bay Area a few years later a hub for all kinds of rock but also saved space for the Kweskin Band as a number of poster art concerts now considered high art would testify even in that Summer of Love craze, maybe because of it.)  And for a while they did, picking up chimes, kazoos, harmonicas, what the heck, even standard guitars and they made great music, great entertainment music, not heavy with social messages but just evoking those long lost spirits from the 1920s when jug music would sustain a crowd on a Saturday night out in the hinterlands. Yeah, in the beginning was the jug…    

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- Happy Birthday Woody Guthire The Father We Never Knew -Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part One-The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Cisco Houston

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Cisco Houston performing "New York Town".

CD Review

Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001


"Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:

Disc One; Woody Guthrie on “Hard Travelin’”, Big Bill Broonzy on “Black , Brown And White”, Jean Ritchie on “Nottamun Town”, Josh White on “One Meat Ball” Malvina Reynolds on “Little Boxes”, Cisco Houston on “Midnight Special”, The Weavers on “Wasn’t That A Time”, Glenn Yarborough on “Spanish Is A Loving Tongue”, Odetta on “I’ve Been Driving On Bald Mountain”, The New Lost City Ramblers on “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down”, Bob Gibson and Bob Camp on “Betty And Dupree”, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott on “San Francisco Bay Blues”, Peggy Seeger on “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, Hoyt Axton on “Greenback Dollar” and Carolyn Hester on “Turn And Swing Jubilee”."

Cisco Houston on “Midnight Special”. Two comments will be enough here. One Cisco was Woody Guthrie’s traveling buddy (and Merchant Marine shipmate during World War II) so you know that he was the real thing. Second, this Lead Belly tune was hit and he rocked the house with it. The song gets a very different look from the interesting voice of one Cisco Houston.



Midnight Special lyrics

Well you wake up in the morning, hear the ding dong ring,
You go a-marching to the table, see the same damn thing
Well, it's on a one table, knife, a fork and a pan,
And if you say anything about it, you're in trouble with the man
Let the midnight special, shine her light on me
Let the midnight special, shine her ever-loving light on me

If you ever go to Houston, you better walk right, you better not stagger, you better not fight
Sheriff Benson will arrest you, he'll carry you down
And if the jury finds you guilty, penitentiary bound
Yonder come little Rosie, how in the world do you know
I can tell her by her apron, and the dress she wore
Umbrella on her shoulder, piece of paper in her hand
She goes a-marching to the captain, says, "I want my man"
"I don' believe that Rosie loves me", well tell me why
She ain't been to see me, since las' July
She brought me little coffee, she brought me little tea
Brought me damn near ever'thing but the jailhouse key
Yonder comes doctor Adams, "How in the world do you know?"
Well he gave me a tablet, the day befo'
There ain't no doctor, in all the lan'
Can cure the fever of a convict man


New York Town: Lyrics
As performed by Cisco Houston
Woody Guthrie

I was standing down New York town one day
I was standing down in New York town one day
I was standing down in that New York town one day
Just singing "Hey hey hey hey"

I was broke and I didn't have a dime
I was broke and I didn't have a lousy dime
I was broke and I didn't have a dime
Every good man gets a little hard luck some time

Every good man gets a little hard luck some time
Every good man gets a little hard luck some time
Every good man gets a little hard luck some time
When he's down and out and ain't got a lousy dime

What you do woman, that sure don't worry me
What you do woman, Lord, that sure don't worry me
What you do woman, that sure don't worry me
I got more women than the Civil War set free

And I can get more women than a passenger train can haul
I can get more women than a passenger train can haul
I can get more women than a passenger train can haul
Just singing "Hey hey hey hey"

I'm gonna ride that new morning railroad
I'm gonna ride that new morning train
I'm gonna ride that new morning train
And I ain't a-comin' back to this man's town again

I ain't a-comin' back to this man's town again
No I ain't-a comin' back to this man's town again
I ain't comin' back to this man's town again
Just singing "Hey, hey hey hey"

Singing "Hey hey hey hey"
Just singing "Hey hey hey hey hey"
Singing "Hey hey hey hey hey"
Just singing "Hey hey hey hey"

****
Of note:

A long (for Cisco) and sparkling guitar solo in this performance, combines with some of Cisco's finest singing to redeem the frightfully non-PC lyrics. And it doesn't sound as if they enjoyed New York City much. Listen for yourself right Here.

