This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Searching For The American Songbook- When The Fight To Turn The World Upside Down Was In Full Flower- With The Doors The Unknown Soldier In Mind
Wait until the war is over And we're both a little older The unknown soldier
Breakfast where the news is read Television children fed Unborn living, living, dead Bullet strikes the helmet's head And it's all over For the unknown soldier It's all over For the unknown soldier Hut, hut, hut ho hee up Hut, hut, hut ho hee up Hut, hut, hut ho hee up Comp'nee, halt Present, arms Make a grave for the unknown soldier Nestled in your hollow shoulder The unknown soldier Breakfast where the news is read Television children fed Bullet strikes the helmet's head And, it's all over The war is over It's all over War is over
Well, all over, baby All over, baby Oh, over, yeah All over, baby
Ooh, ha, ha, all over All over, baby Oh, woah, yeah, all over All over, heh Songwriters Robbie Krieger;John Densmore;Jim Morrison;Ray Manzarek
From The Pen of Frank Jackman
There was no seamless thread that wrapped the 1960s up tightly. A thousand things, or it seemed like a thousand things, came together in pretty rapid succession to draw down in flames, for a while anyway although none of us though it would on be for only a while just as we thought that we would live forever, or at least fast, the dread red scare Cold War freezes of our childhood. But you could traces things a little, make your own “live free” categories of the events that chipped away the ice of those dark nights.
Start in with the mid-1950s if you like with the heat of the black struggle for some semblance of civil liberties down South with fearless ladies refusing to go to the back of the bus (and some sense for equality up North with students and young people mainly wondering what to do and getting an idea of how deep the racial divide was then as now when they started doing solidarity work for the freedom riders and standing tall picketing Woolworth’s telling them to let black people eat at their freaking lunch counters if they wanted too, if they couldhanlde the food is what I though), the first break-out of music with the crowning of rock and roll as the wave of the future (black rhythm and blues, scat, rockabilly mixed all stirred up), the “discovery” of teen alienation and angst exemplified by movie star James Dean, who lived fast, and died fast a metaphor that would work its way through youth culture over the next generation. An odd-ball mix right there. Then start to throw in the struggles against the old authority, the old certitudes that had calmed our parents’ lives in places like Frisco town where they practically ran the red-baiters in the HUAC out of town, but of course the biggest event that opened the doors for liberals, radicals, hell even thoughtful conservatives was the sweet breeze coming down the road from Boston with the election of Jack Kennedy.
That event opened up a new psychological twist (twist since Smilin’ Jack was not exactly Lenin or Trotsky or guys like that who really shook up the old order), that it was okay to question authority, whatever the limitations and shortness of the Camelot times with the struggles against some hoary things like segregation, the death penalty, nuclear proliferation, the unevenness of life which would get propelled later in the decade with fight for women’s liberation, gay liberation, and the fight against the draft, the damn war in Vietnam that drove a nail into the heart of the generation. There were more things, cultural things and experimentations with new lifestyles that all got a fair workout during this period as well.
Plenty of us in retrospective would weigh the various combinations of events differently in figuring out how the uprising started just as plenty of us have our specific dates for when the tide began to ebb, when the mean-spirited and authoritarian began their successful counter-offensive that we still live with today for not taking the omens more seriously.
And then we have a mind's eye photograph to grace this short screed. This photograph is almost impossible to imagine without some combination of that hell broth mix stirred up in the 1960s. Think this-three self-assured women comfortable with the loose and individualistic fashion statements of the day from floppy hats to bare legs, bare legs that would have shocked a mother who all corseted up dreamed a World War II dream of nylons, and would do quite a bite to get her hands on such womanly finery. Uncomfortable about the damn Vietnam war that was eating up boyfriends, brothers, just friends at a heavy rate and they unlike their mothers who came through World War II waiting patiently and patriotically for their military heroes to come home, come home in one piece, have a very different sense of the heroic. A sense of the heroic going back to ancient times when one group of women demanded that their men come home on their shields if they had to rather than speak of defeat and others providing a distant echo for these three women pictured here who refused their soldier boys any favors if they went off to war. That says it all enough said.
Searching For The American Songbook-In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute- With Tom Rush’s No Regrets In Mind
DVD Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
No Regrets, narrated by Tom Rush and whoever else he could corral from the old Boston/Cambridge folk scene minute still around, 2014
I know your leavin's too long overdue For far too long I've had nothing new to show to you Goodbye dry eyes I watched your plane fade off west of the moon It felt so strange to walk away alone
No regrets No tears goodbye Don't want you back We'd only cry again Say goodbye again
The hours that were yours echo like empty rooms Thoughts we used to share I now keep alone I woke last night and spoke to you Not thinkin' you were gone It felt so strange to lie awake alone
No regrets No tears goodbye Don't want you back We'd only cry again Say goodbye again
Our friends have tried to turn my nights to day Strange faces in your place can't keep the ghosts away Just beyond the darkest hour, just behind the dawn It feels so strange to lead my life alone
No regrets No tears goodbye Don't want you back We'd only cry again Say goodbye again
A few years ago in an earlier 1960s folk minute nostalgia fit I did a series of reviews of male folk-singers entitled Not Bob Dylan. That series asked two central questions-why did those folk singers not challenge Dylan whom the media of the day had crowned king of the folk minute for supremacy in the smoky (then) coffeehouse night and, if they had not passed on, were they still working the smoke-free church basement, homemade cookies and coffee circuit that constitutes the remnant of that folk minute even in the old hotbeds like Cambridge and Boston. Were they still singing and song-writing, that pairing of singer and writer having been becoming more prevalent, especially in the folk milieu in the wake of Bob Dylan’s word explosions back then. The ground was shifting under the Tin Pan Alley kingdom.
Here is the general format for asking and answering those two questions which still apply today if one is hell-bent on figuring out the characters who rose and fell during that time:
“If I were to ask someone, in the year 2010 as I have done periodically, to name a male folk singer from the 1960s I would assume that if I were to get an answer to that question that the name would be Bob Dylan. And that would be a good and appropriate choice. One can endlessly dispute whether or not Dylan was (or wanted to be) the voice of the Generation of ’68 (so named for the fateful events of that watershed year when those who tried to turn the world upside down to make it more livable began to feel that the movement was reaching some ebb tide) but in terms of longevity and productivity, the never-ending touring until this day and releasing of X amount of bootleg recordings, he fits the bill as a known quality. However, there were a slew of other male folk singers who tried to find their niche in the folk milieu and who, like Dylan, today continue to produce work and to perform. The artist under review, Tom Rush, is one such singer/songwriter.
