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]    
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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.

Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of "King OF The Beats" Jack Kerouac- The Fire This Time With Kudos To James Baldwin-

Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of "King OF The Beats" Jack Kerouac- The Fire This Time With Kudos To James Baldwin-  

By Lance Lawrence

Sometimes you just cannot win. Sometimes you just let it pass and other times as now anything less than incarceration, some black hole op, or the bastinado will not stop me from saying some words on a subject that I care about. Attentive readers of Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s or its sister publications where such material is something like syndicated know that I, and most of the older writers here and for that matter other publications who grew up in the 1950s have some relationship to “the Beats” to Jack Kerouac and the mad monk poet Allan Ginsberg although maybe not as familiar with the lesser lights stationed in North Beach, San Francisco and Greenwich Village, New York City and other sullen outposts. Guys like Gary Snyder, Phil Larkin, Gregory Corso, Mike Macklin, and maybe Diane Johnson although there were not nearly enough women recognized as part of that movement and only now are a few getting the notice they deserve. Know that although we were way too young or too interested in our generation’s salvation-rock and roll music-to be washed clean by the Beats that by some process of osmosis we picked up some of the ideas, words, be-bop, lust, gangster hep talk, that mainly through endless Saturday afternoon matiness though, homosexual slang, road terminology. Courtesy of Jack Kerouac and the crowd whether he accepted the honorific “King of the Beats” or like Bob Dylan dubbed by the mass media always looking for a hook “King of the Folkies” for the next generation, a title of the folkie-hippie counterculture from which he consciously abdicated as Jack had done going down Florida way with Mere, with mother to drink himself to death after writing that two million words he kept in notebooks in his flannelled shirt pockets. Jesus, imagine if he had, or Fitzgerald or Hemingway had, word processors to glide the way-we would still be reading their stuff first time through now and never get finished.         

Personally, and I have the scars and restless writerly nights to prove it, I was very second-wave influenced by Kerouac and not only by his most famous book On The Road. When the time to learn how to fly on your own came and the house you grew up in and its denizens didn’t fit so well anymore. Maybe in the long haul though less than books like Big Sur which got me to Todo el Mundo just south of Big Sur and some wild escapades and near fatal escapes toked to the gills on weed or whatever came through the very open door. (And where one night after Jack passed I met Jan his daughter also a budding writer but just then hurt beyond belief that Jack never claimed her as his own.) Influences which have made it natural to recount some of those adventures in print of one sort or another. Natural as well this 50^th anniversary year since Jack Kerouac’s death in 1969 to make a big deal out of that milestone. To write some fresh material as below or to republish some older material. And not just memories of Kerouac’s influence but what I called in one article the “assistant king of the beats” Allan Ginsberg’s as well.    

That is where the sometimes you can’t win comes in and the have to “speak to the issue” rears its head as well. Recently both to acknowledge the 50^th anniversary of Kerouac’s passing and to honor Allan Ginsberg as well I had an article Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall originally published in Poetry Today in 1997 republished in several publications under the title For Ti Jean Kerouac On The 50^th Anniversary Of His Death And The “Assistant King Of The Beats” Allan Ginsberg-Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall With Kudos To Bob Dylan “King Of The Folkies."   

In a new introduction to the piece I mentioned that in the interest of today’s endless pursue of transparency which in many cases covers up the real deal with a few fake pieces of fluff admitted that I knew Jack Kerouac’s daughter, always called by me and my crowd Jan, his now late daughter whom he never recognized for whatever cramped reason and which took its toll on her with an also early death, met out in Todo el Mundo south of Big Sur off the famous Pacific Coast Highway. Those were the fast and loose days when everybody wanted to be out somewhere around Big Sur and one day I happened to be in The Lost Way restaurant (now still open under another name serving wholesome food unlike the burgers and fries and beer that sustained us then) and somebody mentioned that Jack’s daughter, unacknowledged daughter as I said, Jan was sitting a few tables away having as I learned later from her just come from  Pfeiffer Beach which played a role in a few of Jack’s books, especially Big Sur. One thing led to another and we wound up taking Jan with us to our digs (house) in Todo el Mundo several miles away.    

That simple fact has now led in 2019 to some fool, a fool with a name very familiar in the age of the Internet of Anonymous, to assume without proof that Jan and I, or Jan and somebody in the house were having an affair, and most probably me. The only “proof” given, maybe asserted is better was that a guy by the name of Johnny Spain told him that he had been there at our house when Jan came tumbling in and that we had a party for about four days when booze, sex, and drugs flowed freely. I knew Johnny Spain back in those days so that part is real. He was on the run from the coppers for either drug possession or for assault I forget which since we had a few such characters come our way and since we were not fond of the coppers then, maybe not now either, we gave him shelter. Johnny probably saw many things as he imbibed in whatever was around the place, but he would not have seen me hanging with Jan. Simple reason: one Carol Riley forever known as Butterfly Swirl in those times when many of us, including me the Duke of Earl (yes from the 1950s hit single), were carrying monikers to reflect our new-found freedoms was slumming from her perfect wave boyfriend existence down in Carlsbad in the days before young women took to the surf themselves and had come north to see what was happening. Butterfly was very possessive which I didn’t mind but would have ditched me and/or has it out with Jan if we had been having an affair. End of story, well, not quite the end Butterfly returned to Carol and her perfect wave surfer before long after finding out “what was what.”          

This is really where my real ire is hanging though. In that same introduction I mentioned that I also knew Allan Ginsberg in his Om-ish days long before he became a professor when we fired up more than one blunt (marijuana cigarette for those who are clueless or use another term for the stick) to see what we could see out in the D.C. National Mall and later Greenwich Village night. Like I said that piece which formed the basis for republication first appeared in Poetry Today shortly after Allan Ginsberg’s Father Death death and caused a great deal of confusion among the readers. I gave a few examples of what went awry in the responses. Some readers thought because I mentioned the word “cat” I was paying homage to T.S. Eliot generally recognized in pre-Beat times as the ultimate modernist poet. That reference actually referred to “hep cats” as in a slang expression from the 1940s and 1950s before Beat went into high gear not a cat. In any case there was no way the staid and high Victorian sensibilities Eliot would know anything about the bohemia of his day except maybe knowing some bonkers Bloomsbury cadre. One would be totally remiss to call him the max daddy of anything as I called Allan in my homage. Maybe “square” if that old term does not confuse anybody.