From The Archives Of The Maine Peace Walk To Stop The Militarization Of The Seas-And The Pollution Too

From The Archives -“Stop the War$ on Mother Earth”  2016 Maine Peace Walk-Build The International Peace Front

By Fritz Taylor

[For several years some social and political activists in Maine have gathered together to sponsor peace walks throughout the state highlighting that state’s tight relationship with the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Particularly its relationship to notorious Portsmouth Naval Base and the infamous Bath Iron Works. These walks have lasted for a couple of weeks each fall and have highlighted a particular theme as the marchers walk down the highways and byways of that great and oversized state. Generally they are led by organizers from the Maine chapter of Veterans for Peace assisted by recruits from other chapters including Massachusetts.

Enter Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris who have coordinated the other chapters contingents and who apparently think nothing of hunkering up and down the Maine roads for the cause. One day they needed a ride up to Bath to help plan the two weeks’ events with the Maine folk and I volunteered since I was a little curious about the preparations and logistics of keeping a civilian caravan going for that period of time. What I learned that day was that these “mainiacs” had planned an almost two-hundred-mile trek starting in something called Rangeley where a military drone operation was located with the idea of heading south all the way the notorious Portsmouth Naval Base already mentioned above to hand the commander there a document outlining an environmentally-friendly alternative to the current use of building war ships. Peaceful conversion in other words so the workers would have some serious gainful employment to keep them busy. Along the route they would pass out leaflets explaining the terms of the march. Each evening after a communal supper as well there would be a program around some aspect of the theme in whatever town they were stopped.

Although the theme, stop the militarization of the seas, meaning using the long Maine coast as a dumping ground for waste, seemed interesting I told Sam and Ralph I would pass, thank you. That “pass” stemming from those days in Vietnam and elsewhere where I walked my ass off promising myself that I would avoid that situation again at all costs. Of course Ralph and Sam thought nothing of marching through Maine in all weathers, the fall being particularly unpredictable, for the good of the cause. They planned to start right in Rangeley even though when I asked neither could tell me where the place was. That did not stop them however from badgering me to walk some of the route. They eventually conned me into picking up the walk in Brunswick, up at Bowdoin College. And still conned me all the way to Kittery where the notorious Portsmouth base is located. Damn, my feet were sore.]  

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. Sustainable may today mean livable, as in livable planet, from the dire news just in the headlines about the huge Artic and Greenland melts, record high temperatures in placed not know for some levels, more and more endangered species falling off the chart since they could not adapt to the dramatically changed environment fast enough and many more strange doing if you read a new book called Inhabitable Earth along with the attention to the bad news days. Meanwhile in the White House and places like Houston and the Dakotas they are drinking their champagnes out of fossil fuel container and secretly making sure they have their places many miles from the coasts and high above the projected water table lines.

I knew in Vietnam about the various defoliate programs to search out the so-called enemy most famously Agent Orange and about the incredible number of unexploded bombs that plague that country forty years later but I was unaware how much material the Navy (and maybe other branches as well) in their everyday functions spew into the world’s oceans including the coast of Maine. I knew of the climate change effect maybe ten years ago when I would go to Maine beaches and note that the new high tide marks were eating severely into the wetlands in places like Ogunquit. I should have mentioned before that leaflets are passed out with messages along that line of thought, along the military  waste  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 some questions. Enter the great equalizers.  I started, kicking and screaming at first about doing this trek once my friends and fellow members 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 Struggle Against Climate Change And Animal Preservation-West Coast Version-Professor Lance Devine-Climate Guru Oops At Leisure

From The Archives Of The Struggle Against Climate Change And Animal Preservation-West Coast Version-Professor Johnny Allan-Climate Guru Oops At Leisure             

By Bart Webber

You know the very first thing, well if not the first thing then early on, Pete Markin always known as the Scribe, our corner boy resident intellectual in front of Tonio’s Pizza Parlor told me many years ago was never to underestimate your opponent, your enemy really. I wished I thought that gold nugget recently when I went after one Professor Johnny Allan, the great ecologist and con man (go figure). I had simply stated public information that in his prime he was treated like a living god in some circles for his early warning about climate change, animal extinction and human hubris. I have heard that there were cults out on the West Coast who burned incense and smoked weed, ganja in front of his portrait although I have never independently confirmed that to my satisfaction. Could have been just another urban legend.         