The following is a question that I have been posing in reviewing the work of a number of male folk singers from the 1960’s and it is certainly an appropriate question to ask of Tom Rush as well. I do not know if Tom Rush, like his contemporary Bob Dylan, started out wanting to be the king of the hill among male folk singers but he certainly had some things going for him. A decent acoustic guitar but a very interesting (and strong baritone) voice to fit the lyrics of love, hope, and longing that he was singing about at the time. During much of this period along with his own songs he was covering other artists, particularly Joni Mitchell, so it is not clear to me that he had that same Dylan drive by let’s say 1968.
As for the songs themselves I mentioned that he covered Joni Mitchell in this period. A very nice version of Urge For Going that captures the wintry, got to get out of here, imaginary that Joni was trying to evoke about things back in her Canadian homeland. And the timelessness and great lyrical sense of his No Regrets, as the Generation of ’68 sees another generational cycle starting, as is apparent now if it was not then. The covers of fellow Cambridge folk scene fixture Eric Von Schmidt on Joshua Gone Barbados and Galveston Flood are well done. As is the cover of Bukka White’s Panama Limited (although you really have to see or hear old Bukka flailing away on his old beat up National guitar to get the real thing on YouTube).”
Whether Tom Rush had the fire back then is a mute question now although in watching the documentary under review, No Regrets, in which he tells us about his life from childhood to the very recent past at some point he did lose the flaming burn down the building fire, just got tired of the road like many, many other performers and became a top-notch record producer, a “gentleman farmer,” and returned to the stage, most dramatically with his annual show Tom Rush-The Club 47 Tradition Continues held at Symphony Hall in Boston each winter. And in this documentary appropriately done under the sign of “no regrets” in which tells Tom’s take on much that happened then he takes a turn, an important oral tradition turn, as folk historian.
He takes us, even those of us who were in the whirl of some of it back then to those key moments when we were looking for something rooted, something that would make us pop in the red scare Cold War night of the early 1960s. Needless to say the legendary Club 47 in Cambridge gets plenty of attention as does his own fitful start in getting his material recorded, the continuing struggle from what he said. Other coffeehouses and other performers of the time, especially Eric Von Schmidt get a nod of recognition and does the role of key folk FJ Dick Summer in show-casing new work (and the show where I started to pick up my life-long folk “habit”). So if you want to remember those days when you sought refuse in the coffeehouses and church basements, sought a “cheap” date night or, ouch, want to know why your parents are still playing Joshua’s Gone Barbados on the record player as you go out the door Saturday night watch this film.
Searching For The American Songbook-In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute- With Tom Rush’s No Regrets In Mind
DVD Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
No Regrets, narrated by Tom Rush and whoever else he could corral from the old Boston/Cambridge folk scene minute still around, 2014
I know your leavin's too long overdue For far too long I've had nothing new to show to you Goodbye dry eyes I watched your plane fade off west of the moon It felt so strange to walk away alone
No regrets No tears goodbye Don't want you back We'd only cry again Say goodbye again
The hours that were yours echo like empty rooms Thoughts we used to share I now keep alone I woke last night and spoke to you Not thinkin' you were gone It felt so strange to lie awake alone
No regrets No tears goodbye Don't want you back We'd only cry again Say goodbye again
Our friends have tried to turn my nights to day Strange faces in your place can't keep the ghosts away Just beyond the darkest hour, just behind the dawn It feels so strange to lead my life alone
No regrets No tears goodbye Don't want you back We'd only cry again Say goodbye again
A few years ago in an earlier 1960s folk minute nostalgia fit I did a series of reviews of male folk-singers entitled Not Bob Dylan. That series asked two central questions-why did those folk singers not challenge Dylan whom the media of the day had crowned king of the folk minute for supremacy in the smoky (then) coffeehouse night and, if they had not passed on, were they still working the smoke-free church basement, homemade cookies and coffee circuit that constitutes the remnant of that folk minute even in the old hotbeds like Cambridge and Boston. Were they still singing and song-writing, that pairing of singer and writer having been becoming more prevalent, especially in the folk milieu in the wake of Bob Dylan’s word explosions back then. The ground was shifting under the Tin Pan Alley kingdom.
Here is the general format for asking and answering those two questions which still apply today if one is hell-bent on figuring out the characters who rose and fell during that time:
“If I were to ask someone, in the year 2010 as I have done periodically, to name a male folk singer from the 1960s I would assume that if I were to get an answer to that question that the name would be Bob Dylan. And that would be a good and appropriate choice. One can endlessly dispute whether or not Dylan was (or wanted to be) the voice of the Generation of ’68 (so named for the fateful events of that watershed year when those who tried to turn the world upside down to make it more livable began to feel that the movement was reaching some ebb tide) but in terms of longevity and productivity, the never-ending touring until this day and releasing of X amount of bootleg recordings, he fits the bill as a known quality. However, there were a slew of other male folk singers who tried to find their niche in the folk milieu and who, like Dylan, today continue to produce work and to perform. The artist under review, Tom Rush, is one such singer/songwriter.
The following is a question that I have been posing in reviewing the work of a number of male folk singers from the 1960’s and it is certainly an appropriate question to ask of Tom Rush as well. I do not know if Tom Rush, like his contemporary Bob Dylan, started out wanting to be the king of the hill among male folk singers but he certainly had some things going for him. A decent acoustic guitar but a very interesting (and strong baritone) voice to fit the lyrics of love, hope, and longing that he was singing about at the time. During much of this period along with his own songs he was covering other artists, particularly Joni Mitchell, so it is not clear to me that he had that same Dylan drive by let’s say 1968.
As for the songs themselves I mentioned that he covered Joni Mitchell in this period. A very nice version of Urge For Going that captures the wintry, got to get out of here, imaginary that Joni was trying to evoke about things back in her Canadian homeland. And the timelessness and great lyrical sense of his No Regrets, as the Generation of ’68 sees another generational cycle starting, as is apparent now if it was not then. The covers of fellow Cambridge folk scene fixture Eric Von Schmidt on Joshua Gone Barbados and Galveston Flood are well done. As is the cover of Bukka White’s Panama Limited (although you really have to see or hear old Bukka flailing away on his old beat up National guitar to get the real thing on YouTube).”
