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

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

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- Warren Smith’s “Rock And Roll Ruby”

Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- Warren Smith’s “Rock And Roll Ruby”

WARREN SMITH ROCK´N´ ROLL RUBY LYRICS


Well I took my Ruby jukin'
On the out-skirts of town
She took her high heels off
And rolled her stockings down
She put a quarter in the jukebox
To get a little beat
Everybody started watchin'
All the rhythm in her feet

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul

Now Ruby started rockin' 'bout one o'clock
And when she started rockin'
She just couldn't stop
She rocked on the tables
And rolled on the floor
And Everybody yelled: "Ruby rock some more!"

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul

It was 'round about four
I thought she would stop
She looked at me and then
She looked at the clock
She said: "Wait a minute Daddy
Now don't get sour
All I want to do
Is rock a little bit more"

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul

One night my Ruby left me all alone
I tried to contact her on the telephone
I finally found her about twelve o'clock
She said: "Leave me alone Daddy
'cause your Ruby wants to rock"

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul

Rock, rock, rock'n'roll
Rock, rock, rock'n'roll
Rock, rock, rock'n'roll
Rock, rock, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul
*****
Nobody had seen Billie (William James Bradley for those who are sticklers for detail) for a while, a few months anyway. I had drifted away from his circle, his corner boy circle, when my family moved across town to the other side of Adamsville, North Adamsville a couple of years before. And when Billie got into some stuff, some larceny stuff, mainly clipping things and stealing cars if you must know, and when I decided, decided almost at the last minute, that I wanted no part of that scene that pretty much ended it. I still kept in touch with him for about a year or so after and then when he got into his new “jag”, robbing stores and the like, through keeping in touch others. Rumor had it, and it was always rumor with Billie whether he was right in the room or got his fate reported by one of his boys, one of his legend-producing boys definitely including me at one time, that he was shacked up with some “broad”. I admit I did my fair share to built up the Billie legend but that’s all, he just naturally filled in the empty spaces, empty spaces that he hated, and that characteristic goes a long way in telling why we hadn’t heard from him for a while except through that rumor mill.

The rumor mill also had it, to fill in the particulars, that he had stolen some car, a classic hopped-up 1949 Nash owned by a tough guy, real tough guy, named “Blindside” Buckley (that moniker tells you all you need to know just keep clear of him, alright) or something like that, or maybe it was that he had stolen one car, abandoned it, and stole another. Either way sounds about right. Stole the cars and was holed up somewhere with a honey, Lucy (description to follow), that he had met down at the Sea and Surf teen nightclub across from the Paragon Park Amusement Park in Nantasket, a few miles outside of the town limits of Adamsville. Now this honey, this Lucy honey, was a little older than Billie but, and like I say this is rumor, she jumped on him from minute one when he walked in the door, leaving the guy she was with looking kind of stupid. And in the scheme of things probably prepared to commit mayhem.

Billie, no question was a good-looking guy, was a real good dancer and, best of all, he had a great voice, a great rock and roll voice, that fit nicely, very nicely into the music that we were all listening to, listening to like crazy, on our little transistor radios. So maybe, for all I know, she had heard Billie sing, sing at one of the two billion talents shows that he was always entering in order, as he constantly said, to win his fame and fortune. Like I said he was good, good at covering Top Forty stuff, but just short, just short, I guess, of making that projects jail break-out move that he was always confident would occur once the talent guys heard him, really heard.

And this honey, this red-headed, luscious red-lipped honey was, reportedly, just the exact kind of honey that Billie dreamed of grabbing for his own. Great shape (great shape then meaning all fill-out curves and leggy legs, or something like that), great boffo hair (dark red, an obviously Irish girl), kittenly sexy, and most importantly ready to go all night whether dancing, doing this and that (figure it out), or helping plan some caper. Just the kind of girl the priests and parents were always warning us against but we still secretly dreamed of, dreamed of hard. Ya, just Billie’s action, just his catnip. And so when I first heard that rumor, that Billie holed up rumor, I said ya, that seems about right.

