When Sun Records Blew The Lid Off Rock And Roll-With The Show “Million Dollar Quartet” In Mind

When Sun Records Blew The Lid Off Rock And Roll-With The Show “Million Dollar Quartet” In Mind  

By Sam Lowell

“You know they are right whoever said it sometimes a picture, a photograph, tells more than a thousand words, or you name the number of words,” Jack Callahan was telling his lady-friend, wife, and number one companion of forty-odd years, Chrissie (nee McNamara and so as Irish as her beau and husband), as they exited the side door of the Ogunquit Playhouse, the non-profit theater group up in the town of the same name up in Southern Maine which this fall (2016) had brought back by popular demand the hit show-The Million Dollar Quartet. Jack’s photograph reference was to the now famous one of the key creators and interpreters of rock and roll, ouch, now called the classic age of rock and roll Elvis (no last name needed at least for anybody who knew anything at all about rock and roll and maybe just about music), Carl Perkins (who actually had first dibs of right on a song, Blue Suede Shoes, that Elvis blew everybody out of the water with), Johnny Cash (a name known as much for country and gospel-oriented music later but a serious rocker out of the blocks when he was starting out who travelled  with the previously mentioned artists as they wowed the young things in the backwaters of the South), and, Jerry Lee Lewis, in the end the most long-lived and perhaps if he could have as Jack’s non-blushing Irish wit grandfather put it, “kept his pecker in his pants” the most prolific of the lot. Certainly the way he was highlighted in the show, the way the actor who portrayed him did his bit, stole the damn show in fact there was much to be said about that possibility. All four, who at various times had been under contract to legendary Sun Records owner Sam Phillips and that photograph taken in the end of 1956 represented the only time all four were under one roof singing together. Beautiful.

Chrissie had had to laugh when she thought about how they had come to be in Ogunquit in the late fall, a time when she normally did not even want to think about north, north of their home in Hingham a town on the coast south of Boston. The hard fact was that Jack and Chrissie had had another of their periodic falling-outs and Jack had, in the interest of preserving the marriage, taken one of those periodic “sabbaticals” from Chrissie that had helped in the past to salvage their marriage. So Jack had taken a small off-season cottage in Ogunquit, a town he, they knew well for almost as long as they had been together. While he had been in “exile” he would frequently pass the Playhouse and notice on the billboard how long the show was playing for. If Chrissie relented before the first week in November he was determined to take her to the show. As it turned out, as usual, but nothing negative should be made of the idea, Chrissie had gotten lonely for her Jack and suggested that she would head north (a real sign that she was missing her guy) and stay with Jack before the end of October. Hence the conversation on Friday night as they exited that side door to reach their automobile for the short ride to Jack’s cottage.

Of course “luring” Chrissie to the show was a no-brainer since they both had grown up, had come of age during the second wave of the rise of rock and roll coming to smite down their parents Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee et al. music that they had been previously enslaved to without recourse. Without recourse meaning the big “no” in the respective Callahan and McNamara family hearths when either had approached their parents about turning the radio dial away from WJDA 1940s stuff to WMEX the hot rock station of the time. They were more likely get “the lecture” on the devil’s music and advise to listen to their 1940s more attentively or worse, much worse, be threatened with the Irish National Hour as an alternative. (On this “second wave” thing their older brothers and sisters who passed on the torch after having given up the radio fight went outside their respective homes to find the music on local jukeboxes starting with early Elvis just as Jack and Chrissie would likewise find their outlet at those same jukeboxes a few years later when the British invasion took the nation by a storm.)

On any given Friday or Saturday night Jack Callahan, a legitimate high school football hero who would go on to be a good if not great college career, and his corner boys, everybody had corner boys in the old Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville, would hang around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor putting dimes and quarters into the jukebox to hear (and re-hear) the newest big rock hits. (Eventually, when Chrissie got under Jack’s skin and did something about it one Friday night, a story in itself worthy of telling but this is about rock and roll legends and not the hijinks of 1950s teenagers so we will move on she and Jack would spent those Friday and Saturday nights spinning tunes together -and other stuff too.)

Back to the show though. Jack and Chrissie had had dinner at a local restaurant and then headed to the Playhouse a little early since neither in all the years they had collectively been going to Maine set foot in the place. So they were thrilled when they saw the stage all festooned with the Sun record label in bright lights and with the stage set up to be like Sam Phillips’ wreck of a recording studio. To top that off in the background rock and roll music was being played over the loudspeakers- Jack laughed (and sang along) when he heard Warren Smith doing his classic Rock and Roll Ruby followed by Jerry Lee’s Mona Lisa. Jack admitted and Chrissie would too at intermission that they were amped up, expected to be thrilled to hear a lot of the songs they had grown up with and hadn’t heard for a while. And they were not disappointed, no way.

Of course the core of the show was about the fabulous four (not to be confused with the other fabulous four, the Beatles, who worshipped at the shrine of these older rockers over in Britain when the American teen audience was gravitating toward bubble-gum music). But there also was a sub-story line dealing with the hardships of a small record company promoting talent, promoting rock and roll talent, and in those days most of them were small and would be out of business without some kind of hit to keep them afloat. So the story line was as much about the trials and tribulations of Sam Phillips trying to keep his operation afloat-including the unfortunate selling of Elvis’ contract to big dog RCA for what in the end was chump change in order to keep above water-to keep his dream of creating rock legends alive.

The other tension was between the various performers and their desires to make the big time which at times did not coincide with what Sam was trying to. At the edge of the Phillips story though is what to do after Elvis got away, and Johnny and Carl wanted to sign with a bigger record company. And that is where grooming Jerry Lee came in, the next big thing that Phillips seemed to be able to draw to his little two-bit operation. Like Jack’s grandfather said if Jerry Lee could have just kept it in his pants once maybe he could have ruled the whole rock and roll universe. That was the way the story played here. 

Story-line or no story line (including an additional female singer, a girlfriend of Elvis’ who represented the seriously under told story of female singers in the early days of rock and roll) the show was about the songs that Jack and Chrissie came of age to from Elvis’ classics including those hips moving frantically to Carl’s great rockabilly guitar (he dubbed the “king of rockabilly” back then) to Johnny deep baritone. And the topping-the actor doing Jerry Lee’s role doing things with a piano (including blind-folded) that would seem impossible. Let’s put it this way after that night Chrissie was seriously thinking about taking Jack back-again. Enough said.               

In Defense Of The Truth-Not Alternate Facts- The Long March (No, Not Mao’s Famous One To Yenan Back In The Day)-From North Adamsville High To Atlantic Junior High-No Kidding-A Rebuttal

In Defense Of The Truth-Not Alternate Facts- The Long March (No, Not Mao’s Famous One To Yenan Back In The Day)-From North Adamsville High To Atlantic Junior High-No Kidding-A Rebuttal  

By Bart Webber

[The piece Jack Callahan did on his so-called role in the “long march” from North Adamsville High to our new digs at Atlantic Junior in the winter of 1959 was the last straw. In that article he implied, hell no he bragged that without his leadership we may have had many more casualties, that some fellow students might still be among the missing. That really was the last straw for me after all the years of know-towing to that silly bastard just because he subsided this publication and help keep it afloat financially in a few troubled times. I talked it over with others who have also been miffed the piece but who continue to “defer” to Jack’s wisdom. I may be panhandling again after this spiel but what the hell I have been there before, been out on the mean streets with no protective cover.     