Whether Tom Rush had the fire back then is a mute question now although in watching the documentary under review, No Regrets, in which he tells us about his life from childhood to the very recent past at some point he did lose the flaming burn down the building fire, just got tired of the road like many, many other performers and became a top-notch record producer, a “gentleman farmer,” and returned to the stage, most dramatically with his annual show Tom Rush-The Club 47 Tradition Continues held at Symphony Hall in Boston each winter. And in this documentary appropriately done under the sign of “no regrets” in which tells Tom’s take on much that happened then he takes a turn, an important oral tradition turn, as folk historian.
He takes us, even those of us who were in the whirl of some of it back then to those key moments when we were looking for something rooted, something that would make us pop in the red scare Cold War night of the early 1960s. Needless to say the legendary Club 47 in Cambridge gets plenty of attention as does his own fitful start in getting his material recorded, the continuing struggle from what he said. Other coffeehouses and other performers of the time, especially Eric Von Schmidt get a nod of recognition and does the role of key folk FJ Dick Summer in show-casing new work (and the show where I started to pick up my life-long folk “habit”). So if you want to remember those days when you sought refuse in the coffeehouses and church basements, sought a “cheap” date night or, ouch, want to know why your parents are still playing Joshua’s Gone Barbados on the record player as you go out the door Saturday night watch this film.
The Last Of The Classical Lyric Poets?- Bob Dylan’s 121st Dream-With Professor Richard Thomas’ “Why Bob Dylan Matters” In 2017 In Mind
[During the past several years, which has built up some extra stream the past couple of year, there has been a storm brewing among the writers who write for various departments in this space, for the American Left History blog (and the on-line Progressive American, American Film Gazette and American Folk Gazette websites with which we have fraternal relations including cross-publication of certain articles). Since a great deal of the storm has subsided after we have now reached agreement on some decisions about the road forward I feel it is appropriate as the about to retire administrator to let the reading public know what those decisions entail, what way we are heading. Over the past few years we have brought younger writers like Zack James, Bradley Fox, Jr., Alden Riley and the writer of the article below, Lance Lawrence, in to begin the transition away from writers, including myself, who were totally “washed clean” as one of the older writers Fritz Taylor is fond of saying by the turbulent 1960s, a watershed in American culture, politics and social arrangements.
While it has been entirely possible to read plenty of other material including older films, music and books over the years the strongest component, the subject that has held sway more often than not has been somehow involved with the growing up days in the 1950s and coming of age in the 1960s of the first wave of writers. That has tilted all have agreed, although I have dissented, vigorously dissented as to the degree and to the extent of my alleged role in the process, the axis of the American Left History experience we are trying to educate people about and preserve too one-sidedly around experience from fifty or sixty years ago when we came of age as if nothing has happened since then beyond the long haul rearguard actions against the reactionary trends of the past forty or so years when we have taken it on the chin once the “60s” ebbed.
Almost naturally the storm (what my old high school friend and low time associate here oldster Sam Lowell called a “tempest in a teapot” as he sided with the younger writers against the old guard, against my leadership casting the decisive vote against me) reflected the generational divide-the sensibilities of the old guard against the very different perspectives of the younger writers who were plainly way too young to have appreciated except second-hand all the tales and lies that we older folk have imposed on them. This whole dispute came to a head, although other similar disputes this year played a role, over the figure of Bob Dylan not what Lance will write about below but an earlier dispute over our tendency to have a music review on every one of the seemingly never-ending, seemingly never-ending to me as well, bootleg series volumes including Volume 12 which Zack had considered nothing but a commercial rip-off and composed of nothing but a million out takes and other crap and not worthy of giving review space here.
That dispute was the beginning of our awakening to the fact that not everything the man (our “the Man”) did was pure gold something which would have been blasphemy if one of older generation had uttered those words. The hard fact, as the younger writers were at pains to explain, younger writers who self-styled themselves as the “Young Turks,” Bob Dylan to the extent than any of them listened to him or saw him as anything but some old fogy who will probably die on the road doing his two hundred boring concerts a year, to draw anything from his music was something like our reaction to Frank Sinatra when we were young. Square, too square. That comment by I think Bradley Fox cut me especially to the quick. In any case other writers can give their respective takes on what has gone on of late. Since I am headed for retirement which just this minute feels like some kind of exile that seems best rather than my going on and on in defense of various objectionable actions I have taken over the past few years. Soon to be retired administrator Peter Paul Markin]
************
By Writer Lance Lawrence
I suppose if a man, if a man like Bob Dylan the subject of this short piece, has lived long enough, has been in the public eye, mostly in his case the public eye of a dwindling number of hard core folkie aficionados then somebody will write what he or she thinks is the definitive say on the subject. Especially some academic somebody like Harvard Professor Richard Thomas who has indeed written a treatise called “Why Bob Dylan Matters” where he regales the brethren, the devotees who will buy the book because they buy everything Dylan-etched including bogus Bootleg series volumes some of which are nothing but stuff better left on the cutting room floor. The good professor’s premise is that Mister Dylan is the second coming of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid, who knows maybe Cato and Cicero too in the “big tent” lyrical poet pantheon.
Originally this piece was going to be written by I think Bart Webber, one of the older writers who would probably like a number of the older writers in this space, on this American Left History blog drool on and on in agreement with the good professor. (This is nothing personal against Bart which has pulled me out of more dead-ends on stories than I care to count but he unlike the more thoughtful Sam Lowell who was like a breath of fresh air in the dispute Markin mentioned above in that quasi-introduction was his most rabid supporter.) Would have make up a laudatory piece which according to my archival research on this site has had over four hundred Bob Dylan-related articles almost all of them “soft-ball puffs” like Dylan was the King of the world and not the nightshade of the old guard. Looking over the archives nobody except Leon Trotsky, who after all was a world historic revolutionary, led a real revolution, and was a key historic figure even if he seemed to have been snake-bitten in his struggle to keep the faith in the Bolshevik future when old “Uncle Joe” Stalin bared his fangs in public has more entries.
