***Stop The Killer-Drone Madness…Stop It Now

***Stop The Killer-Drone Madness…Stop It Now

Late one night in 2014 Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton had been sitting at a bar in Boston, Jack Higgin’s Grille, down a few streets from the financial district toward Quincy Market talking about various experiences, political experiences in their lives as they were wont to do these days since they were both mostly retired. Ralph having turned over the day to day operation of his specialty electronics shop in Troy, New York to his youngest son as he in his turn had taken over from his father Ralph, Sr. when he had retired in 1991 (the eldest son, Ralph III, had opted for a career as a software engineer for General Electric still a force in the local economy although not nearly as powerful as when Ralph was young and it had been the largest private employer in the Tri-City area) and Sam had sold off his small print shop business in Carver down about thirty miles south of Boston to a large copying company when he had finally seen a few years before the writing on the wall that the day of the small specialty print shop specializing in silk-screening and other odd job methods of reproduction was done for in the computerized color world. 

So they had time for remembrances back to the days in the early 1970s when they had first met and had caught the tail-end of the big splash 1960s political and social explosion that stirred significant elements of their generation, “the generation of ’68” so-called by Sam’s friend from New York City Fritz Jasper although neither of them had been involved in any of the cataclysmic events that had occurred in America (and the world) that year. Sam had that year fitfully been trying to start his own small printing business after working for a few years for Mr. Snyder the premier printer in town and he was knee-deep in trying to mop up on the silk-screen craze for posters and tee shirts and had even hired his old friend from high school Jack Callahan who had gone to the Massachusetts School of Art as his chief silk-screen designer, and later when he moved off the dime politically his acting manager as well. Ralph’s excuse was simpler, simplicity itself for he was knee-deep in the big muddy in the Central Highlands of Vietnam trying to keep body and soul together against that damn Charlie who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Occasionally over the years Ralph would come to Boston on trips at Sam’s invitation and they almost always would go have a few at Jack Higgin’s during his stay talking mainly family matters before Ralph would head back to Troy and his family but more frequently of late they would go back over the ground of their youth, would go over more that ground more than one time to see if something they could have done, or something they did not do, would have made a difference when the “counter-revolution,” when the conservative push-back reared its head, when the cultural wars began in earnest with the ebbing of that big good night 1960s explosion. Sam would return the favor by going out to Albany, or more frequently to Saratoga Springs where he, they could see who from the old days, Utah Phillips before he passed away, Rosalie Sorrels before she left the road, Ronnie Gilbert and Pete Seeger before they passed but you get the picture, the old folk minute of the early 1960s that Sam had been very interested in when he started to hang around Cambridge later in that decade, were still alive enough to be playing at the famous coffeehouse still going from the 1960s, the Café Lena, although minus founder Lena for quite a while now. Sam had never lost the bug, never lost that longing for the lost folk minute that in his mind connected in with him hanging around the Hayes-Bickford in Harvard Square on lonesome weekends nights seeing what was to be seen. Sam had dragged Ralph, who despite living on about less than an hour away had never heard of the Café Lena since he had been tuned to the AM stations playing the awful stuff that got air time after the classic period of rock went into decline and before rock became acid-tinged, along with him and he had developed a pretty fair appreciation for the music as well.          

The conversation that night in 2014 got going after the usual few whiskey and sodas used to fortify them for the night talkfest had begun to take effect had been pushed in the direction of what ever happened to that socialist vision that had driven some of their early radical political work together (in the old days both of them in these midnight gabfest would have fortified themselves with in succession grass, cocaine, speed and watch the sun come up and still be talking. These days about midnight would be the end point, maybe earlier.). The specific reason for that question coming up that night had been that Sam had asked Ralph a few weeks before to write up a little remembrance of when he had first heard the socialist-anarchist-communist-radical labor militant   international working class anthem, the Internationale, for Fritz Jasper’s blog, American Protest Music. 

Sam had noted that Ralph had with a certain sorrow stated that he no longer had occasion to sing the song. Moreover one of the reasons for that absence was that  despite his and Sam’s continued “good old cause” left-wing political activism socialism as a solution to humankind’s impasses was deeply out of favor (that activism as Ralph mentioned to Sam on more than one occasion these days considerably shortened from the old frenzied 24/7 desperate struggles around trying unsuccessfully end the Vietnam War from the American side by getting the government to stop the damn thing although the Vietnamese liberation forces in the end and at great cost had had no trouble doing so). 

People, intellectuals and working stiffs alike, no longer for the most part had that socialist vision goal that had driven several generations, or the best parts of those generations, since the mid-19^th century to put their efforts into, did not have that goal on their radar, didn’t see a way out of the malaise through that route. Had moreover backed off considerably from that prospective since the demise of the Soviet Union and its satellites in the early 1990s if not before despite the obvious failure of capitalism to any longer put a dent in the vast inequalities and injustices, their suffered inequalities and injustices, in the world. Sam had had to agree to that sad statement, had had to agree that they, in effect, too had abandoned that goal in their own lives for all practical purposes even though they had been driven by that vision for a while once they got “religion” in the old days in the early 1970s, once they saw that the anti-war struggle that animated their first efforts was not going to get the war-makers to stop making war. 

Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was growing older and more reflective, maybe it was that Ralph’s comments had stirred up some sense of guilt for losing the hard edge of their youthful dreams but that night Sam wanted to press the issue of what that socialist prospective meant, what they thought it was all about (both agreed in passing, almost as an afterthought that what had happened, what passed for socialism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere was NOT what they were dreaming of although they gave third world liberation struggles against imperialism like in Vietnam dependent on Soviet aid plenty of wiggle room to make mistakes and still retain their support).        

Both men during the course of their conversation commented on the fact that no way, no way in hell, if it had not been for the explosive events of the 1960s, of the war and later a bunch of social issue questions, mainly third world liberation struggles internationally and the black liberation question at home they would not even be having the conversation they were having (both also chuckling a little at using the old time terms, especially the use of “struggle” and “question,” for example the  black, gay, woman question since lately they had noticed that younger activists no longer spoke in such terms but used more ephemeral “white privilege,” “patriarchy,”  “gender” terms reflecting the identity politics that have been in fashion for a long time, since the ebb flow of the 1960s).  

No, nothing in the sweet young lives of Samuel Eaton to the Carver cranberry bog capital of world in Carver (then) working-class born (his father a “bogger” himself when they needed extra help) and Ralph Morris, Junior to the Troy General Electric plants-dominated working- class born would have in say 1967, maybe later, projected that almost fifty years later they would be fitfully and regretfully speaking about the their visions of socialism and it demise as a world driving force for social change.  

Ralph and Sam had imbibed all the standard identifiable working-class prejudices against reds, some of those prejudices more widespread among the general population of the times, you know, like the big red scare Cold War “your mommy is a commie, turn her in,” “the Russians are coming get under the desk and hold onto your head,” anybody to the left of Grandpa Ike, maybe even him, communist dupes of Joe Stalin and his progeny who pulled the strings from Moscow and made everybody jumpy; against blacks (Ralph had stood there right next to his father, Ralph, Sr., when he led the physical opposition to blacks moving into the Tappan Street section of town and had nothing, along with his corner boys at Van Patten’s Drugstore, but the “n” word to call black people, sometimes to their faces and Sam’s father was not much better, a southerner from hillbilly country down in Appalachia who had been stationed in Hingham at the end of World War II and stayed, who never could until his dying breathe call blacks anything but the “n” word); against gays and lesbians (Ralph and his boys mercilessly fag and dyke baiting them whenever the guys and he went to Saratoga Springs where those creeps spent their summers doing whatever nasty things they did to each other and Sam likewise down in Provincetown with his boys, he helping, beating up some poor guy in a back alley after one of them had made a fake pass at the guy, Jesus; against uppity woman, servile, domestic child-producing women like their good old mothers and sisters and wanna-bes were okay as were “easy” girls ready to toot their whistles, attitudes which they had only gotten beaten out of them when they ran into their respective future wives who had both been influenced by the women’s liberation movement although truth to tell they were not especially political, but rather artistic.  Native Americans didn’t even rate a nod since they were not on the radar, were written off in any case as fodder for cowboys and soldiers in blue. But mainly they had been red, white and blue American patriotic guys who really did have ice picks in their eyes for anybody who thought they would like to tread on old Uncle Sam (who had been “invented” around Ralph’s hometown way).       

See Ralph, Sam too for that matter, had joined the anti-war movement for personal reasons at first which had to do a lot with ending the war in Vietnam and not a lot about “changing the whole freaking world” (Ralph’s term). Certainly not creeping around the fringes of socialism before the 1960s ebbed and they had to look to the long haul to pursue their political dreams. Ralph’s story was a little bit amazing that way, see, he had served in the military, served in the Army, in Vietnam, had been drafted in early 1967 while he was working in his father’s electrical shop and to avoid being “cannon fodder” as anybody could see what was happening to every “drafted as infantry guy” he had enlisted (three years against the draft’s two) with the expectation of getting something in the electrical field as a job, something useful. But in 1967, 1968 what Uncle needed, desperately needed as General Westmoreland called for more troops, was more “grunts” to flush out Charlie and so Ralph wound up with a unit in the Central Highlands, up in the bush trying to kill every commie he could get his hands on just like the General wanted. He had extended his tour to eighteen months to get out a little early from his enlistment not so much that he was gung-ho but because he had become fed up with what the war had done to him, what he had had to do to survive, what his buddies had had to do to survive and what the American government had turned them all into, nothing but animals, nothing more, as he told everybody who would listen. When he was discharged in late 1969 he wound up joining the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), the main anti-war veterans group at the time. Such a move by Ralph and thousands of other soldiers who had served in ‘Nam a real indication even today of how unpopular that war was when the guys who had fought the damn thing arms in hand, mostly guys then, rose up against the slaughter, taking part in a lot of their actions around Albany and New York City mainly.