Some readers, and I really was scratching my head over this one since this was published in a poetry magazine for aficionados and not for some dinky survey freshman college English class, that because I mentioned the word “homosexual” and some jargon associated with that sexual orientation when everybody was “in the closet” except maybe Allan Ginsburg thought I was referring to W.H. Auden. Jesus, Auden, a great poet no question if not a brave one slinking off to America when things got too hot in his beloved England in September 1939 and a self-confessed homosexual in the days when that was dangerous to declare in late Victorian public morality England especially after what happened to Oscar Wilde when they pulled down the hammer was hardly the only homosexual possibility despite his game of claiming every good-looking guy for what he called the Homintern. Frankly I didn’t personally think anybody even read him anymore once the Beats be-bopped.

There were a few others who were presented as the person I was championing. James Lawson because some of his exploits were similar to the ones I described but those events were hardly rare in the burned over 1950s down in the mud of society. If anybody recalls Lawson is the guy who first used the word “beat” to describe the post-World War II malaise affecting the young who either didn’t serve in the war or who as a result of serving were not ready to go back to what Sam Lowell called for his Vietnam War “the real world.” His poetry though was good enough for Village jazz clubs and coffeehouses, the main hang-out venues for beats but hardly the epic stuff that would stir youth nation. Young nation which had had it with normalcy. The flight from downtrodden home life made worse by plodding square parents whose dreams for their off-spring were life-deadening civil servant jobs although admittedly a step up from the dregs down at the working poor base of society.  Jack Weir because of some West Coast references, the usual suspects North Beach, Big Sur, Todo el Mundo (where Allan Ginsberg never went or never went while I was there hanging his hat in Big Sur a stop on the Greyhound bus line unlike Todo with Jack), Fillmore Street dreams and drugs, the inevitable Golden Gate reference. Jeffery Stein, the poet of the new age shtetl because of the dope and self-identification with the downtrodden and the caged inmates at the mental hospitals which he frequented more times than he liked to admit.

All wrong. That poet had a name an honored name Allan Ginsberg who howled in the night at the oddness and injustice of the world after saying Kaddish to his mother’s memory and not be confused with this bag of bones rough crowd readership who refused to learn from the silly bastard. This piece was, is for ALLAN GINSBERG who wrote for Carl Solomon in his hours of sorrow just before he went under the knife and I for him, for Allan the sad day when he went under the ground.

That all was twenty some years ago and while those readers responses were stone-cold crazy they at least had the virtue of ignorance since I did not mention the name Allan Ginsberg in the title nor in the piece. Frankly I did not think I had to do so. What, however, is to be made of readers in 2019 who I assume had read my introduction and its named poet in bold print who still believe that I am referring to some other poet, some of them pretty obscure and old school which makes me think these readers were maybe college freshman survey course takers. I won’t go through them all since unlike 1997 where people actually had to write and mail with proper postage whatever was on their minds today they can just flail away and done so many more responses showed up at my in-box.

Here is today’s list of scratching my head entries. What Sam Lowell a fellow writer here has seen it all in his forty plus years as a film critic calls trolls since they are tied to alternate facts and more importantly whatever they have on their minds, if that is what they have. Maybe they just don’t read introductions or are among the dwindling few who still take umbrage that someone would tout the virtues of a long-time known homosexual when everybody else has moved on, has bought into a very sensible idea that it is nobody else’s business who you love-and now wed. So a few of the rabid went along that line but rather than grab onto Ginsberg have assumed that I was writing about Walt Whitman, since I mentioned the grand civil war and the fate of boys and men including a semi-erotic paean to Abe Lincoln by Walt. Of course they got that wrong since Whitman’s ode to Lincoln Oh Captain, My Captain is one of the few truly chaste and un-coded poems he wrote. But that is a classic example of this troll contingent’s faking reality to suit some odd-ball political agenda from we should all run like hell.

It only got worse after Greg Green, site manager for the on-line publications here who in the old hard copy days would have been called the editor, started publishing some of the e-mails which only fueled the flames. Declared open season on reason until on advice of wise Sam Lowell mentioned above who chairs the Editorial Board that sits to clamp down on an editor’s more off-the-wall decisions told him to stop giving these lonely hearts a platform. To continue though a vague off-hand reference to the various Eggs off Long Island Sound got one F. Scott Fitzgerald the brass ring mainly so that Jay Gatsby could be extolled as the upwardly mobile paragon of American virtue for a new century (that is exactly what was said if you can believe that since in the unlamented Jazz Age except for the jazz Jay got himself shot and dumped in some coal bin.) A couple more to make my point since I suddenly realized that to even present these holy goofs, an expression learned at the feet of one Jack Kerouac who had I believe more talented types in mind, but the expression just popped out at me. Yeats, Yeats of all poets drew some fan-dom based on talk of Irish girls losing their virtues in sullen Cape Cod gin mills. How that goes with muse Maude Gonne escapes me. Finally, and at least this person had some literary sense he thought because I mentioned Time Square hipsters, drifters and grifters waking up in sullen midnight sweats looking for some savior not the Lord fixer man to get them well and ready to do an occasional soft-core armed robbery or jack-roll (I was impressed with the use of that term since nobody uses that expression for a very old trick of taking a slender club or maybe a roll of fisted quarters and bopping some drunk or old lady for their ready cash I was speaking of one Gregory Corso the bandit-poet. Sorry I was reaching for the big Howl and Kaddish master and beautiful lumpen dream Corso was a secondary player back in those long-gone daddy days. Enough. Lance Lawrence]

“Advertisements for Myself”-Introduction by Allan Jackson, a founding member of the American Left History publication back in 1974 when it was a hard copy journal and until 2017 site manager of the on-line edition.      

[He’s back. Jack Kerouac, as described in the headline, “the king of the beats” and maybe the last true beat standing. That is the basis of this introduction by me as we commemorate the 50^th anniversary of his untimely death at 47. But before we go down and dirty with the legendary writer I stand before you, the regular reader, and those who have not been around for a while to know that I was relieved of my site manage duties in 2017 in what amounted to a coup by the younger writers who resented the direction I was taking the publication in and replaced me with Greg Green who I had brought on board from American Film Gazette to run the day to day operations while I oversaw the whole operation and planned my retirement. Over the past year or so a million rumors have, had mostly now, swirled around this publication and the industry in general about what had happened, and I will get to that in a minute before dealing with Jack Kerouac’s role in the whole mess.