Some guys, guys seemingly like Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Shelley Lewis, Jazz McCoy and Jack Callahan seem to be protected by some mysterious Velcro coating in their lives. Everything god or bad comes up roses. Jack has lived that life among the North Adamsville corner boys for a while. In thinking about this expose I have been trying to figure out why, with the exception of this effort nobody has taken down this bastard when the bullshit on a stick is flying from his direction.       

Maybe it really is like I have mentioned previously people are worried about their pay checks if Jack gets his knickers in a bunch. It is not like he has not done that before over anything that bothered him from our panning his goddam Toyotas made of tin and not much else. Maybe it is the aura of his being that perennially Mr. Toyota of Eastern Massachusetts which seems like he had been forever. Maybe, and this one requires a little more introspective it really is a hangover from the glory days of Warrior football when he led the team to our only state championship in school history. But I am getting to start to put some juice into the idea that it has nothing to do with Jack himself nut with Chrissie Callahan, nee McNamara. Chrissie, now Mrs. Toyota of Eastern Massachusetts for over forty years was the subject of more than one young male crush in junior high school, high school or both until she put her foot down and claimed Jack for her own one sophomore night at Tonio’s Pizza Parlor by jumping on his lap and daring him to pull her off. Needless to say it never happened. And every other guy fell down in the ditch after that.

With all that speculation about why we sucked up to Jack for so long here is the real deal on the “long march” back in 1959. Bart Webber]     

Some unsuspecting readers who read Jack Callahan’s short, very short piece published here on September 2, 2019 with a similar title to this one except minus the idea of speaking “truth” about the “world historic” move during seventh grade from august North Adamsville High School to our new digs at what was then called Atlantic Junior School and now North Adamsville Middle School might have gotten the erroneous idea that if he had not led the damn thing there would still be students stuck out in the tundra some place. All of his noise about this event is just that, what we today rightfully call alternative facts, lies okay. As my late sainted mother used to say, say about me as well as a ne’er do well older brother “the truth was not in him.” Her rant ran down some crooked Roman Catholic theology hill from there and I blew it off as so much dust.     

Now Jack may take umbrage at all of this and cut off funding to this publication as he has done before when he gets his knickers all bunched up. I remember he went crazy when Seth Garth said the 2017 Toyota Camrys Jack forced us to buy to jack up his sales record was a piece of tin and had the acceleration of a go-cart and cut us off for a couple of months. Fortunately, Allan Jackson had “angels” up the kazoo, real devotees to the literary life and not money-grubbing bastards looking to look good while selling silly cars lined up to sponsor us and give us some ready cash. Still although I might be working the panhandle to get next month’s rent now is the time for a little truth before another sixty years goes by and nobody is around to straighten out the record. Not everything Jack uttered was a lie. Yes, Jack is right in this part, the town fathers in their wisdom decided to ease the overcrowding at the high school caused by the surfeit of kids produced by our sex-starved parents right after World War II. And yes, there were delays due to construction hassles, the usual low bid government shoddy noise with people’s noses bent out of shape when they didn’t get their timely payoffs which meant that the new school would not open until January of 1959 but beyond that the rest is hogwash.

Maybe this is the point to start a little expose that probably should have occurred those many years ago. Maybe we would not be so scared of Jack’s wrath now when he is one of the great hoary elder beasts of the planet. Let’s draw a distinction though.  No question, later, Jack Callahan, Mr. Toyota of Eastern Massachusetts these days and cash heavy from the mark-ups on his cheapjack cars pulled some weight, but in seventh grade he was nothing but a shy dweeb although I do not believe that word was in use then. According to Jack mythology and that is really what it is, total myth,  the reason that Mr. Walsh who had been the junior varsity football coach and who was to be the headmaster at the new school which tells you something about town politics as much as about anything had asked him to lead the troops (Walsh’s words if I recall) was that he was some superstar football player and would naturally gather in the adorning fellow student fans and make things easier. Bullshit. We all know and were crazy to appreciate that Jack did turn into a star football player when he bulked up, learned a few juke moves and got some devious speed who lead the Warriors to the state class championship senior year but in seventh grade he was from nowhere, a second maybe third string wannabe center weighting in at maybe one hundred and fifteen pounds and had to double clench his belt on his uniform pants to hold them up if I recall. I think Jack maybe got in a couple of times when the game was decided and got trampled by fiery opposing linebackers who left his ass in the mud. (I want to say they went around him but I am not sure that was true and since we are talking alternative facts, lies, let’s just say he was down in the mud and leave it at that.)   

    

The reason, the real reason, Jack got the assignment from Mr. Walsh was that Jazz Turner, the real star running back of the junior high era, and his backup Buzz Alcorn refused to do anything to help a bunch of snotty students move their dopey asses in cold ass winter. Walsh who would always go to his football bagmen all though his long tenure at Atlantic begged Jack to lead the way knowing that Jack had his corner boys, us, to help him out. Naturally Jack, scared out of his mind that if he didn’t do as Walsh asked he would be doing water boy service the next fall rather than his dream starting center job, said yes sir, something like that.        

Again, later, by the numbers, Jack would be a great football player and a great salesman but back then he was a boot lick, a brown nose, stuff like that. Here is where the hard part of alternative facts come in. Jack in total disrespect for the sacred memory of our later brother Pete Markin stated that when he went to organize his leaders, us, he skipped Markin since he knew he was a holy goof. Here’s how funny the tale is sixty years later. The day we moved, the cold as a witch’s tit day we moved and it started snowing Jack lost it, or rather lost his bearings and fell down the hill that he was taking for a shortcut to get to the new school before everybody else. Nobody knew where the hell he was. Guess who stepped into the breech, who played Colonel Hale if you want to use the Valley Forge reference or General Te Ho if you like the Mao long march Yunan idea. Yeah, Markin, beautiful balled up Markin who took the gaff that day. Got everybody safely into the new schoolhouse that day. So watch out for who is telling war stories and why.

In the meantime has anybody got any spare change just in case Jack goes whacky and I need a few shillings to get by next month’s rent.

In Honor Of The King Of The Folk-Singing Hard-Living Hobos The Late Utah Phillips -From The Archives- On The 104th Anniversary-Labor's Untold Story- Bread And Roses- The Heroic Lawrence Textile Strike Of 1912

Click on title to link to Lucy Parsons Project site for a pro-IWW analysis of the famous Lawrence (Massachusetts) textile strike of 1912. Where the expression "bread and roses" came from. There are other sources with different perspective on this strike so Google on.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

Poem and Song lyrics-"Bread and Roses"

Poem

As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: "Bread and roses! Bread and roses!"
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!
As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler -- ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses! Song Lyrics


Song

As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!
As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.
As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.
As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses

From The Archives-Labor Day Round-Up 2011(U.S.-Our Real Day Is May Day-The International Workers' Holiday) - The One-Sided Class Struggle Continues- And Labor Is Not Winning

Markin comment:

My headline slogan The One-Sided Class Struggle Continues- And Labor Is Not Winning kind of says it all for this past year (with a few exceptions)like the previous several as the American (and most of the international working class) continues to take a beating-without a serious fight back. Never a good situation for labor. In lieu of an in any case sparse American labor news summary for this year I am placing some of my blog comments for the year that will be germane as we face the ahead until next Labor Day.
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Thursday, February 24, 2011

The Latest From The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions' Struggle-Wis. troopers sent to find Democrats, no one home- Hands Off The Democratic Legislators!