Naturally I went through the litany of his accomplishments from the old days basically updating the whole system of getting people interested in these subjects and grabbing contributions, large and small to do the work and awareness projects about what humankind was doing to many species by its wanton wasteful ways burning us up. I also pointed out that the good professor was nothing but a hard rock con man and fraud when he put together a very profitable operation sucking money away from legitimate environmental groups into his own pockets. A couple of people have written books on his lifetime of scams and cons so again this was public knowledge including that for various reasons none really that make sense governments never brought charges against him, and other organizations wouldn’t “play ball with the law” and so he walked.     

This was all a decade or more ago and given his birthdate I thought the old sniveling bastard had died since I had not heard much about him of late. No such luck. His lawyer sent me a letter, no, an e-mail pointing out that Johnny was still alive and angry that I had brought up the latter issues after all this time. Reason: Johnny believed that such talk would damage his little shop selling serapes and knickknacks in Olde Town San Diego and that I had defamed him. The lawyer wanted to talk money to settle out of court.  I, in my best corner boy manner, said fuck off with my defense being the truth of the matter. At the end of the archival caption I used to express my sentiments I noted the truth is a great defense and old Johnny would have to play some other sucker for dough (it did not look like that stall of his was thriving). I expected not to hear further from this rogue.

Then the other day I got a letter, certified, from that same lawyer asking again for dough but this time claiming all the “speculation” about Johnny’s scams was pure fantasy, was pure spite by losers and holy goofs (my expression). Said Johnny had spent the monies given for what they were intended for. What they did not know was that I had actually read Ray Ellis’ book on Johnny’s exploits complete with pictures of his “outings” (see photograph below of Johnny and his group playing golf at Spanish Bay, an exclusive club on 17 Mile Road near Carmel in California when he was supposed to be in Africa for the endangered batum puma). I have plenty more, plenty so while I will be a little more savvy about whether I will hear from dear Johnny that is that.            

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- *Once Again,On Music As The Revolution-Or Counter-Revolution?

Click on title to link to Bob Feldman's blog on the subject of music (folk)and revolution. I have left a comment there.

Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night-Juke Box Cash-In

Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night-Juke Box Cash-In

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

[Several years ago then site manager Allan Jackson (under the moniker Peter Paul Markin like he needed a cover name like he was on the run, as he had been in his youth for a while after making a  few wrong decisions about the virtues of being a stone-cold outlaw living as he once told me “you had to live on the outside to be honest”) in commemorating the 50^th anniversary of, Christ I forget what it was, either this graduation from high school, or maybe what was then called junior high school and now almost universally middle school commissioned, and that is exactly the right word a series of sketches  about the music of our youths. About the role that we admitted the gathering clouds of rock and roll had on our already weary working- class heads.

Now since I am a little younger that the brethren who have written here  forever or if not forever like Bart Webber one would have thought that my line of march would have been somewhat different than those “present at the creation” like Zack James’ oldest brother Alex who actually saw and heard Big Joe Turner blast out Shake, Rattle and Roll on the television (although when Zack inquired Alex did not remember what show it was back in 1954). Had heard the first Elvis fits and starts on something called the Louisiana Hayride before he really started grinding his ass and making the young girl, hell their mothers too sweat. Had heard Warren Smith cannonball his Ruby to rock and roll heaven. Probably a little different too that guys like Allan, I won’t use his outlaw name since he may feel he needs to use it again if he doesn’t get steady work soon to pay off those three alimonies and paying for the graduate school programs of a brood of young adults who need to be kept off the streets until better times come.

