I Did It My Way-With Bob Dylan’s Frank Sinatra “Shadows In The Night” In Mind

I Did It My Way-With Bob Dylan’s Frank Sinatra “Shadows In The Night” In Mind

By Sam Lowell

If anybody has read the introduction to my review of an early part of these American Songbook series about the legendary Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band dated January 11, 2018 In The Beginning Was The Jug…in the archives you will already know that I have been given the task of writing the history of this site and it personnel as well as the internal in-fighting that roiled the publication over the last few months of 2017 in order to finally put an end to the turmoil. Below is one part of that history which I have decided I need to cut into parts or the whole project will overwhelm me. If you want to skip this and wait until the whole project is archived be my guest. I will let you know when the whole thing is complete.     

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The American Left History blog has been in cyberspace, on-line, for the past fifteen years or so and which readers can reference to any particular article via the ALF archives. What many people do not know is that there has been a much longer history to the ideas and purpose of the site going back to the 1970s and maybe even a little to the 1960s if you add in Peter Paul Markin’s work, the real Peter Paul Markin who I will talk about later when I explain why I used the word “real” before his name. In those days, the Summer of Love, 1967 days the 50^th anniversary last year of which started the firestorm that followed over the latter part of 2017 at this publication Markin worked on and off for The Eye and The East Bay Other two of what were called in those days alternative newspaper to distinguish them from the main stream media which gave short shrift to the political and cultural events that stirred us, you know the New York Times and Washington Post.  Sound familiar? Except those alternative publications did not deal with so-called alternative facts or carry on about conspiracy theories like today but other things of interest to young people, “hippies” for lack of a better word that the mainstream media were clueless about.           

That Peter Paul Markin that I mentioned above won a few awards for his articles, his series on his fellow Vietnam War veterans some who like him had a hard time adjusting to what they called the “real” world, the non-Vietnam world and set up camps and such along the rivers and railroad tracks out in Southern California where he joined them for a time because he himself had a hard time adjusting as well and told their stories. No, that is wrong, let them tell their stories. The series entitled The Embattled Brothers Of Westminster (one of the biggest railroad campsites) would from what I heard inspired Lenny Lawrence to write a very popular song about those lost souls using that title if I recall. So that was one early piece of what would follow over the next forty years or so.

Markin, everybody called him Scribe when he was growing up and that name stuck but I will use Markin here was not alone in working for those publications. After he got back from Vietnam he reunited with Josh Breslin, yes, Josh Breslin who writes for this blog even now so you can start to make the long drawn out connections, a guy from up in Olde Saco, Maine whom he met out in San Francisco during the Summer of Love, 1967 (you can also start to see how that event, how those times played a key role as well in what followed) and Allan Jackson whom he, we, had grown up with in North Adamsville and had followed Markin, as I did as well, out to the Summer of Love. The three of them were all crazy to write, write about the war, write about the counter-culture everything and The Eye and later The East Bay Other were ready-made for guys who wanted to look at the steamy, seamy side of life.          

Like most things in the 1960s when the hammer went down, when the war turned everybody sour, and then later in reaction the other side decided that things had gone too far and started a counter-offensive which more than one writer, young or old, in this space has noted has been going on for the past forty years or so things like grassroots, fly-by-the-seat-of –your-pants and woefully underfunded alternative newspapers were going to ground in droves. That was the fate of those two papers. Josh, Markin, Allan and I would join them as well in the mid-1970s after I had been roaming around the country “sowing my oats” as my grandfather used to say although he would have been mortified at my motto, our generational motto-“drugs, sex, and rock and roll” were crazy to continue writing, writing the kind of stuff they had been writing but with a little more of a political twist than those mainly culturally-oriented papers had been. That is where the idea for Progressive Nation came from in the beginning. The Progressive Nation that a number of us still write for on occasion although it had changed from our hands and from our brand of left-wing street politics many years ago.         

That idea though almost went stillborn for a while for one main reason-that real Peter Paul Markin who I have been alluding to. We had gathered some seed money from a few still extant “hippies” with trust funds to get the publication started mainly through Markin and Josh’s connections via The Eye and The East Bay Other. The rest of the financing would come from advertisers (we were totally naïve about the horrible influence that would have on what we were trying to do with our good idea. If you want a current day example of just how off the rails a good idea can go once the advertisers sink their claws in check out an early version of Rolling Stone and one today-Egad) and other “angels” and subscribers. Then Markin ran away with the money to buy dope, to buy the emerging cocaine that he would eventually become addicted to and which would cost him his life down in Sonora, Mexico over a busted drug deal when he was the loser, the six feet under in a potter’s field grave which still has unexplained parts to the story until this day.        

That obviously is the bad part about Markin, that “from hunger” part that he more than the rest of us never got over. And which Vietnam only accentuated. Not that the war did him in like many others but it did not help either the few times he would talk about his experiences, about what he had had to do, and had seen others do as well in that hell-hole. But the good part, the part that wanted the revolution to win, the world to be turned upside down is the part we knew and loved. Not all the guys we grew up with had those same feelings, the guys who had no dough like us and hung around street corners to get out of tumultuous home life, but a small crew did, a crew that was always led by Markin. Not a leader in the organizational sense that was Frankie Riley who has written a few things here about Markin, but in the spiritual sense is the best way I can put it.

That is what has bound Allan Jackson, Si Lannon, Jack Callahan, Bart Webber, Frank and me over the long years. That buying into Markin’s vision even though he personally could not go the distance, came up short. Funny before we lost track of him, or really Josh Breslin lost track of him since he was his housemate in Oakland in the days when they had a communal house there and he was the last person to see Markin alive in America Markin would always say that Progressive Nation would carry us into our old ages. That did not happen since I have already mentioned he flew the coop and later when we got some more dough and published for a while we sold that enterprise off when the political winds shifted dramatically in the 1980s and we had to cut our loses. What did happen and made Markin a prophet after all was that we then established the hard copy version of ALH and then went on-line I think in 2003. All from that original ideal spawned by the real Markin. So it was a no-brainer when we started the on-line version that Allan Jackson our site manager when it came time to take cyberspace necessary monikers would go back to the old days, to our growing up days and honor our fallen brother by using his moniker in this space. Hell, it just seemed right.

More next time

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A couple of years ago when I was Senior Film Critic before I gained emeritus status and before Greg Green the new site manager abolished all titles which the previous site manager had bestowed on senior personnel, many his longtime friends and co-workers I did a review of Bob Dylan’s latest CD, Shadows In The Night, a tribute to the king of Tin Pan Alley Frank Sinatra. In that review I noted that such an effort was bound to happen if Dylan lived long enough. Strange as it may seem to a generation, the generation of ’68, the AARP generation, okay, baby-boomers who came of age with the clarion call put forth musically by Bob Dylan and others to dramatically break with the music of our parents’ pasts, the music that got them through the Great Depression and slogging through World War II, he has put out an album featuring the work of Mr. Frank Sinatra the king of that era in many our parents’ households. The music of the Broadway shows, Tin Pan Alley, Cole Porter/Irving Berlin/ the Gershwins and so on. That proposition though seems less strange if you are not totally mired in the Bob Dylan protest minute of the early 1960s when he, whether he wanted that designation or not, was the “voice of a generation,” catching the new breeze a lot of us felt coming through the land.