Markin comment:

The story below tells the tale in the headline. Last week when the Wisconsin struggle first broke out I mentioned that we might need to send workers' defense guards to the Wisconsin borders to insure that the legislators are not "kidnapped" back into the state. I might not be so far off on that one after all. As I also said in that post we are living in strange time indeed when I am worrying, in the year 2011, about the safety and fate of Democratic legislators. So be it. Victory to the Wisconsin Public Workers Unions!

******
Wis. troopers sent to find Democrats, no one home
By TODD RICHMOND and SCOTT BAUER, AP
3 hours ago

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MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin state troopers were dispatched Thursday to try to find at least one of the 14 Senate Democrats who have been on the run for eight days to delay a vote on Republican Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to strip collective bargaining rights from nearly all public employees.

Meanwhile, the state Assembly appeared close to voting on the union rights bill after two days of filibustering the measure with a blizzard of amendments. Democrats reached an early morning deal after 43 hours of debate to limit the number of remaining amendments and time spent on each.

Troopers went to multiple homes Thursday morning hoping to find at least one of the 14 Democrats, some of whom were rumored to have made short trips home to pick up clothes and other necessities before again fleeing the state. But they came up empty handed, Senate Sergeant at Arms Ted Blazel said.

"Every night we hear about some that are coming back home," said Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who hoped sending the move to send the troopers would pressure Democrats to return.

But Democratic Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who was in the Chicago area, said all 14 senators remained outside of Wisconsin and would not return until Walker was willing to compromise.

"It's not so much the Democrats holding things up, it's really a matter of Gov. Walker holding things up," Erpenbach said.

Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie issued a statement praising the Assembly for nearing a vote and renewing his call for Senate Democrats to come back.

Thousands of people have protested the bill for nine straight days, with hundreds spending the night on the Capitol's hard marble floor as the debate was broadcast on monitors in the rotunda. Many still were sleeping when the deal to only debate 38 more amendments, for no more than 10 minutes each, was announced shortly after 6 a.m. The timing of the agreement means the vote could come as soon as noon Thursday.

"We will strongly make our points, but understand you are limiting the voice of the public as you do this," said Democratic state Rep. Mark Pocan of Madison. "You can't dictate democracy. You are limiting the people's voice with this agreement this morning."

Democrats, who are in the minority, don't have the votes to stop the bill once the vote occurs.

Passage of the bill in the Assembly would be a major victory for Republicans and Walker, but the measure still must clear the Senate. Democrats there left town last week rather than vote on the bill, which has stymied efforts there to take it up.

The battle over labor rights has been heating up across the country, as new Republican majorities tackle budget woes in several states. The GOP efforts have sparked huge protests from unions and their supporters and led Democrats in Wisconsin and Indiana to flee their states to block measures.

Republicans in Ohio offered a small concession Wednesday, saying they would support allowing unionized state workers to collectively bargain on wages — but not for benefits, sick time, vacation or other conditions. Wisconsin's proposal also would allow most public workers to collectively bargain only for wages.

In Ohio, Republican Senate President Tom Niehaus denied protests have dented the GOP's resolve, saying lawmakers decided to make the change after listening to hours of testimony. He said he still believes the bill's core purpose — reining in spending by allowing governments more flexibility in dealing with their workers — is intact.

Senate Democratic Leader Capri Cafaro called the changes "window dressing." She said the entire bill should be scrapped.

"We can't grow Ohio's economy by destroying jobs and attacking the middle class," Cafaro said. "Public employees in Ohio didn't cause our budget problems and they shouldn't be blamed for something that's not their fault."

Wisconsin Democrats have echoed Cafaro for days, but Walker has refused to waver.

Walker reiterated Wednesday that public workers must make concessions to avoid thousands of government layoffs as the state grapples with a $137 million shortfall in its current budget and a projected $3.6 billion hole in the next two-year budget.

The marathon session in the Assembly was grand political theater, with exhausted lawmakers limping around the chamber, rubbing their eyes and yawning as Wednesday night dragged on.

Around midnight, Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, accused Democrats of putting on a show for the protesters. Democrats leapt up and started shouting.

"I'm sorry if democracy is a little inconvenient and you had to stay up two nights in a row," Pocan said. "Is this inconvenient? Hell, yeah! It's inconvenient. But we're going to be heard!"

The Ohio and Wisconsin bills both would strip public workers at all levels of their right to collectively bargain benefits, sick time, vacations and other work conditions. Wisconsin's measure exempts local police, firefighters and the State Patrol and still lets workers collectively bargain their wages as long as they are below inflation. It also would require public workers to pay more toward their pensions and health insurance. Ohio's bill, until Wednesday, would have barred negotiations on wages.

Ohio's measure sits in a Senate committee. No vote has been scheduled on the plan, but thousands of protesters have gathered at the Statehouse to demonstrate, just as in Wisconsin.

In Indiana, Democrats successfully killed a Republican bill that would have prohibited union membership from being a condition of employment by leaving the state on Tuesday. They remained in Illinois in hopes of derailing other parts of Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' agenda, including restrictions on teacher collective bargaining.

And in Oklahoma, a Republican-controlled state House committee on Wednesday narrowly approved legislation to repeal collective bargaining rights for municipal workers in that state's 13 largest cities.

___

Associated Press writers Ryan J. Foley in Madison and Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

The Assembly deal was announced shortly after 6 a.m. while the troopers were sent after the Democrats at 7 a.m.
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Thursday, March 10, 2011
From The Wisconsin War-Zone- The Lines Are Further Drawn- The Fight For A General Strike Of All Labor In Wisconsin Is Directly Posed-And Solidarity Actions By Those Outside The State- Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Get To It

Click on the headline to link to an AP report on the latest turn of events in the struggle by Wisconsin public workers unions to retain their collective bargaining rights against a right-wing directed onslaught to eliminate them.

Markin comment:

Over the past few week as the events concerning the fate of collective bargaining rights, the core of any union’s reason for existence, of Wisconsin’s public workers unions have unfolded I had joined the voices of those who have argued that passage of the ant-iunion legislation by the Republican Senate majority should trigger the call for a one day general strike of all Wisconsin as the start of a push back. Well that day has arrived and every pro-labor militant from Madison to Cairo (Illinois or Egypt, it matters not) should be joining their voices in that call, and agitating in their unions and other organization to carry it out. The lines could not be more clearly drawn, the survival of the Wisconsin public workers unions are at stake, the survival of all public workers unions are now at stake, and the survival of unionism in the United States as well. This is only the start of the right-wing onslaught. Let Wisconsin’s labor response make it the end. Fight for a one day general strike now!
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Friday, March 04, 2011

On The Question Of General Strikes In Defense Of The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions- Don't Mourn, Organize- A Short Note

Click on the headline to link to a James P.Cannon Internet Archive online article about the lessons of the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934 mentioned in the post below.