What you need to know first, if you don’t know already is that Greg Green took me back to do the introductions to an encore presentation of a long-term history of rock and roll series that I edited and essentially created after an unnamed older writer who had not been part of the project balled it all up, got catch flat-footed talking bullshit and other assorted nonsense since he knew nada, nada nunca and less, about the subject having been apparently asleep when the late Peter Markin “took us to school” that history. Since then Greg and I have had an “armed truce,” meaning I could contribute as here to introductions of some encore and some origin material as long as I didn’t go crazy, his term, for what he called so-called nostalgia stuff from the 1950s and 1960s and meaning as well that Greg will not go crazy, my term, and will refrain from his ill-advised attempt to reach a younger audience by “dumbing down” the publication with odd-ball comic book character reviews of films, graphic novels and strange musical interludes. Fair is fair.

What I need to mention, alluded to above, is those rumors that ran amok while I was on the ropes, when I had lost that decisive vote of no confidence by one sullen vote. People here, and my enemies in the industry as well, seeing a wounded Allan Jackson went for the kill, went for the jugular that the seedy always thrive on and began a raggedy-ass trail of noise you would not believe. In the interest of elementary hygiene, and to frankly clear the air, a little, since there will always be those who have evil, and worse in their hearts when “the mighty have fallen.”  Kick when somebody is down their main interest in life.

I won’t go through the horrible rumors like I was panhandling down in Washington, D.C., I was homeless in Olde Saco, Maine (how could that be when old friend and writer here Josh Breslin lives there and would have provided alms to me so at least get an approximation of the facts before spinning the wild woolly tale), I had become a male prostitute in New York City (presumably after forces here and in that city hostile to me put in the fatal “hard to work with” tag on me ruining any chances on the East Coast of getting work, getting enough dough to keep the wolves from my door, my three ex-wives and that bevy of kids, nice kids, who nevertheless were sucking me dry with alimony and college tuitions), writing press releases under the name Leonard Bloom for a Madison Avenue ad agency. On a lesser scale of disbelief I had taken a job as a ticket-taker in a multi-plex in Nashua, New Hampshire, had been a line dishwasher at the Ritz in Philadelphia when they needed day labor for parties and convention banquets, had been kicking kids out of their newspaper routes and taking that task on myself, and to finish off although I have not given a complete rundown rummaging through trash barrels looking for bottles with deposits. Christ.

Needless to say, how does one actually answer such idiocies, and why. A couple of others stick out about me and some surfer girl out in Carlsbad in California who I was pimping while getting my sack time with her and  this one hurt because it hurt a dear friend and former “hippie girl” lover of mine, Madame La Rue, back in the day that I was running a whorehouse with her in Luna Bay for rich Asian businessmen with a taste for kinky stuff. I did stop off there and Madame does run a high-end brothel in Luna Bay but I had nothing to do with it. The reason Madame was hurt was because I had lent her the money to buy the place when it was a rundown hotel and built it up from there with periodic additional funds from me so she could not understand why my act of kindness would create such degenerate noise from my enemies who were clueless about the relationship between us.

I will, must deal with two big lies which also center of my reluctant journey west (caused remember by that smear campaign which ruined by job opportunities in the East, particularly New York City). The first which is really unbelievable on its face is that I hightailed it directly to Utah, to Salt Lake City, when I busted out in NYC looking for one Mitt Romney, “Mr. Flip-Flop,” former Governor of Massachusetts, Presidential candidate against Barack Obama then planning on running for U.S. Senator from Utah (now successful taking office in January) to “get well.” The premise for this big lie was supposedly that since I have skewered the guy while he was governor and running for president with stuff like the Mormon fetish for white underwear and the old time polygamy of his great-grand-father who had five wives (and who showed great executive skill I think in keeping the peace in that extended family situation). The unbelievable part is that those Mormon folks, who have long memories and have pitchforks at the ready to rumble with the damned, would let a sinner like me, a non-Mormon for one thing anywhere the Romney press operation. Christ, I must be some part latter day saint since I barely got out of that damn state alive if the real truth were known after I applied for a job with the Salt Lake Sentinel not knowing the rag was totally linked to the Mormons. Pitchforks, indeed.    

The biggest lie though is the one that had me as the M.C. in complete “drag” as Elsa Maxwell at the “notorious” KitKat Club in San Francisco which has been run for about the past thirty years or so by Miss Judy Garland, at one time and maybe still is in some quarters the “drag queen” Queen of that city. This will show you how ignorant, or blinded by hate, some people are. Miss Judy Garland is none other than one of our old corner boys from the Acre section of North Adamsville, Timmy Riley. Timmy who like the rest of us on the corner used to “fag bait” and beat up anybody, any guy who seemed effeminate, at what cost to Timmy’s real feelings we will never really know although he was always the leader in the gay-bashing orgy. Finally between his own feeling and Stonewall in New York in 1969 which did a great deal to make gays, with or with the drag queen orientation, a little less timid Timmy fled the Acre (and his hateful family and friends) to go to friendlier Frisco. He was in deep personal financial trouble before I was able to arrange some loans from myself and some of his other old corner boys (a few still hate Timmy for what he has become, his true self) to buy the El Lobo Club, his first drag queen club, and when that went under, the now thriving tourist trap KitKat Club. So yes, yes, indeed, I stayed with my old friend at his place and that was that. Nothing more than I had done many times before while I ran the publication.                   

But enough of this tiresome business because I want to introduce this series dedicated to the memory of Jack Kerouac who had a lot of influence on me for a long time, mostly after he died in 1969 

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All roads about Jack Kerouac, about who was the king of the beats, about what were the “beats” lead back to the late Pete Markin who, one way or another, taught the working poor Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville corner boys what was up with that movement. Funny, because we young guys were a serious generation removed from that scene, really our fathers’ contemporaries and you know how far removed fathers were from kids in those days especially among the working poor trying to avoid going  “under water” and not just about mortgages but food on tables and clothing on backs, were children of rock and roll, not jazz, the Beat musical medium, and later the core of the “Generation of ‘68” which took off, at least partially, with the “hippie” scene, where the dying embers of the beat scene left off. Those dying embers exactly the way to put it since most of our knowledge or interest came from the stereotypes-beards before beards were cool and before grandfather times -for guys, okay, berets, black and beaten down looks. Ditto on black for the gals, including black nylons which no Acre girl would have dreamed of wearing, not in the early 1960s anyway. Our “model” beatnik really came, as we were also children of television, from sitcom stories like Dobie Gillis with stick character Maynard G. Krebs standing in for all be-bop-dom.        