Here is the way Ralph told Sam in 1971 about how he came in contact with VVAW while they had plenty of time to talk when they were being detained in RFK Stadium after being arrested in a May Day demonstration. One day in 1970 Ralph was taking a high compression motor to Albany to a customer and had parked the shop truck on Van Dyke Street near Russell Sage College. Coming down the line, silent, silent as the grave he thought later, were a ragtag bunch of guys in mismatched (on purpose he found out later) military uniforms carrying individual signs but with a big banner in front calling for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam and signing the banner with the name of the organization-Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). That was all, and all that was needed. Nobody on those still patriotic, mostly government worker, streets called them commies or anything like that but you could tell some guys in white collars who never came close to a gun, except maybe to kill animals or something defenseless really wanted to. One veteran as they came nearer to Ralph shouted out for any veterans to join them, to tell the world what they knew first-hand about what was going on in Vietnam. Yeah, that shout-out was all Ralph needed he said, all he needed to join his “band of brothers.”                               

Sam as he recalled how he and Ralph had met in Washington had remembered that Ralph had first noticed that he was wearing a VVAW supporter button and Ralph had asked if he had been in ‘Nam. Sam, a little sheepishly, explained that he had been exempted from military duty since he was the sole support for his mother and four younger sisters after his father had passed away of a massive heart attack in 1965. (He had gone to work in Mister Snyder’s print shop where he had learned enough about the printing business to later open his own shop which he kept afloat somehow during the late 1960s with Jack Callahan’s help and which became his career after he settled down when the 1960s ebbed and people started heading back to “normal.”) He then told Ralph the reason that he had joined the anti-war movement after years of relative indifference since he was not involved in the war effort had been that his closest high school friend, Jeff Mullins, had been blown away in the Central Highlands and that had made him question what was going on. Jeff, like them had been as red, white and blue as any guy, had written him when he was in Vietnam that he thought that the place, the situation that he found himself in was more than he bargained for, and that if he didn’t make it back for Sam to tell people, everybody he could what was really going on. Then with just a few months to go Jeff was blown away near some village that Sam could not spell or pronounce correctly even all these many years later. Jeff had not only been Sam’s best friend but was as straight a guy as you could meet, and had gotten Sam out of more than a few scrapes, a few illegal scrapes that could have got him before some judge. So that was how Sam got “religion,” not through some intellectual or rational argument about the theories of war, just wars or “your country right or wrong wars,” but because his friend had been blown away, blown away for no good reason as far as that went.  

At first Sam had worked with Quakers and other pacifist types because he knew they were in Cambridge where he found himself hanging out more and more trying to connect with the happenings that were splitting his generation to hell and back. They got him doing acts of civil disobedience at draft boards, including the Carver Draft Board on Allan Road the place where Jeff had been drafted from (and which created no little turmoil and threats among the Eaton’s neighbors who were still plenty patriotic at that point, his mother and sisters took some of the fire as well), military bases and recruiting stations to try to get the word out to kids who might get hoodwinked in joining up in the slaughter. As the war dragged on though he started going to Cambridge meetings where more radical elements were trying to figure out actions that might stop the damn war cold and that appealed to him more than the “assuming the government was rational and would listen to reason” protest actions of those “gentile little old ladies in tennis sneakers.”

1971 though, May Day 1971 to be exact is, where these two stories, two very different stories with the same theme joined together. Sam at that point in 1971 was like Ralph just trying to get the war ended, maybe help out the Panthers a little but before May Day had no grandiose ideas about changing the “whole freaking world.” Sam had gone down to Washington with a group of Cambridge radicals and “reds” to do what he could to shut down the war under the slogan-“if the government does not shut down the war, we will shut down the government.” Ralph had come down with a contingent of ex-veterans and supporters from Albany for that same purpose. Sam and Ralph had as a result met on the bizarre football field at RFK Stadium which was the main holding area for the thousands of people arrested that day (and throughout the week)

So May Day was a watershed for both men, both men having before May Day sensed that more drastic action was necessary to “tame the American imperial monster” (Sam’s term picked up from The Real Paper, an alternative newspaper he had picked up at a street newsstand in Cambridge) and had come away from that experience, that disaster, with the understanding that even to end the war would take much more, and many more people, than they had previously expected. Ralph, in particular, had been carried away with the notion that what he and his fellow veterans who were going to try to symbolically close down the Pentagon were doing as veterans would cause the government pause, would make them think twice about any retaliation to guys who had served and seen it all. Ralph got “smart” on that one fast when the National Guard which was defending the Pentagon, or part of it that day, treated them like any Chicago cops at the Democratic Party Convention in 1968, treated them like cops did to any SDS-ers anywhere, and like anybody else who raised their voices against governmental policy in the streets.

Ralph told Sam while in captivity that he still worked in his father’s shop for a while but their relationship was icy (and would be for a long time after that although in 1991 when Ralph, Senior retired Ralph took over the business). He would take part in whatever actions he could around the area (and down in New York City a couple of times when they called for re-enforcements to make a big splash).

Ralph has like he said joined with a group of VVAW-ers and supporters for an action down in Washington, D.C. The idea, which would sound kind of strange today in a different time when there is very little overt anti-war activity against the current crop of endless wars but also shows how desperate they were to end that damn war, was to on May Day shut down the government if it did not shut down the war. Their task, as part of the bigger scheme, since they were to form up as a total veterans and supporters contingent was to symbolically shut down the Pentagon. Wild right, but see the figuring was that they, the government, would not dare to arrest vets and they figured (“they” meaning all those who planned the events and went along with the plan) the government would treat it somewhat like the big civilian action at the Pentagon in 1967 which Norman Mailer won a literary prize writing a book about, Armies of the Night. Silly them. 

They after the fall-out from that event were thus searching for a better way to handle things, a better way to make an impact because those few days of detention in D.C. that they had jointly suffered not only started what would be a lifelong personal friendship but an on-going conversation between them over the next several years about how to bring about the greater social change they sensed was needed before one could even think about stopping wars and stuff like that. (The story in short of how they got out of RFK after a few days was pretty straight forward. Since law enforcement was so strapped that week somebody had noticed and passed the word along that some of the side exits in the stadium were not guarded and so they had just walked out and got out of town fast, very fast, hitchhiking back north to Carver, and Ralph later to Troy). Hence the push by Sam toward the study groups led by “red collectives” that were sprouting up then peopled by others who had the same kind of questions which they would join, unjoin and work with, or not work with over the next few years before both men sensed the tide of the rolling 1960s had ebbed. 

Old time high school thoughts even with the cross-fire hells of burned down Vietnam villages melted into the back of his brain crossed his mind when Ralph thought of Marx, Lenin (he, they, were not familiar with Trotsky except he had “bought it” down in Mexico with an icepick from some assassin), Joe Stalin, Red Square, Moscow and commie dupes. Sam had not been far behind in his own youthful prejudices as he told Ralph one night after a class and they were tossing down a few at Jack’s in Cambridge before heading home to the commune where Sam was staying.

Ralph had gone out of his way to note in that blog entry for Fritz that before he got “religion” on the anti-war and later social justice issues he held as many anti-communist prejudices as anybody else in Troy, New York where he hailed from, not excluding his rabidly right-wing father who never really believed until his dying days in 2005 that the United States had lost the war in Vietnam. Ralph had realized that all the propaganda he had been fed was like the wind and his realization of that had made him  a very angry young man when he got out of the Army in late 1969. He tried to talk to his father about it but Ralph, Senior was hung up in a combination “good war, World War II, his war where America saved international civilization from the Nazis and Nips (his father’s term since he fought in the Pacific with the Marines) and “my country, right or wrong.” All Ralph, Senior really wanted Ralph to do was get back to the shop and help him fill those goddam GE defense contract orders. And he did it, for a while.

Ralph had also expressed his feelings of trepidation when after a lot of things went south on the social justice front with damn little to show for all the arrests, deaths, and social cataclysm he and Sam had gotten into a study group in Cambridge run by a “Red October Collective” which focused on studying “Che” Guevara and the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky after an introduction to the Marxist classics. Sam who was living in that commune in Cambridge at the time, the summer of 1972, had invited Ralph to come over from Troy to spent the summer in the study group trying to find out what had gone wrong (and what they had gotten right too, as Sam told him not to forget), why they were spinning their wheels trying to change the world for the better just then and to think about new strategies and tactics for the next big break-out of social activism. At the end of each meeting they would sing the Internationale before the group broke up. At first Ralph had a hard time with the idea of singing a “commie” song (he didn’t put it that way but he might as well have according to Sam) unlike something like John Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance, songs like that. As he, they got immersed in the group Ralph lightened up and would sing along if not with gusto then without a snicker.