Markin comment:

Recently, in the wake of the front-line struggle of the Wisconsin public workers unions (now heightened by the latest news that the Ohio Senate has also voted to curb collective bargaining rights in that state), I, along with others, have been agitating for a one day general strike by organized labor, unorganized, but desperately in need of being organized, workers, and other allies, in support of those efforts. I have also placed the propaganda of others, individuals and organizations, who are advocating this same general position in this space, and will continue to do so as I see it come up as I scan the leftist universe. Before I go on, just to make things clear on this issue, I would draw the reader’s attention to the distinction between propagandizing, the general task for communist organizers in this period pushing issues on behalf our communist future, and agitation which requires/requests some immediate action. The events in the public sector labor movement over the past several weeks, as they have rapidly unfolded, call for immediate action whether we can cause any motion on the issue or not.

That said, I would also note that I have framed my call to action in terms of posing the question of a general strike, the objective need for such action. That proposition is the axis of intervention for leftist and trade union militants today. And that is the rub. Of course, right this minute (and as the Ohio situation foretells maybe only this minute), any such one day general strike would, of necessity, have to be centered in Wisconsin, and the tactical choices would have to be made on the ground there ( how to make the strike effective, what unions to call in, what places to shut down, etc.). My original posting did not make a distinction on location(s)though, and I make none now, about whether such a strike would be localized or not. Certainly, given the centrally of the collective bargaining principle to the lifeblood of any union, and the drumbeat of other states like Ohio, it can hardly be precluded that it could not be a wider strike than just in Wisconsin.

And that is the rub, again. I am perfectly aware, after a lifetime of oppositional politics of one sort or another, that it is one thing to call for an action and another to have it heeded by some mass organization that can do something about it, or even have it taken for more than its propaganda value. And it is the somewhat fantastic quality of the proposition to many trade unionists that I have been running up against in my own efforts to present this demand. Now, as I have noted previously, in France this kind of strike is something of an art form, and other European working classes are catching on to the idea. Moreover, in the old days the anarchists, when they had some authority in the working class in places like Spain,thought nothing of calling such strikes. And some Marxists, like the martyred Rosa Luxemburg, saw the political general strike as the central strategic piece in the working class taking state power. However the low level of political consciousness here, or lack of it, or even of solid trade union consciousness, is what the substance of this note is about.

Although the Wisconsin public workers unions have galvanized segments of the American labor movement, particularly the organized sector (those who see what is coming down the road for them-or who have already been the subject of such victimizations in the roller coaster process of the de-industrialization of America) the hard fact is that it has been a very, very long time since this labor movement has seen a general strike. You have to go back to the 1930s and the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934, or to the San Francisco General Strike of that same year to even been able to provide an example to illustrate how it could take place in this country. That, my friends, is over seventy-five years ago, a long time in anybody’s political book and, more importantly, a couple of generations removed from the actual experience. Hell, it has been as far back as the period immediately after World War II since we have seen massive nation-wide industrial strikes. The closest situation that I can think of that would be widely remembered today, and that was also somewhat successful and well supported, was the UPS strike in the 1990s. All of this points to one conclusion, our class struggle skills are now rather rusty, and it shows.

How? Well, first look at the propaganda of various leftist and socialist groups. They, correctly, call for solidarity, for defense rallies and for more marches in support of the Wisconsin struggle. But I have seen relevantly little open advocacy for a one day general strike. That is damning. But here is the real kicker, the one that should give us all pause. The most recent Wisconsin support rally in Boston was attended by many trade union militants, many known (known to me from struggles over the years) leftist activists, and surprisingly, a significant segment of older, not currently active political ex-militants who either came out for old times sake, or understood that this is a do or die struggle and they wanted to help show their support. In short, a perfect audience before which a speaker could expect to get a favorable response on a call for a political general strike. And that call that day, was made not by me, and not by other socialists or communists, but by a militant from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a well-known union with plenty of militants in it. The response: a few claps in a crowd of over two thousand.

Time has been, is, and will be our enemy here as we struggle to win these pubic workers union fights. Why? Our sense of leftist legitimacy, our class struggle sense has so atrophied over the past several decades that people, political people, trade union political people and even leftist political people have lost their capacity to struggle to win. Still, the objective situation in Wisconsin, hell, in Boston and Columbus, requires that we continue to fight around a class struggle axis. And central to that fight- Fight for a one day general strike in support of the Wisconsin public workers unions!
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Monday, March 14, 2011
Rally to Support WGBH Workers In Boston- Tuesday, March 15, 2011, 4:00 pm

Rally to Support WGBH Workers In Boston- Tuesday, March 15, 2011, 4:00 pm

Rally to Support WGBH Workers
Submitted by ujpadmin1 on Fri, 03/11/2011 - 8:26am.
When: Tuesday, March 15, 2011, 4:00 pm
Where: 10 Guest St • Brighton
Start: 2011 Mar 15 - 4:00pm


From Wisconsin to Boston, show your support for workers' rights!

Please join us to show support for WGBH’s AEEF/CWA Local 1300 in their current struggle.

Workers at WGBH, our local public television station, are fighting for the basic right to have a union in their workplace. Workers are members of AEEF/CWA Local 1300, and have been organized for nearly 40 years.

In the past, WGBH has bargained in good faith with their workers. Management and the union have been in negotiations since August, and management has recently decided to end collective bargaining. The union now faces the implementation of an unfair contract, and needs your support today!

Keep the union-busting in Wisconsin out of Massachusetts.

Sponsored by AEEF/CWA Local 1300, Greater Boston Labor Council, Massachusetts Jobs with Justice.

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Tuesday, March 15, 2011
From The Wisconsin War-Zone- The Lines Are Further Drawn- The Fight For A General Strike Of All Labor In Wisconsin Is Directly Posed-And Solidarity Actions By Those Outside The State- Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Get To It

Markin comment:

Over the past few week as the events concerning the fate of collective bargaining rights, the core of any union’s reason for existence, of Wisconsin’s public workers unions have unfolded I had joined the voices of those who have argued that passage of the ant-iunion legislation by the Republican Senate majority should trigger the call for a one day general strike of all Wisconsin as the start of a push back. Well that day has arrived and every pro-labor militant from Madison to Cairo (Illinois or Egypt, it matters not) should be joining their voices in that call, and agitating in their unions and other organization to carry it out. The lines could not be more clearly drawn, the survival of the Wisconsin public workers unions are at stake, the survival of all public workers unions are now at stake, and the survival of unionism in the United States as well. This is only the start of the right-wing onslaught. Let Wisconsin’s labor response make it the end. Fight for a one day general strike now!
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Friday, March 04, 2011

On The Question Of General Strikes In Defense Of The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions- Don't Mourn, Organize- A Short Note

Click on the headline to link to a James P.Cannon Internet Archive online article about the lessons of the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934 mentioned in the post below.