So it is easy to see where except to ostracize, meaning harass, maybe beat up if that was our wont that day, we would have passed by the “beat” scene, passed by Jack Kerouac too without the good offices, not a term we would have used then, if not for nerdish, goof, wild and woolly in the idea world Markin (always called Scribe for obvious reasons but we will keep with Markin here). He was the guy who always looked for some secret meaning to the universe, that certain breezes, winds, metaphorical breezes and winds, were going to turn things around, were going to make the world a place where Markin could thrive. Markin was the one who first read Kerouac’s breakthrough travelogue of a different sort novel On The Road.

Now Markin was the kind of guy, and sometimes we let him go on and sometimes stopped him in his tracks, who when he was on to something would bear down on us to pay attention. Christ some weekend nights he would read passages from the book like it was the Bible (which it turned out to be in a way later) when all we basically cared about is which girls were going to show up at our hang-out spot, the well-known Tonio’s Pizza Parlor and play the jukebox and we would go from there. Most of us, including me, kind of yawned at the whole thing even when Markin made a big deal that Kerouac was a working-class guy like us from up in Lowell cut right along the Merrimac River.

The whole thing seemed way too exotic and moreover there was too much homosexual stuff implied which in our strict Irish-Italian Catholic neighborhood did not go down well at all -made us dismiss the whole thing and want to if I recall correctly “beat up” that Allan Ginsberg character. Even Dean Moriarty, the Neal Cassidy character, didn’t move us since although we were as larcenous and “clip” crazy as any character in that book we kind of took Dean as a tough car crazy guide like Sonny Jones from our neighborhood who was nothing but a hood in Red Riley’s bad ass motorcycle gang which hung out at Harry’s Variety Store. We avoided him and more so Red like the plague. Both wound up dead, very dead, in separate attempted armed robberies in broad daylight if you can believe that.    

Our first run through of our experiences with Kerouac and through him the beat movement was therefore kind of marginal-even as Markin touted for a while that whole scene he agreed with us that jazz-be-bop jazz always associated with the beat-ness was not our music, was grating to our rock and roll-refined and defined ears.

Here is where Markin was always on to something though, always had some idea percolating in his head. There was a point where he, we as well I think, got tired of rock and roll, a time when it had run out of steam for a while and along with his crazy home life which really was bad drove him to go to Harvard Square and check out what he had heard was a lot of stuff going on. Harvard Square was, is still to the extent that any have survived like Club Passim, the home of the coffeehouse. A place that kind of went with the times first as the extension of the beat generation hang-out where poetry and jazz would be read and played. But in Markin’s time, our time there was the beginnings of a switch because when he went to the old long gone Café Nana he heard folk music and not jazz, although some poetry was still being read. I remember Markin telling me how he figured the change when I think it was the late Dave Von Ronk performed at some club and mentioned that when he started out in the mid-1950s in the heat of beat time folk singers were hired at the coffeehouses in Greenwich Village to “clear the house” for the next set of poetry performers but that now folk-singing eclipsed poetry in the clubs. Markin loved it, loved the whole scene of which he was an early devotee. Me, well, strangely considering where I wound up and what I did as a career, I always, still do, hated the music. Thought it was too whinny and boring. Enough said though.                   

Let’s fast forward to see where Kerouac really affected us in a way that when Markin was spouting forth early on we could not appreciate. As Markin sensed in his own otherworldly way a new breeze was coming down the cultural highway, a breeze push forward by the beats I will confess, by the folk music scene, by the search for roots which the previous generation, our parents’ generation, spent their adulthoods attempting to banish and become part of the great American vanilla melt, and by a struggling desire to question everything that had come before, had been part of what we had had no say in creating, weren’t even asked about. Heady stuff and Markin before he made a very bad decision to quit college in his sophomore years and “find himself,” my expression not his, spent many of his waking hours figuring out how to make his world a place where he could thrive.

That is when one night, this is when we were well out of high school, some of us corner boys had gone our separate ways and those who remained in contact with the brethren spent less time hanging out at Tonio’s, Markin once again pulled out On The Road, pulled out Jack’s exotic travelogue. The difference is we were all ears then and some of us after that night brought our own copies or went to the Thomas Murphy Public Library and took out the book. This was the spring of the historic year 1967 when the first buds of the Summer of Love which wracked San Francisco and the Bay Area to its core and once Markin started working on us, started to make us see his vision of what he would later called, culling from Tennyson if I am not mistaken a “newer world.” Pulling us all in his train, even as with Bart Webber and if I recall Si Lannon a little, he had to pull out all the stops to have them, us, join him in the Summer of Love experience.

Maybe the whole thing with Jack Kerouac was a pipe dream I remember reading about him in the Literary Gazette when he was down in Florida living with his ancient mother and he was seriously critical of the “hippies,” kind of banged on his own beat roots explaining that he was talking about something almost Catholic beatitude spiritual and not personal freedom, of the road or anything else. A lot of guys and not just writing junkies looking for some way to alleviate their inner pains have repudiated their pasts but all I know is that when Jack was king of the hill, when he spoke to us those were the days all roads to Kerouac were led by Markin. Got it. Allan Jackson    

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

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60^th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)

By Book Critic Zack James

To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes, I know that the actual term “beat” was first used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis)

Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my oldest brother Alex who was washed clean in the Summer of Love, 1967 but must have known the edges of Jack’s time since he was in high school when real beat exploded on the scene in Jack-filled 1957, they called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all Jack’s kid stuff high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the poet princely mean streets of New York, Chi town, Mecca beckoning North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps (and the fleas were real no time for metaphor down in the bowels where the cowboy junkies drowse in endless sleeps, raggedy winos toothless suck dry the dregs and hipster con men prey on whoever floats down), half stirred left on corner diners’ coffees and groundling cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).

I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50^th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers, connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to trash those connection when the acolytes and bandit hangers-on  came calling looking for the “word.” So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands).

Literary stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back which has caused more riffs and bad words than I want to yell about here).             

Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine and so only an honorary corner boy after hitching up with the Scribe out on a Russian Hill dope-filled park), Bart, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967, their birthright event, just mentioned.  Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker, what did Jack call his generation’s such, oh yeah, holy goofs, who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before 1967 (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or dismissed out of hand, what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie  and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of a very different world.

But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s travel adventure book which had caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail since the story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best part, have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain, desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.    

Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end down some dusty Jack-strewn road in Mexico cocaine deal blues. With maybe this difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some   hot chick’s pants any way they could as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law back then when the coppers were just waiting for corner boy capers to explode any Friday or Saturday night, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.

What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as silk Frankie now also like Alex a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.

The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antenna for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Bob Dylan above all else.) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my brother Alex’s memory bank.)

Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll in about three weeks. So it was through the Scribe via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60^th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.           

Book Review

Atop The Underwood: Early Stories And Other Writings, Jack Kerouac, edited by Paul Marion, Viking Press, New York, 1999

For starters, for the benefit of the younger set, I should explain the word Underwood used in the title of this compilation refers to a typewriter, an ancient tool used by writers and others in pre-historical times (before the digital age) in order to more quickly tell what they had to say to the world. How primitive, right? Except, typewriter or word processor, a writer is still obliged to have a plan (or plans) to tell his woes to the world. Now I have spent considerable time in this space reviewing many of the major works of the “beat writer Jack Kerouac, including masterpieces of his generation (and my later one) like “On The Road”, “Dharma Bums”, and “Desolation Angels”. And rightly so. Now we come to a compilation of his early writings, thoughts, half –thoughts, sketches for thoughts and a few poems thrown in. In short, we are now in the stage of interest to the aficionado.

The editor of the compilation, Paul Marion, a younger fellow Lowell compatriot and writer of Kerouac’s has what can only be described as a labor of love in organizing this work. Jack Kerouac may not have always written material that was unalloyed gold but he wrote a ton of stories and ideas for stories starting from his youth in junior high school in Lowell. Marion has separated out the best or otherwise most representative of the work from about 1936 to 1943 (just before the decisive meetings with the New York crowd, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Lucien Carr, etc., with whom he would make literary history as the core of the “beat” generation writers). For those who want to trace Kerouac’s evolution as a writer, what animated him at any given time, how he created that spontaneous writing form that he became famous for, or those who just want to be entertained by stories form the old days of the 1930s and 1940s this is good stuff to run through. For the rest us you NEED to read those three novels listed in the first paragraph, and you had better get to it.

When All The World Was Young-In The Pre-Lapsarian Days Before The Boot Out From Eden-When The Late Famed California Private Detective Lew Archer Was “Walking With The King”-The Broadmore Case

When All The World Was Young-In The Pre-Lapsarian Days Before The Boot Out From Eden-When The Late Famed California Private Detective Lew Archer Was “Walking With The King”-The Broadmore Case    

By Seth Garth

[About a year ago, maybe more I did an earlier series of articles on the rise and fall of famed 1950s California private detective Lew Archer who after a really good start to his career wound up on cheap street, wound up working for wages at Sheila Sharp’s detective agency on Post Street in San Francisco doing at first the dregs  repo work and key-hold peeping and then when he fell down on that basically the office go-fer since Sheila had a soft spot for him, or something. Once he started taking dough out of the coffee and crullers till, the petty cash she had to reluctantly let him go. He would wind up working like a dog for the notorious junkie private eye agency run by Kenny Millar and who knows who else before he laid down his head. (I did not know of the Millar connection then but only learned it from Sheila recently).  

I did that series based on the assumption that Lew had passed away many years ago so I was shocked to learn that he had only passed away a few months ago at the age of 104. He was found in a Bunker Hill (L.A.) skid row rooming house head down in a toilet after overdosing on heroin (That description may seem indelicate, but a surprising number of famous and not so famous junkies have been found in that condition.) That renewed my interest in the fate of one Lew Archer who in the immediate post-World War II period after serving in Military Intelligence in the war and forsaking his pre-war public copper job set up his own agency and was ready to give guys like Sam, Marlowe, Phil Larkin and Benny Gold a run for their money.    

In the interest of the current craze for transparency I should mention that I interviewed Lew in person in the early 1970s for the East Bay Other where the editor Ruth Ryan knew Sheila Sharp who had helped set up the interview. Ruth’s idea, mine too, was to focus on what happened to bring Lew low, why was he then reduced to doing repo work and key-hole peeping. I spent considerable time with Lew, and with others like his ex-wife Martha who had an idea of how the big fall down happened. I even found myself drafted onto a couple of committees urging the P.I Hall of Fame nominating committee to put Lew on the ballot in those days for basically life-time achievement and subsequently for changes in the way the profession moved on from just hard-boiled macho types with twists hanging off every arm while a P.I. worked his case against the bad guys. They laughed in our faces on both counts since Lew had less than a decade of first-rate work and the repo stuff was beneath contempt and that to avoid an anachronism Lew had to stand up to the doll-swirling P.I. model of his time.      

Bringing things forward to the almost present as part of that series last year I joined a group which once again was attempting to get Lew in the Hall this time through an end around on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) seeing his sexual disfunction as a qualifying medical condition which would be factored in. The nominating committee this time, given the subject, did not laugh in our faces but could find no reason like sexual dysfunction to bring a guy in when they had one-armed Bart Devine and wheel-chair-bound Chris Lord waiting for induction. Real disabilities is what they really meant. The junkie head in the toilet will preclude any further efforts, no question.]   

Ah, to be young was very heaven as old greybeard poet Wordsworth had it. To be young when hard-boiled private detectives, male mostly, the parlor pink stuff was left for amateurs like Dame May Whitty, took on the bad guys with dolls swinging from every arm and unlike the public coppers closed down the case without shipping it off to the dead water cold case bin. Yeah, in the days when a guy like Sam, Sam Spade, went right about against evil, female evil and sent over his paramour without blinking an eye after the bodies started to rise to block out the sun. Grabbed some other frail the next day and never missed a beat. Take Phil, Philly Dog Marlowe who lammed into a beautiful money pit complete with a couple of wild child doll sisters who couldn’t keep their clothes on for long. And all the Dog had to worry about was a couple of whacks to the head and a couple of off-hand slugs before he did the big kiss off. Starting to round out things how about Phil Larkin who specialized in co-eds and young tail but who cleaned up Dodge when the deal went down. I could go on but one more, Danny Moore, the handsome ex-film star turned P.I. couldn’t show up on Sunset Boulevard without a fistful of lovelies and some serious iron.          

That my friends is the culture, the ethos, if unwritten that the once famous California private dick Lew Archer who I have written about extensively about over the past couple of years, partially in a final last ditch effort to get him into the P.I. Hall of Fame, partially to show how easy it was for a guy to essentially lose his nerve and in the end wind up as a bag man for the notorious junkie fixer man gumshoe Kenny Millar and partially as a cautionary tale for any guys and dolls coming into the shamus grift these days, days when it is not seen as a virtue to have a ton of frail or muscle hanging off your arms. Of late I have spent most of my time, once I found Lew had only this year passed away as a dead weight junkie on skid row, bringing up his failed cases, cases which he fell down on leading to his being  reduced to repo man, key-hole peeper and eventually office go-fer for real private detectives in Sheila Sharp’s Frisco agency and then bag man for the evil Millar and his sleaze ball operations out of darkest Oakland. But today, thanks to some fancy footwork and some archival work by Sarah LeMoyne I have the details of Lew’s last successful caper, the Broadmore case when he was in his prime, when he was ready to take on the whole known shamus world.       