What Dylan has been about for the greater part of his career has been as an entertainer, a guy who sings his songs to the crowd and hopes they share his feelings for his songs however he is interpreting them at the time. Just like Frank when he was in high tide. What Dylan has also been about through it all has been a deep and abiding respect for the American songbook (look on YouTube to a clip from Don’t Look Back where he is singing Hank Williams stuff or a ton of country stuff from the Basement tapes). In the old days that was looking for roots, roots music from the mountains, the desolate oceans, the slave quarters, along the rivers and Dylan’s hero then was Woody Guthrie. But the American songbook is a “big tent” operation and the Tin Pan Alley that he broke from when he became his own songwriter is an important part of the overall tradition and now his hero is Frank Sinatra.

I may long for the old protest songs, the songs from the album pictured above, you know Blowin’ In The Wind, The Times Are A Changin’ stuff like that, the roots music and not just Woody but Hank, Tex-Mex, the Carters, the odd and unusual like Desolation Row or his cover of Lonnie Johnson’s Tomorrow Night but Dylan has sought to entertain and there is room in his tent for the king of Tin Pan Alley (as Billie Holiday was the queen). Having heard Dylan live and in concert over the past several years with his grating lost voice (it was always about the lyrics not the voice even when young but now that voice seems not to bad) I do wonder though how much production was needed to get the wrinkles out of that voice to sing as smoothly as the “Chairman of the boards.” What goes around comes around.             

***Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- With The Dubs Could This Be Magic In Mind- Jenny Dolan Speaks Her Mind, Circa 1962

***Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- With The Dubs Could This Be Magic In Mind- Jenny Dolan Speaks Her Mind, Circa 1962

By Si Lannon

[Some of the stories from the old Acre working-class neighborhood in deathless North Adamsville by some of the original “present at the creation” older writers which former site manager Allan Jackson (a former Acre denizen himself) let them do as they pleased seem worthy of an additional presentation. What Allan called an encore presentation when he did a re-run of a rock and roll series based on these same Acre corner boy experiences. With this proviso that I do some introductions and some updating if necessary.

I should point out that I am not of that Acre corner older boy generation which came of age in the 1960s (I came of age with guys like writers here Zack James and Lance Lawrence about a decade later although Zack’s oldest brother Alex had spoon-fed Zack on stories of the old days in their Acre neighborhood). Thus on some occasions when I reviewed these stories they set my teeth on edge since I came up in a fairly rich family in New York and had never brushed shoulders with poverty, with what that meant and never either had anything but a storybook knowledge of corner boy life except I steered very clear of the town toughs in Croton-on-Hudson where I grew up).

That said some stories are eternal like the one here where anybody, certainly any young woman, any high school young woman could relate to Jenny Dolan’s longings for some boy who seemingly didn’t know she existed-or so she thought. I personally never had a girl that was all that determined to get my attention, but I sure wish I had. When I asked Seth Garth what he knew about the Jenny Dolan-John O’Connor romance which sparked this remembrance he froze, froze in his tracks at the name. When he defrosted, he told me that he had had a crush, a very 1960s word from what I can gather on that same Jenny Nolan and even fifty years later he wished she had given him the looks she saved for her John. So Jenny’s story has the ring of truth to it although in my neighborhood no self-respecting guy, certainly no football player would expose himself to comradely ridicule by letting a girl sit on his lap and dare him to put her off.     

One of the things that I am interested in is what happened to the parties involved in these stories, if that is known. In this case, strangely, according to Si Lannon who wrote the original story after seeing Jenny at the 50^th anniversary class reunion and she gave him the details of the tryst she had with Johnny that Chrissie McNamara who was supposedly Jenny’s friend stole Johnny away from Jenny in senior year. The strange part is that Johnny and Chrissie, Mr. and Mrs. Toyota of Eastern Massachusetts to let you know their fates, are still married while Jenny, has been married four times and confided in Si that she never got over that “theft” of Johnny by Chrissie although she held no animosities. What she did say was that she thought he multiple marriages were a fruitless search for another Johnny or failure to keep Johnny, take your choice. Such is life. Greg Green]      

A YouTube film clip of The Dubs performing the classic, Could This Be Magic.

THE DUBS


"Could This Be Magic"

Could this be magic
My dear
My heart's all aglow
Could this be magic
Loving you so

Could this be magic
My dear
Having your love
My prayers were answered
So far from above

I thought it would be
Just a memory
To linger my heart in pain
But too much pride
I opened up my eyes
And I'm with you dear once again

Could this be magic
My dear
Having your love
If this is magic
Then magic is mine
Could this be magic
Then magic is mine

Jenny Dolan speaks from out of the 1960s night:

I suppose everybody in America knows, knows by heart now, that John O’Connor and I, Jenny Dolan, are an “item.” The poster boy and girl sweethearts of North Adamsville High according to one piece of gossip that I heard, or overheard, Joanne Doyle saying sarcastically in the girls’ lav at school one Monday morning when she was giving her weekend round-up report to all who would listen. What I couldn’t spread around about her and her lover boy, Frankie, but that was old Jenny, old miserable Jennie, before I got my John, and got him good. Of course, Joanne only retells what the pizza pie in your eye corner boy king, so-called, Frankie, Frankie Riley if you are one of the about three people in the Class of 1964 who doesn’t know him, has already started spreading around. The gist of tale is that he has lost his ace-in-the-hole (really just his bodyguard for when he makes the wrong move, Joanne Doyle not around wrong move, on some real tough guy's girl), Jumping John O’Connor (although I am putting a stop to calling him that name, and fast) to a frill (that’s me, or that’s me when Frankie does his 28 flavors of disrespect to girls thing, except to no-nonsense mistress Joanne, by calling them frills, molls, frails and everything else that he has picked up from watching too many 1930s gangster films, and reading too many Raymond Chandler crime novels). See John and Frankie go back to first grade together over at North Adamsville Elementary and somehow Frankie thought that was enough to keep the “twists” (girls again) at a distance so John could be his full-time “body-guard.”

And if Frankie hasn’t spread the news around about John and me then Peter Paul Markin, clueless Peter Paul when it comes to knowing anything about girls (and girls and guys who get together for more fun, Saturday night fun, than just some silly reading books at the library, or going to a debate about whether Red China should, or shouldn’t be admitted to the United Nations, or stuff like that) will, once Frankie unleashes him to spread it around. Now everybody respects Peter Paul for his knowledge, for his devotion to learning more about stuff, and for sticking up for the, as he calls them, the “fellow down-trodden” of the earth but he has been strictly blind-sided by Frankie ever since he came to North Adamsville. When I was lonely (lonely for my John, if you want to know) I went out with Peter Paul, once, but no thanks. So between Joanne (really Frankie), Frankie (really Joanne) and Peter Paul (really Frankie, and maybe Joanne) you’ve probably got the story all wrong. Like the why behind why John and I did not get together until just now, although we were made for each other and that’s the truth and has been the truth for a long time.

Let me tell the story, my side, and see if it is anything like you heard from Frankie, or Peter Paul. Although now that I think about it if you got it from Peter Paul then you haven’t finished reading the treatise on the subject of John O’Connor and Jennifer Dolan yet and I can save you some time and save your eyes too. See back in sixth grade when I was just starting to get a little shape but was still really just a “stick” I went to Chrissie McNamara’s twelfth birthday party. Now Chrissie and I had been friends for ages so I expected to be at the party but what really got my girl temperature up was that John was going to be there.