That same apprehensive attitude had prevailed when after about three meetings they began to study what the group leader, Jeremy, called classic Marxism, the line from Marx and Engels to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. A couple of the early classes dealt with the American Civil War and its relationship to the class struggle in America, and Marx’s views on what was happening, why it was necessary for all progressives to side with the North and the end of slavery, and why despite his personal flaws and attitudes toward blacks Abraham Lincoln was a figure to admire all of which both men knew little about except the battles and military leaders in American History classes. What caused the most fears and consternation was the need for revolution worked out in practice during the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. They could see that it was necessary in Russia during those times but America in the 1970s was a different question, not to speak of the beating that they had taken for being “uppity” in the streets in Washington, D.C. in 1971 when they didn’t think about revolution (maybe others had such ideas but if so they kept them to themselves) and the state came crashing down on them.    

The biggest problem though was trying to decipher all the various tendencies in the socialist movement. Ralph, maybe Sam more so, though if everybody wanted the same thing, wanted a better and more peaceful system to live under then they should all get together in one organization, or some such form. The split between the Social Democrats and the Communists, later the split between Stalinists and Trotskyists, and still later the split between Stalinists and Maoists had their heads spinning, had then thankful that they did not have to fight those fights out.

All in all though they had the greatest respect for Trotsky, Trotsky the serious smart intellectual with a revolver in his hand. Had maybe a little sympathy for the doomed revolutionary tilling against the windmills and not bitching about it. Maybe feeling a little like that was the rolling the rock up the hill that they would be facing. That admiration of Trotsky did not extend to the twelve million sects, maybe that number is too low, who have endlessly split from a stillborn organization he started when he felt the Communist International had stopped being a revolutionary force, the Fourth International. Sam brought up a Catholic would make Ralph laugh when he compared those disputes to the old time religious disputes back in the Middle Ages about how many angels would fit on the tip of a needle. They, after spending the summer in study decided that for a while they would work with whoever still needed help but that as far as committing to joining an ongoing organization forget it. 

At the beginning in any case, and that might have affected his ultimate decision, some of Ralph’s old habits kind of held him back, you know the anti-red stuff, Cold War enemy stuff, just like at first he had had trouble despite all he knew about calling for victory to the Viet Cong (who in-country they called “Charlie” in derision although after  Tet 1968 with much more respect when Charlie came at them and kept coming despite high losses). But Ralph got over it, got in the swing. 

The Marxism did not come easy, the theory part, maybe for Ralph a little more than Sam who had taken junior college night classes to bolster the small print shop he had built from nothing after Mister Snyder moved his operation to Quincy to be nearer his main client, State Street Bank and Trust (although for long periods his old Carver friend, Jack Callahan, managed the place when Sam was off on his campaigns). They got that the working-class, their class, should rule and be done with inequalities of all kinds but the idea of a revolution, or more importantly, a working class party which was on everybody’s mind in those days to lead that revolution seemed, well, utopian. The economic theory behind Marxism, that impossible to read Das Capital and historical materialism as a philosophy were books sealed with seven seals for them both. Nevertheless for a few years, say until 1975, 1976 when the tide really had ebbed for anybody who wanted to see they hung around with the local “reds,” mostly those interested in third world liberation struggles and political prisoner defense work. Those were really the earnest “socialist years” although if you had asked them for a model of what their socialism looked like they probably would have pointed to Cuba which seemed fresher than the stodgy old Soviet Union with their Brezhnev bureaucrats.

After that time while they would periodically read the left press and participate any time somebody, some group needed bodies for a rally, demonstration, some street action they would be there in their respective hometowns that they both eventually filtered back to. Then 2002 came and the endless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and seemingly a million other places drove them to drop their “armed truce” (Sam’s term picked up by Ralph) with society and return to the streets , return with an almost youthful vengeance. They would see young people at the rallies hocking their little Marxist papers, maybe buy one to read a home but that flame that had caused them to join study groups, to work with Marxist-oriented “red collectives,” to read books that were hard to fathom had passed, had passed just as socialism as a way to end humankind’s impasses had fallen out of favor once the Soviet Union and its satellites had gone up in a puff of smoke. Sam thought one time that maybe those earnest kids with their wafer-thin newspapers will study the classics and make more sense out of them than Sam and Ralph could. As for Sam and Ralph they would now just keep showing up to support the “good old cause.”              

 And here is what Ralph, an ex-Vietnam veteran and no stranger to war up close and personal  had to say about the damn drones:   

If one takes a quick look at military history not at the pre-conditions that set any particular war up but, you know, what was decisive in the victory of one side over the other you will, except those times when desperate valor saved the day, actually an unusual occurrence in the great scheme of warfare, notice that the side with the technological advantage, the latest gadget usually will prevail. Or at least that is what the average run of military historians will highlight. Taking an example from American internal war history, the Civil War of the 1860s, the decisive edge had been given to the industrial power of the North to produce as many cannon, guns, wagons, etc. as needed whereas the South, especially after Billy Sherman and his “bummers” marched through Georgia and its environs squeezing whatever industrial capacity that region did have, was starved for such materials. Thereafter the massing of high caliber accurate firepower weaponry became the standard on the battlefield.

All of this simple-simon history is presented to make a point about what military strategists are up to these days with the incessant use of killer-drones, those gadgets that now, whether recognized as such or not are seen as the solution to reducing the need for boots on the ground which in turn means that those like the American military and its civilian administrators need to worry less about outraged citizens when the body count gets too high. That has not deterred every administration, including the current Obama one from anteing up the boots on the ground when the deal goes down and land needs to be secured. So needless to say this military “new age” thinking is hogwash since while drones had more than occasionally hit their targets they have more than occasionally created what is euphemistically termed “collateral damage” to anybody in the area of the strike.

That fact alone, that fact of innocent civilian causalities, is why I along with others, hopefully a growing number of others, are out in the streets at anti-war rallies and elsewhere telling presidents and generals to stop their killer-drone programs. Join us on this one just like you would when the American government throws boot on the ground in some ill-conceived plan to make the world “safe for democracy.”         

HONOR SAMUEL ADAMS AND JAMES OTIS-AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARIES

HONOR SAMUEL ADAMS AND JAMES OTIS-AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARIES

COMMENTARY

ON THE 4TH OF JULY -HONOR SAMUEL ADAMS, JAMES OTIS, THOMAS PAINE, THE SONS OF LIBERTY AND THE WINTER SOLDIERS OF VALLEY FORGE.

REMEMBER THE LESSONS OF THIS EARLY STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION- YOU CANNOT WIN IF YOU DO NOT FIGHT.

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

As we approach the Anniversary of the American Revolution militants should honor the valiant fighters for freedom, many not prominently remembered today, such as Samuel Adams, James Otis and Tom Paine who kept the pressure on those other more moderate revolutionary politicians such as Washington and John Adams who at times were willing to compromise with the British Empire short of victory. We should also remember the valiant but mainly nameless Sons of Liberty who lit the spark of rebellion. And the later Winter Soldiers of Valley Forge who held out under extreme duress in order to insure eventual victory. Anyone can be a sunshine patriot; we desperately need militants in the tradition of the winter soldiers. No revolution can succeed without such fighters.

The 4th of July today is covered with so much banal ceremony, flag- waving, unthinking sunshine patriotism and hubris it is hard to see the forest for the trees to the days when, as Lincoln stated, during that other great progressive action of this country’s history- the Great Civil War of 1861-65- that this country was the last, best hope for civilization. Note this well- those men and women who rebelled against the king from Washington on down were big men and women out to do a big job. And they did it. A quick look at the political landscape today makes one thing clear. This country has no such men or women among its leaders today-not even close.

Rereading the Declaration of Independence today, a classic statement of Enlightenment values, and such documents as the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution demonstrates that these men and women were, hesitantly and in a fumbling manner to be sure, taking on some big issues in the scheme of human development. Today what do we see- half-hearted withdrawal programs to end the quagmire borne of hubris in Iraq, amendments against same sex marriage, amendments against flag-burning, the race to the bottom of the international wage scale bringing misery to working people, serious attempts to create a theocracy based on Christian fundamentalism, creation of a fortress against immigration in a nation of immigrants, among other things. In short, the negation of that spirit that Lincoln talked about. Today, the militants who fought the American Revolution would probably be in some Guantanamo-like cages. DEFEND THE ENLIGHTENMENT!

In earlier times this writer had been rather blasé about the American Revolution tending to either ignore its lessons or putting it well below another revolution- The Great French Revolution, also celebrated in July- in the pantheon of revolutionary history. However, this is flat-out wrong. We cannot let those more interested in holiday oratory than drawing the real lessons of the American Revolution appropriate what is the property of every militant today. Make no mistake, however, the energy of that long ago revolution has burned itself out and other forces-militants and their allies- and other political creeds-the fight for a workers party and a workers government leading to socialism- have to take its place as the standard-bearer for human progress. That task has been on the historical agenda for a long time and continues to be our task today. Yes, we love this country. No, we do not love this form of government. Forward.

Note- To learn more about the history of the American Revolution and the foundation of the Republic any books by Gordon S. Wood on the subject are a good place to start. Garry Wills in his book Inventing America also has some insights worth reading.

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Steppenwolf's "America When Are You Now...We Can't Fight Lone Against The Monster"

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Steppenwolf's "America When Are You Now...We Can't Fight Lone  Against The Monster"   

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!