Yeah, the Broadmore case, was classic Lew. Lew, coming like a bat out of hell after Military Intelligence duty in the Army in the Pacific during World War II. Racked up a few classic cases like Galton, Harlan, Hardmore, the last piece of the Sternwood case which brought in dough, glory plenty of referrals from people who could pay the freight or get their hands on plenty of dough from somewhere. The Damask case is what got Lew in the front door of the Broadmore case, his known    
discretion, his getting kidnap victims back alive and when women are involved a little romp in the hay along with that one hundred large and expenses, tax exempt.    

Laura Broadmore, against his husband’s wishes, sent for Lew once it was clear their son had been taken, probably kidnapped, by a couple of lame longhair types (beatniks really but strictly from Corona not the Frisco hardcore), boy and girl who had some kind of agenda which Lew was supposed to solve. All teary-eyed when talking about that son, Ronny, Lew consoled her the best way he knew how (after that quick romp she would admit that relations, sexual relations with hubby, some blowhard named Stanley, were on the ropes. Amazing how many such stories Lew heard, and acted on when he was himself in good sexual health, providing something like a public health service he told one colleague at the time.)        

Lew went through his paces (paces plus in this one) getting on the trail of these bastards, a trail that led to some mountain retreat that belonged to this Stanley’s mother who was the source of the dough from her father who was one of the rancid oilmen who blew the West Coast to smoke and traffic jams. There he found Stanley killed by some force of nature it seemed which left his mother distraught with Lew there to console her. Meanwhile the girl beatnik, Sandy something, was reported missing by her parents and since they knew this Laura he went to interview them and see what was what. As it turned out this Ellen, Sandy something’s mother, was another one of those frustrated 1950s housewives, sexually frustrated, a situation Lew helped tamp down. He eventually worked his way into grabbing that share of the case too (although by rights he should have farmed it out to his ex-partner Willie Brown). To grab the trifecta the male beatnik, some hulky punk named Jerry, was connected to the other two families by some earlier financial dealings and his parents didn’t have a clue as to what to do with this bum of the month. After Martha, Jerry’s father’s second wife, got rid of that pesky husband she and Lew settled down to drinks and silky sheets Lew grabbing all three parts of the deal, great stuff.            

You have to follow the bouncing ball on this one because unlike say the Sternwood case where Lew picking up the remnants, grabbing young Carmen Sternwood for a saucy weekend in the bargain, was not dealing with old-time Los Angles gangsters who were not ready to give in to the new boys like Bugsy and Lucky from the East and who played rough, including the usual spray of orchid-like slugs to keep things interesting this was not about hardened criminals but misunderstood youth who got blended in with plenty of unsavory behavior by their parents and/or friends’ parents. Not worse but different because the bang-bang factor didn’t get much play and Lew got cold-cocked only once. Some experts I have run into think beyond his later sexual dysfunction when his ex-wife gave him the big boot out of the household door that he had gotten a little soft, had begun to look for cases where he didn’t have to run into hard guys, did need to bleed as much as when he was younger. That his career life’s blood was heading south.     

Whatever the truth of that assertion and I don’t necessarily buy the story this was a “soft” case beyond the bewildering number of nubile young to middle-aged housewives who were ready to run him in their racks as part of the play. Okay, okay I will tell you right now Ronnie, sweet little Ronnie got back to his mother safe and sound via the cleverness of one Lew Archer. Here is where things get weird and maybe started the weirdness trend very much associated with California even today. The two beatnik felons despite what looked like a snatch for cash were playing out some weird drama revolving around things their parents had done say fifteen years before. They thought in their demented drug-soaked minds filled with all the 1950s-1960s alienation and angsts which some prosperity created in essentially overindulged and under emotionally cared for post-war youth they were saving the little guy from the tyranny of the past. And Lew, for good or evil bought the argument and let these juvenile delinquents off easy. But that was later, much later.   

Here is the play old man Broadmore was nothing but a ladies’ man and a guy with no dough except through his wife, the one who grabbed it from her oilman father. All this some fifteen years before the snatching of baby Ronnie. If it wore a skirt he grabbed, willingly or not, and on occasion had a couple of these bored housewives doing tricks in one of his buddy Lester’s motels along the Pacific Coast for travelling salesmen. Once the heat was on though thoughts of stir, thought of a world without access to women made him close up shop, got out of the country especially when one friendly copper, public copper asked him if he wanted to play ball with the law to get out from under. Knowing Eddie Mars was the subject of that snitch he decided to blow town fast before Eddie had Mister Brown Suit hang him out to dry. So he took off with this Ellen and that was to be the end of the troubles.  

As it turned out that Ellen was a woman not his wife and that triggered a whole bunch of stuff not so much by her as by her old-time evangelical housekeeper, a woman named Sister Snow who even Lew passed on not because she wasn’t desirable but because he couldn’t take the gaff with her Book of Revelation fire in the lake bullshit. What happened was this Broadmore brought this Ellen to a mountain cabin owned by his wife and that flipped the wife out and Sister too. Wifey killed hubby and put him about sixteen feet under with the help of Sister’s oddball son. Nothing happens for a long time except a wildfire brings out some craziness, brought out the link between Ronnie’s snatching and old man Broadmore’s murder via Ronnie’s father, that dwebb Stanley, who was looking for the father he never knew. To keep the thing tamped down Sister Snow wasted that Stanley when he was up at that very same mountain cabin and anybody else who got in the way, meaning anybody else who was looking for answers about the whereabouts of the old man or Ronnie, or both. Lew finally caught up with the snatchers left them in the care of their parents and blew back to L.A. and some well-deserved rest  

Like I said follow the bouncing ball but know this our Lew didn’t travel back to L.A. alone he had that Laura and little Ronnie riding sidesaddle on the golden calf. Shacked up with her for a while. That would be either the last straw or pretty close to the last straw for his wife Martha. The rest you know. Still, to be young at that time was very heaven.    