Markin, I might as well say it since we have all been given the go ahead to give our respective takes on the internal fight now that the smoke has apparently cleared, mercifully soon to be retired Markin, or is it “purged” like his buddy Trotsky, started the whole madness early in his regime on when he wrote a ton of his own stuff rather than just run the site and hand out assignments as he was supposed to do. He lashed together extensive 3000 word reviews of Dylan’s five or ten first albums and then went over the top when he decided several years ago to write a series entitled “Not Bob Dylan.” That series seemingly endless series about the ten million or so it seemed male folkies who had not been dubbed by Time magazine to be the “King” of the 1960s folk minute (and it was only a minute despite all the hoopla here making it seem like some world-historic event like Trotsky’s Russian Revolution which even I could see had some merit for that designation rather than a tepid passing fad) and who had gone on to something else or who still inhabit the nether-world of the backwaters folk venue world.
I swear Markin must have written up the employment bios, resumes, and fates of every guy who knew three chords and a Woody Guthrie song learned in seventh grade music appreciation class with the likes of Mister Larkin at my middle school who walked into a coffeehouse back then. Even guys I had never heard of in passing like Erick Saint Jean who was supposed to be big in Boston and New York and Manny Silver who was supposed to be the greatest lyric writer since Woody (and probably if Professor Thomas took a whack at it probably since Milton or somebody like that). If I hear one more word about those guys, hell now that I think about it he also added insult to injury by doing a series on the ten million folkie women who were “Not Joan Baez” Dylan’s paramour and the queen of that 1960s folk minute (according to omnipotent Time).
But enough of taking cracks at the folk aficionados wherever they are who saw Dylan as a god, a guy who wrote lyrics better than he could sing. Frankly the guy was a has-been by my time, a leader of the folk minute that had passed mercifully away. We used to laugh at the graying long-haired guys guitar in hand in the subway still singing covers of his songs while the trains roared by. Would drop a dollar in the guitar case if they DID NOT sing Blowin’ In The Wind or The Times Are A-Changin’ one more freaking time remembering Mr. Larkin that music teacher in seventh grade, another guy from the 1960s line-up, trying to get us to sing that crap since the words were so meaningful, so important to know and remember according to him.
Finally since I am supposed to be an objective reporter of sorts, supposed to give all sides a short at reasoned opinion let me take Professor Thomas’ thesis at face value. Now my take on Homer is that he wrote pretty good stories made up of whole cloth no crime and created quite an oral tradition. Same with plenty of Greeks and Romans we read about in high school and college. They survived the cut, they represented some pretty high standards for the lyric form. Got quite workout by Miss Laverty my high school English teacher who was crazy for those guys and the way she read their words out loud you could see why they lasted. Literary comparisons aside about who was the king the lyrical poetic hill who except those guys like Markin and Sam Lowell, despite his honorable part in our internal fight, and who I do not believe know one song later than maybe 1972 which everybody will admit is a long time to be stuck on an old needle even listens to Dylan anymore except for old nostalgia trips.
For those three people who may be interested in exploring Professor Thomas’s ideas, see what makes him tick, see why he seemingly a rational man is a Dylan aficionado who probably one of the two guys who bought that dastardly Volume 12 which started this “revolution” here is a link to an NPR On Point broadcast hosted by Tom Ashbrook where the good professor holds forth:
[Although Professor Thomas’ thesis about Dylan’s place in the pantheon was not central to the recent disputes among the coterie of writers who ply their trade here Dylan did figure in the mix when all hell broke loose the day Zack James refused to write a review on Volume 12 of the never-ending Bootleg series. I would still be surprised if going out the door Pete Markin will let my “venomous” words see the light of day. As is. If he does then maybe we will have new day after all.]
Legend-Slayer Will Bradley Rides Again-Don’t Believe All That Dime-Store Zane Grey Nonsense About How The West (Western United States) Was Won-Gary Cooper’s “Man Of The West” (1958)- A Film Review, Of Sorts
By Will Bradley
I must admit that when I started out back in late 2016 feuding back and forth with fellow film reviewer Seth Garth over the overblown reputation of English private investigator or whatever he called himself back then Sherlock Holmes (since exposed as a master criminal who was responsible for half the crime in greater London in his time whose real name was Larry Lawrence, no relationship to our own Lance) that I would have never believed that I could gather a following in my lonely attempts to destroy, eliminate, banish or whatever word you like some pretty bad characters. Guys, and it has been mainly guys thus far, maybe reflecting his-story not her-story on the evil side of life in the past and elsewhere who must have had pretty good press agents, publicity guys, who wrote whatever drivel the hard-pressed populations would believe just to keep their guys in the limelight. Keep their reputations all bright and shiny when the reality was quite different.
I have already given the example of the shoddy Holmes, oh, Lawrence and his dear friend Doc Watson (I don’t want to get into that “gay” Homintern business that Seth tried to run by a candid world which didn’t buy his take for a minute after my expose about Larry and Doc’s serious criminal enterprises which helped deflate those bastards’ reputations forthwith). There has also been since I began my work a noticeable decline in the reputations of others I have exposed like cheapjack slave-driver, sorry tenant farmer, peasant, serf, yeoman-driver Robin Hood, besotted Don Juan (real name Jose Rios out of Aragon who gained his “fame” via some convent beauties’ depraved fantasies while held captive those unholy dungeons, impotent, yes impotent we now have some scientific evidence for what for years was mere speculation, imposter Casanova and the wicked chattel owner Captain Blood out of Jamaica slavery markets working night and day to expand the fucking empire.
Strangely the only one who I have not been able to bring down is the so-called legendary early aviator and aeronautic innovator Johnny Cielo who claimed his whole worthless life to have invented flight despite the fact that he was born in 1910 several years after the Wright Brother joined Icarus in the legendary category down at Kitty Hawk. Maybe it is because he is a more modern example of bloated reputation which people are more inclined to believe but if anything people I run into despite the reams of documents proving he was nothing but a bush pilot, never ran guns to Fidel and the hermanos in the old days, never knew Rita Hayworth either have elevated this heel to some kind of god or something rather than bum of the month. Despite my documentation, despite the manifest on that last flight telling the whole candid world, or even the non-candid world, that he was taking high-end passengers between Key West and Naples down in Florida and had perished in the Gulf of Mexico not in the Caribbean heading toward Cuba with a shipment of guns as the legend has it. I will have to see who his press agent was, is. He or she should get a ton of money for their commissary at whatever prison they should wind up in.