Steppenwolf – Monster Lyrics

Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of Kingdom and pope

Like good Christians some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands, to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And till the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end

While we bullied, stole and bought a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

The Blue and Grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war was over
They stuffed it just like a hog

And though the past has its share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But its protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey

The spirit was freedom and justice
And its keepers seemed generous and kind
Its leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
Now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told

Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into the noose
And it just sits there watchin'

The cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole world's got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner we can't pay the cost

'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into the noose
And it just sits there watchin'

America, where are you now
Don't you care about your sons and daughters
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster

America, where are you now
Don't you care about your sons and daughters
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster

America...America...America...America...

The Folk Music Of The Hippie Generation (1962)-With The Music Of Erick Saint-Jean In Mind.

The Folk Music Of The Hippie Generation (1962)-With The Music Of Erick Saint-Jean In Mind.

By Zack James

Seth Garth and I, Jack Callahan, his closest friend in high school although we had been something like enemies in junior high over some silly girl named Rosalind whom I thought he had tried to cut my time with but had been wrong about, were as thick as thieves one frosty November Saturday night in 1962 when he conned me into heading over to Harvard Square, the Harvard Square that fronts Harvard University although we were not going to have anything to do with the University, not that night anyway. The conning wasn’t as bad as it sounds because what Seth had proposed was that we take in a show, I guess that is what you would call it although maybe concert or just performance would be better, at the Club Nana where this up and coming guy Erick Saint-Jean was going to sing some of his folk songs-some covers of other folk performers like Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs and some original work about par for the course in such things.

That Friday morning before Seth had cornered me in the first floor corridor of Riverdale High where we were both sophomores and begged me to take Laura Perkins as my “date” to go and hear Saint-Jean. Jimmy Jenkins, as usual, had chickened out, had no dough, had no balls, not enough to handle Laura, or something but whatever the reason he had cornered Seth in the Boys’ lav before school and gave him the somber news that he would not be able go to the concert. Who gives a rat’s ass what the reason was all I know is that I got cornered by Seth shortly after that. The “hook” that had me conned was that his date, Sally Soren, although everybody called her Sal once Seth started to call her by that nickname, could not go with him to Cambridge or anyplace else for that matter unless there was another couple going along as well. No questions asked. No company, no go and Seth was crazy to go, and crazy for Sal. And as it turned out she was crazy for him as well.

It seems that Sal’s parents were strict Brethren of the Common Life communicants and were having fits that Sal was going anyplace with a “heathen,” their term for anybody not a Brethren, not a Brethren boy although who knows maybe even that crowd was off-limits. The only reason they had consented to let Sal go with this particular “heathen” was that Seth, who really did have a bagful of knowledge about such things as hymns and other religious-type songs as part of his book of knowledge of such ancient music, had conned them into thinking all the trips to Cambridge were to take Sal to a social event where hymns and such were to be sung.   

I said “no” at first because while I liked the idea of being around Laura Perkins although she had always been cool around me especially when she found out that I was the guy who gummed up the works with her taking dead aim at Jack Callahan when he had eyes for Kathy Kelly and I gave Kathy the word folk music made my teeth grind, the whole scene that Seth dug was so much soapy air to me. This had not been the first time that Seth tried to get me over to some folk venue either in Boston or Cambridge. The previous October he had forced my hand, had made a bet with me that I would like folk music as a pleasant change from rock and roll music which was nowhere just then. Said I needed a ‘cure’ from bitching about guy singers like Ricky Nelson, Fabian, Bobby Rydell and bitching about a bunch of girl singers like Sandra Dee and Leslie Gore who had made me almost swear off listening to my transistor radio. He said Doris Nelson who was starting to make a name for herself in the local folk ho-hum was appearing at the Turk’s Head in Boston and I just had to hear her to fall in love with her voice, her ballad-strewn voice. He added that she was a knock-out as well. Which I bought into in the end although how a sophomore in high school like me was going to get near a young woman who had recently graduated from Boston University was left unexplained by him, or thought about by me while he was about the business of conning. 

We had that night, just he and I, no dates or even just hang around girls from school  tagging along taken the subway after having a couple of drinks of Southern Comfort that Willie the Wino down at the river-front park where he hung out (that moniker was how he was known by every under-aged kid in town and how he responded to anybody who was in need of his services) who went to Johnny Glenn’s Liquor Store and bought the suck-ass booze for us because the stuff was cheap and got you high fast and on fire after just a little for us after we gave him enough extra money to get his tusk of Thunderbird as his fee). The one in town near the Greyhound bus station that took you to the nearest subway stop at Field’s Corner which then took you rumble-tumble, bumpy-bump toward Boston or Cambridge depending on where you were heading, what stop you want to get off at. This Turk’s Head was supposed to be the “hip” place where all the new talent, talent like Seth claimed this frail Doris had, that was taking up the folk craze just then got their work-outs, perfected their acts before moving on to bigger venues, really bigger coffeehouses which was where the action was then wherever Seth in his whacko brain thought the music was going.

So we got there after stopping off at the Charles Street subway stop since the Turk’s Head was on Charles Street itself so we didn’t have to walk too far. We were looking for number twenty-two and we couldn’t  find it, asked a guy where it might be, number twenty-two first then when that came up empty we asked by name and the guy pointed  across the street and we still couldn’t see any sign of a coffeehouse or a sign of anything. The guy said that the place, the cool place he added, was down in the basement. Jesus. Even Seth was thrown off by the idea of stepping down in some basement when he had built up this folk thing as the big deal. So we crossed the street, headed down to the cellar and almost bumped our heads on the cross-beam that seemed to be holding the place up and came to a young woman sitting behind a cash register asking us for two dollars each as a cover charge. I told Seth I didn’t have two dollars, had maybe a buck to get home and he fronted me the dough since he said he had caddied  that morning up at Crosswinds Country Club, his main way to get dough since otherwise his family, like mine had no dough.

I should explain about the look of that gal at the cash register because looking around the then half-empty room since we had gotten there kind of early which had maybe a dozen or fifteen tables, two and four chairs to a table and while never totally filled up that evening half the girls, maybe more, in the place looked as for style like the cash register girl. As the place did fill up the look, the sameness of style got even more pronounced, I would come to see that look almost explode on college campuses by the time I got there myself.  She, I think somebody said her name was Mimi something, had long black hair which went straight down her back almost to her ass and which I found out later when I had a girlfriend who looked like her that she had ironed with an iron to keep it straight, wore a colorful peasant blouse of the kind that I had seen in the movies that Mexican peasant women wore, or Jane Russell in Hell’s Angels, except she, Jane, showed a lot more shoulder and a lot more bosom, a tight black skirt which went to her knees like a lot of the girls at school wore and open-toed sandals even though it was November. (Later toward the end of the folk craze that comely peasant blouse showing shoulders and knee-length skirt would be replaced by a formless, from nowhere granny dress to the ground which reminded me of the potato sacks girls wore back in sixth grade.)  At the time I was seriously into beehive hair blondes with tight, very tight cashmere sweaters, those okay tight black skirts and some kind of pumps I think they called them except on gym days when they wore tennis sneakers, at least at school. So that Turk’s Head girl while obviously pretty and a bit foxy every time she looked my way was strictly no heart beat for me-then.  

Seth and I took our seats near the front of the place near this tiny stage just big enough for one performer it seemed and maybe a small instrument like a flute or clarinet since that was where the two seat tables were and because Seth wanted to hear Doris clearly while he was taking notes about her performance, how the audience reacted to her play list and what he called getting “color,” getting a feel for what the folkies as he called them were up to. After we had sat down a few minutes later a waitress came by to take our order. Naturally she looked like she could have been the sister to the girl at the cash register, maybe she was although she filled out that peasant blouse a little better and that was why I thought she was waiting on tables and the other gal was on the door. Like I told Seth before when they asked for the cover charge I only thought I had enough dough to get home, and maybe a few cents left over. Seth who must have gotten a couple of high roller good guys to caddy for that day and said he was flush said he would cover me because it was important to him that I follow this folk scene that had him all wired up.

It was at that moment that I was “christened” into the mores of the folk scene as it was emerging around Boston. See in order to keep your seat at one of these coffeehouses unlike the Waldorf in Riverdale where as long as you weren’t disturbing anybody you could sit and wait for the bus or just sit and watch the winos like Willie the Wino suck down some watered-down coffee after a hard day or night of twisting with a wine bottle or sitting in Tonio’s Pizza Parlor, our corner boy hang out then which Tonio was happy to let us do since it brought girls in you had to have something in front of you, a cup of coffee slowly sipped anyway. Otherwise somebody who might be waiting outside, fat chance that night, who could pay the freight should by rights grab your seat. That night the situation got resolved by Seth forking up the dough for two coffees and a shared brownie just to make sure we were covered. When the coffee came, steaming coffee with milk somehow foaming on top of it and I sipped it I liked the tastes immediately. I had never had coffee so strong even my mother’s percolated with egg shells thrown in for good measure.                   