See Billie one night, one twelve year old summer night, down in back of old Adamsville South Elementary School where we used to hang out because that was the only real hang-out place around, and talk, talk of futures, talk of dreams just like everybody else, every twelve year old everybody else Billie kind of laid the whole thing out for us. He was going to parlay his singing voice, his rock and roll singing voice, into fame and fortune and when his ship came in he was going to search for his rock and roll soul-mate. He didn’t put it just this way but the idea was to get the hottest, sexiest, dancingest girl around and sail off into the sunset leaving that dust of the projects behind, way behind.

So it looks like Billie has one part of his dream coming true, although being on the lam, being big time on the lam, from the cops, the owner of that hopped-up classic 1949 Nash, or maybe even that guy left looking stupid, take your choice, wasn’t part of the description back in those twelve year old summer nights. But being sixteen, being in some dough, and being with the rock and roll queen of the seaside night still seems like a bargain worth having made with whatever devil Billie needed to consult to pull the caper off. Hell, it makes me think that maybe I made a mistake moving away from Billie’s orbit. But just call that a rumor in case any cops are around, alright. Anyway, now that Billie is holed up, any girls who want to dance the night away just call out my name. Hey, I can dream too.

July 4: CELEBRATING A “SLAVEHOLDER’S REPUBLIC”-“WHAT TO THE AMERICAN SLAVE IS YOUR 4TH OF JULY?” James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech (July 5, 1852)

July 4: CELEBRATING A “SLAVEHOLDER’S REPUBLIC”-“WHAT TO THE AMERICAN SLAVE IS YOUR 4TH OF JULY?”  James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech (July 5, 1852)

July 4: CELEBRATING A “SLAVEHOLDER’S REPUBLIC”

Modern histories of the American Revolution rightly emphasize the interests of slaveholders and land speculators hungry to overthrow Britain’s limits to westward expansion into Native lands.  The colonial leaders debated publicly what sort or government they wanted, but they were unanimous in rejecting “Democracy,” a word which appears nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution.

 

“WHAT TO THE AMERICAN SLAVE IS YOUR 4TH OF JULY?”

James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech (July 5, 1852)

 

Click on the image above to watch and listen!

 

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RENAMING FANEUIL HALL WOULD NOT ERASE HISTORY

We must face some sobering facts: Peter Faneuil — for whom Faneuil Hall is named — was a slave trader, a purveyor of human flesh, an international trafficker of people whose lives he left in ruins…  In defense of retaining the name of Faneuil Hall, many say we should “not change history.” Here we misunderstand that history is always changing in light of new discovery, which is the product of tireless effort to verify truth claims. Without such an approach, we would have held steadfastly to wrong-headed conceptions of the galaxy when new methods, facts, and revelation compel us all otherwise.  In a similar vein, many reject renaming Faneuil Hall because it would “erase” the history of Peter Faneuil a great Bostonian, a “scion of the French Huguenots… fleeing oppression” themselves. But what about Peter Faneuil’s complicity with the slave trade and ownership of other humans? And what about the long and obscured history of blacks in Boston, which we willingly ignore, suppress and reject? In other words, is the historical narrative of black slaves in Boston as important as the stories of whites in our city? Yes, of course.  The move to rename Faneuil Hall should not be viewed as an attempt to “erase history” or change the past. Logic dictates that this is impossible. But remembering history is possible and necessary should we desire to embrace our democratic birthright.   More

 

In The Days When Crime Paid And The Coppers Took Their Graft Anyway They Could-Gene Tierney and Dana Andrew’s “Where The Sidewalk Ends” (1950)-A Film Review

In The Days When Crime Paid And The Coppers Took Their Graft Anyway They Could-Gene Tierney and Dana Andrew’s “Where The Sidewalk Ends” (1950)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Will Bradley

Where The Sidewalk Ends (yeah, I know, they must have spent about three dollars to some starving stringer in the scriptwriters’ quarters to come up with that title), starring lovely Gene Tierney and pretty boy Dana Andrews, directed by Otto Preminger, 1950    