After all that foreplay today we are going big again, going down and dirty with what in America is something like the holy of holies-the Old West, the Wild West when men, mostly men settled things with iron and plenty of slugs-bullets and whiskey. From Jesse James to the famed and underrated Johnny Young just before World War I which is really the last time you can talk about the Old West. You didn’t have to be Professor Turner over at Harvard to know that once you got to the Pacific your chances that the frontier was vanishing were pretty strong. Yeah from Jesse and Johnny and everybody in between these bums have gotten a free ride, have been made legends out of whole cloth. Got their respective legendary starts from some guy in New York writing dime-store novels from the comfort of his room at the Brown Hotel-in New York City. That in any case is how I was able to track down the legend of a guy named Link Jones who went by a million other names in his stealing, thieving murdering time like Dock Tobin, Billie Ellis, and I think Gary Cooper, stealing the rangy homespun actor’s name even before he had it although I couldn’t definitely confirm that last one.
This one defies belief, belief that an admitted stone-cold killer and robber like Link could throw sand in our eyes and go straight after a lifetime of crime, that should have set alarms off right there. (Admitted his transgressions to Jackie Jenkins, the famous, make that infamous New York World reporter who did more than his fair share of bulling us about these “men of the west” who downplayed the bloodthirsty part to make Link readership worthy) But see old Mister Grey, Louie Le Marr, Cormac McCormick, Larry Murphy and their ilk did their jobs well, sold a million copies of the bogus book, books really detailing the bush-whackers, tramps, bums and sociopaths who really populated the West back in the day all prettified and there you have it. Like I said without leaving Manhattan. Nice work if you could get it, right. Reality check: you had to have chewed up your chances in the East, had to have been on the run or had no other recourse to pick up stakes and head West to drought, famine, desperadoes, “injuns,” now indigenous peoples or Native American depending on where you are, coyotes, avalanches, sod-busting, range wars, grifters, water wars, coal dust, cannibals, train smoke and dreams, poison wells, buffalo stampedes, social diseases, do I have to explain that, drifters, con men and women and craven insects and tumbleweed.
With all those strikes again success old Zane and his crowd really had their work cut out for them although since they were writing for city-slickers who were not heading west, not going to the aforementioned hazards except in books naturally the guy, here one Link Jones, had to be ramrod straight in the saddle, long and tall, with that “aw shucks” manner and slow-rolling drawl. Christ they cookie-cut these guys except maybe the real deal Sam Shepard who really was long and tall and slow-draw talking (not slow at shooting though as many a man found out). Sam could have been on the cover of old Professor Turner’s opus, could have shown rum brave Link Jones a thing or two.
Of course today a million sociologists, and maybe half a million psychiatrists, will defend Link, will say it was a dysfunctional homelife, no mother, a bastard of a “father” figure in Dock Tobin, whose real name after my research was Cobb, wanted in six states-dead or alive as was Link- and his natural sons, Jack and Slim, plus a couple of stray villains in the mix, who taught him every evil known to man, woman too. Bullshit. Link, at least according to legend which we will bust quickly below, broke loose one day, repented, went straight after serving some time in some purgatory town out in the prairie somewhere, got married, had kids. Nice story right. More Grey-like malarkey.
Here is the legend in all its glory with my refutations. Link, supposedly “reformed” was sent on a mission from his Podunk town to go to Forth Worth down in Texas to get the town a schoolteacher and had enough money to pay the required year’s salary to get her to leave everything in a big city (for the time) to teach a bunch of wooden-headed kids out on the prairie. Reel them in. Christ Link couldn’t spell teacher never mind get one. Truth: he took the dough alright but spent it all in a couple of days in Dallas on some whore named Billie, Billie something, although the only one I was able to find who spent time with Link was a whore named Julie who in the end ran off with the last of his dough when he was running low after another blood-simple kill streak. Even better, with no dough and nothing better to do he just happens to borrow some dough from some grifter with a sad story and took a train ride to Fort Worth which just happened to get robbed by Dock Tobin, remember Cobb, and his boys. Just happens to take some Judy, Julie, some woman met on the rebound, there were almost as many desperate to leave the East as men who figured to make a killing selling themselves and then maybe see what happened when the dust settled, Billie if you like to the gang’s hiding place, just happens to “play along” with Dock to the rob the El Dorado Bank of their dreams and when that flushed down the toilet wastes the whole lot of them after they had ravished Julie, his woman.
Believe all that at your peril. Real deal, Link masterminded the robbery, had planted himself on the train in order to get to Dock and his own worn-out dreams and only wasted the gang, wasted Dock and the boys because they had wasted his time on a freaking ghost town exploit. Had it planned he would take all the dough and was pissed off when Dock hadn’t done his homework on the real situation in El Dorado. Killed one cousin just for the hell of it. By the way all that reformed married and kids’ stuff was just a cover when women “took a shine to him” like this Julie. He might have begotten kids but he wasn’t claiming them, not supporting them. The real Link would finally face the hangman in Colorado after about six more cold-blooded murders and a dozen more bank and train robberies. Julie fell by the wayside some time before Link’s end taking what was left of his and was never heard from again probably went back to whoring in Denver when they became a big cattle stockyard. Women like her always landed on their feet. I hope to high hell that Link Jones doesn’t like Johnny Cielo prove to be “Teflon man” just because half the American populations is enthralled by Old West nostalgia bits and pieces.
Deal Them Off The Top, Brother, Deal Them Straight Off The Top--With Eric Holden’s “The Cincinnati Kid” In Mind
[Every once in a while a subject comes up, here gambling through the prism of high stakes poker to be the top dog, that someone has written about previously, then gambling through the prism of high stakes pool to be the top dog, and did such a well thought of job at it that good sense requires that person to take a stab at the new subject which in this case is really a variation on the older subject-who and how to get to be number one, numbero uno, in your chosen profession when the guy at the top seems immovable, seems immortal. That was the case when Josh Breslin wrote when he was younger for the East Bay Eye in the late 1960s and which subsequently has been posted in this space with some additional editing about young, handsome and here is the fatal kicker impetuous “Fast Eddie” Felton’s rise in the world of cigarette-strewn and whiskey bottle smoky pool halls until he came up against the king of the hill a guy named Jackie “Tubby” Gleason and got his clock cleaned. Lost his angel girl too to some one-eyed pimp daddy whom she took around the world on the rebound once Fast Eddie had that “loser” tag tattooed on him, on his forehead although anybody even vaguely familiar with that sport didn’t need that identification mark to know he had tapped out, news in such circles moves fast. Yeah impetuous had to go against the tiger before he was ready, before he broke his “impetuous jones” lost everything until he faded and went back to cheap street just another guy hustling nickels and dimes from punk kid amateurs out in some Joe’s Pool Hall in Peoria who didn’t know he touched the big time before he became pimp meat.