      

On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Fourth International-The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- *Defeated, But Unbowed-The Writings Of Leon Trotsky, 1930-31

On The Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution Of 1905-

By Frank Jackman

For the attentive reader of this unabashedly left-wing publication which moreover not only takes history seriously but commemorates some historical nodal points worthy of attention today I have drawn attention this month of January to the 100^th anniversary of the assassinations of key nascent German Communist Party leaders Rosa Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, and Karl Liebknecht the heart of the left-wing German workers movement. In that commentary I noted that history in the conditional, especially when things turned out badly as they did in Germany with the failure of the Communists to take power within a few years of the Armistice and aid the struggling isolated and devastated Russian revolution, is tricky business. There were certainly opportunities closed off by the decimation of the heads of the early German Communist Party that were never made up. That failure helps in its own way to pave the road to the Nazi takeover and all that meant for Europe and the world later. I also cautioned against stretching such conditionals out too far without retreating to an idea that the rise of the Nazis was inevitable. Give it some thought though.
History in the conditional applies as well to events that would in the future turn out well, well at the beginning in any case, and that leads to the role played by what many parties including Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky referred to as the “dress rehearsal” for the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. That was the Revolution of 1905 which although it was shattered and many of the leading participants either killed, exiled or banished still provided some hope that things would turn on that proverbial historical dime in the end. The key organization structure set up in 1905, the Workers Soviets, councils, which in embryo provided the outline for the workers government everybody from Marx and to his left argued for to bring socialist order to each country, to the world in the end almost automatically was reestablished in the early days of 1917. Who knows in conditions of war and governmental turmoil what would have happened if that organizational form had not already been tested in an earlier revolutionary episode. Again, let’s not get too wide afield on history in the conditional on this end either. Think about those episodes though as we commemorate that 1905 revolution. 


   


The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons-    *Defeated, But Unbowed-The Writings  Of  Leon Trotsky, 1930-31

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives copy of an article from the pen of Leon Trotsky, "Thaelmann And The "People's" Revolution" for 1931, the period of the book reviewed below.

BOOK REVIEWS

If you are interested in the history of the International Left in the first half of the 20th century or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. I have reviewed elsewhere Trotsky’s writings published under the title The Left Opposition, 1923-1929 (in three volumes) dealing with Trotsky’s political struggles for power inside the Russian Communist Party (and by extension, the political struggles inside the Communist International) in order to save the Russian Revolution. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of his writings from his various points of external exile from 1929 up until his death in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, during the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space). Look in the archives in this space for other related reviews on and by this important world communist leader.

After the political defeat of the various Trotsky-led Left Oppositions 1923 to 1929 by Stalin and his state and party bureaucracy he nevertheless found it far too dangerous to keep Trotsky in Moscow. He therefore had Trotsky placed in internal exile at Ata Alma in the Soviet Far East in 1928. Even that turned out to be too much for Stalin’s tastes and in 1929 he arranged for the external exile of Trotsky to Turkey. Although Stalin probably rued the day that he did it this exile was the first of a number of places which Trotsky found himself in external exile. Other places included, France, Norway and, finally, Mexico where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940.

As these volumes, and many others from this period attest to, Trotsky continued to write on behalf of a revolutionary perspective. Damn, did he write. Some, including a few of his biographers, have argued that he should have given up the struggle, retired to who knows where, and acted the role of proper bourgeois writer or professor. Please! These volumes scream out against such a fate, despite the long odds against him and his efforts on behalf of international socialist revolution. Remember this is a revolutionary who had been through more exiles and prisons than one can easily count, held various positions of power and authority in the Soviet state and given the vicissitudes of his life could reasonably expect to return to power with a new revolutionary upsurge. Personally, I think Trotsky liked and was driven harder by the long odds.

The political prospects for socialist revolution in the period under discussion are, to say the least, rather bleak, or ultimately turned out that way. The post-World War I revolutionary upsurge has dissipated leaving Soviet Russia isolated. Various other promising revolutionary situations, most notably the aborted German revolution of 1923 that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution, had come to nought. In the period under discussion there is a real sense of defensiveness about the prospects for revolutionary change. The specter of fascism loomed heavily and we know at what cost to the international working class. The capitulation to fascism by the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties in 1933, the defeat of the heroic Austrian working class in 1934, the defeat in Spain in 1939, and the outlines of the impending Second World War colored all political prospects, not the least Trotsky’s.

Organizationally, Trotsky developed two tactical orientations. The first was a continuation of the policy of the Left Opposition during the 1920’s. The International Left Opposition as it cohered in 1930 still acted as an external and unjustly expelled faction of the official Communist parties and of the Communist International and oriented itself to winning militants from those organizations. After the debacle in Germany in 1933 a call for new national parties and a new, fourth, international became the organizational focus. Many of the volumes here contain letters, circulars, and manifestos around these orientations. The daunting struggle to create an international cadre and to gain some sort of mass base animate many of the writings collected in this series. Many of these pieces show Trotsky’s unbending determination to make a breakthrough. That these effort were, ultimately, in large part militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. Hats off to Leon Trotsky.

I WILL ADD TO THIS SERIES AS I REREAD OR ACQUIRE THE OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES. HERE GOES FOR NOW.

THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1930-31, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973

As to the 1930-31 volume this reviewer recommends a careful reading of the following articles: On the Question of Thermidor and Bonapartism, (taken from analogies with the French Revolution which nicely draws the distinctions between the overturn of the revolutionary leadership and the balancing act implied in a military dictatorship); Thermidor and Bonapartism (same); Problems of the German Section (on the ever reoccurring problem of German Left Oppositionists taking serious political action toward the rank and file of the German Communist Party before it is too late);New Zigzags and New Dangers (on the notorious ‘third period’ strategy of the Communist International); and, At the Fresh Grave of Kote Tsintsadze, (probably one of the best and most insightful political obituaries of a fellow revolutionary ever written).

On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Fourth International-The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- Defeated, But Unbowed-The Writings Of Leon Trotsky, 1939-40

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons-   Defeated, But Unbowed-The Writings  Of  Leon Trotsky, 1939-40

Google Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for a copy of an article, "Marxism In Our Times", from the pen of Leon Trotsky for 1939, the period of the book reviewed below.

BOOK REVIEW

If you are interested in the history of the International Left in the first half of the 20th century or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. I have reviewed elsewhere Trotsky’s writings published under the title The Left Opposition, 1923-1929 (in three volumes) dealing with Trotsky’s political struggles for power inside the Russian Communist Party (and by extension, the political struggles inside the Communist International) in order to save the Russian Revolution. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of his writings from his various points of external exile from 1929 up until his death in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, during the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space). Look in the archives in this space for other related reviews on and by this important world communist leader.