Now John was good-looking even then, kind of quiet, a good all-around athlete (a great football player-in-the-making even then, even then in little Pop Warner League), and, I think, shy around girls but I had eyes for him. Big eyes, and not just twelve- year old big eyes, but going way back to first communion at Sacred Heart where we were boy white suit and girl white dress paired together to walk down to the communion rail and I had to calm him down because he was scared of the idea of eating the wafer, the body and blood of Christ. No, I was not every day in every way crushed up on him but crushed up somewhere deep inside since then. In sixth grade time though when I started getting my shape a little, you know, I couldn’t keep from thinking of him. So at Chrissie’s party I was flying high in expectation. I had my best dress on, had taken a long soapy bath, and worn some of my mother’s perfume (don’t tell her, okay). And I wasn’t disappointed because he asked me to dance, dance close, dance airless close. I almost kissed him then, but I waited until the lights went out that signaled the time for some “petting” games to start and then ran over to the sofa and planted the biggest, hardest kiss I could on him. Boy, did I have my signals crossed because he pushed me aside (not hard but definitely aside) and ran out of the house. That’s how he got the name Jumping John O’Connor once Frankie got the story out. He hated the name, and I did too.

After that I didn’t run into him enough to get nervous because at school we were in different classes and, obviously, I wasn’t hanging around shabby, two-bit, greasy pizza parlors wasting my good time and energy listening to Frankie (and his lap dog, Peter Paul) play his lordship and chamberlain. Besides Joanne, Joanne Doyle, Frankie’s plain jane, so-called girlfriend, and I never got along ever since I told her that Frankie was calling me up on the telephone anytime they had a “misunderstanding.” She flat-out didn’t believe me but ask Peter Paul, he knows, he knows everything about Frankie Riley and his “love” life.

This year though, sophomore year, John and I have our daily last period study class together and a couple weeks into the class I noticed that he kept looking (for a second anyway) in my direction. More than once. And I started looking in his direction (for a second anyway, and more than once). As we found out later everybody in the class, including the study class monitor, Miss Wilmot, the old dyke, knew we were “making eyes” at each other. Except, of course, maybe Peter Paul who was also in the study hall down front and reading. Still, naturally, that will not stop him from claiming in his treatise that he was the key to introducing John and me.

Believe me I didn’t know what to do at first. I was “gun-shy” from that sixth- grade fiasco party so I was afraid to think that he might be interested in me. But, and I admit it, I was miserable, and had been pretty miserable since John’s rebuff that Chrissie’s party night, even though I went out with lots of boys. Then one day I figured out (and talked to Chrissie about it, and she agreed) that John, shy, quiet John wasn’t going to do anything about me unless I started the ball rolling. And here is what I figured out to do (on my own, no Chrissie help). I was going to go into the lion’s den, the holy of holies, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor where Frankie and his boys, including John, hung out a lot and just flop myself in John’s lap and dare him, no double- dare him, to throw me off in a public place. And I was going to do it too, once I got my courage up, or was miserable enough to try anything.

Well, one Friday night, one October Friday night, a few weeks ago I got so miserable at home that I decided to go for broke. I walked up the Downs and entered Salducci’s, fearful, very fearful, but then I saw John sitting on the outside of the booth with the boys (Frankie, Peter Paul, Fingers Kelly, John and a couple of other denizens) and saw my chance. I quickly walked over and flopped myself on John lap. And you know what he said. “I’m sorry” as he gently, very gently, broke my fall with his strong arms. My heart went crazy with fear. I thought that I had once again misinterpreted his looks at me in study class just like at the party and started to get up. But as I started to get up John held me close, held me close like maybe it was going to take the whole football team, both offense and defense, and scrubs and water boys thrown in, to get me off his lap before he finished his red-faced say.

And this is what he said and said in a way that he had been thinking about it for a while. “I’m sorry, real sorry, that I pushed you away at Chrissie’s birthday party and ran out and never apologized. I just didn’t know what to do then.” And he added, “Will you forgive me?” Frankie and the boys were flabbergasted but John, red-faced and all, maybe more so after saying his piece, held his ground. I wanted to say all kinds of witty, smart things but all I could blurt out was, “yes.” I started to get up but he would not let me up (and truthfully I wasn’t trying very hard anyway) until he asked to walk me home. You know the answer so I will not be coy. As we walked and talked it seemed like an instant until we got to my house. The lights were out but John said he wanted to talk a little, and we did, boy and girl things that you don’t need to know about. And while we were talking, he reached out and held my hand. And I got all red-faced, especially when every once in a while, he would loosen up his grip and then gently squeeze my hand again like he was afraid to let go. And I was afraid to let him let it go. I will tell you that night, I swear, John could have done anything he wanted with me, anything, but we just held hands, tight hands. Okay, you have the story straight now.

The Vagaries Of Art At The Museum Of Fine Arts In Boston -The Mexican Muralist And Political Assassin David Alfaro Siqueiros

The Vagaries Of Art At The Museum Of Fine Arts In Boston -The Mexican Muralist And Political Assassin David Alfaro Siqueiros

A link to a WBUR (NPR) "Morning Edition" report on the installation of Mexican Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros work of art after a long absence.     

http://www.wbur.org/artery/2018/01/10/mfa-siqueiros-painting

By Frank Jackman

We live in weird times. Not just the Age of Trump madness which is getting a bit tiresome although Donald J. represents the best possible “recruiting sergeant” of our side, for the left possible (hell maybe even for the middling muddle and rational right too). No today in light of the sexual harassment and sexual crimes committed by Hollywood power broker, Washington wizard fixer men fisting power, media stars tumbling to stuff twelve year olds would think twice about, and don’t forget a few guys next door who can take the fall too although it will not reach the 24/7/365 news cycle I want to mention, once again, the dilemma of trying to separate out, if that is even possible, the horrible actions and crimes of these creative types and their works.     

What got me going on this question was a recent revelation by actress Tippi Hendron who starred in one of Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s classis suspense films The Birds that he relentlessly pursued her against her very strong wishes to the contrary. Worse he basically ruined her future promising career by using his authority as a great film director to bad-mouth her in the film industry when she wouldn’t respond to his brutish behavior. That brought the vexing question to a head. It still has not been fully answered as yet but for myself I have a diminished regard for Sir Alfred’s work when I have to think about reviewing anything of his as I did recently with a review of his classic The 39 Steps.

Now comes another version of that same question although it does not involve sexual harassment or crimes but the more serious one of political assassination. As the link above indicates the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is after a long absence displaying a major work by Mexican muralist and political activist David Alfaro Siqueiros. Fair enough as far as it goes. Although the MFA representative gusted forth about Siqueiros’ combination of artistic mastery and left-wing political activist she left out one little point. David Alfaro Siqueiros led a group of political thugs on the compound of exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky in Mexico and attempted, and failed, to murder that world-historic figure. Although not for trying it was only a miracle he was not murdered then.      

Now we all know of the checkered careers of all kinds of culturati-bandits from Villon to Bellini to modern day and we cherish some of their cultural achievements but even if we recognize, and we should at some level, the great artistry of Siqueiros can we really sweep his criminal political activity under the rug. Or ignore it as the MFA representative did. Shame on her.   

In The Beginning Was The Jug- The Jim Kweskin Jug Band

In The Beginning Was The Jug- The Jim Kweskin Jug Band

By Sam Lowell

No question I was, am, a central figure in the still on-going fallout over the purge, and that is exactly the right term although half the writers here who were down and dirty in the fight prefer to tell the tale that the previous site manger “retired.” Like Allan Jackson, yes, I am using his given name despite the notice from new site manager Greg Green that we were in the future in the interest of “moving on” not to mention him by name or speak of his accomplishments (presumably Allan’s down sides are still fair game), would voluntarily retire from something he helped create and loved. I also acknowledge here that although I was Allan closest and longest known friend going back to elementary school that I sided with the young rebel writers, the self-styled “Young Turks” although I hate that term when it came to choosing sides.