So we, the soon to be retired administrator on this site, Pete Markin, and I, Greg Green, now the acting administrator to see how I like it and see if I can help reverse some narrowing of perspective on this site over the past several years when a lot of the action has centered on the turbulent 1960s and not much else, invited Josh to give us what film critic emeritus Sam Lowell loves to call the “skinny” on the biggest poker game, stud poker of course what else, that ever hit the wicked sun- drenched and fucking humid town of New Orleans back in the 1930s, the time of the great hunger among plenty of guys looking to be top dog on the sly. Just to set the stage this is a tale about the rise of another young, handsome and here is without making this thing a cautionary tale the fatal kicker impetuous in the world of stud poker, a guy named Steve McQueen although he went by a million names. I think Josh said at the time of this event Eric Holden, but everybody called him the Cincinnati Kid although as Josh mentioned this kid had never been to that Ohio River city, had never really been north of Memphis and probably couldn’t pinpoint the place if you gave him three chances for a buck.
The rise of the Kid until he hit the buzz saw of ancient Lance Robinson who like Tubby Gleason with Fast Eddie cleaned his clock and sent him back to cheap street to nurse his wounds is what interested Josh. Interested the same way young Eddie Felton interested him when he got the story from Georgie Boy Scott out in some sleazy back-water pool hall when Tubby Gleason finally cashed his check and Josh wanted to what had happened to guys who had taken a run at him when he was in his prime. So when we sent him on the trail after hearing that Lance Robinson had recently gone on to his just rewards as an ancient warrior king of the poker parlors he was almost as eager as when he first sniffed that cigarette-strewn whisky besotted pool hall back in his young reporting days (That changing of names by the way according to Josh pervasive in gambling circles since you never know when you have to skip town owing a million markers to some rough guys and have to head into a dive town where if you used your real name to grab a stake from the hotshot local amateurs they would tar and feather you-they would know how to do that little number no matter how bad they were at your profession.)-Greg Green]
By Joshua Lawrence Breslin
I got this story straight from the “Shooter,” a guy whose real name or at least that is what I always knew him by when I got tipped that he was the guy to get whatever I needed to know about Lance and about his most famous challenger was Carl Malden. I had run into him around Jackson Square in New Orleans. Somebody from the now long faded Lafayette Hotel known more now for fast-hustling hookers paying room rent by the hour (or rather their Johns doing the honors) than poker-faced poker players had tipped me that Shooter might know where world historic defeated pool-player “Fast Eddie” Felton might be nursing his wounds and the Shooter told me that was old hat, Fast Eddie was working the steamboat tourist trade up and down the Mississippi since he got stripped naked by Tubby Gleason and was not story, zero in the pool hall world where it counted down in the human sink along with the whores, pimps and stone ass junkies. I got the Felton story almost despite the Shooter once he knew that I knew he, the Shooter, had taken his liberties like a lot of guys had with this kinky stone ass junkie Angelica who used to be Fast Eddie’s girl until he tanked out while she was riding high with Fast Eddie. I threatened Shooter with the hard ass fact that when I found Fast Eddie which I would do eventually I would lay that very juicy piece of information on him and the guy crumbled like a bent fender in the days when such things happened to fenders almost at the touch. (You already know from Greg Green’s thoughtful introduction that I did get the story, did get some awards for the piece, the coveted Globe for one, and that I did not tell Fast Eddie who had not aged gracefully what with a booze and jone habit stacked together that his angel girlfriend had taken Shooter around the world while Eddie was playing some rich Memphis banker downstairs in his hillside mansion. Fuck it he probably would not have cared one way or the other-yesterday’s news but Shooter was shaky to buy my line.)
The story Shooter really wanted to tell was about a guy named Eric Holden, something like that who was the cat’s meow at poker, five card stud poker in case anybody was asking, the only kind, serious kind to get a man’s blood up and who knew Fast Eddie in passing since they both had hung out at Sam Levine’s pool hall over on the low rent end of Bourbon Street where the amateurs, the rising stars with no dough backing them up hung looking for attention and the guys on the run who kept a low profile in the smoking background. I don’t think from what I learned later that Eddie and Eric knew each all that well since they were running different sides of the street once this Eric figured he would end up in some back alley face down if he played any serious money pools but had this almost mathematically precise mind for stud poker (and nerves of steel a not unimportant attribute if you are going up against the king of the hill). The Shooter told a story about how Fast Eddie always the hustler told Eric that he would spot him three balls if he would “shoot pools” his favorite expression for a hundred bucks. Eric told him to fuck off that “it was not his game.” Yeah both young, from hunger, handsome, ladies handsome but both young men maybe a little bit too blue-eyed pretty boy for the serious aficionados of pool or poker and fatally flawed with those impetuous natures like they were gods, gods pure and simple.
Before I retell the Shooter’s tale I had better give you his bone fides. Shooter like a lot of guys before World War II was pretty footloose, was from what later guys up my way in Olde Sacco in Maine would call “from hunger,” I know they were, I, was. Very early on he would hustle his friends for dimes and quarters playing card tricks to while away the time until he got his first stake. Maybe a hundred bucks which was real money then among the squares although before he hit bottom he was using hundred dollar bills as straws for his cocaine habit lines. He moved pretty quickly up the stud poker food chain, got a reputation as a tough guy to beat which is an excellent advertisement in that profession since it will draw all kind of guys to “prove” you are a one-shot wonder, just lucky with the rubes. Probably helped that build-up with about twenty shots of straight whisky. His aim all that time was to build a reputation in order to get a shot at the reigning king of the hill, guess who even back then, Lance Robinson. Well the long and short of it was that when that big match occurred in Memphis old King Lance kicked out the jams on the Shooter in less that twenty-four hours, something of a record in high stakes poker at the time among the top contenders.