After the political defeat of the various Trotsky-led Left Oppositions 1923 to 1929 by Stalin and his state and party bureaucracy he nevertheless found it far too dangerous to keep Trotsky in Moscow. He therefore had Trotsky placed in internal exile at Ata Alma in the Soviet Far East in 1928. Even that turned out to be too much for Stalin’s tastes and in 1929 he arranged for the external exile of Trotsky to Turkey. Although Stalin probably rued the day that he did it this exile was the first of a number of places which Trotsky found himself in external exile. Other places included, France, Norway and, finally, Mexico where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940.

As these volumes, and many others from this period attest to, Trotsky continued to write on behalf of a revolutionary perspective. Damn, did he write. Some, including a few of his biographers, have argued that he should have given up the struggle, retired to who knows where, and acted the role of proper bourgeois writer or professor. Please! These volumes scream out against such a fate, despite the long odds against him and his efforts on behalf of international socialist revolution. Remember this is a revolutionary who had been through more exiles and prisons than one can easily count, held various positions of power and authority in the Soviet state and given the vicissitudes of his life could reasonably expect to return to power with a new revolutionary upsurge. Personally, I think Trotsky liked and was driven harder by the long odds.

The political prospects for socialist revolution in the period under discussion are, to say the least, rather bleak, or ultimately turned out that way. The post-World War I revolutionary upsurge has dissipated leaving Soviet Russia isolated. Various other promising revolutionary situations, most notably the aborted German revolution of 1923 that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution, had come to nought. In the period under discussion there is a real sense of defensiveness about the prospects for revolutionary change. The specter of fascism loomed heavily and we know at what cost to the international working class. The capitulation to fascism by the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties in 1933, the defeat of the heroic Austrian working class in 1934, the defeat in Spain in 1939, and the outlines of the impending Second World War colored all political prospects, not the least Trotsky’s.

Organizationally, Trotsky developed two tactical orientations. The first was a continuation of the policy of the Left Opposition during the 1920’s. The International Left Opposition as it cohered in 1930 still acted as an external and unjustly expelled faction of the official Communist parties and of the Communist International and oriented itself to winning militants from those organizations. After the debacle in Germany in 1933 a call for new national parties and a new, fourth, international became the organizational focus. Many of the volumes here contain letters, circulars, and manifestos around these orientations. The daunting struggle to create an international cadre and to gain some sort of mass base animate many of the writings collected in this series. Many of these pieces show Trotsky’s unbending determination to make a breakthrough. That these effort were, ultimately, in large part militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. Hats off to Leon Trotsky.

I WILL ADD TO THIS SERIES AS I REREAD OR ACQUIRE THE OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES. HERE GOES FOR NOW.


THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1939-40, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973

As to the 1939-40 volume this reviewer recommends a careful reading of the following articles: On the Eve of World War II (an analysis of the impending war and what revolutionaries had to do when it came ): The German-Soviet Alliance (an interesting take on an policy that sent faint-hearted defenders of the Soviet Union overboard); The World Situation and Prospects (an optimistic, and as it turned out too optimistic assessment of the revolutionary prospects); Manifesto of the Fourth International on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian World Revolution (the program of the Fourth International for the war period and its aftermath); and, Another Thought on Conscription (on the American conscription question and a first look at the ill-advised Proletarian Military Policy).

Happy Birthday Jim Kweskin-The Max Daddy Of Jug- *A “Blues Mama” For Our Times- The Blues Of Maria Muldaur

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Maria Muldaur Performing "Handy Man".

CD Review

Naughty Bawdy &Blue, Maria Muldaur, Stony Plain Records, 2007

This CD review was originally posted in 2007 elsewhere hence the now dated reference to ex-president Clinton…

If you ever wondered who, if anyone, was going to carry on the tradition of great female blues singers now that the likes of Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Sippy Wallace and Memphis Minnie have long been gone from the scene look no further. As I pointed out in a review of her last album, "Sweet Lovin' Ol' Soul",. Maria Muldaur has paid her dues and here she is doing it all over again. This is the third album in series that she started in 2002 to cover the old great blues singers. In the present album she covers the above-mentioned singers and others in a style in which they would surely recognize as their own. These are the classic female blues singers of the 1920's and 30's. Maria is in fast company but she does not miss a beat.

Pay particular attention to her rendition of Victoria Spivey's "Handy Man" (Spivey"s "TB Blues" is nicely done, as well). Check out what the divine Ms. Spivey had to say about Maria on the liner notes. And do check out the covers of Sippy Wallace songs, "Up Country Blues" and "Separation Blues". Damn if Maria does not sound like that unfortunately not well known singer (Maria also covered a Wallace classic "Don't Advertise Your Man" on her last album). Update: I just found out recently (2009) that Sippy Wallace appeared with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band (Maria's old group) in the 1960's. Now it all makes sense, right?

I would also add that I had the pleasure of hearing some of the cuts on this album live in concert by Maria in Cambridge (one of her old stomping grounds in her youthful days with the Kweskin Jug Band back in the sixties) and she can still belt them out. If there is any truth in the assumption that former President Clinton was our first `black' president no one can deny that Maria is our first `black' classic blues singer. And has the stage presence, to boot. The tradition lives. Listen on.


"Don’t Advertise Your Man"

This Tom-Swifter,
A blab-mouth sister,
Had herself a lovin' sheik!
She had a way of braggin'
Kept her tongue a-waggin',
With every woman she'd meet;
So her bosom friend
Vamped her lovin' man,
He quit her cold as ice;
Now she never had
So much to say,
But gives very woman this advice:

Open your eyes,
Woman, be wise!
And don't you advertise your man!
It's all right to have a little bird in a bush,
But it ain't like the one you've got in your hand.
Your head will hang low,
Your heart will ache,
Your threatenin' frog's
Gonna vamp and snake,
So take a tip,
Hold your lip,
And don't you advertise your man!

What a blunder
To blow like thunder,
When you love you love your daddy so!
You better keep him hidin',
Don't you be confidin'
To every woman you know!
If you do, you'll find,
Some gal will sure be tryin'
Her best to take him 'way from you!
So you'd better heed my good advice,
And do like a woman ought to do.

Don't be a nut,
Keep your mouth shut,
And don't you advertise your man!
It's all right to brag about your hat or your dress,
But don't go blowin' 'bout the man you love best!
Just rave about the things your man can do,
And some woman will sure take him away from you!
So take a tip,
Hold your lip,
And don't you advertise your man!
And don't you advertise your man!