You would however be wrong, and maybe that is why despite much pressure at the time from his remaining hometown North Adamsville corner boys Seth Garth and Jack Callahan he gave me the assignment (that rundown derelict hometown which produced more armed robbery aficionados than anywhere else in the country for a town that size and where they listened to WMEX the pirate radio station out of Boston run by an ex-junkie, seriously, named Artie Ginsberg, something like that who had been a Time Square hipster, really an upscale name for a junkie back in the 1940s and early 1950s and had frequented a lot of rhythm and blues clubs downtown in Soho or better right in the mix up around 125^th Street in Harlem and to his dying day claimed rock and roll had been invented by guys like Smiley Davis and Eddy “The Can” Edwards). And here is where Allan was exactly right since my uncle “Slim” Deauville ran the great rock and roll radio show Rock Me, Mama out of WABD in Olde Saco up in Maine, or really off the coast of Maine since this was the Pine Tree state’s version Ginsberg’s pirate operation (you might remember my uncle’s name if you were from somewhere  in Gaspe in Quebec where the family hailed from back in the early par to the 20^th century and his series of hits on covers of One Night Of Sin, Swish and Sway, Bingo Baby Rock and hopefully have forgotten that he was “anybody’s darling,”  my mother’s bitter term when the big payola scandals hit in the late 1950s). So I breathed rock and roll, breathed stuff that guys like Alex James breathed at the creation and that gangster-in-waiting Allan Jackson grabbed second hand a little latter.         
   
When new site manager Greg Green, well maybe not so new now since the coup that ousted Allan happened a couple years back wanted to do an encore presentation to recognize the 60^th anniversary of what Allan had done for the forlorn 50^th he tossed Allan to the wolves and got the “real deal” to do the new introductions to the revived series. Josh Breslin]    
**********

A link to a YouTube film clip of Jerry Lee Lewis performing Breathless to give a little flavor of the early 1960s American teen angst night.

Markin comment:

Frankie, Frankie, king of the old North Adamsville neighborhood, Frankie, king hell king, Frankie, king arbiter of the teen social mores, was the alpha and omega. Or that is what his relentlessly self- promoted image would have you believe. Most of it was strictly “flak” and now that we have some serious distance of time and space to shield us from retribution it can be safely told that a lot of this “mystique”, this Frankie, king of the hill, mystique, was made up by me to enhance his authority. Nothing wrong with that kings, and lesser kings and, hell, just average jacks and jills have been using this gag for centuries. What is not a gag, what is not “flak” is what I have to tell you here.
Frankie and I, of course, if you have been paying attention went back to old North Adamsville middle school days and although we had some tight moments old king Frankie, giving the devil his due, guided me fairly well through the intricacies of, well, ah, girls, girlish ways, and girlish charms. No question that I would have been left to dry out, alone, in that great teenage angst night if not for my brother, Frankie. And I’ll just give you one example, and you can judge for yourself. Okay.

I was just the other day telling someone about how in the great 1960s teen night a lot of our time, our waiting around for something, anything to happen time, was spent around places like pizza parlors, drugstore soda fountains, and corner mom and pop variety stores throwing coins into the old jukebox to play the latest “hot’ song for the umpteenth time (and then discard them, most of them anyway, after a few days). This is the scene that Frankie ruled over wherever he set up his throne. I was also telling that person about a little “trick” that I used to use when I was, as I usually was, chronically low on funds to feed the machine.

See, part of that waiting around for something, anything to happen, a big part, was hoping, sometimes hoping against hope, that some interesting looking frail (girl in the old neighborhood terminology, boy old neighborhood terminology that is, first used by Frankie, and then picked up by everyone else) would come walking through that door. And, especially on those no dough days, would put some coins in that old jukebox machine. I swear, I swear on anything, that girls, girls, if you can believe this, always seemed to have dough, at least coin dough, in those days to play their favorite songs.

So here is the trick part, and see it involves a little understanding of human psychology too, girl human psychology at that. Okay, say, for a quarter you got five selections on the juke box. Well, the girl, almost any girl that you could name, would have a first pick set, some boy romance thing, and the second one too, maybe a special old flame tryst that still hadn’t burned out. But, see after that, and this is true I swear, they would get fidgety about the selections. And, boy, that is where you made your move. You’d chime up with some song that was on your “hot” list like Save the Last Dance for Me, or some other moody thing and, presto, she hit the buttons for you.