Markin comment:

Recently, in the wake of the front-line struggle of the Wisconsin public workers unions (now heightened by the latest news that the Ohio Senate has also voted to curb collective bargaining rights in that state), I, along with others, have been agitating for a one day general strike by organized labor, unorganized, but desperately in need of being organized, workers, and other allies, in support of those efforts. I have also placed the propaganda of others, individuals and organizations, who are advocating this same general position in this space, and will continue to do so as I see it come up as I scan the leftist universe. Before I go on, just to make things clear on this issue, I would draw the reader’s attention to the distinction between propagandizing, the general task for communist organizers in this period pushing issues on behalf our communist future, and agitation which requires/requests some immediate action. The events in the public sector labor movement over the past several weeks, as they have rapidly unfolded, call for immediate action whether we can cause any motion on the issue or not.

That said, I would also note that I have framed my call to action in terms of posing the question of a general strike, the objective need for such action. That proposition is the axis of intervention for leftist and trade union militants today. And that is the rub. Of course, right this minute (and as the Ohio situation foretells maybe only this minute), any such one day general strike would, of necessity, have to be centered in Wisconsin, and the tactical choices would have to be made on the ground there ( how to make the strike effective, what unions to call in, what places to shut down, etc.). My original posting did not make a distinction on location(s)though, and I make none now, about whether such a strike would be localized or not. Certainly, given the centrally of the collective bargaining principle to the lifeblood of any union, and the drumbeat of other states like Ohio, it can hardly be precluded that it could not be a wider strike than just in Wisconsin.

And that is the rub, again. I am perfectly aware, after a lifetime of oppositional politics of one sort or another, that it is one thing to call for an action and another to have it heeded by some mass organization that can do something about it, or even have it taken for more than its propaganda value. And it is the somewhat fantastic quality of the proposition to many trade unionists that I have been running up against in my own efforts to present this demand. Now, as I have noted previously, in France this kind of strike is something of an art form, and other European working classes are catching on to the idea. Moreover, in the old days the anarchists, when they had some authority in the working class in places like Spain,thought nothing of calling such strikes. And some Marxists, like the martyred Rosa Luxemburg, saw the political general strike as the central strategic piece in the working class taking state power. However the low level of political consciousness here, or lack of it, or even of solid trade union consciousness, is what the substance of this note is about.

Although the Wisconsin public workers unions have galvanized segments of the American labor movement, particularly the organized sector (those who see what is coming down the road for them-or who have already been the subject of such victimizations in the roller coaster process of the de-industrialization of America) the hard fact is that it has been a very, very long time since this labor movement has seen a general strike. You have to go back to the 1930s and the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934, or to the San Francisco General Strike of that same year to even been able to provide an example to illustrate how it could take place in this country. That, my friends, is over seventy-five years ago, a long time in anybody’s political book and, more importantly, a couple of generations removed from the actual experience. Hell, it has been as far back as the period immediately after World War II since we have seen massive nation-wide industrial strikes. The closest situation that I can think of that would be widely remembered today, and that was also somewhat successful and well supported, was the UPS strike in the 1990s. All of this points to one conclusion, our class struggle skills are now rather rusty, and it shows.

How? Well, first look at the propaganda of various leftist and socialist groups. They, correctly, call for solidarity, for defense rallies and for more marches in support of the Wisconsin struggle. But I have seen relevantly little open advocacy for a one day general strike. That is damning. But here is the real kicker, the one that should give us all pause. The most recent Wisconsin support rally in Boston was attended by many trade union militants, many known (known to me from struggles over the years) leftist activists, and surprisingly, a significant segment of older, not currently active political ex-militants who either came out for old times sake, or understood that this is a do or die struggle and they wanted to help show their support. In short, a perfect audience before which a speaker could expect to get a favorable response on a call for a political general strike. And that call that day, was made not by me, and not by other socialists or communists, but by a militant from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a well-known union with plenty of militants in it. The response: a few claps in a crowd of over two thousand.

Time has been, is, and will be our enemy here as we struggle to win these pubic workers union fights. Why? Our sense of leftist legitimacy, our class struggle sense has so atrophied over the past several decades that people, political people, trade union political people and even leftist political people have lost their capacity to struggle to win. Still, the objective situation in Wisconsin, hell, in Boston and Columbus, requires that we continue to fight around a class struggle axis. And central to that fight- Fight for a one day general strike in support of the Wisconsin public workers unions!
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Thursday, April 28, 2011
No More Wisconsins!-Anti-Union “Mission Creep” In Massachusetts- State House Of Representatives Votes To Eliminate Bargaining Over Health Care

Click on the headline to link to a Boston Globe article, dated April 26, 2011, detailing a vote on a bill by the State House of Representatives essentially eliminating heath care issues as bargaining items in public union contracts.

Markin comment:

Okay, one more time by the numbers. Unions exist to bargain over wages, conditions of work, and benefits. Bargain in good or bad faith, but bargain. The defeat in Wisconsin over the right to collectively bargain on, in reality, anything has found echoes in other states using a slow fuse method to attain the same results-break the unions’ task as bargaining agent and go back to the good old days of workers taking what you get, and like it. The Massachusetts House of Representatives recent vote, in a so-called liberal, pro-labor state, on a bill to essentially take heath care issues off the bargaining table is a prime example of this latter strategy. If we do not want unions, public and private, to become mere company unions (or mere dues-paying fraternal organizations, like the Elks)then we had better do a better job of fighting to save the collective bargaining process before there is nothing left. And work under the slogan- No More Wisconsins! No More Massachusetts’! An injury to one is an injury to all!
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Wednesday, August 10, 2011
On The Wisconsin Recall Elections- The Limits of Parliamentary Tactics In Today's Class Struggle

Click on the headline to link to a news article concerning the recent Wisconsin recall elections in which those who advocated such a tactic were defeated.

Markin comment:
In the class struggle which is now raging more than somewhat in this country, a one-sided class struggle for the most part that we are not winning or even close to doing so, the militant labor movement has learned to use many forms of protest strategy and tactics. One such arena is the parliamentary struggle. But as the results here from the special recall election in Wisconsin show that is not always our most effective way to win what we need. Especially in this case where the fundamental labor right to have our own organizations for collective bargaining was at stake.

The attempt to try to defend that right, as has now happened in Wisconsin, by parliamentary means, has always struck me as somewhat utopian. Depending on the whims of an electorate, any electorate, where labor’s votes count for no more than a tea-partyite or those of any other political persuasion just did not make sense to me. Not these days. During the past winter when the Wisconsin organized working class was up in arms, both public and private, and with many in-state supporters as well as a groundswell of others nationally, there were calls for a general strike as a way to fight back. I raised that call in this space and others did in theirs as well. Who knows if that would have stopped this frontal attack on labor’s basic rights. What I do know is that it should have been tested under those circumstances. Yesterday’s defeats in Wisconsin only makes that more evident.
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Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Victory To The Verizon Workers!- All Out In Support Of The Communcation Workers Of America (CWA) And International Brotherhood Of Electrical Workers (IBEW)!- Labor Needs A Victory Here Now!-Defend The Picket Lines At All Costs!