Allan was getting more and more wrapped into some 1960s and forget the rest thing that disturbed me no end as I continually told him especially when he went over the edge in that overkill of the 50^th Anniversary of the Summer of Love, 1967 stuff. So when I “conspired” with the younger writers (some of who had before Allan went hog wild over the situation never heard of the event, were to young to give fuck about the legendary in the mist 1960s) I told everyone straight up that this would have to be a purge-no quotation marks needed. We, he and I, had come up in the rough and tumble of radical 1960s politics so Allan knew that my defection meant only one thing if we were to be successful. He would be out, in exile, although don’t believe all that stuff about him being holed up Utah sucking up to Mitt Romney and that white underwear Mormon crowd or Kansas with the hard-shell flat-landers that is just urban legend stuff he, or somebody at his direction, made up to make this whole thing seem like a Stalinist coup and he, Leon Trotsky-like suffered defeat and exile in some American Siberia for his efforts. I know my Allan and I would not be surprised that a counterattack against me and the blog will come any day.

As part of the change in course and presumably as a safeguard against things going haywire like they began to do under the Jackson regime Greg initiated on his own a seven member Editorial Board to filter ideas and motions through. Some people, some opponents have called the board a group of toadies and “yes” people for whatever Greg has in mind. That is their opinion. In any case I was asked to sit on the board and I have along with several younger writers and one of the older writers who had abstained on the Jackson removal vote (there were several abstentions by older writers which makes me think I was not alone in thinking Allan had gone over the edge but didn’t want to buck him for any number of reasons. I would argue that had any one of them voted for Allan then my “desertion” would have meant nothing except I might have been the guy rumored to be in Utah or Kansas. Such is life.) 

Although the board is up and running for a few months now it has only been asked to approve one item-the “erasing” of Allan’s name from this site in the interest of whatever Greg thought that served. I have been around enough to know that it is beyond poor form to “erase” the past especially on a site dedicated to putting a big shining light on that past particularly the parts that get short shrift in the history books and mainstream media. I voted “no,” the lone dissenter with that one older writer’s abstention which may be his mode of operation on tough questions. Maybe that dissent will put me in better grace with Allan. 

I took this jug band, Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band assignment because I am still crazy about this kind of music and because at least three of the original members of the band, Jim, Geoff, Maria are still performing occasionally together but usually individually and over the past several years I have seen them in various admittedly small venues around Greater Boston. I was surprised though when Greg mentioned to me that he no longer wanted to see pieces about “f—king” jug band music in the future and that this would be the last time he would let it pass since nobody under about the age of sixty gave a damn about this kind of music anymore.

Since Greg is considerable younger than I am I could see where it did not mean anything to him when he was growing up in Westchester County in New York but to cancel out in advance any reference to an important part of Americana in the 1920s and the revival in the 1960s seems short-sighted. Allan who also was crazy for jug music and who turned me onto the stuff in high school when he took me and our dates to the Unicorn Coffeehouse in Back Bay Boston to hear the legendary Harper Valley Boys do their jug, washtub, wringer magic. I will be bucking Greg a little on this one if I can find a spot to sneak a jug piece in.

Finally, and this part has nothing directly to do with jug music or anything else that has been presented here over the past almost fifteen years of this blog’s existence and prior to that the hard copy of it and it predecessors. I, like a number of irritated readers and a not a few writers have grown tired of seeing more than enough coverage of the internal crisis of the past few months here leading to the new regime. This new mandate by Greg with the majority of the Ed Board’s approval of “erasing” Allan Jackson’s name and work is kind of a watershed making me think the whole public airing has gone too far. Moreover the story is all over the place depending on who has their hackles up. This must stop and a return to ordinary commentary and reviews is in order.  

As a decisive member of the Editorial Board I have been able to negotiate with Greg a truce, an “armed truce” as one older wag put it which seems strange since the majority of personnel here have some very strong anti-war views. The “truce” has two parts. The first- all articles now in the pipeline, about fifteen, can carry whatever commentary about the internal dispute the writer wants to talk about. In return after that amnesty lot is posted there will be no overt references to the previous site manager or his achievements or failures. The second is that I will write as probably the most knowledgeable person around about all aspects of this publication and its personnel a full history of the site and of the internal dispute to be after it completion referenced in the archives as such for anybody to cite and refer others to -either writer or scholar. No guidance was given about how to do this task but I have decided to cut it up among the various parts of the American Songbook series which the jug band piece below is one example and then post the whole thing with comments from the two Ed Board members Greg has assigned to me for this work.              

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Who knows how it happened maybe somebody in the band looked up some songs in the album archives, or found some gem in some record store, an institution that sustained many for hours back then in the cusp of the 1960s folk revival when there were record stores on almost every corner in places like Harvard Square and you could find some gems if you searched long enough and found Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music (although sometimes the search was barren or, maybe worse, something by Miss Patti Page or Tennessee Ernie Ford stared you in the face). From there they found, maybe Cannon’s Stompers, the Mississippi Sheiks or the Memphis Jug Band, saw they could prosper going back to those days if they kept the arrangements simple, and that was that.

See, everybody then was looking for roots, American music roots, old country roots, roots of some ancient thoughts of a democratic America before the robber barons and their progeny grabbed everything with every hand. And that search was no accident, at least from the oral history evidence having grown up with rock and roll and found in that minute that genre wanting.  Some went reaching South to the homeland of much roots music and found some grizzled old geezers who had made a small name for themselves in the 1920s when labels like RCA and Paramount went out looking for talent in the hinterlands.

So there was history there, certainly for the individual members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim, Geoff Mulduar, Mel Lymon, Maria Muldaur, Fritz Richmond , all well-versed in many aspects of the American Songbook (hell, I would say so, even old tacky Irving Berlin got a hearing), history there for the taking. All they needed was a jug, a good old boy homemade corn liquor jug giving the best sound and so they were off, off to conquer places like Harvard Square, like the Village, like almost any place in the Bay area. And for a while they did, picking up chimes, kazoos, harmonicas, what the heck, even standard guitars and they made great music, great entertainment music, not heavy with social messages but just evoking those long lost spirits from the 1920s when jug music would sustain a crowd on a Saturday night. Yeah, in the beginning was the jug…    

In The Beginning Was The Jug- The Jim Kweskin Jug Band

In The Beginning Was The Jug- The Jim Kweskin Jug Band

By Sam Lowell

No question I was, am, a central figure in the still on-going fallout over the purge, and that is exactly the right term although half the writers here who were down and dirty in the fight prefer to tell the tale that the previous site manger “retired.” Like Allan Jackson, yes, I am using his given name despite the notice from new site manager Greg Green that we were in the future in the interest of “moving on” not to mention him by name or speak of his accomplishments (presumably Allan’s down sides are still fair game), would voluntarily retire from something he helped create and loved. I also acknowledge here that although I was Allan closest and longest known friend going back to elementary school that I sided with the young rebel writers, the self-styled “Young Turks” although I hate that term when it came to choosing sides.

Allan was getting more and more wrapped into some 1960s and forget the rest thing that disturbed me no end as I continually told him especially when he went over the edge in that overkill of the 50^th Anniversary of the Summer of Love, 1967 stuff. So when I “conspired” with the younger writers (some of who had before Allan went hog wild over the situation never heard of the event, were to young to give fuck about the legendary in the mist 1960s) I told everyone straight up that this would have to be a purge-no quotation marks needed. We, he and I, had come up in the rough and tumble of radical 1960s politics so Allan knew that my defection meant only one thing if we were to be successful. He would be out, in exile, although don’t believe all that stuff about him being holed up Utah sucking up to Mitt Romney and that white underwear Mormon crowd or Kansas with the hard-shell flat-landers that is just urban legend stuff he, or somebody at his direction, made up to make this whole thing seem like a Stalinist coup and he, Leon Trotsky-like suffered defeat and exile in some American Siberia for his efforts. I know my Allan and I would not be surprised that a counterattack against me and the blog will come any day.