That choice by you rather than, let’s say Breathless by Jerry Lee Lewis which maybe was your real “hot” choice told her you were a sensitive guy and worthy of a few minutes of her time. So you got your song, you got to talk to some interesting frail (you remember who that is, right?), and maybe, maybe in that great blue-pink great American teen night you got a telephone number even if she had a boyfriend, a forever boyfriend. Nice, right?
But here is the part, the solemn serious part, that makes this a Frankie story although He is not present in this scene, at least not physically present. Who do you think got me “hip” to this trick? Yes, none other than Francis Xavier Riley, Frankie, king of the teen night, king of the North Adamsville teen night. And, this is why he was king. He was so smooth, after a while, at directing the selections that girls would not even get a chance to pick those first current flame and old flame selections but he would practically be dropping their quarters in the machine for them. Hail Frankie.

From The Archives -The Spirit Of Supporting "Taking The Knee" -Boston Version From MLK To Malcolm X

From The Archives -The Spirit Of Supporting "Taking The Knee" -Boston Version From MLK To Malcolm X

By Allan Jackson


A while back a well-known professional football player, a quarterback, a San Francisco 49er’s quarterback Colin and who knows how to spell his last name I seen it about six different ways from the Times to Modern News Kaepernick and take no offense since no offense intended but admiration, “took the knee.” Took that knee during the playing of the National Anthem at the beginning of some Sunday football game. Took it not as a quirky, knee-jerky thing but to highlight what everybody now knows, or should know, that blacks (and others as well but today we are concerned about the history and fate of black people who did not immigrant here, no way) since almost the first day the European settlers came off the boats have been at the back of the bus, have been given a raw deal in ever way the white majority could give a raw deal, and some we don’t even know about.     

Of course “taking the knee” in a football crazed country during an event when half the patrons are boozed up by showtime and who expect no drama from the “gladiators” while drinking said booze, especially not over the “sacred” anthem which nobody can sing in any case caused more than a little controversy. Caused a lot of controversy from those who want to duck at all costs and in every way dealing with the bedrock racism issues that have racked this country since that settler time mentioned early. Caused the “big cheese” in the White House to foam at the mouth about tired old patriotism, about look what we have done for our “n’s” and the like. (Now the deal, the real deal, what that blather was all about is “ship then back to Africa, Spain, Morocco, Somalia, somewhere, hell Mexico even if they don’t like it here” if anybody gets too uppity)         

Sometimes you have to take sides; get Rosa Parks off the back of the bus, get dirt poor sharecroppers the right to vote, get Doctor King out of dusty Birmingham jail, sent Mister James Crow and his oppressive laws into oblivion, and the like. Yeah, duck your heads if you want but this was another such moment. You can use lots of reasons to have supported Colin but here is the simple way to put it. If you want to keep your eyes on the prize you had better keep your ass on the gas. Better assume that without an upfront accounting this race question can never go away, nor should it.   

Now a number of whites, white football fans included freaked out, decided to burn Colin-endorsed products, were ready to get the return voyage slave ships ready for immediate departure. Some of those though, some whites and one Fritz Taylor in particular supported Colin with all arms. Now this is important once you get Fritz’s story because you would have thought this football-crazed guy would have been ready to yell bloody murder. See Fritz is, or was, nothing but a good old boy from Fulton County down in Georgia where they practically invented the “n” word. Moreover whatever other later wars they might have fought for national patriotic reasons all men on both sides of Fritz’s family tree fought, fought and died in some cases, for the Confederacy back when whites were confronted big time about the race question. Fritz said some of his forbear’s own slaves, worked them to death on the plantations.     

Fritz himself knew nothing but the “n” word before he left Georgia to join the service, the military for those not familiar with that old term. Wanted to know nothing about the “negro question,” the black liberation struggle, the race question except he wished those uppity “n’s” would stop their protests and go to work. Said he had reveled in the advantages Mister James Crow gave his poor white trash people. Remembered at twelve maybe thirteen when he was old enough to know the code insisting that some old dignified black woman (remember he did not say black then), a laundry woman, walk in the rain-swept street with her bundle since he was on the sidewalk. Watched her as her bundle took its dirt road beating when she dropped it against a sullen wind. The woman didn’t even turn back when all this occurred (maybe a social message of its own but Fritz does not remember).