That experience left the Shooter very shaken, left him always working the percentages thereafter, win a little, lose a little, and keep your hand in until you find a guy who could beat this Lance. Now when the Shooter is telling me this story he is already an old man, is reliving some younger dreams about bringing the Kid along. After his defeat at the hands of Lance the Shooter also began to toy with other gambling ventures which makes senses since win a little, lose a little makes for very tight budgets and screams from irate landlords and bill collectors. He took up horses, pool, and cock fights which is how his honey to be introduced in a minute got her sexual juices up watching those cocks go at it, strange bitch it seemed to me but the Shooter remained true blue to her even when she blew town on him the last time with a half a hundred thou. (On that barbarian cock fight stuff remember this is Louisiana, Cajun country where such “traditions” were still honored even though the sport was illegal in the state.)
Shooter would drift through the towns all up and down the Mississippi trying as he said “to do the best he could.” It was in Shreveport where he ran into the Kid the first time who was working in a pool hall. Shreveport is also where he met his first wife, this Maggie Ann, the cock fight frill, who was working in Madame LaRue’s whorehouse when he picked her out of the line-up and she took him around the world. This Maggie Ann is important to the story later when the big match comes around but every time the Shooter mentioned her name to me he added “that whore” so he was still hot under the collar about her whorish strutting ways even when they were married, maybe especially when they were married and he was out of town a lot trying hustle dough to keep her in clover. No dice in the end although not for the Shooter’s not trying since she led him a merry chase and that ain’t no lie.
So the Shooter once the Kid hits New Orleans teams up with him, teaches him a few things and starts working to get him a bankroll in order to face down this Lance. Things were moving along well until the Kid ran into some country girl, Laura, whom the Kid always called Tuesday since that was the day that they met and he had had big night cleaning up five Gs off the big boys at the Lafayette Hotel weekly game, with blonde hair and doe-like eyes all blue and he fell, fell hard for her (this despite grabbing Maggie Ann’s free ass for getting his ashes hauled every time Shooter was out of town-and a couple of times when he was in town and Maggie Ann was testing her coquettish whorish ways to see if he would belt her one). Although Shooter didn’t know about the stuff between Maggie Ann and the Kid until she was ready to leave town and wanted to rub it in, rub salt in Shooter’s loveless wounds and told him every detail about every guy she had done, and a couple of girls too, told him she had blown all his friends for good measure, he knew that having a girl hanging over the Kid as he was trying to go for the brass ring was the kiss of death, would be an albatross around his neck. He wouldn’t listen, told Shooter he could beat Lance, beat the old man like a gong without working up a sweat. Almost broke the whole thing off when just before the big Lafayette Hotel game he snuck down to Cajun country to see this Tuesday and have some sex with her which would, no doubt in the Shooter’s mind, make him too loose, too unfocused on his mission.
So the big day comes and everybody who is anybody around Louisiana gambling circles showed up for the Kid-Lance show-down. The Shooter could tell after about fifteen seconds that the Kid had had his way with this Tuesday and that his energies would be sapped. Jesus. Now the way these games, this high stakes stud poker works is a lot different from some back room at Mick’s gin mill where Mick has paid off the coppers for the amateurs to play for a few bucks and he gets a cut off the top for his services. They have certain protocol or they did until guys like Reno Red build a casino on up in the mountains just short of California and Bugsy Segal built Xanadu out in the Los Vegas deserts. A big game would take place in an up-scale hotel where the manager paid off the coppers to keep away and the gamblers would rent out a suite of rooms to do their business in.
High stakes stud poker was, is, played to the death, played until somebody cries “uncle” and can’t or won’t raise anymore dough to stay in the game. So the whole process can take hours, days and a suite with bedrooms and the like is a bare minimum requirement. Besides a high stakes game will draw many interested spectators to see if the champ will be dethroned but more likely to bet on the oncome, bet big. (One of the fastest pieces of action on the sidelines which would put those who bet today on each play in a football or basketball game to shame is to bet on every turn of the card for say $100 a shot-the money changes hands very quickly and somebody can get very rich very fast-or tap out the same way.
In the old days the once elegant now faded Lafayette Hotel down near the breakwaters of the Mississippi River was the stop for high rollers coming to play in New Orleans. Every half decent stud poker player dreamed of showing his (or occasionally her) stuff in those large well-provisioned rooms against all-comers. Up and coming guys would say “I’m heading to the Lafayette” even when they were stumbling around to get stakes to play in Riley’s Pub back room dollar limit games. That included the Kid when he was coming up, when the Shooter was bringing him along and wanted to entice him with that glitter. So the big game was played up in Suite 606, a suite specifically reserved for poker players who chipped into pay the freight, to pay the room rate.
Like I said these events would draw a crowd from all over, all over the East sometimes all the way up to Boston. I mentioned the side bettors but as well in most games others beside in this case the young Kid and the old Lance opted for a seat in the game to see if that day maybe their luck would change and they could by default become king of the hill. Such dreams keep certain men (and occasionally women) afloat in a tough and grimy world. This day would find a few guys who had been “gutted” somehow that inelegant word used to describe cutting up fish or livestock was the term of art for those thrown on the scrapheap by either the Kid or Lance.
There was Pig, a low rent guy who made his money from chiseling cheapjack guys in those back alley games enough to grab a stake and take his chances. Pig that day very early on sweating like a pig would fall early since he always worried about whether his stake would last long enough. Lance made toast of him. There was Doc who kept his numbers book, his lined drawn tables which showed him the percentages with each upturned card. He faded without a whimper once his figures went south on him as they naturally would when one is betting on whether a guy is bluffing or really has that down card to complete some combination that looked promising. Gone.
Then there was “Yella,” a name from a term familiar in race-conscious New Orleans which meant that somewhere along the way he had white blood in him which made him acceptable in white society somewhat, that somewhat being good enough to get “gutted” by both the Kid and Lance at the poker table in his time. Although Doc and Pig were pretty non-descript second-rate actors in this game Yella had an interesting past having gone to New York City when he was younger and set the town on fire at the Cotton Club when he had his own jazz band back in the 1920s Age of Jazz that the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald endlessly wrote about and coined the term. A New Orleans guy like Louie Armstrong was just too black for the white upper-crust crowd which frequented that uptown Harlem establishment but Yella fit right in. Then the Great Depression set in and jazz and jazz bands took a back seat. When he saw the writing on the wall the resourceful Yella won a handful of dough in a game at the Plaza Hotel against a bunch of Mayfair swells and returned to New Orleans and first pimped on Bourbon Street and the teamed with Madame LaRue to set up a high end bordello complete with girls for every kind of taste from a trip around the world to a quick blow-job when the latter was kind of an exotic treat unlike later when high school girls were doing it as a rite of passage in some places to keep some car freak lover at bay down in some Squaw Rock lovers’ lane. (As it turned out although nobody talked about it Yella had pimped for Maggie Ann when she first hit town from Podunk down in the bayou and he would later get Tuesday as a favor to the Kid going down that road although not before as he said “sampling the wares” in both cases.) Despite that interesting background when the deal went down Yella tapped out early. Gone too.