As part of the change in course and presumably as a safeguard against things going haywire like they began to do under the Jackson regime Greg initiated on his own a seven member Editorial Board to filter ideas and motions through. Some people, some opponents have called the board a group of toadies and “yes” people for whatever Greg has in mind. That is their opinion. In any case I was asked to sit on the board and I have along with several younger writers and one of the older writers who had abstained on the Jackson removal vote (there were several abstentions by older writers which makes me think I was not alone in thinking Allan had gone over the edge but didn’t want to buck him for any number of reasons. I would argue that had any one of them voted for Allan then my “desertion” would have meant nothing except I might have been the guy rumored to be in Utah or Kansas. Such is life.) 

Although the board is up and running for a few months now it has only been asked to approve one item-the “erasing” of Allan’s name from this site in the interest of whatever Greg thought that served. I have been around enough to know that it is beyond poor form to “erase” the past especially on a site dedicated to putting a big shining light on that past particularly the parts that get short shrift in the history books and mainstream media. I voted “no,” the lone dissenter with that one older writer’s abstention which may be his mode of operation on tough questions. Maybe that dissent will put me in better grace with Allan. 

I took this jug band, Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band assignment because I am still crazy about this kind of music and because at least three of the original members of the band, Jim, Geoff, Maria are still performing occasionally together but usually individually and over the past several years I have seen them in various admittedly small venues around Greater Boston. I was surprised though when Greg mentioned to me that he no longer wanted to see pieces about “f—king” jug band music in the future and that this would be the last time he would let it pass since nobody under about the age of sixty gave a damn about this kind of music anymore.

Since Greg is considerable younger than I am I could see where it did not mean anything to him when he was growing up in Westchester County in New York but to cancel out in advance any reference to an important part of Americana in the 1920s and the revival in the 1960s seems short-sighted. Allan who also was crazy for jug music and who turned me onto the stuff in high school when he took me and our dates to the Unicorn Coffeehouse in Back Bay Boston to hear the legendary Harper Valley Boys do their jug, washtub, wringer magic. I will be bucking Greg a little on this one if I can find a spot to sneak a jug piece in.

Finally, and this part has nothing directly to do with jug music or anything else that has been presented here over the past almost fifteen years of this blog’s existence and prior to that the hard copy of it and it predecessors. I, like a number of irritated readers and a not a few writers have grown tired of seeing more than enough coverage of the internal crisis of the past few months here leading to the new regime. This new mandate by Greg with the majority of the Ed Board’s approval of “erasing” Allan Jackson’s name and work is kind of a watershed making me think the whole public airing has gone too far. Moreover the story is all over the place depending on who has their hackles up. This must stop and a return to ordinary commentary and reviews is in order.  

As a decisive member of the Editorial Board I have been able to negotiate with Greg a truce, an “armed truce” as one older wag put it which seems strange since the majority of personnel here have some very strong anti-war views. The “truce” has two parts. The first- all articles now in the pipeline, about fifteen, can carry whatever commentary about the internal dispute the writer wants to talk about. In return after that amnesty lot is posted there will be no overt references to the previous site manager or his achievements or failures. The second is that I will write as probably the most knowledgeable person around about all aspects of this publication and its personnel a full history of the site and of the internal dispute to be after it completion referenced in the archives as such for anybody to cite and refer others to -either writer or scholar. No guidance was given about how to do this task but I have decided to cut it up among the various parts of the American Songbook series which the jug band piece below is one example and then post the whole thing with comments from the two Ed Board members Greg has assigned to me for this work.              

********

Who knows how it happened maybe somebody in the band looked up some songs in the album archives, or found some gem in some record store, an institution that sustained many for hours back then in the cusp of the 1960s folk revival when there were record stores on almost every corner in places like Harvard Square and you could find some gems if you searched long enough and found Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music (although sometimes the search was barren or, maybe worse, something by Miss Patti Page or Tennessee Ernie Ford stared you in the face). From there they found, maybe Cannon’s Stompers, the Mississippi Sheiks or the Memphis Jug Band, saw they could prosper going back to those days if they kept the arrangements simple, and that was that.

See, everybody then was looking for roots, American music roots, old country roots, roots of some ancient thoughts of a democratic America before the robber barons and their progeny grabbed everything with every hand. And that search was no accident, at least from the oral history evidence having grown up with rock and roll and found in that minute that genre wanting.  Some went reaching South to the homeland of much roots music and found some grizzled old geezers who had made a small name for themselves in the 1920s when labels like RCA and Paramount went out looking for talent in the hinterlands.

So there was history there, certainly for the individual members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim, Geoff Mulduar, Mel Lymon, Maria Muldaur, Fritz Richmond , all well-versed in many aspects of the American Songbook (hell, I would say so, even old tacky Irving Berlin got a hearing), history there for the taking. All they needed was a jug, a good old boy homemade corn liquor jug giving the best sound and so they were off, off to conquer places like Harvard Square, like the Village, like almost any place in the Bay area. And for a while they did, picking up chimes, kazoos, harmonicas, what the heck, even standard guitars and they made great music, great entertainment music, not heavy with social messages but just evoking those long lost spirits from the 1920s when jug music would sustain a crowd on a Saturday night. Yeah, in the beginning was the jug…    

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up-With Pretty Boy Brosnan’s James, James Bond “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997) In Mind

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up-With Pretty Boy Brosnan’s James, James Bond “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997) In Mind 

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

[Since Leslie Dumont was only recently hired to begin to yank the overwhelming male “good old boy club” previous character of this blog from its moorings she is naturally outside the truce agreement. Although, unlike recent hire Alex Radley also outside the agreement, strange as it may seem since she was very close, was a companion for several years of Josh Breslin who also writes in this space, and who was extremely close to the previous site manager she knew the previous site manager very well. Nevertheless that manager refused to hire her full time after she had been a stringer for a few years. Fed up she went elsewhere and finally got a by-line at New York Today. I deliberately assigned her this film which she accepted with good grace to finally get a woman’s view of this skirt-chasing fool Bond, James Bond. Greg Green]    

Tomorrow Never Dies, starring Pierce Brosnan, 1997

As my old friend and now fellow writer here Phil Larkin is fond of saying –WTF. (I have to laugh every time I think about his growing up moniker Foul-mouth, if ever a name.) In the year 2018 after all we have heard in gruesome detail about the misogynies of half the powerful men in Hollywood-land and who knows who else or what else it is rather fitting to be able to review a film that comes out of a series via the pen of bloody old British Empire aficionado Ian Fleming (did he ever may “Sir”) based on the character of one of the most cravenly misogynous men in fiction or film, Bond, James Bond (sorry Greg I couldn’t resist mimicking you).

Although it probable does not matter on these formula-driven vehicles now over the twenty hump in number this one is entitled Tomorrow Never Dies which is probably not true but at least gives this beast of a film a title. Another thing that clearly does not matter is who is playing the lead, the Bond, James Bond lead from Her Royal Highness’ the Queen’s first guy handsome Johnny Sean Connery through to whoever is doing the hard-scrabble chore these days. Pretty Boy Brosnan did four in the 1990s or so this one the second. Before I get into the play-by-play I should reference this silly little pissing contest that Sandy Salmon and Alden Riley both who should know better about who the real James Bond is have been having since Greg decided to run the road with this batch of films. Between from what I understand the two finalists Connery and Brosnan.