I get down on my hands and knees every day and pray that the day never comes when professional writing, review writing, ever stops being a dog eat dog proposition. Stops being what young, well she is younger than I am after all, Sarah Lemoyne, a fellow reviewer here following her mentor old greybeard Seth Garth has called a cutthroat business where only the strong and ruthless survive-once they get their coveted by-lines. Of course I would discount out of hand anything Mr. Garth has to inform the young and unwashed with, impressionables like Ms. Lemoyne, since I took the full measure of the man when he went down in flames in our “dueling” film review set-too on the question of the iconic nature of Sherlock Holmes and Doc Watson in their long and illustrious film series. I won’t bore the reader with details here but Garth insisted that the whole series was nothing but an ill-disguised homage to the Homintern, to their kinky little high-brow male same-sex club complete with every thief and con man in the kingdom doing their bidding.  And Ms. Lemoyne bought into that madness, following Seth’s lead about me being wet behind the ears since I didn’t catch on to the importance of “dilly boys,” young male whores, riffraff really in the whole scheme of their illegal Baker Street operations covered up by a see no evil landlady. But enough of that since if anybody is still interested in that what did wizened and senile, for once Sarah got it right, Sam Lowell call it, oh yes, a tempest in a teapot they can thumb through the archives at this publication (and American Film Gazette with whom this publication has reciprocal agreements on high profile reviews).         

Yes, I gladly bent the knees for the glories of beating down so-called film reviewers who have passed their prime and hope the nightmarish day never comes when, egged on by the likes of Amazon and Netflix, every buffoon who has access to the Internet, to endless cyberspace decides without any evidence that they can take on the lions, the real film reviewers. I have made a point of this mainly to respond to Ms. Lemoyne’s comments in her baffling film review of the first of the Star Wars episodes where she castigated me for not being a whirling dervish slave of the series after I panned, dismissed out of hand, Star Wars: The Last Jedi where ancient has-been, maybe never was, Mark Hamill as some sullen greybeard AARP-type Luke Skywalker finally gives us some relief from his tedious attempts at fighting inter-galactic evil from some ill-thought out self-imposed exile while younger,  fresher forces are willing to do battle up close and personal. Hell, I just realized that the plot-line of that movie could stand in for the controversy swirling around this joint’s water cooler between the has-beens and the new vanguard forces.  

Maybe I had better step back a bit and describe what the whole sad saga, this eternal office politics struggle is all about.  Sarah was assigned, and in this I think rightly so, a nice six-pic review package of cheaply produced and scripted psychological thrillers outsourced by Columbia Pictures to low-rent, low overhead Hammer Productions over in England back in the late 1950s. Then wizened and senile Sam Lowell who seems to endlessly hangs around the water cooler looking for young women to recognize him as the max daddy, his expression I think, of the film noir world based on some book he wrote or ghosted I never got it straight stormed into site manager Greg Green’s office and demanded based on some film noir series he had done put out by the same production company years ago to do Sarah’s series. Greg, needless to say, caved in automatically. Reason: Sam Lowell’s by-line is still a watch-word among noir aficionados. Real reason: Sam was the decisive vote when he cut his old friend Allan Jackson’s throat which gave the job to Greg. Yeah, office politics.      

Moving along. Sarah outraged turned to her mentor Seth hanging out at the water cooler just after her banishment. I would discount any denials by either one of them that nothing, noting romantic is in the cards between them but that is not germane to what happened next so I will can it. I will say old-time mentor Seth really did give some good advice on this score. He told Sarah to get right back in there before things cooled off and demand some kind of equivalent assignment. Hence her Star Wars package. Hence her stabbing me in the back over my perfectly righteous review of a bunch of has-beens whose only real existence now is to keep extorting sad sack parents for tickets, sodas and that awful popcorn for sullen underfoot kids that keeps the studios humming along.

I took her measure and the next Star Wars review I will give my considered judgment of the film and of her work but today I have a bigger score to settle. Have to take down one Samuel Lowell (don’t know his middle name or if he has one) and his sullied reputation as the king hell king, his expression of the film noir world. A reputation based on his “definitive” work The Night Belongs To Film Noir way back in the late 1960s and which even Sarah Lemoyne mentioned was something that every serious aficionado or noir reviewer has to acknowledge as the cat’s meow. Then it might have been true, and even today there are probably kernels of wisdom which a reviewer could profit by. But some of the stuff he spewed out was, well, bullshit. How do I know this?