After that I made my first mistake though. I asked Seth, just in passing, just to kill time until Doris came on the stage, just to seem like I was interested in case one of the girls at the adjoining tables was listening so they would think I knew something about the new trend whether it made me grind my teeth or not, why he was taking notes about the performer and whatever else he was writing about. Here is the mistake in asking Seth any kind of open-ended question like that because the opening allowed him to go on and on about the ten thousand facts he knows about whatever interested him even if not strictly on the subject. See as long as I had known Seth, unlike the other guys on the corner who maybe dreamed of working in an auto shop, maybe pumping gas for a living, maybe getting a job on the town work force, a fireman or public works department job, maybe a white collar job in the town hall Seth had dreams of being a reporter, although he always called it being a journalist, and usually prefaced that designation with the words “big time.” So as boring as those then thousand facts were to the corner boys, including me, as much as any of us could give a rat’s ass about whatever came into his mind his idea was that knowing all that stuff was his ticket away from poverty, away from that white collar town job his mother was always telling he should aim for as the highlight of his life.     

So after telling me that Minnie Murphy, the editor of the school newspaper The Magnet, had promised him she would publish an article by him on this new folk music craze that she too was getting crazy about and which kind of surprised me because I thought Seth was the only goof in town who even knew about the thing he proceeded as usual to give me everything I didn’t want to know about, didn’t give a rat’s ass about the scene. Told me that there were lots of people who were tired of the goof stuff that was passing for rock and roll in those benighted times, tired of the bubble gum music that even I was tired off even if this folk stuff was making me grind my teeth. Told me a bunch of college students and other people with time on their hands had gone all over the country to squirrely places like Appalachia which I was not sure where it was and down in Mississippi which I did know because all hell was breaking out there with black people (who in our neighborhood we called the “N” word almost universally except maybe Seth, and maybe he did too when he hung around the corner and guys were bitching about what did the damn “n---gers” want anyway I don’t remember exactly). Said people were crazy to find stuff that a guy named Child, Francis Child, had put together from the old old days, back in the 16^th century or thereabouts and that I would find out first-hand about that very night. Told me people, folksingers like Doris Nelson were beginning to make money, make a job kind of money doing.

Seth, although maybe on nights when Willie the Wino came through for us and we had too much Southern Comfort which really could rot, hell, fuck up your brain he would do so, never claimed he had discovered folk music, never claimed that he had the “Word” as he called it but after hearing a “fugitive” radio station (his term) from Providence one night, WBIL I think he said it had been, what later proved to be the Brown University radio station by mistake one night, started grooving on the sound he made a mental note to explore what the whole thing was about. Told me at the Turk’s Head that the reason he had cornered Minnie Murphy was that he expected to ride the wave of the folk scene to a “big time” reporter’s job using this folk scene as a stepping stone. This school newspaper article was to be the first step and if he played his cards right he might get noticed by guys around Harvard Square who were busy writing songs, songs which I will get to in a while, writing about their “discoveries” of some ancient ballad that song people in Prestonsburg down in Kentucky were singing, had been singing since their forbears were kicked out of England  and then either couldn’t make it  on the coastal cities of the East or got kicked out of there as well, and writing about the guys who were writing the songs and making the latest folk ballad discoveries.

That was what Seth wanted to do so badly that he could taste it. (My term and not meant as a compliment either.) This was pure Seth for as long as I had known him when he had his million facts hat on. He had a lot more to say or he would have had a lot more to say except that Mimi girl who clipped us for four bucks was now on stage getting ready to introduce this Doris Nelson. The usual emcee build-up for whatever act was in front of them, the role of “flaks” since they invented them. Some stuff about how she had been classically-trained from childhood and had given that up to sing the “people’s music.” Pure flak.               

No question Doris was a dark-haired, tall, ruby-red lipped beauty although like I said before about girls in the room she was dressed and wore her hair like half the girls sitting at the mismatched tables around the place. (I found out later that her friend Joan Baez whom she had gone to school with at BU, had had a couple of classes with had started the trend, the “look,” or was one of the starters). After a few stumblebum hardly audible hem and haw words of introduction to the song, which struck me as odd since she was being touted by Mimi as this new breed singer-songwriter about how some guy named Cecil Sharpe had discovered the song, Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies, she started to strum her guitar which seemed too big for her and which given how small the stage was kept banging against the walls when she swayed to the melody of the song if that was what she was doing. She had a big voice, no question either, but every time she hit the high note on “fair and tender” she made my teeth grind even more. Made me almost long for some bubblegum music by any one of about fifty popular teenage-oriented female singers.

Get this and you will get just the slightest inkling why I was getting a big headache that night. The story line of the song, what Seth started to call “the narrative” after he had read some guy named Irving something used the term when dealing with these endless ballads was about some gal, a country gal who probably was pretty gullible and naïve anyway about men who had been two-timed by her man, which could only mean one thing-that she had given into his lusts or maybe hers-a theme I would hear constantly later except sometimes it would be the gal doing the two-timing. She wanted revenge or at least have the guy feel remorse. Christ who wanted to listen to that stuff from olden times for about ten  minutes when you could get the Shirelles to sing a short and sweet story about a gal wondering if her guy will still love her tomorrow-done in two minutes and some change.

Then Doris did a series of high-pitched wails, hoots if you asked me, about some sea captain who was poking his cabin boy only he was a she and got pregnant. Jesus who gave a fuck. After that bummer she went gentle on some obscure song from that Child guy’s list, a ballad she called it, about a guy named Geordie. Seemed he was from royalty, had bedded, married or not, some fair damsel who had three kids whether by him or by some cuckolded husband wasn’t clear to me, had been short on dough when he cashed in by poaching some of the king’s deer, a capital offense if caught and he was, was sentenced and ready to be hanged and quartered or whatever they did to get rid of poachers in those dark ages days. The fair damsel rode to London and tried to talk the judge out of it but no soap and I guess old Geordie swung for his misdeeds. Again she made my teeth go cuckoo chattering when she hit the high notes, started going wah-wah. Seth kept trying to keep me quiet since the place was so small Doris probably heard every curse I threw her way. Jesus again.     

I could keep going on about that dragged night and  it would be more of the same but I would like to mention her last song, her encore song which Seth had jumped up and led the audience in asking for. He told me later that he saw he really needed a personal interview with her to round out the article he was thinking through all that night. Here is what you maybe don’t know, maybe you do, but let me say that the so-called “ah, shucks” folkies were as susceptible to such claptrap as any Broadway show tune performer. Almost immediately after Seth called “encore” she was tuning up that runaway guitar for her big ending. Later, a few years later, when I got hip to stuff about the music industry, I would find out that performers would do an encore even if not one soul in the whole place asked for it. I remember one guy didn’t even bother to leave the stage to be acclaimed by popular demand that they wanted an encore but just blatantly said he was too tired to go backstage and so here was the encore.

But back to the song, the ballad another one of those damn endless Child ballads that this Doris seemed to specialize in (and which Seth once he got his foot in the door would write endlessly about and expect people to take seriously). This one Barbara Allan, although she called it Barbarreeee or something like that Allan would try the patience of Job or one of those old time righteous prophets since she decided that she would sing it in Middle English, in other words, sing it like somebody in Shakespeare’s time, maybe earlier would sing the thing to whatever audience he was pitching to. After the first verse I almost walked out the door but Seth pulled me back by promising to pay my bus fare home if I just waited until the end. The story here which even Seth did not understand that night but only caught up with later when he looked in the library at school for the modern lyrics was some royal guy or some young noble who was in love with an inevitable fair maiden. Except she thought he had slighted her, had as has been going on since men and women started hanging out together, not been paying enough attention to her as against other women in their crowd at the tavern. Brushed off by his true love fair maiden he took ill rather than moving on. Started to take that road to the grim reaper. Sent emissary after emissary to see if she would come and see him before he passed away from a broken heart. No soap. No soap until she showed up pretty late just as he was about to expire. Sensing that she had wronged him she too “died for love” and they were buried next to each other in sanctified ground as far as Seth could tell. Get this as is the nature of things growing on the world on the guy’s grave grew a rose and on the fair maiden’s a briar which after some time passed intertwined. People applauded after Doris finished this downer. Can you believe in the year 1962 that some half-intelligent woman thought she could breakout in the music world singing that rubbish. (As it turned out Doris could although as part of a singing duo with Henrietta Hardwick as Two For The Road and with modern material just to let you know where I was at then as far as my predictive abilities went.)     

So I was no stranger to “folk scene” when Seth barrel-assed his little favor non-favor at me to help him out with his Sal problem about going to the Club Nana over in Cambridge. I might as well tell you now that I never figured that Sal-Seth attraction, mutual attraction I might add because they stayed together until the end of Seth’s sophomore year in college when Sal went to try to make a name for herself in the folk scene in New York down at the Village and didn’t want to wait for Seth to finish school and then head down there. She said the folk minute might be over by then and she would lose her chance in get out from under her parents’ thumb, now was the time to prove what the local Cambridge scene aficionados were saying about her talent. Sal was closer to the truth than she knew since by then the British invasion with the Beatles and the Stones was sucking all the air out of any marginal kinds of musical expression, especially for people who were just then trying to break into the folk scene and Seth lost track of her although she had made a few records and opened for a few bigger acts before she disappeared from our radar out West somewhere, not California West but maybe Utah or someplace like that where they didn’t like people swearing either, were scornful of heathens as well.