Beyond Phil’s classic WTF who cares. More important, more important for the future sanity of this space, why did neither of them even if only by implication if they were afraid to actually come out and say it that both these guys are twerps, male chauvinist pigs in second-wave feminist speak when it comes to what Josh (through the late Peter Paul Markin who I never met but who I heard a million too many stories about when Josh and I were bedmates) calls speaking the true no matter how bitter.         

It seem crazy to build the MCP case for something that is so obvious and has been through twenty something episodes but I will soldier on. Start with the main action (after ten senseless minutes of Jimmy proving he has metal blowing up terrorist supply dumps on the Russia border to show his “cred”). Sin number one as the “real” action opens up he is bedded with some alleged Danish professor, hell Jimbo probably couldn’t spell Danish or maybe thinks it was that awful breakfast treat before duty calls to prove his “cred” as a skirt-chaser, womanizer, stud, and not a latent homosexual as various academic feminists have speculated about over the years. And the every useful male chauvinist pig of blessed memory. Not only that but he answers that duty call, dutifully, in the middle of, well, let’s just call it coitus interruptus and move on. Like whatever the goddam assignment from that female MI5 boss of his couldn’t wait since everybody in the world knows or should be expected to know that when J.B. is on the case it is open and shut. Done.          

Jimmy only adds insult to injury by bedding an old flame who just so happens to be married to the arch-enemy in this saga, a Rupert Murdoch-type guy who wants to own the universe, or else. Finally he beds a commie agent. No, not the old time Soviet nemesis, the Russians, come on now this film is dated 1997 well after after the USSR went up in smoke and shot guys like Ian Fleming, John Le Carre and Tom Clancy’s reasons for existence all to hell. This young woman a versatile, brave Chinese agent who is far too bright for him but who after the action is over starts the inevitable action post-coitus pillow talk waiting for help to arrive. Funny because I have seen maybe five of these Bond things to get a sense of what the hell is the draw and guess what they all have this same 1950s era formula of bedding women who are just waiting to go down and dirty on the satin sheets. Like the women’s liberation movement now getting a third wind never existed never change the nature of the game.  Never let women be anything but vessels for male inadequacies (I already mentioned that latent homosexual point so I don’t need to repeat it here.)          

Oh yeah, yawn, the plot. Seems this guy Murdoch, no, Carter is setting up World War III between God Save The Queen England and the commies, remember not the USSR guys they are kaput, the Red Chinese as they said in the old days. Purpose? To sell a zillion newspapers, to run the rack on the world media market, and, hell, just to prove he can do it. (I will save my WTF on these reasons until later) The set-up is to sink a HMS ship and blame it on the nefarious Chinese Reds, grab a nuclear weapon from said sunken ship and then throw it at China and let the games begin. He is also looking for regime change backing a renegade Red General who will take over to avoid that WWIII. Reason? To break into the huge Chinese media market where he had been shut out by the wily Reds. Yeah, two things yawn and now that WTF.      

Like I tried to telegraph to you the reader so maybe you will go read a recent article I did for New York Today instead of going down this vagrant trail Jimmy and the Chinese agent kick, blast, fight, motorbike chase, detonate, sky-dive, leap tall buildings at a single bound, kick again after avoiding enough spent ammunition to have kept WWI going for another ten years without a scratch or even sweat on the upper lip on the way to that pillow talk at the end. I know I am rolling that Promethean stone up some fairly steep hill but isn’t 2018 the year to start pulling some thumbs down to this sullen silliness.         

The Legend-Slayer Cometh -Young Will Bradley Rides Against-Shattering The “Fake News, Alternate Facts” Myth Of Early Aviator Johnny Cielo-With A Vengeance-No Quarter Given-No Quarter Taken

The Legend-Slayer Cometh -Young Will Bradley Rides Against-Shattering The “Fake News, Alternate Facts” Myth Of Early Aviator Johnny Cielo-With A Vengeance-No Quarter Given-No Quarter Taken 

By Will Bradley

Here is genesis. A couple of years ago, at a time when fake news and alternate facts were in their infancy, no, when they surfaced after leading underground cultist existences and “all the news that’s fit to print” was the official mantra I got as one of my first assignments a dueling film review partnership with old-time “corner boy,” meaning one of those present at the creation of this publication when it was in hard copy form, Seth Garth to give our respective takes on one Sherlock Holmes (an alias real name Larry Lawrence but to avoid confusion here I will stick with his more well-known moniker). The original idea was that he was to give his review from an old guy perspective of one who grew up with the legend of this so-called master private detective and I from a young guy who was clueless about the guy perspective. Both of us dug deeply into every aspect, every public aspect and a few private ones of how Holmes’ legend got its start.

What we both found out was that the legend was made out of whole cloth, that Holmes was a fake, a fraud, and much more despite the big press agent, publicity department build-up with which the unknowing British people were hammered with from day one of the press campaign. Led by an English firm called Christie and Doyle at the time, although there were later dummy corporations to make it harder to track the bums down but whatever the name those were just covers for lots of illegal activity to get Holmes’ name in the prints and over the radio and in the movies, television had not come along by then. One example, Winston Churchill, yes, the guy who was President, Prime Minister or whatever the call the kingdom’s top lap dog kowtowing to royalty at every step, received a ton money, thousands of pounds, British money, for saying out loud that he wished some his Scotland Yard coppers were half as good as this Holmes. Another example, one of the Lords, a lord who later turned out to a mouthpiece for the Nazis during World War II took a big pay-off to try to get Holmes a knighthood, a “Sir” before his name, the OBE. One slow news days these flaks were able to get the London tabloids to print whatever swill these bums threw out as press releases usually the paper just cutting off the top putting one of their paid-off reporters names on it and let it fly. All for cold hard cash. And you thought this stuff only happened in long-ago ward-heeling America or in the post-Citizens United. Wise up, please.

Seth when he has time, or if he can remember, can fill the reader in on what he uncovered, the same basic swill but usually rawer, stuff about getting Holmes’ name into “girlie magazines” to show how virile he and Nigel somebody, his dear friend, Seth’s expression not mine, were to guard against those ever present insinuations that they were more than just dear friends. The best one I remember was the way these hounds were able to drop some poor bedraggled professor from Oxford into the deep blue sea, Moriarty I think the name was, and faking documents naming him as the mastermind of the Gunpowder Plot, or some such evil endeavor against the royal family, King George, at the time. This professor who had trouble tying his shoes or knowing what day it was. Beautiful. The guys and gals who are running big time publicity operations for starlets and reality television show entertainers could learn a few tricks from these guys as much as I hate to say it. The one thing that grizzled old Seth and I agree on.      

The battle between Seth and me which stretched endlessly and mercilessly over something like fourteen films each more cravenly worshipful of Holmes and his live-in dear friend Nigel than the last was a “no holds barred” fight to the end though as far as exposing this bum of the month (and indirectly putting the slams on C&D although those guys were able to ride out the storm grabbing a big contract from clients who wanted to build up the Robin Hood legend to claim some odd-ball inheritance by primogeniture, or some cloudy claim). Seth, maybe reliving some of his youthful anti-gay (then fag, homo, Nancy, “light on their feet” stuff) feelings, concluded that Holmes’ whole legend was the work of what he called the “Homintern” (which he told me was a word created as a take-off on the Comintern which guys he knew like Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender hung around by the English poet W. H. Auden, himself a known gay, or maybe not then but now known, who hung around with the British private school gay cotillion). The idea was to create myths about guys who were gay (I don’t know about lesbians since this never came up in our duel so I will stick with gays) to make them more intelligent, more virile, more cultured than ordinary guys and protect the clan.