Greg Green who is all over the place on what he does, or does not, want to see this publication become has latched onto a new idea that the younger writers like Sarah and I, maybe Minnie Moore, should take a fresh eye look at some older material that has withstood the test of time-or Hollywood is still putting out. Hence Sarah’s Star War look, hence my Sherlock Holmes take, and now I have been assigned to do a fresh-eyed look at film noir. Starting with the classic Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney film noir Where The Sidewalk Ends.

Reason: this is one of the films Sam reviewed, or somebody under his direction reviewed, many years ago. Re-reading his piece gave me a better idea that the old man really did have one idea and blasted a gullible world with ever since. I will explain below but you should also know that Sam was notorious for either having somebody, a stringer, write his stuff once he got his lifeline by-line or just ripped off whatever the studio publicity department put out and signed his name to it. I think the latter here.

My late grandfather who was a cop’s cop which I believed until I found out that he like all his brethren never paid for his coffee and crullers at Ida’ Bakery once some older cop clued him in always said that if a cop turns, if a cop goes rogue then get rid of him (and now him or her). And he should have known since he was a captain in the Albany Police Department and had seen it all, done it all. That seemed to be the family consensus as well since the family was infested with coppers who paid attention to the old man and probably took their coffee and cruller graft too. That idea, that getting rid of a bum cop is the story line behind this cute little noir. My grandfather would have been happy with the ending here. Of course Sam Lowell went to great lengths to yak about how one Mark Dixon, played by Dana Andrews, should have been lauded not lammed (and old town expression meaning given the boot, unceremoniously given it). And in the process destroying the whole premise of noir that no evil deed will go unpunished even as the bodies pile up. But maybe I had better run the story-line and you will see how Sam booted the ball something terrible.            

Even Sam Lowell, if not now then in his prime, in the time of his so-called definitive noir primer, would have to agree with my contention that it was a lot easier to say what a good noir private detective is than what a good public copper was when it came right down to it before he got all soft and dewy-eyed about reformed coppers. Jesus, Sam set the table on private eyes, guys, always guys in those days, who maybe had gotten some higher education (a good observation by him noting the germane reason why private dicks always were one or seven steps ahead of the slothful by-the-book, a book they couldn’t read in most cases, public coppers), had worked the public racket maybe in the DA’s office but saw the graft and gaff and didn’t worry about the pension twenty years out for staying low and unobserved, ready to take a slug or two, a fist or two to get a little rough justice in this wicked old world. If a good-looking dame, a femme, a what did Sam call them in the prime, frails, twists crossed his path and maybe curled his toes, and I hope I don’t have to explain what that meant to the good reader so much the better. If he rode off in the sunset with her fine, if he had to throw her over, well that was the breaks, that’s the way the ball bounced. Guys like Sam Spade, Phil Marlowe, Lance Larkin, and a host of others lighted up the firmament and raised hell with the public coppers just for kicks while getting their respective cases closed.

        

Film noir good public coppers, guys like Mark Dixon under review here are harder to figure in those pre-Miranda days. Mostly they didn’t have a pot to piss in, my grandmother’s expression, the one married to the police captain, could have given a fuck about criminal rights save that for the ACLU lawyers and the faint-hearted liberals and had the mindset of desert rats in heat. I would have taken Mark Dixon, bright boy Mark Dixon for what passed for a good cop in those days. Unlike my uncles who were afraid to get out of the squad car for fear they might have to do something which might jeopardize their heavenly pensions, who were mostly “on the take” from one guy or another (unknown to grandpa while he was alive anyway) and whose idea of justice was roughing up, pistol-whipping, Ida of Ida’s Bakery for having the audacity to ask them to pay for their coffee and crullers when she was having trouble meeting the rent money Mark Dixon was a straight-arrow copper. Did a little “third degree” here, a little rabbit punch there, a cold-cocked pistol-whipping for kicks. A little over the top but            not enough to get the commissioner and his underlings in a snit unlike when the Mayfair swells complained when he busted up their floating crap games or they had to fork over cases of high shelf whiskey. Mark’s idea of justice, if he knew the word, ran to hard fists and no bullshit.