We were never friendly not even that night at the Nana, even though I think I only swore once and then said I was sorry but she always seemed to have a permanent scowl on her face for me which made that beautiful face of hers seem ugly to me. And it wasn’t because of her religious background which other than her almost reflexive hatred for swearing in her presence she wore pretty lightly around school. I was kicking my own Catholic background so I could have given a fuck about her religious principles. You know I really think she was giving Seth something at least a blow job because Seth was the kind of guy around the corner who was not known for dealing with goof girls even if they were pretty, maybe especially because they were pretty. The only thing that got him anywhere with that proposition to me about double-dating was that he said he would cover my expenses. With that and with Laura as the lure he tagged me.  Tagged me despite my reservations about going with him and Sal since like I said Sal was very prissy about language, about swearing so I thought that I would spent most of my time keeping my mouth shut. Tagged me although he greased the pole about folk music by saying that this Erick Saint-Jean was the new cat’s meow and very different from that Doris Nelson performance which even he admitted long after the fact was not to everybody’s taste-anybody in the 20^th century I told him back.  

The Saturday night we went to see Erick at Club Nana started out okay. Naturally since Sal’s parents had to be appeased we met at her house for the inspection and the interrogation which I got used to the few times later I wound up with double-date, hell, double-duty with Seth on one of his and Sal’s adventures to the coffeehouse scene. The inspection apparently was to see if I had two heads or something or if Laura was a loose woman or something. The interrogation part Seth had briefed us on, Laura and me, since Sal’s parents would be sure to ask us where we were going and we had to answer about going to a social where there would be hymns singing the praises of the Lord and such. We made it through the gauntlet okay as they kind of beamed that four young people were going to a good church social on a Saturday in this day in age and wasn’t it a sign, or something. Yeah, end times sign of something. We then headed toward Thornton Street where the Eastern Massachusetts bus depot was located in order to take the bus to connect up with the Redline subway at Field’s Corner in the roughneck section of Dorchester and head to Harvard Square at the end of the line (then). As we walked along Thornton Street Laura said to Seth that she had read his article about Doris Nelson in the Magnet and after complimenting him on the piece said she was looking forward to hearing Erick Saint-Jean whom she had heard about from her cousin who lived in New York where he had appeared as the front act for Pete Seeger at the famous Gaslight Coffeehouse.    

That remark made me cringe, made me feel that I was doomed that evening because Laura had made the cardinal sin with Seth of expressing the slightest interest in whatever he was hot under the collar about which turned out to be this Erick guy. Moreover he expected all of us “non-folkies” he called us to give him our candid opinions of Erick’s performance since he was “on assignment” for the Magnet after Minnie Murphy had published his first article (after some heavy re-write by her which would plague Seth all his writing career like publications, small presses and journals mostly, had infinite space for whatever he had to say from the mountain and he could not keep it under five thousand words when the publisher had asked him for say three thousand). I told him right then and there, right in front of Laura who seemed to be gravitating toward folkie-dom since she was wearing a peasant blouse that evening, an outfit which I had never seen her wear before since she usually filled out tight cashmere sweaters rather nicely and thankfully had a great big head of bee-hive styled blonde hair, that he could save time and register my answer right there and say that the stuff made my teeth grind.       

Hell, before I could take it back Seth started in again on this Erick so I turned out to be no smarter that Laura about playing to Seth’s vanities as he started to tell us why this Erick was the next big thing. Fortunately, I thought, the Greyhound bus arrived just then and we got on after Seth paid all our fares. But Seth when he got on his soapbox would not let it go and so all the way to Dorchester he droned on and on about Erick. Gave us his history seemingly from when he was a baby although that part I drowned out and did not pick up his story until Seth mentioned that he had gone to Harvard for a couple of years before he dropped out to “follow his muse” was what Seth called it. I found it strange that a guy who could make Harvard, had the smarts to get in which we all recognized in the poor ass Acre neighborhood where we grew up was a big deal would give up a ticket to success for some iffy music career which might last a minute or a century who knew. I mentioned this to Seth as we were riding the bus since we had talked about this whole college thing, the struggle to get into any decent school, when we were hanging around in front of Tonio’s Pizza Parlor one Friday night on a night when we had no dough and no dates, and no prospects of a date and he replied that Erick had already had one of his original folk songs recorded and on sale, Light Rain Falling, which he would play that night and was working on recording his latest song A Time Is Coming said to be a sure-fire hit according to the reporter from the Village Voice who was present at the Gaslight in the Village the night Erick fronted for Pete Seeger. I still was not convinced that he had made the right decision but I kept that to myself.         

During the subway ride to Harvard Square the clacking and clicking of the trains kept Seth quiet although he seemed to be whispering stuff to Sal that made her laugh, probably some high heaven hymn about God’s righteousness and seeking mercy on wicked humankind. Laura was a bit cool to me for most of the evening until then especially after I made that crack (her term which she used when describing her coolness that first night later when we were on better terms-much better terms, okay) about folk music making my teeth grind since she had gone out of her way to buy a peasant blouse for the occasion after her cousin had told her the what’s what about looking cool on the emerging folk scene. I explained to her my experience with Seth at the Doris Nelson concert but she only said that this Erick was something different, was something of a star rising with his off-beat humor and his drilling the right spots on his lyrics which she called (citing her cousin) “protest music.” That Light Rain Falling had been a heartfelt plea for the government to stop making nuclear weapons, stop testing them wherever the hell they wanted, stop building up the stockpiles and let the world live and not worry our next breathes, if there were to be any. That last remark gave me much better idea of what Laura was about, told me she was more than a good-looking social butterfly who only spent her waking hours on all the silly school committees like the seasonal dances and sports’ pep club and I started to hone in on her a little more. Started asking what else her cousin told her about Erick, about this folk scene that we would enter just as soon as we got up the two flights of stairs to breath in Harvard Square air proper as we hit the last stop on the line.   

As we surfaced Seth went crazy telling us about the Hayes-Bickford that was right in front of us. The one in Riverdale we avoided like the plague because it had steamed everything and if you got there say an hour after the food had been put on the steam table then it was basically inedible. The Hayes moreover was for winos like Willie the Wino when he was looking for a change of scenery from the Waldorf or had been kicked out for pan-handling or otherwise abusing the real paying customers. But this Hayes was, had been for a while, the afterhours hangout first for the now passé “beatniks” and their endless poetry readings and writings and now for guys like Bob Dylan who would write notes on the paper napkins provided by the place and tuck them in the pocket of his disheveled jacket probably to be turned into lyrics for a song. So everybody who heard about what was happening in Harvard Square made the pilgrimage to the Hayes to see who was doing what, what new songs were being gestated there among the steamed vegetables and weak-kneed coffee poured into those ceramic mugs that seemed indestructible. Seth noted that Erick, who lived in a garret up on the other end of Mount Auburn Street, had actually written A Time Is Coming at a table at the Hayes one rainy night when he was there with his muse, his girlfriend, Henrietta Hardwick (the same gal who would successfully team up with Doris Nelson as a duet with modern material), although Erick would mention her at his performance as his paramour which Seth said was the same thing when I asked him what that meant at intermission. 

Even though Seth had snuck out of the family house in Riverdale several times by himself late at night to head to the Square and the Hayes hang-out trying to see what was what (and avoiding the after midnight winos, college drunks, hustlers and con artists who descended on the place late especially when it turned into the favored after hours hang-out of many local young up and coming folk artists) he had never been at the fairly new Club Nana since these places were popping up all over the Square so he asked somebody where it was located and it turned out that the club was in the building adjacent to the Brattle Theater a few blocks down from the Hayes. We found the place no problem since we saw a long line forming outside the club as it was not open then as we had along with those others in that line arrived early. Seth, seeing the line, was worried we would not get a table, would not get in for Erick’s first set and was bitching about how we should have taken the earlier bus and all that. I thought to myself that no way would the place fill up just like it hadn’t at the Turk’s Head because although a few guys like Seth and his kind were into this folk scene everybody else was still going cuckoo over rock and roll or stuff like that who were into music (hell, Laura, even that night mentioned that she still had a strong “crush” on teen idol Ricky Nelson, hell and damn him). As it turned out there was no waiting at the Club that night unlike later occasions since it was significantly larger that the Turk’s Head (and not in the freaking basement with a crossbeam to hit your head on to boot), had about thirty tables for twos and fours although the furniture was all mismatched just like at the Turk’s Head. Nobody was spending money on that stuff, on matching furniture, and nobody probably gave a damn what they sat on as long as they got in and were not positioned behind a pole so they couldn’t see the stage which was always the curse of every concert venue. The stage here was the same small dinky one like at the Turk’s Head just barely enough for the performer to perform if he or she was not too big and played the piccolo.

Here’s where I started to get a better frame of mind about this folk thing (besides that unspoken threat that Laura was getting dragged into the milieu and if I was to have a chance with her I had better think twice about my earlier opinions about the genre or do a better job of keeping it to myself-or be more public about how nice she looked in a peasant blouse although frankly she still looked tons better in a tight cashmere sweater and probably always would). No cover charge. Yes, unlike the Turk’s Head over on Charles Street in the Back Bay which pretty much had the field to itself and so could rob us of two bucks each to hear some old garbled ballads in some weird language from the Middle Ages plus having to buy coffees to keep in front of you and keep your place, the new Club Nana had stiff competition from the myriad other folk clubs and coffeehouses that covered about a six blocks in the heart of the Square.