Seth’s whole approach was to identify various aspects of Holmes’ life starting with his relationship to his “dear friend” Doc Watson in their little love nest on Baker Street and expose him as a second or third-rate private eye who was clueless about how solve a murder mystery without the aid of a battalion of Scotland Yard agents. He did present some strong evidence including eye-witness account of Holmes and Doc hanging around the notorious KitKat Club and haunting waterfront taverns looking for sailors who were looking for kinky kicks-on land. Something seemed wrong about his gay-baiting approach, something that didn’t seem to jell with the facts once I looked at Holmes’ police sheet (which is how I was able to figure out the Holmes name was an alias and his real name Larry Lawrence and which Seth was clueless about in his quest to discount anybody in the 20^st century because he was gay). Of course one size fits all Seth would not have dreamed of checking police records even if he only was looking to see if he or Nigel had ever been arrested like poor Reading Gaol-bound Oscar Wilde for the “love that dare not speak its name.”

I was thus more than happy to concede that Holmes was gay, that he was playing house with Nigel on Baker Street but what of it. My take from the beginning had been though that Holmes was essentially asexual, was driven more by a lust for gold than for another man’s body, certainly not Doc’s (whose real name if I didn’t mention it before was Nigel something but don’t make a fuss about names because they were changed like underwear). Maybe it was a generational thing but who cared if they slept together or not. The key was an arrest made by the London bobbies when they made one of their periodic raids of the KitKat Club where Holmes and Doc had been hiding out. The coppers found tons of stolen goods, drugs, sexual paraphernalia, pornography, guns. As it turned out, although it was never conclusively proven as to the extend, Holmes was the master thief behind half the robberies, kidnappings, beatings, purse-snatchings and what have you in London. He spent six years in Dartmoor (under the name Larry Lawrence which is why it was originally hard to figure out why the legend was nothing but a press agent’s dream, dreamed up by a guy who worked for the publicity firm, Christie and Doyle who later turned state’s evidence or what every they called the British Empire in court.

But enough of Holmes and his man Doc. What that eye-opening experience led to for me was an extreme interest in finding out about other legends, see what some press agent dreamt up out of the blue to invent guys, gals too but as in much of history mostly guys got their stories told, true or not. Since them I have exposed guys like Robin Hood as a two-bit rack-renting landlord (despite the best efforts of those latter-day clients of Christie who never did prove their right to inheritance but who started a backlash by the descendants of those yeoman and tenant farmers who Hood gouged looking for their family lands back or reparations), Captain Blood as nothing but a dregs Middle Passage slaver (and whose still intact estate in Jamaica is the subject of a separate reparations effort), Don Juan as some convent maiden’s hormonal urgings and so on (no basis for reparations and in any case the initial outburst by that frustrated maiden ignited so rapidly it would be hard to see who to claim reparations from and the only realistic recourse would be to have Don Juan posthumously put in the dock for child molestation and unwanted sexual advances amounting to assault).

The more modern legends like Superman (proven to be a ninety-eight pound weakling who one day found a matchbook cover ad for developing muscles to shed the reputation that girls could kick sand in his face and that kryptonite stuff was just another PR hustle, this time by Mad Men working overtime to create somebody to save the sorry modern world on the quiet) and Batman (who in the end wound up facing charges of sexual assault on his “protégé” Robin and destruction of public property) dismissed out of hand as mutants and foul balls. What has spurred me on, what has let site manager Greg Green let me have free reign and moved me up the food chain in this dog eat dog journalism business is a recent survey conducted by UCal (and supported by the well-respected Harrison Foundation) where as a result of my work, and that of others, there has been a sharp decline in many legends. I take this as simple proof, contrary to what most of the writers here had expected, that at least some people are beginning to rebel against fake news and alternate facts, which is what legends live on that I have been successful.         

Moreover, as I have recently demonstrated with my defense of the Green Lantern, both the individual and universe-wide organization which is protecting us even I as write and of the luscious Red Sparrow, the Russian espionage agent who is keeping a check-up on things under Putin I am not dismissing all legends out of hand. Only those which are fake, made up, undeserved. I have worked out, no, am working out a kind of guideline to determinate who or what deserves legendary status.

The pro-legend cases just mentioned can serve as an evaluation tool for such efforts. The Green Lantern, organization first, is pretty much of a no-brainer, a motley band of citizens of the universe, 3600 in all earthlings take notice with your bloated military and security budgets that protect no one from serious harm by evil forces, have volunteered to protect us all. Hats off. Beyond that they are working in the service of the greater good, the struggle against fear that grips us all at times and which the evil genies depend on to wreak their havoc. As for our section protector Green Lantern, one Hal Jordan, yes, the Hal Jordan who flew, really flew the top of the line fighter planes and broke a million records for speed and altitude his record speaks for itself. While cynics have sneered that he took the Lantern job just to impress his girlfriend and have made fun of the fact that he can as the first earthling since Icarus’ ill-fated adventure fly without some superstructure holding him back, he is the real deal. Hats off again.

The Red Sparrow, the former ballerina turned seriously trained Russian espionage agent who was turned by her revulsion at the current situation in Russia, now working with the CIA via a field operative who went rogue to bring her in from the cold kind of speaks for herself. Every aspect of her case checks out. With those cases in mind I can truthfully say I have been very successful thus far in weeding out the bum of the month crowd from the real stars.  

Except, one big except in the case highlighted by the headline to this piece, the fake legend of one Johnny Cielo whose ratings have actually gone up as a result of my hammering his faded reputation. (I would add that a similar spike occurred in belief in angels which sobered me a little in the belief that people were buying into rational argument across the board. I will investigate the finding on this phenomenon more when I receive the actual data from UCal-maybe it is a skewed sample or maybe we are not further away from the primordial slime than I have led myself to believe.) Yes, Johnny Cielo who I didn’t know from Adam when I started my crusade has defied my best efforts to send him to well-deserved oblivion. Frankly when I started out slaying undeserved legends, I knew nothing about the guy and only half-consciously remembered him as having something to do with early aviation, although even that I was not sure of and had to look up in Wikipedia or one of those other Internet information services.  

How I even got the name was that a fellow reporter, a free-lancer, who has since caught on with the Miami Herald was in that town on a “spec” assignment from the Washington Post about continued CIA attempts to destabilize the Castro regime in Cuba (this before Fidel passed and Raul stepped down). They never showed up at the Flamingo bar where they were to meet my friend. Having been “stiffed” and with time on his hands he bellied up to the bar and started ordering shots of whisky straight up (a bad habit I gave up about three weeks after I came of legal drinking age). A guy, who called himself Billy Bond, as usual don’t make much of names in this legend business or you will go crazy with despair, asked my guy to buy him a drink. He did. They got to talking after four or five shots when this Billy started talking about how when he was a kid he had met the legendary, Billy’s word, Johnny Cielo, who was quite a character and who had flown guns and supplies to Fidel and his crowd back in the late 1950s when it counted. My guy sensing a story to replace the one that had just fallen down kept buying rum-dum Billy shots while pressing for details.     

The gist of what Billy had to say was that this Johnny had been the real guy who had followed Icarus’s dream, had been the first guy to fly and gave some details about places and times. Had been there later when Howard Hughes was ready to make aviation a mass consumer product worth billions of dollars with his TWA operation.