Taking up the last seat, usually six was the maximum number at the table at any one time, was the Shooter who was in for a while as a player until things settled out and he just dealt them out, dealt them from the top. We know Shooter’s story or enough to get us by once we know that he had been “gutted” by the old man and once we know his trials and tribulations trying to keep Maggie Ann in style and away from every stray dog of a man who caught her eye. Tough work which made dealing high stakes poker games to get some dough like child’s play. Shooter would fold after the first day and so deep into the second day it was Lance against the Kid, one on one.
Of course these high stakes games, actually even those back room ones, had a certain rhythm, a certain protocol. One was since the games were long, could be days long, any player could call himself out for a while and not lose his play at the table. Another was that if a player tapped out he or she had half an hour to raise additional cash. For known players, markers, IOUs, were acceptable and many times the only way to keep players going until they had to lay low and pay some dough toward the markers was to take markers or they would be shut out of games. Players, if they agreed, could deal themselves if there was no back-up dealer available that any players trusted enough. The dealer could also call himself out and that is why in most games a back-up dealer was hanging around.
In this meet they back up was none other than Missouri Moll who just then had tapped out having had a bad run at blackjack. She like Yella was interesting being one of the few high stakes female players. They say Moll had gotten her start in the famous Mrs. McCabe’s whorehouse up in the Klondike, up in gold country before that panned out where the girls in that girl-starved country charged (or rather Mrs. McCabe charged) five hundred dollars cash or gold for their “favors,” a quaint term of the times before World War II. This Mrs. McCabe (she was not married but having the Mrs. kept the men away from her door-mostly) is reputed to be the “inventor” of “going under the table,” of giving guys playing cards blowjobs, head, whatever you call oral sex in your neighborhood without having to leave the table to keep up their spirits so to speak (she did not do missionary sex just the blow-jobs although more than one guy would be willing to give her a fistful of gold when she was younger for the pleasure).
Whatever the truth of Mrs. McCabe’s invention Moll learned that little trick as she rose in the ranks of high stakes poker players. Any time she tapped out and needed to raise cash fast she would go to work (not always “under the table” giving new meaning to that expression but in an adjacent bedroom) and within a half hour would have five hundred or a thousand just like that. (Many guys would hope for her to tap out including Lance when he was younger just to keep their “spirits” up.). Now older and maybe wiser she was just backing up the action although she still had enough looks for the older guys to maybe take a run at her if she needed some dough.
Not all the action as I pointed out was around the table. Money is a magnet for the pure bettor and the interested parties with cash to wager on any outcomes. A couple of guys, Mack from Detroit (don’t ask for any other part of his moniker you might wind up floating down the Mississippi) and Ruby Red, can be seen here betting on every flip of the card, on every hand just like today’s sports junkies which as I mentioned before is a tough dollar, is very wearying. The guy though that is important to this part of the story is a guy named Varner, Jody Varner, who father Will left him 28,000 acres of the best bottom land in Mississippi and a company town to feed what he wanted to feed off of. This Jody Varner though was not present by happenstance but because he desperately wants to see Lance fall down. All I have to say is that he had been gutted by Lance and you by now know what the deal is. This Jody seems ready to go through Will’s lifetime of struggle fortune in as short a time as he could between his mulatto mistress and his sporting habits. (As an equal opportunity sexual partner he had his way with the very white Maggie Ann on more than one occasion and would later after the Kid’s fall have his way with that Tuesday when the Kid needed a stake and needed it quickly).
Jody wants Lance beaten so badly that he did not want to leave anything to chance. He has conned the Shooter who after-all only had his reputation for fair-dealing on the line to send a few off-hand high cards the Kid’s way. The Shooter balked but being vain about Maggie Ann and her tramp-like ways which were not generally known he succumbed when Jody told him he was going to send her back to some backwater whorehouse going down on Cajun boys if he did not do as told.
In the end it didn’t do Shooter any good since the Kid spotted what he was doing from the first hand he tried to do it. In the end it didn’t matter for Shooter either since that Maggie Ann ran off with some travelling salesman who promised her the world. More importantly in the end it didn’t matter as well since ancient Lance played the Kid like a fiddle. See the Kid never having played the old man and had only stories about how he gutted one guy or another the Kid had no clue, no clue at all about how Lance played out the play. About how without saying a word he would stand up and seem in pain over a back spasm. How he would after a couple of hours call for a rest while the Kid was hot and in the meantime went crazy waiting for Lance to return. Worse of all he was clueless when he mistook a few false hands that Lance let him win and left him suspecting Lance of senility. That was the real action leading up to the “kill”-that last hand when everything matter and the Kid was like putty in Lance’s hands.
Even though the Kid gave Lance the battle of his life he forgot the first rule of high stakes stud poker when two or more savvy guys are playing. If a guy keeps calling and raising, calling and raising at thousand dollar increments then you best fold and wait for a change of luck because as sure as shooting a guy like Lance has the goods. When he throws a check for five thou and takes your marker it is way too late-you are a goner. The Kid found out $5000 in the hole hard way when Lance turned over a Jack to complete a flush. Yeah, back to cheap street until Lance retired or kicked the bucket. It would never happen. Maybe he should have checked out where Fast Eddie Felton was hanging and take him up on that three ball handicap for a hundred bucks because he was finished as a big daddy stud poker player now that everybody knew he could be rattled. The only thing for certain after the Kid fell down was that sweet girlfriend Tuesday was going to wear out a few beds and maybe her knees getting that dough for the Kid when Lance called in that marker. (Jody even before she and the Kid left the room gave her his calling card and said he expected to see her soon-the bastard.)