Fritz’s “kin,” he still uses that term to name family had their ups and down from Confederacy times with is side of the family increasing downward mobile when a grandfather either drank or gambled or “sexed” away whatever fortune he had and so Fritz came up as dirt poor down in Fulton County, something out of those old Appalachia mountains photographs with the tar paper glassless window hovels. Still, talk about white skin privilege, he was able to lord it over that poor black woman for no other reason than the code allowed him to do so.


But get this Fritz “got religion,” got it long and hard even if it took a long time in a place called Vietnam where he went after another group of non-whites who only wanted to be left alone. Learned it like he, and we, would learn to hate war, and do something about it. Learned there, no, learned a little even before that in basic training where he saw more black guys in one place than he had ever seen before that maybe they weren’t so different except for skin color. Learned one night the hard way when he was in the Enlisted Men’s Club and drunk, started calling out the “n” word and almost caused a riot that he had better curb his tongue because no way was he back in Fulton County and the protections of Mister James Crow. Learned after being around black guys a lot, being saved a couple of times by black guys in his Fourth Infantry unit from stupid ideas he had about bravery and getting “Charlie.” Learned when a black man who he thought was too uppity dragged his wounded ass to shelter and saved him from more grievous injuries. Learned that the old ways had to go, that he had to see things a little differently. What do you think about that.      

Supporting Colin Kaepernick in a united front from the Nation of Islam to Veterans for Peace 

From The Archives Of The Carter’s Variety Store Corner Boys- The Night They Burned Snug Harbor Elementary School Down-Almost

From The Archives Of The Carter’s Variety Store Corner Boys- The Night They Burned Snug Harbor Elementary School Down-Almost  

By Sam Lowell

Of all the corner boys (read: juvenile delinquents in some quarters, sullen schoolboys in some, and misunderstood youth in others all three probably true in some senses) who hung around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor while we were going to North Adamsville High in the early 1960s I am the only one still standing who started his corner boy career at Carter’s Variety Store across town in the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments (read: “the projects”). That experience started when I was a student at the Snug Harbor Elementary School located just outside the projects. The school had been built to meet the needs of the burgeoning school age population of both the young families who found themselves in need of cheap housing at the recently built projects and the influx of families who were filling in the extensive 1950s-style new ranch houses up the road. That should do for background for now.

I mentioned that I am the only Carter’s boy still standing but I was not the only one. There was one other one Peter Paul Markin who at Tonio’s was always known as the Scribe and I will use that here rather than that pretension-filled moniker his mother laid on him. Now much ink (and many tears, many tears still) has been spilled in this publication about his latter exploits and craziness of the Scribe when he was in high dudgeon at Tonio’s and a little later but little has been noted about the early days, the early corner boy days in elementary school when most of the Tonio’s boys were clueless about the value of desperately poor kids joining together, hanging out to do, well to do the best they could.             

I am not quite sure how the Carter corner boys started since it was already formed when I started hanging out along with the Scribe. Let’s leave it that this store was the only one in the whole projects area (and sadly still is) where residents without cars, including my family many times, or in need of some quick item could shop. That it has penny candy (yeah, I know inflation) and other sweets galore probably added to the allure. That and Mister Carter did not mind us hanging out as long as we didn’t block anything and didn’t do anything crazy (we never did-there).        

I met the Scribe the first day of school in fourth grade after my family had moved to the projects from another project in Riverdale west of Boston when my father’s company moved to the area and he needed the work. That was in Miss Sullivan’s class, an old biddy who trucked no nonsense and who made it her profession to keep us after school for detention-even that first day which was supposed to be easy stuff. The Scribe was looking at some book, forgotten now, and I commented that it looked interesting to start a conversation. That was all the Scribe needed as he wowed me with the contents. And didn’t wow Miss Sullivan who kept us after for the continuous talking. After that after school detention business we went to Carter’s to see what was up once he told me fourth and fifth grade guys hung out there and it was okay.

Later and elsewhere the Scribe, and to some extent me, would be the leaders of various corner boy combinations, would plan whatever needed to be planned, legal or illegal but then we were frankly naïve and really just foot soldiers. The deal was already set for leadership with Ronnie, George, Rodger, Lenny running the operations (all would later do various stretches of time in county and state prisons I think except Lenny who laid his head down in Vietnam during that war). We had no problem with that since we were in thrall to the whole aura of the thing.      