Of course there was the even then famous Club 47 and the up and coming Café Blue leading the pack where the more recognized performers like Dylan and Joan played and where you waited, patiently or impatiently as was your wont, in line outside (or got there at some ridiculously early time to wait in that freaking line, forget it) so the lesser clubs like the Algiers and Idler and now the Nana had to pitch their tents in the  shadows and offer some reason to take a left to Brattle Street rather than a right to Mount Auburn Street and so the “no cover charge” was the draw. As for the Nana, as the owner and emcee Barry Bowditch explained that first night before introducing Erich for his first set, that club was attempting to be the new hangout for the next run of up and coming folk artists to present their wares, to perfect their acts just like the 47 and Blue had done in their turn. Still you needed to keep that ubiquitous cup of coffee in front of you, maybe needed a sweet and low pastry out of smell necessity since Barry had a small bakery next door working up the smell factor, if you wanted to keep your place in the pecking order. But it was nice to know I would not owe Seth four extra dollars later on when I had some dough.  (Come on you know guys were expected to pay the freight for the girl then-if he expected to get anywhere-otherwise somebody like Laura whatever she might have thought of the new breeze folk thing would have been a “no show” for this kind of date if it was Dutch treat. She told me once later after we had been going together for a while that if she had wanted to, or had been expected to pay her part she would not have shown-she could have gone out with her Dutch treat girlfriends).            

Once we were seated, grabbed our coffees and cakes from the good-looking college girl waitress (from Emerson College who was slumming as a waitress to get close to the folk scene since she like what appeared to be half the Harvard Square world was a budding folk-singer) we sat listening to some piped in music. One song interested me, Viva La Quince Brigada sung by a guy named Woody Guthrie, a song that Seth told me was about the Spanish Civil War, was about Americans who fought there in the 1930s in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15^th International Brigade to save the Spanish Republic when it was attacked by the local fascists under General Franco who still ran the show there. (Seth gave me that military designation for the Lincolns which he had found out about when he was doing a tern paper in 9^th grade for a Civics class and he picked the Spanish Civil War as his topic.) The beauty of the song sung in Spanish was that I could follow the lyrics because I knew enough Spanish from my second-year Spanish class to understand what the song was getting at. Of course the rest of the period before Barry came up on that small stage to introduce Erick was the usual folk ballad bummer. A song about some guy in Ohio who murdered his sweetheart because she would not marry him and what remorse he had after he did the deed (and about facing the hangman’s noose and/or God’s wrath as well for his indiscretion). Another song about a guy named Matty Grove who stole some nobleman’s wife, lived with her for a while, the nobleman came by and killed Matty then the errant wife after which he too had remorse-for the wife’s murder not Matty’s if you can believe that. I swear this song was the same one Doris Nelson sang at the Turk’s head except this version had a different name, was even longer, even endlessly longer going into the nobleman’s motivation for wasting Matty, his sense of honor abused which needed to be avenged, and the methods he would employ in order do poor Matty boy in.  There might have been a few other songs but the only other one I remember was a silly song about some muleskinner who was sick of his work and wanted to break out, wanted to ride the range I guess, his desire to break out not half as much as mine as I was getting antsy waiting for the show to begin. Laura sensed that and started making small talk about how she liked that Matty Grove song, felt bad for the guy Matty who was taking good care of his lady but that when the deal went down that illicit affair was doomed anyway since nobles and commoners didn’t mix so well then whatever role love played in the scheme of things. When I kept silent rather than bursting out laughing she shifted to small talk high school social butterfly stuff, did I know about the Spring Frolic Dance and how hard her committee had been working to make it a success (and which I would wind up taking her too, actually proudly taking her too since that was the first public, meaning school the only place that mattered, appearance. I feigned interest (as I would many times later when she brought up one of her endless committee assignments-she would no matter how deeply she was involved with the Harvard Square scene never outgrow that butterfly thing-never saw a reason to do so I guess).   

Finally Barry saved the day. Came up on stage and gave a few minute introduction about Erick after telling us about fire exits, about making sure we had something wink, wink to eat or drink in front of us for the duration since that no cover charge meant there was dough for food so don’t be stingy, be generous with the hard-working waitresses, and a few upcoming events including a Tuesday night “open mic” search for new talent to get featured on New Talent Thursday Nights (which would be the next time I heard Doris Nelson in person the first time she partnered with Harriet Hardwick). Then Erich showed up behind him. 

This Erich was long and tall, angular, had to have some WASP blood in him despite the Gallic surname because he wreaked of Yankee brethren as only a kid who had been drilled to perdition about the bloody English forebears and their mad policies in Ireland before Easter 1916. He wore what for what would be for guys, folk guys, “the uniform.” Long hair, longer than what dear mother would have liked to see, a wisp of a beard, unusual and always associated with beatniks in our neighborhood hence by mother’s and others with uncleanliness and evil intent, a plaid flannel shirt, brown, black chinos, a red handkerchief hanging out of the back pocket and work boots against all weathers. (And yes I wore that same “uniform” for a while before I got a real uniform of khaki greens courtesy of the United States government in hellhole Vietnam.). He had a strong baritone voice and as he strummed his weather-beaten guitar I, and the others at my table and probably the house too, knew this guy was a serious guitar player from the first strums.   

But enough of wardrobe descriptions and skills speculation because Erick didn’t speak too much but rather let his songs speak for him. Something in the force of his voice got to me. That Light Rain Falling had all the pathos of a song about the very real possibility of the world exploding on itself if the nuclear war we all feared to the marrow of our bones actually occurred. A Time Is Coming spoke of some new thing in the world, about the end times of the old stagnant world and its stuffy rigid order and falsity, not just folk music but a new way of people dealing with each other and you had better get on board or get left behind. Fair Winds Or Foul spoke to me in the same vein except Erick’s  spin on the subject was that there was going to be opposition, that the bad guys running the show now were not going to let the new breeze take over, were going to fight back, fight back hard, would crush our spirits in the process. Our Hour spoke of the twists and turns ahead, that not everybody was going to stay the course when the new breeze hit, not everybody was made for the road, for all-night talking, for living very simply and for experimenting with everything from drugs to communal living, and his encore song Sabrina spoke of lost love despite him jumping through hoops for the woman named in the song, a song that seemed autobiographical and recent. (It was, was about a young woman from Radcliffe who couldn’t see Erick going the folk music root and who had her feet firmly planted on the ground. As it turned out Harriet Hardwick had come along just after that and eased the pain, as did writing the song as he mentioned at the end of the song.)    

Of course since Erick was just starting out he did covers some by Pete Seeger he told the audience that Pete had showed him how to play on the guitar like Where Have All The Flowers Gone and a song by that same Woody Guthrie who I had heard earlier in the evening over the sound system, one that I really liked about going to California and having dough or don’t go which I was crazy to go to, dough or no dough.  

Okay here’s the grift. When Erich was finished I was the guy who yelled encore and he gave us the melancholy Sabrina in return. As the lights came on to clear out the joint I mentioned to Laura that I thought the show was great. She smiled and agreed. Once we got outside and headed to the late hour subway I was the one who was going on and on about what Erick said about the new breeze coming, about how if guys and gals sang stuff like he did then maybe we would get the new breeze, would get a shot at making something of the world as we were coming of age. For once I outtalked Seth. Oh yeah, and told him that while those old time folk ballads still made my teeth grind guys like Erick had something to say. Oh yeah too, as I left Laura at her door I mentioned that maybe the next weekend we could go to Harvard Square by ourselves and see what was what. She smiled and agreed. Whoa!

[Post Script: many years later Seth Garth as he was ready to retire after what for him had been a reasonably successful career first as a music critic for various alternative newspapers and small press journals and then as a free-lance writer for publication big and small on a whole range of topics from culture to politics to self-help tips (don’t laugh those pieces got at least three kids from various marriages, three altogether through college and graduate school) he started receiving almost weekly CD compilations in the mail asking him to review the CD for a nice little check. Most of them he dismissed out of hand since that nice little check was little enough for him to dismiss out of hand now that he was no longer on his way to the poor house trying to put six, count them, six kids through all forms of higher education, although it was a close thing for a while.

But one from old friend Sid Daniels the producer of compilations of folk music minute songs for Roundabout Records geared to the baby-boomers who came of age on that material and had enough nostalgia and dough to make producing such materials financially worthwhile. After listening to the CD, Urban Folks Blues Seth started to wonder what had happened to some of those artists and agreed to do a review for Sid on that basis.

See everybody knew that the “king of the hill” Bob Dylan had embarked on what would eventually be a never-ending tour and that prior to his death Dave Von Ronk would show up regularly on the dwindling folk circuit, the few places scattered in the universe where there were enough old folkies to sustain a coffeehouse-you know Ann Arbor, Berkeley, the Village, Harvard Square- or if away from those old-time centers then some thoughtful monthly coffeehouses at UU churches or places like that. But Seth was not thinking about the fates of those guys which had been well documented but a guy like Erick Saint-James who back in the day looked like he would threaten Dylan for that “king of the hill” title.  