Click on the headline to link to the Communication Workers Of America website for the latest in their strike action against "fat cat" Verizon.

Markin comment:

The issues: wages, health care, conditions of work, pensions and out-sourcing a now familiar litany of things that used to be negotiated without much muse or fuse but now entail a "cold" civil war in the class struggle. We need a win here, especially after the last few years. Victory to the Verizon workers! All out in solidarity with the Verizon workers! In the Northeast walk the pickets lines in solidarity!
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Thursday, August 11, 2011
Victory To The Verizon Workers!- All Out In Support Of The Communcation Workers Of America (CWA) And International Brotherhood Of Electrical Workers (IBEW)!- Labor Needs A Victory Here Now!-Defend The Picket Lines At All Costs!

Click on the headline to link to the Communication Workers Of America website for the latest in their strike action against "fat cat" Verizon.

Markin comment:

The issues: wages, health care, conditions of work, pensions and out-sourcing a now familiar litany of things that used to be negotiated without much muse or fuse but now entail a "cold" civil war in the class struggle. We need a win here, especially after the last few years. Victory to the Verizon workers! All out in solidarity with the Verizon workers! In the Northeast walk the pickets lines in solidarity!
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Thurday August 11, 2011 update

Verizon is threatening to take legal action against its unions (CWA, IBEW) in Massachusetts for allegedly blocking access to their sites and "harassing" scabs and others trying to enter workplaces. B.S.- Picket Lines Mean Don't Cross- Defend The Picket Lines At All Costs!

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Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Verizon Workers Head Back To Work- No Contract Victory In Sight

Click on the headline to link to a Boston Globearticle detailing the return ot work of the Verizon strikers.

Markin comment:

The Verizon strikers are heading back to work without a new contract. From the outside it is sometimes hard to see what negotiations will produce without a picket line to back them up, if anything. A workers’ strike, short of the struggle for state power, is a moment in the class struggle and a union contract is an “armed truce” in that struggle. Not all strikes, obviously, are successful, or produce the hope for results but returning back to work without a better contract on this one does not make sense. First, the picket lines were holding, and being held militantly in many cases. Secondly Verizon acknowledged that the strike was hurting their customer base. In short the strike was hurting the company’s basic concern-profits. This did not seem like a time to walk off the lines. Period.

When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of The Late Folk-Singer Dave Van Ronk’s Time

When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of The Late Folk-Singer Dave Van Ronk’s Time

  

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Sometimes Sam Lowell and his “friend” Laura Perkins (really “sweetie,” long time sweetie, paramour, significant other, consort or whatever passes for the socially acceptable or Census Bureau bureaucratic “speak” way to name somebody who is one’s soul-mate, his preferred term) whose relationship to Sam was just described in parenthesis, and righteously so, liked to go to Crane’s Beach in Ipswich to either cool off in the late summer heat or in the fall before the New England weather lowers its hammer and the place gets a bit inaccessible. That later summer heat escape valve is a result of the hard fact that July, when they really would like to go there to catch a few fresh sea breezes, is not a time to show up at the bleach white sands beach due to nasty blood-sucking green flies swarming and dive-bombing like some berserk renegade Air Force squadron lost on a spree who breed in the nearby swaying mephitic marshes.

The only “safe haven” then is to drive up the hill to the nearby robber-baron days etched Crane Castle to get away from the buggers, although on a stagnant wind day you might have a few vagrant followers, as the well-to-do have been doing since there were well-to-do and had the where-with-all to escape the summer heat and bugs at higher altitudes. By the way I assume that “castle” is capitalized when it part of a huge estate, the big ass estate of Crane, now a trust monument to the first Gilded Age, not today’s neo-Gilded Age, architectural proclivities of the rich, the guy whose company did, does all the plumbing fixture stuff on half the bathrooms in America including the various incantations of the mansion. 

Along the way, along the hour way to get to Ipswich from Cambridge Sam and Laura had developed a habit of making the time more easy passing by listening to various CDs, inevitably not listened to for a long time folk CDs, not listened to for so long that the plastic containers needed to be dusted off before being brought along, on the car CD player. And is their wont while listening to some CD to comment on this or that thing that some song brought to mind, or the significance of some song in their youth.  One of the things that had brought them together early on several years back was their mutual interest in the old 1960s folk minute which Sam, a little older and having grown up within thirty miles of Harvard Square, one the big folk centers of that period along with the Village and North Beach out in Frisco town, had imbibed deeply. Laura, growing up “in the sticks,” in farm country in upstate New York had gotten the breeze at second-hand through records, records bought at Cheapo Records and the eternal Sandy's on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge and a little the fading Cambridge folk scene when she had moved to Boston in the early 1970s to go to graduate school.     

One hot late August day they got into one such discussion about how they first developed an interest in folk music when Sam had said “sure everybody, everybody over the age of say fifty to be on the safe side, knows about Bob Dylan, maybe some a little younger too if some hip kids have browsed through their parents’ old vinyl record collections now safely ensconced in the attic although there are stirrings of retro-vinyl revival of late according a report he had heard on NPR. Some of that over 50 crowd and their young acolytes would also know about how Dylan, after serving something like an apprenticeship under the influence of Woody Guthrie in the late 1950s singing Woody’s songs imitating Woody's style something fellow Woody acolytes like Ramblin’ Jack Elliot never quite got over moved on, got all hung up on high symbolism and obscure references. Funny guys like Jack actually made a nice workman-like career out of Woody covers, so their complaints seen rather hollow now. That over 50s crowd would also know Dylan became if not the voice of the Generation of ’68, their generation, which he probably did not seriously aspire in the final analysis, then the master troubadour of the age.

Sam continued along that line after Laura had said she was not sure about the connection and he said he meant, “troubadour in the medieval sense of bringing news to the people and entertaining them by song and poetry as well if not decked in some officially approved garb like back in those olden days where they worked under a king’s license if lucky, by their wit otherwise but the 'new wave' post-beatnik flannel shirt, work boots, and dungarees which connected you with the roots, the American folk roots down in the Piedmont, down in Appalachia, down in Mister James Crow’s Delta. So, yes, that story has been pretty well covered.”  

Laura said she knew all of that about the desperate search for roots although not that Ramblin’ Jack had been an acolyte of Woody’s but she wondered about others, some other folk performers who she listened to on WUMB on Saturday morning when some weeping willow DJ put forth about fifty old time rock and folk things a lot of which she had never heard of back in Mechanicsville outside of Albany where she grew up. Sam then started in again, “Of course that is hardly the end of the story since Dylan did not create that now hallowed folk minute of the early 1960s. He had been washed by it when he came to the East from Hibbing, Minnesota for God’s sake (via Dink’s at the University), came into the Village where there was a cauldron of talent trying to make folk the next big thing, the next big cultural thing for the young and restless of the post-World War II generations. For us. But also those in little oases like the Village where the disaffected could put up on stuff they couldn’t get in places like Mechanicsville or Carver where I grew up. People who I guess, since even I was too young to know about that red scare stuff except you had to follow your teacher’s orders to put your head under your desk and hand over your head if the nuclear holocaust was coming, were frankly fed up with the cultural straightjacket of the red scare Cold War times and began seriously looking as hard at roots in all its manifestations as our parents, definitely mine, yours were just weird about stuff like that, right, were burying those same roots under a vanilla existential Americanization. How do you like that for pop sociology 101.”