For a while and for a while Sam Lowell kept propping him up in his famous turncoat review (the first time he went soft on a police procedural public copper when he did not have to do so at all). Then Dixon went crazy trying to frame local mobster Jimmy Scalise for everything from starting World War II to jacking up the price of gold and silver. Reason: and this would be Sam’s downfall, his Achilles Heel if you really want to know, Mark’s father, Jeep Dixon was the king-pin mobster before Jimmy, had put Jimmy on easy street with the gambling and whorehouse concessions and when Jeep ran afoul of the coppers for trying to cut their swag he died in a blaze of gunfire “trying to escape.” I don’t have to draw a diagram for you on that one. Dixon was scarred, was bleeding heart liberal scarred by being the son of a gangster, couldn’t take it and became a hard-nosed, third degree no holds barred copper. Sam bought that lonely hearts story hook, line and sinker. Saw this as a breakthrough for noir coppers with brains. Jesus.      

Of course Sam all rose-colored glasses now, or was it his ghostwriter who did him in, that will probably be his alibi when he answers this accusation, if he has the moxie to, and an accusation is exactly what it is, didn’t count on Mark committing about eight thousand felonies and a few misdemeanors in the mix, trying to save his damn ass from going up to Ossining and a “party” with a few guys he put in stir, a few guys who needed a “girlfriend” to while away those twenty years they were doing for crossing Dixie boy. This is where the unacknowledged American psycho part comes in. Mark was so obsessed with getting Scalise and his boys that he would stop at nothing. Figured when some rich Texas oilman got bonged, got good and bonged to death for winning too much dough at one of Jimmy’s get togethers that he had the bastard cold. Jimmy was not Jeep’s acolyte for nothing and he easily slipped Dixon’s noose with a pretty tale which the chief coppers bought.

Dixon was frantic, saw his golden opportunity for a frame, a big old square frame slip away, melt like butter on a hot summer day so he went to see the ringer, to see the guy who brought Tex to the party, brought some pretty frill as well who will get introduced soon. Confronted the ringer a little too hard and said ringer who had a steel plate in his head from a war injury went dead. Oops.

From there it is all downhill for Dixon as he makes mistake after mistake even a mental midget could see would not work. He tried to frame Jimmy for this one and instead got the ringer’s father-in-law, or maybe ex-father-in-law facing the big step-off in his place. This is where Morgan, played by Gene Tierney last seen in this space with that same Dana Andrews under different circumstances when he was trying to find out who killed her in the noir classic Laura, comes in and muddies up the waters, for Mark. See that ringer was her ex-husband, had been a guy, a war veteran like so many others and who various older writers at this publication, including Seth and Sam, have written extensively about, who couldn’t adjust after their military service. The ringer wanted easy street and so linked up with Jimmy. Brought Morgan along for the ride on the Texas oilman caper.

Mark and Morgan meet and are attracted to each other without knowing why and without knowing that Mark did in her ex-husband, accident or no, and would set the trap for her father to take the rap for killing his ex-son-in-law. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel which Sam gushed all over himself about. Tough copper Dixon, falling for the frill, can’t let her father fall fatally so devised a plan to let Jimmy fall if he can get one of his minions to snitch. That bastard does and Dixon grabs Jimmy for a hard fall. Here is where it gets sappy, where Sam begins his long fall from grace, Dixon’s superior is all set to let him back on the force when he hands back Dixon a letter he had written telling all he had done to cover up murder, mayhem and frameups. Dixon in a fit of conscience tells the superior to read the letter. Dixon will get to be somebody up at Ossining girlfriend after all. Morgan, father cleared, will stand by her man now that he has manned up. Sam has declared that scene the beginning of neo-film noir. I swear the last original thing he had to say was in about 1964, 1965.  As for his take on this film. Ugh! The emperor has no clothes.        

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Playing For Change- Bob Marley's "One Love"

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Playing For Change- Bob Marley's "One Love"       

During, let’s say the Obama administration or, hell, even the Bush era, for example  we could be gentle angry people over this or that notorious war policy and a few others matters and songs like Give Peace A Chance, We Shall Overcome, or hell, even that Kumbaya which offended the politically insensitive. From Day One of the Trump administration though the gloves have come off-we are in deep trouble. So we too need to take off our gloves-and fast as the cold civil war that has started in the American dark night heads to some place we don’t want to be. And the above song from another tumultuous time, makes more sense to be marching to. Build the resistance!

    


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