This next part is where things get interesting and where eventually I had to step in to break down this bogus legend which even by duped legend standards was a whopper. Johnny had been running various airmail services, essentially into the ground as I would find out later, when he had to flee the country since guys, tough guys, working for guys who had loaned Johnny money based on his “connections” with Howard Hughes were looking high and low for him. He wound up in golden Barranca in Central America running that airmail service into the ground. You ask so what. Well according to Billy and the other cultist believers Johnny had the real movie icon drop dead beautiful Rita Hayworth on his arm as he entered the country. I will get to debunking in a minute but the final act in the legend, literally, was that bit about Johnny running guns to Fidel over in Cuba. Billy added that Johnny had fallen down into the ocean, into the Caribbean on one desperate flight and that was that for poor Johnny.

After my reporter friend pumped Billy for whatever he could, whatever a dozen whiskey shots got him he left the bar, went to his hotel room and started making plans to verify the story. (Those were the halcyon days when reporters actually verified stuff before sending it along unlike today when everything is made of whole cloth and fast in the 24/7/365 news cycles.) That entailed going to Key West which is when Johnny operated out before he fell into the sea, and where Billy claimed he met Johnny as a kid in the 1950s. And that is where the story began to unravel. Not through refutation by anybody who knew anything there because everybody who knew about Johnny believed the legend intact. By the simple fact that no way Johnny could have been at the beginning of aviation, been with the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk. Some cultists had built a shrine to Johnny Cielo, a small memorial with his name and dates of birth on it. Johnny was born in 1910 and died in 1958. It took a minute for my guy to realize that the Wright Brother followed Icarus (without his tragic fate) in 1903. From there everything else fell down, fell like a house of cards. That is when my friend contacted me knowing that I was interested in busting fake and undeserved legends.

Silly me I thought like with Sherlock and the more modern legends I would break this thing like a twig would expose the fakery once I got an handle on how it started, who benefitted from keeping the legend alive. Naturally it was as I surmised a work of an overzealous press agent, publicity guy who had been hired by the crowd of cultists in Key West to keep Johnny’s legend intact. No that was later after Johnny died. Johnny had hired the guy originally when he was in the chips running high-    end passengers from Key West to say Naples up the West Coast of Florida so they wouldn’t have to drive and get all sweaty or something. That is where John Kerr entered the lists in behalf of bedraggled Johnny Cielo.  John Kerr, yes, that John Kerr who had worked as the Society Page guy for the Times is the villain of the piece, is the guy who has through his long-ago work thwarted my efforts to bring some rational thought to the real life bum whose every breathe seemed to be a lie.    

Let me go by the numbers, go in order to yet again try to bring some sense to this damn Cielo legend. I have already mentioned that birth date which precludes Johnny being present at the creation. Funny there are of plenty of photographs of Wilbur and Orville, working their magic, at the museum, shrine whatever you want to call it which is nothing but a gold standard money-maker between the admission fee and the “company store” material for sale but not one picture of Johnny with them. Same thing with the Hughes so-called connection. There is every conceivable photo of the handsome Hughes and his various experimental planes and his first efforts with TWA but not one except one of Johnny working the engine of some beat down plane, some crate that would last about one minute in the air. Checking out employment records from the time, Hughes was a fanatic about many things and keeping tight fiscal accounts was one of them, I found out through the Hughes Archives that Johnny had worked in Omaha for the Hughes corporation but had been let go for stealing tools.

How Kerr buried that is a story I would dearly love to hear. See part, no, most of the roadblocks which I have encountered in busting Johnny’s legend have been set up by John Kerr who is the guy who set up the Johnny shrine in Key West and is the main beneficiary of the dough that comes pouring in from poor saps who don’t know enough history to know Johnny wasn’t even born when the Wrights went skyward. It took me a while, took me to investigating the so-called Cielo-Hayworth romance to realize the ninety-something Kerr was still working his PR bullshit on a gullible public using his former reputation for truth at the Times and rubbing stardust in the eyes to get away with some really crazy stuff.     

The Hayworth “affair” takes the cake. I don’t know all the details about why Johnny had to flee America except he was such a poor manager that he ran every airmail operation, including his brief stint delivering the U.S. mails, into the ground and so he was in hock up to his eyebrows. He wound up in fabled Barranca working for the bigwig postal guy there and since that guy didn’t know about the stuff in America hired him to deliver outpost mail. It didn’t hurt that he had that even now to the eye drop dead beautiful “Rita” on his arm, eye candy for guys away from foxy women for a while. I will tell you right now if you have not guessed already that was not the real Rita on his arm but some whore he met either a bordello or dime-a-dance joint in Hoboken. No question from the million photographs at the shrine although that this woman looked very much like Rita that it was not her, no way. First because even a fairly quick look can tell that she had been beaten down, been working on her ass too long and would not age well, not at all. Secondly, again a blow against alternate facts for what good it has done me thus far, the real Rita Hayworth in the time frame mentioned was playing footsies with a guy named the Aga Khan, a bigwig over in Morocco somewhere. By the way I will forewarn you that the number one selling items at the company store are photos and other memorabilia connected with Rita’s presence on Johnny’s arm.    

Now for the final blow, what should be the final blow, Johnny’s work for the heroic Castro brothers, Che and the fistful of other guerilla fighters up in the Sierra Madres looking to beat down America-supported Batista. The Kerr storyline which even got play in the Times supposedly the place that only deals with “all the news that’s fit to print” but where he had powerful connections from his previous work there, was that Johnny fell down into the Caribbean going on a gun run. Nonsense. Johnny did fall down, or at least I am willing to believe he fell down there in the Gulf of Mexico when his plane, his freaking stupid ass Piper Club ran out of gas and he had to ditch the plane with hm and three high society passengers aboard who were heading to Sarasota. The real deal was that Johnny finally did make some dough, enough to hire John Kerr, in the 1950s by ferrying passengers from Key West to points north. So much for the gun run noise. Never happened, totally made up by one John Kerr when he saw his meal ticket was being punched.  

Okay those are the bare outlines of the Cielo legend. One would think that it would be easy, very easy to just blow that away with the wind. Especially as I have gone way out of my way since my reporter friend tipped me to this story to document stuff. Still the cultists and desperate hero-worshipers have hung on, mainly by the brainwashing from Kerr. Here is what I have done to refute the legend to no avail. I have a notarized photostat of John Robert Cielo’s birth certificate from Elmira, New York his birthplace. I have sworn statements by people who knew Rita Hayworth, knew where she was, and where she wasn’t in the 1940s. I have that Hughes employment and unceremonious discharge record from Hughes Aviation and I have the flight manifests for Johnny’s last flight from Key West to the never gotten too Sarasota.

You would think that would be enough proof to sink any legend, any legend for guys who at least had done some of the stuff that their press agents distributed. No, all I get is so-called anonymous communications denying that I had the right Johnny, the right Johnny on the birth certificate when they claim he was born in Elmira, Ohio (checked out, no go). That “so what” if Johnny and Howard didn’t see eye to eye when Johnny was trying to save him money on some Golden Goose plane by saying it wouldn’t work, was not economically feasible, at the time. That Rita wasn’t down in Barranca with Johnny didn’t matter, implying that the foxy whore before she ran out on Johnny when he ran out of dough or was run out of Barranca when he ditched the postmaster’s last serviceable plane, was good enough for them to hang onto. Here is the clincher, the one that says it all about whether Johnny ran guns for the Castros or was just a bush pilot running tourist around sunny 1950s Florida went that place was a haven for the rich gringos. They claim that the Stalinists, the Cuban Communist, the “commies” the way one Johnny aficionado put the matter, have kept the archives locked up so we will not know for maybe fifty years what Johnny’s role with Castro boys will turnout to have been. Alluding to the possibility that Johnny at some point helped out the revolution. That has the mark of John Kerr all over it. Enough said.