“One of the talents who was already there when hick Dylan came a calling, lived there, came from around there was the late Dave Van Ronk who as you know we had heard several times in person, although unfortunately when his health and well-being were declining not when he was a young politico and hell-raising folk aspirant. You know he also, deservedly, fancied himself a folk historian as well as musician.”    

“Here’s the funny thing, Laura, that former role is important because we all know that behind the “king” is the “fixer man,” the guy who knows what is what, the guy who tells one and all what the roots of the matter were like some mighty mystic (although in those days when he fancied himself a socialist that mystic part was played down). Dave Van Ronk was serious about that part, serious about imparting that knowledge about the little influences that had accumulated during the middle to late 1950s especially around New York which set up that folk minute. New York like I said, Frisco, maybe in small enclaves in L.A. and in precious few other places during those frozen times a haven for the misfits, the outlaws, the outcast, the politically “unreliable,” and the just curious. People like the mistreated Weavers, you know, Pete Seeger and that crowd found refuge there when the hammer came down around their heads from the red-baiters and others like advertisers who ran for cover to “protect” their precious soap, toothpaste, beer, deodorant or whatever they were mass producing to sell to a hungry pent-ip market.  

Boston and Cambridge by comparison until late in the 1950s when the Club 47 and other little places started up and the guys and gals who could sing, could write songs, could recite poetry even had a place to show their stuff instead of to the winos, rummies, grifters and conmen who hung out at the Hayes-Bickford or out on the streets could have been any of the thousands of towns who bought into the freeze.”     

“Sweetie, I remember one time but I don’t remember where, maybe the Café Nana when that was still around after it had been part of the Club 47 folk circuit for new talent to play and before Harry Reid, who ran the place, died and it closed down, I know it was before we met, so it had to be before the late 1980s Von Ronk told a funny story, actually two funny stories, about the folk scene and his part in that scene as it developed a head of steam in the mid-1950s which will give you an idea about his place in the pantheon. During the late 1950s after the publication of Jack Kerouac’s ground-breaking road wanderlust adventure novel that got young blood stirring, not mine until later since I was clueless on all that stuff except rock and roll, On The Road which I didn’t read until high school, the jazz scene, the cool be-bop jazz scene and poetry reading, poems reflecting off of “beat” giant Allen Ginsberg’s Howl the clubs and coffeehouse of the Village were ablaze with readings and cool jazz, people waiting in line to get in to hear the next big poetic wisdom guy if you can believe that these days when poetry is generally some esoteric endeavor by small clots of devotees just like folk music. The crush of the lines meant that there were several shows per evening. But how to get rid of one audience to bring in another in those small quarters was a challenge.

Presto, if you wanted to clear the house just bring in some desperate “from hunger” snarly nasally folk singer for a couple, maybe three songs, and if that did not clear the high art be-bop poetry house then that folk singer was a goner. A goner until the folk minute of the 1960s who probably in that very same club then played for the 'basket.' You know the 'passed hat' which even on a cheap date, and a folk music coffeehouse date was a cheap one in those days like I told you before and you laughed at cheapie me and the 'Dutch treat' thing, you felt obliged to throw a few bucks into to show solidarity or something.  And so the roots of New York City folk according to the 'father.'

Laura interrupted to ask if that “basket” was like the buskers put in front them these days and Sam said yes. And asked Sam about a few of the dates he took to the coffeehouses in those days, just out of curiosity she said, meaning if she had been around would he have taken her there then. He answered that question but since it is an eternally complicated and internal one I have skipped it to let him go on with the other Von Ronk story. He continued with the other funny story like this-“The second story involved his [Von Ronk's] authoritative role as a folk historian who after the folk minute had passed became the subject matter for, well, for doctoral dissertations of course just like today maybe people are getting doctorates in hip-hop or some such subject. Eager young students, having basked in the folk moment in the abstract and with an academic bent, breaking new ground in folk history who would come to him for the 'skinny.' Now Van Ronk had a peculiar if not savage sense of humor and a wicked snarly cynic’s laugh but also could not abide academia and its’ barren insider language so when those eager young students came a calling he would give them some gibberish which they would duly note and footnote. Here is the funny part. That gibberish once published in the dissertation would then be cited by some other younger and even more eager students complete with the appropriate footnotes. Nice touch, nice touch indeed on that one, right.”

Laura did not answer but laughed, laughed harder as she thought about it having come from that unformed academic background and having read plenty of sterile themes turned inside out.       

As Laura laugh settled Sam continued “As for Van Ronk’s music, his musicianship which he cultivated throughout his life, I think the best way to describe that for me is that one Sunday night in the early 1960s I was listening to the local folk program on WBZ hosted by Dick Summer, who was influential in boosting local folk musician Tom Rush’s career and who was featured on that  Tom Rush documentary No Regrets we got for being members of WUMB, when this gravelly-voice guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, sang the Kentucky hills classic Fair and Tender Ladies. It turned out to be Von Ronk's version which you know I still play up in the third floor attic. After that I was hooked on that voice and that depth of feeling that he brought to every song even those of his own creation which tended to be spoofs on some issue of the day.”

Laura laughed at Sam and the intensity with which his expressed his mentioning of the fact that he liked gravelly-voiced guys for some reason. Here is her answer, “You should became when you go up to the third floor to do your “third floor folk- singer” thing and you sing Fair and Tender Ladies I hear this gravelly-voiced guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, some Old Testament Jehovah prophet come to pass judgment come that end day time.”

They both laughed. 

Laura then mentioned the various times that they had seen Dave Von Ronk before he passed away, not having seen him in his prime, when that voice did sound like some old time prophet, a title he would have probably secretly enjoyed for publicly he was an adamant atheist. Sam went on, “ I saw him perform many times over the years, sometimes in high form and sometimes when drinking too much high-shelf whiskey, Chavis Regal, or something like that not so good. Remember we had expected to see him perform as part of Rosalie Sorrels’ farewell concert at Saunders Theater at Harvard in 2002 I think. He had died a few weeks before.  Remember though before that when we had seen him for what turned out to be our last time and I told you he did not look well and had been, as always, drinking heavily and we agreed his performance was subpar. But that was at the end. For a long time he sang well, sang us well with his own troubadour style, and gave us plenty of real information about the history of American folk music. Yeah like he always used to say-'when the tin can bended …..and the story ended.'

As they came to the admission booth at the entrance to Crane’s Beach Sam with Carolyn Hester’s song version of Walt Whitman’s On Captain, My Captain on the CD player said “I was on my soap box long enough on the way out here. You’re turn with Carolyn Hester on the way back who you know a lot about and I know zero, okay.” Laura retorted, “Yeah you were definitely on your soap-box but yes we can talk Carolyn Hester because I am going to cover one of her songs at my next “open mic.” And so it goes.               