Erick Saint- James had it all going for him, a strong baritone, good basic guitar skills, knew a dozen chords or so, which as one wag mentioned at the time was all you needed to get a place in the folk universe, better, have all the girls hanging around you. Erick in addition was a good-looking guy who graced many covers of Rise Up Singing Folk, the original “must read” publication that got many young folkies their first look see. He had big hits with covers like Railroad Bill but also with his own compositions like the classic A Time Is Coming, Falling Light Rain, and Panama Woman Special. Then a few years later he fell off the folk map. Seth had spent many hours starting out in the business tracing the whereabouts of every possible folksinger in order to keep up with the movement in order to grab free-lance jobs once editors like Benny Gold and Sam Lawrence knew that he had enough knowledge to write quick reviews when they were pressed for publication time-lines so he referred back to his backlog of notes for starters.   

So Seth had worked his way back. Found out that Erick had had a streak of bad luck, bad management, a bum agent who took a lot of his dough, who lost a lot on bad deal buy-backs and at the track, both things besides talent which you need to have working for, not against, you. Had a few songs, a couple of albums that went nowhere. Of course that was around the edge of the folk minute, the point where folk rock was the place to be or get off the boat. That was the main musical fact of life of the time. Old time ballad went into the dustbin, went back to where someday a new crop of folk archivist would wonder what the fuck they were talking about. Part of Seth’s loss of Erick’s whereabouts had been that Seth had sensed another wave coming and he was on the envelope of what would later be called the “acid” rock moment and so had let whatever he knew about folk kind of fall off of his planet. That was where his career was heading, where he was getting assignments and so the fate of stray folk guys like Erick faded in the background. That too was a hard fact of life just ask Benny or Sam.  

Then Erick hit some skids, got caught up doing too much alcohol and later too much grass, then heroin. As far as Seth could trace that decline into the late 1980s that was what had happened to Erick. One source said he went down to Mexico to study painting while he was trying to dry out. Another said that he was down in some Jersey Holiday Inn doing a lounge lizard act for coffee and cakes. In any case the trail ended around 1990 so who knows what happened to him. All Seth knew was that back in the day Erick could cover the old time folk songs, worked at it and added a few gems to the folk section of the American songbook. Yeah, if you want to know what it was like when guys and gals sang folk for keeps, when Erick Saint-James sang folk for keeps grab Sid’s compilation CD. Listen to Dave, Tom, Geoff, Tracey and Jesse too but weep a tear for Erick and your lost youth as well.]      

*****Yes, You Had Better Shake, Rattle And Roll That Thing-With Big Joe Turner In Mind

*****Yes, You Had Better Shake, Rattle And Roll That Thing-With Big Joe Turner In Mind 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

In the old days, the old days meaning around the turn of the century, the 20^th century let’s make it clear, when the songs of the people, of Mister’s plantation miseries and his kindred sharecropper rip-off woes were just starting to be weaned off of the old time religion gospel high heaven Jehovah savior be with us poor and despised hymn book provided by Master’s so-called good wishes a man could speak of more mundane things and not be damned (or a woman either but that would come later when the female blues-belters came to prominence in the small towns of the South, you know the infinite number of Smith’s including Queen bee Bessie).

Yes it took a while to undo that wretched thing dropped down on the planation by Master’s devious methods way back when, when he took the forbears from out of Africa, pushed the Middle Passage and then robbed man, woman and child by placing you know the damn Christian yoke around every neck to add insult to injury, slavery times injury as if Master’s whip was not enough. You know got the precious brethren of the light to get behind that compulsion to testify, to call yourself own truth self a sinner against some forlorn god who was not listening as the more savvy of the brethren figured out, figured out fast come rebellion time, come time to stand up and cross the lines to the Union side with what you had on your back or what you could grab from Master’s ill-provisioned shack. That damn music that accompanied the psalms to consider yourself "saved." We know how hard it was to not see the new dispensation, the new secular worldview as some of the devil’s work, the devil’s work, the devil’s music in some households all the way up to rock and roll  and not just in some Baptist-tinged folks but hardy white dirt poor Catholic believers too.

The music of the folk had come down from the muddy swamps, down from Mister’s sweated plantation field, down from the stinking turpentine factories and bloody sawmills and in place of praise the lord, lord save us, lord lead us to the promise land began to speak of some rascal like Mister Joe Turner (not the Joe Turner of the title above but mentioned below but a ne’er-do-well who came and stole whatever could be stolen) began of speaking of hard, hard drinking, hard lovin’ maybe with your best gal's friend if it came right down to the core, maybe flipping the bird on you and running around all flouncy with your best friend, maybe some hard-hearted "do this do that" woman on your mind, yeah, the old birth of  the blues days, the blue being nothing but a good woman or man on your mind anyway, around the turn of the 20^th century and you can check this out if you want to and not take my word for it a black guy, a rascally black guy of no known home, a drifter, maybe a hobo for all I know, and who knows what else named Joe Turner held forth among the folk. Old Joe would come around the share-cropper down South neighborhoods and steal whatever was not nailed down, including your woman, which depending on how you were feeling might be a blessing and if you in a spooning mood might be a curse on that bastard's head. Then Joe Turner would leave and move on to the next settlement and go about his plundering ways. Oh sure like lots of blues and old country music as it got passed on in the oral traditions there were as many versions of the saga as there were singers everybody adding their own touch. But it was always old Joe Turner doing the sinning and scratching for whatever he could scratch for. 

But for the most part the story line about old ne’er-do-well Joe Turner rang very similar over time. So Joe Turner got his grizzly old self put into song out in the Saturday juke joints, out in the back woods sneak cabin with no electricity, maybe no instruments worthy of the name either, some old beat to perdition Sears catalogue order guitar, hell, maybe just some wire between two nails if times were tough or that Sears model was in hock at some Mister’s pawnshop, out in places like the Mississippi Delta where more legends were formed than you could shake a stick, got sanctified (the once church gospel holy amen kind just didn’t do the job when a man had the thirst) on old  Willie’s liquor, white lightning home-made liquor got to working, and some guy, maybe not the best singer if you asked around but a guy who could put words together to tell a story, a blues story, and that guy with a scratch guitar would put some verses together and the crowd would egg him on. Make the tale taller as the night went until everybody petered out and that song was left for the next guy to embellish.

By most accounts old Joe was bad man, a very bad man, bad mojo man, bad medicine as the folk call what ails but can't be fixed just short of as bad as Mister’s plantation foremen where those juke joint listeners worked sunup to sundown six days a week or just short of as bad as the enforcers of Mister James Crow’s go here, not there, do this not that, move here not there laws seven days a week. Yeah, Joe was bad alright once he got his wanting habits on, although I have heard at least one recording from the Lomaxes who went all over the South in the 1930s and 1940s trying to record everything they could out in the back country where Joe Turner was something like a combination Santa Claus and Robin Hood. Hell, maybe he was and some guy who lost his woman to wily Joe just got sore and bad mouthed him. Passed that bad mouth on and the next guy who lost his woman to somebody pinned the rap on Joe, Joe Turner, yeah it was that old rascal that did her in, turned her against her hard-working ever-loving man. Stranger things have happened.

In any case the Joe Turner, make that Big Joe, Turner I want to mention here as far as I know only stole the show when he got up on the bandstand and played the role of “godfather” of rock and roll. Yeah, that is what I want to talk about, about how one song, and specifically the place of Big Joe and one song, Shake Rattle and Roll in the rock pantheon. No question Big Joe and his snapping beat has a place in the history of rhythm and blues which is one of the musical forbear strands of rock and roll. The question is whether Shake is also the first serious effort to define rock and roll. If you look at the YouTube version of Big Joe be-bopping away with his guitar player doing some flinty stuff and that sax player searching for that high white note and Big Joe snapping away being  very suggestive about who should shake and what she should shake you can make a very strong case for that place. Add in that Bill Haley, Jerry Lee, and Elvis among others in the rock pantheon covered the song successfully and that would seem to clinch the matter.      

In 2004, the fiftieth anniversary of the debut of Shake by Big Joe, there had been considerable talk and writing again as there is on such occasions by some knowledgeable rock critics about whether Shake was the foundational song of rock. That controversy brought back to my mind the arguments that me and my corner boys who hung out in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner in Carver, a town about thirty miles south of Boston, had on some nothing better to do Friday nights during high school (meaning girl-less, dough-less or both nights). I was the primary guy who argued for Big Joe and Shake giving that be-bop guitar and that wailing sexy sax work as my reasoning while Jimmy Jenkins swore that Ike Turner’s frantic piano-driven and screeching sax Rocket 88 (done under an alias of the Delta Cats apparently for contract reasons a not uncommon practice when something good came up but you would not have been able to do it under the label you were contracted to) was the be-bop beginning and Sam Lowell, odd-ball Sam Lowell dug deep into his record collection, really his parents' record collection which was filled mainly with folk music and the blues edge played off that to find Elmore James’ Look On Yonder Wall. And the other corner boys like our leader Frankie Riley lined up accordingly (nobody else came up with any others so it was those three).

Funny thing Frankie and most everybody else except I think Fritz Taylor who sided with Jimmy Jenkins sided with me and Big Joe. The funny part being that several years ago with the advent of YouTube I started to listen to the old stuff as it became available on-line and now I firmly believe that Ike’s Rocket 88 beats out Shake for the honor of the be-bop daddy of rock and roll. As for the old time Joe Turner, done come and gone, well, he will have to wait in line like the rest of us if he wants his say. What do you think of that?