Now they say, maybe they said is better, that juvenile delinquents are born not made. Have some genetic kink missing which throws everything off. That was true of Ronnie I believe for he had a really devious and sadistic bent (his idea of initiation, for example, was to kick each new corner boy in the scrotum which almost killed the Scribe and I for we never saw it coming-what pain) Somehow Ronnie had gotten into a beef with his teacher and was going to be suspended or some such thing. He was livid about it. One Sunday night shortly after the beef he gathered us together to seek his revenge. He planned to burn the school down-with our help. Whether we thought about it or not we were in. So we started gathering wood from small forest behind the darkest part of the school where we would not be seen by traffic from the road and stacked it against a back pair of doors.

Ronnie had some gas, not much but enough to douse the wood and then took a match from a matchbook and lit the stuff. We ran like hell. Before long though we heard the fire engines come. A neighbor apparently had seen the fire and called. There really wasn’t much damage as we found out later since those doors were flame-resistant. Joke on us, right. My understanding was that the coppers, firemen and the headmaster too though it was some rummies from the forest trying to break in for whatever reason. That Monday night though while I was home with the Scribe watching television Ronnie went berserk and broke about twenty windows in the school. We were all called in on that one although nothing came of it since we all had alibis (and gave Ronnie one too). Yeah, that Ronnie was a piece of work.        
   
[I should point out for future reference that the Scribe and I hung out together until he moved crosstown to his grandmother’s house after his grandfather died in seventh grade. There he joined up with the corner boys who hung around Doc’s Drugstore which I also joined when my family bought a little shack of house in the Bottoms section of the Acre, the working poor section of North Adamsville at the beginning of ninth grade.]         

Oh, Rosalita-With Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable’s Film Adaptation Of Arthur Miller’s “The Misfits” In Mind

Oh, Rosalita-With Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable’s Film Adaptation Of Arthur Miller’s “The Misfits” In Mind     

By Reviewer Zack James

Maybe it was something in the drinking water but Louis Lyons was beside himself one he figured out the real reason why he spent a couple of weekend nights watching a couple of old-time flicks, films which he had gathered in from his Netflix service. Lou had been on a long term kick about watching, or rather re-watching, films, mostly black and white from his checkered seedy random youth. In those days he would have viewed such films not on his HD television or via the stream of his computer but at his local theater, The Majestic, in his hometown of Oxford out in Western Massachusetts now long since closed where he would spent many an ungodly Saturday afternoon  viewing the current fare. The “ungodly’ part for real his parents were devout Sixth Day Anabaptists whose day of worship started midday Saturday and ended at dawn Sunday morning and although they were liberal enough to see that Lou would have snuck out anyway always cast that epitaph his way when he came sheepishly through the door after being hunkered down with a box of made last popcorn and some candy bars purchased at Billy’s Variety and “snuck” in under the watch-less eyes of the ushers.

Later in high school, having grown out of kids’ clothing and Saturday matinees about the same time, he let those epitaphs flow off his back like water off a duck after coming in late on Saturday nights. Reason: or one of the reasons, Lotty Larson who was the first girl who accepted his invitation when he asked her the locally famous, locally famous high school movie date night, question-balcony or orchestra? Orchestra meant maybe one date and out but balcony meant promise of anything from a “feel” inside or out of some girl’s cashmere sweater to a tight space blow job.            

This trip, this diversion down rural hills nostalgia road, has a purpose since it was on the same track that was bothering Lou’s old mind. The eternal, infernal, ways of sex which had one way or another bothered Lou’s mind since puberty, maybe before if Doctor Freud and his acolytes were right. The association played out this way. On Friday night he had watched for the umpteenth time one of his all-time favorite films the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have And Have Not starring Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. One of the reasons that he favored that film is that although he did not see it when it had come out since he was only a dream in his parents’ way of life in 1941 when the film had come out when he did see the film in retrospective in college at the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square he had told his date, name now long forgotten in memory, that some of the scenes in that classic were as hot, maybe hotter, between two people with their clothes fully on than half the porno being featured in the Combat Zone in downtown Boston. (Lou vaguely remembered that night was a hot date night with that unremembered young woman when they had gone back to her place on Commonwealth Avenue.)