In Search Of Heroes Of The Great American Hispanic Night-Mi Hombre Senor Zorro-The ‘Z’ Man Of My Youthful Dreams-Antonio Banderas’s “The Mask Of Zorro” (1998)-A Film Review

In Search Of Heroes Of The Great American Hispanic Night-Mi Hombre Senor Zorro-The ‘Z’ Man Of My Youthful Dreams-Antonio Banderas’s “The Mask Of Zorro” (1998)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Si Lannon

The Mask Of Zorro, starring Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Anthony Hopkins and assorted sleaze-ball Spanish dons and their senoras and senoritas, 1998

I have made no secret here or in private conversations that in my youth, my childhood really, I was crazy to watch the Zorro half hour on 1950s black and white television. For a reason that only a few people knew then, mostly family, and excluding my corner boys, some of who work for this publication, and whom I grew up with in the heavily working- class Irish and some Italian neighborhood of the Acre in North Adamsville a suburb south of Boston. I suppose every family has its family secrets, its skeletons in the closet like some looney grand aunty up on the batty attic, a brother, a hermano in home speak, who has spent more time in jail for various armed felonies than on the outside, that some cousin was in the vernacular of the day in our family at least was “different” meaning then a “fairy, fag” you know what I mean and today proudly LGBTQ, a young female relative who also in the code words of the day had to travel to “Aunt Emmy” for a while, meaning that she was pregnant out of wedlock and had to leave town to avoid family disgrace and dagger neighborhood dowager grandmother eyes probably never to come back.

In my family the deep dark secret which also reveals in passing why I loved Zorro as my youthful hero was that my mother was a Latina, Hispanic, you know from Mexico whose last name was Juarez, Bonita Juarez. No big deal right, now anyway although in the age of the long knives, in the age of Trump and all the animosities he has helped stir up, bring to the ugly surface of American life, that may no longer be true. But back then, back in 1950s growing up Irish-Italian Acre that was a no-no. The way around it devised by my parents was that sweet Bonita was “passed off” as Italian. An entirely respectable ethic designation in a town that drew Italians back around the turn off the 20^th century to work the granite quarries that dominated the topography of the landscape (that work died out with the exhaustion of the quarries to be replaced by a booming shipbuilding industries which by the 1950s has in their turn faded this time by off-shore outsourcing and eventual departure which explained a lot about the wanting habits of we corner boys in the 1950s while other working class towns were observing something of a golden age-also mainly gone now with globalization). While there were names, derogatory names, for Italians in some Irish working-class homes in the neighborhood there was enough intermixing to level things off.

Almost universally though since there were absolutely no Hispanic families in the whole town the normal terms of abuse applies-spics, wetbacks, braceros, and the like. My father could not stand for that and even his relatives in the neighborhood believed my mother was from Italy. She had come up to California from Mexico during World War II with her family to work the grape and melon fields and my father stationed at Fort Ord at the time met her at a USO dance and wooed her after that. Since Bonita’s English was halting she was forbidden to speak Spanish when others were around. The only way any corner boys knew that she was Spanish was in high school when in ninth grade my best friend Jack Callahan had been taking Spanish and had come to the house unannounced and heard her speaking that language and not Italian. Naturally asking what gives and I told him and from there to the rest of the guys who hung around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor. [In the interest of today’s seemingly compulsory transparency statement Jack Callahan has not only occasionally written in this publication but has been a substantial financial backer-Greg Green]

The corner boys when they found out since we were “brothers” today hermanos were pretty cool about the whole thing since she was my mother and that counted a lot even when we were at civil war with them, con madres. In general though it was not until many years later after Bonita passed away that people became aware of her nationality in a time when such things were more openly okay-even in the Acre.                    

Secrets aside I loved Zorro the same way my corner boys loved say white gringo good guys, avenging angels like Wyatt Earp or the Maverick boys from the television our main source outside of the movies from having characters we could identify with. Swashbuckling Zorro taking on all-comers, bad ass gringos especially but also batos locos paid soldiers and other scumbags and of course the oppressor hombres-the mainly Spanish dons who had the huge land grants from the Spanish kings when California was part of the fading Spanish Empire and later after formal independence and creation of a Mexican state who gouged the peasantry into the ground to maintain their freaking luxurious lifestyles. I would have to keep my devotion something of a secret although in general Zorro was a positive figure among the television-watching corner boys.

I was therefore very interested in doing this review of The Mask of Zorro when site manager Greg Green decided that enough was enough as Mexican Nationals, immigrants, citizens, hard-working peoples were being bashed for no good purpose by the Trump unleashed dark alt-right-Nazi-fascist-white nationalist cabal and had to be defended on all fronts including popular culture-including films. And in a very definitive way-beyond the obvious romance between Zorro, played by a youthful Antonio Banderas and his lovely senorita and soon to be marida and madre of his child, Elena, played by drop-dead beautiful Catherine Zeta-Jones-this film shows a heroic and honorable side of the Mexican saga-of cultural super-heroes among the oppressed peoples of the world. 

Here is the way the thing worked on this one although one can take the production to task for not have more Hispanics, Latinos, etc. in key roles like Elena, who could have worthily been played by Penelope Lopez, and certainly Zorro, the elder, played by venerable and ubiquitous high-toned Brit actor Anthony Hopkins could have had a better casting. The elder Zorro has a running battle in the Mexican independence struggle with the soon to be departed Spanish viceroy, a real bastard whose name is legend so no need to give him some human surname over the way the peasantry and others were treated by him. More importantly over the elder Zorro’s wife and daughter since that msl hombre viceroy was smitten by her. Eventually the bastard was the cause of the mother’s death and the elder Zorro’s imprisonment leaving the field clear for him to raise that daughter, Elena, when going back to Spain in comfort and culture.    

Then fast forward twenty year later and the bastard returned with Elena and with the idea of turning via those well-off land grant Dons California into an independent republic by stealth and cold hard cash to the Mexican leader Santa Ana, known as a villain in U.S. history via the Alamo and Jimmy Polk’s Mexican War adventure. The one guys like young Abe Lincoln and Henry avid Thoreau couldn’t stomach. Enter a rejuvenated elder Zorro who nevertheless is too old to go mano a mano with the bastard and his hired thugs. Through serious trial and error he trains a new generation Zorro, played by Banderas, to lead the struggle against the returned kingpin oppressor and let the peasantry live off the their lands in some peace. Once our new Zorro finishes his basic training he is off and running to woo the lovely Elena, tweak the bastard, fight a million sword fights, woo the lovely Elena, fight a few million more sword fights, and well you know the “and” part by now. A most satisfying film which only rekindled my love of the sacred youthful character-thanks young and old Zorro.         

In Honor Of The King Of The Folk-Singing Hard-Living Hobos The Late Utah Phillips -From The Archives- *Labor's Untold Story-The Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW)- Party Or Union?

Click on title to link to ex- IWW'er, American Communist Party founder and Socialist Workers Party (Trotskyist)founder James P. Cannon's analysis of the IWW.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.