After that recent viewing though he had remarked to his wife, his third wife, Moira, that given the best of it Captain Morgan, Bogie’s role, a craggy sea salt, and Marie, the Bacall role, that he had to be at least twice her age, maybe more. (He had actually looked it up on Wikipedia and found Bogie was forty-five and Bacall nineteen at the time so the “maybe more” was definitely in play). That started a short discussion between them about younger women being attracted to older men (as a sign of some kind of distorted social norm older men being attracted to younger women never made it to the conversation table). No conclusions were drawn at the time by Lou.                   

Saturday night Moira was out attending her weekly bridge party with some of her girlfriends and Lou wound up watching the other film he had ordered the film adaptation of Arthur Miller’s The Misfits starring Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable (with serious supporting roles by Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach, and Thelma Ritter). Once again maybe giving Clark, playing Gaye, a decided edge in the looks department over Bogie and the fact of being a real cowboy over a sea captain an older man was attractive to a younger woman, Rosalyn, played by Marilyn Monroe. Lou, a little younger than the older brothers and fathers who saw Ms. Monroe as the epitome of 1950s sexual allure and beauty, had seen the film when he was in high school, alone if he recalled.        

The question of younger women being attracted to older men would not have stuck out as much it had on those recent nights on the first viewing of the films back in the day but since then there had been Rosalita, his second wife, the wife that Lou had left for Moira. The main reason, although not the only reason, had been the wide gap in age between them, Rosalita had been twenty-five and he almost fifty when he spied her one night in San Francisco at the City Lights Bookstore, the famous one run by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the big “beat” hang-out back in the 1950s when being “beat” mean something socially unlike later when he tried to emulate them with black beret, logger’s boots and flannel shirt , and got nothing but laughs for digging something so passe. He was trolling the place, literally, since he had just got divorced back in Massachusetts from his first wife, Anna, and after the acrimonious settlement decided he needed to head west and make a new start. Needed the company of a woman as well and somebody he had run into at Ginny’s Bar in North Beach had told him that if you were looking for a certain type woman, intellectually curious, maybe a little off-kilter, maybe easy too then in San Francisco you hit the bookstores and City Lights was a magnet. (That “custom” was not confined to Frisco Town he had met Moira at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston under the same imperative).          

Lou had been looking for a copy of Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl (in a paperback book format which came with other poems as well) since that was one of his favorite poems, if not his most favorite at the time. Then this thin, brown-eyed, black-haired good-looking young women whom he at first thought was Spanish, maybe from Mexico given where he was came up behind him and started going on and on about Ginsberg who had just died a few years before. (Rosalita was not Spanish at all but Irish her mother just liked the name.) He was shocked that anybody under the age of forty would know anything about Ginsberg and the importance of his poem not only as a break in the kind of poem that was acceptable in polite society but the harsh social message Ginsberg was laying down. She, not he, asked if he would like to stop at the café and have a cup of coffee. He figured why not (he did not find out until after they had a couple of subsequent dates that women, women of all ages, also trolled the bookstores looking for men, men who say would be looking at something like Howl which told them the guy could at least read unlike some of the beasts they had run across in the bars or at some off-the-wall party).      

That afternoon started their affair but Lou was from the start apprehensive about their differences in ages which came up often along the way, for example, when he mentioned that he had been in Washington on May Day, 1971 and had been arrested in the dragnet that the cops and military had set up that day she didn’t understand, could not get around the idea that people would try to shut down the government if it did not stop the Vietnam War. At times they could work through it like that first day with Ginsberg (she turned out to have been an English major at Berkeley) but other times, times when she tried to coax him into jogging which she was crazy about they would fight civil war worthy battles. He always had the sneaking suspicion that Rosalita was not telling the truth when she mentioned that she had had trouble with her male peers, boys she called them, and had been attracted to older men ever since her father had abandoned her family when she was twelve. She had told him repeatedly that she was looking for the maturity and security that an older man would bring. Lou could never really get that through his head and eventually his tilted his behavior toward giving dear Rosalita reason to boot him out the door. (On top of meeting Moira closer in age to him at the museum when for one last effect to reconcile he and Rosalita had moved to Boston).

That night Lou thought though maybe Rosalita had been just like Marie and Rosalyn in the films needing a safe harbor. Damn.