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.   

The Earrings Of Madame X-A Journey Through The Arts-John Singer Sargent’s Portrait Of Madame X (Yes, I Know Everybody Knows Who The Woman Was But Let’s Keep Up Appearances For The Sake Of Grand Art)

The Earrings Of Madame X-A Journey Through The Arts-John Singer Sargent’s Portrait Of Madame X (Yes, I Know Everybody Knows Who The Woman Was But Let’s Keep Up Appearances For The Sake Of Grand Art)

By Laura Perkins

One of the positive things about the dramatic change of leadership at this publication in 2017 has been the efforts on the part of new site manager Greg Green to give the audience, on occasion, some background about how decisions are made in this cutthroat no holds barred publishing business. This piece, something of an introductory piece for what is projected to be an on-going series if beautiful gentile if sometimes half-witted Greg doesn’t get sidetracked and demand one and all start writing about bowling or something like he did when he took over the reins and went berserk having every writer, young or old, paying hosannas to Marvel/DC Comic Universe comic book characters come to film nonsense, is one of those times. (By the way although I was not here at the time I am very well aware that “dramatic change of leadership” was nothing less than a purge of previous manager Allan Jackson and has since been recognized as such by all parties concerned except maybe Pollyanna Lance Lawrence. My long-time companion Sam Lowell, now on the skids down the food chain cast the deciding vote against keeping his longtime friend since elementary school Allan on under the theory that the “torch had to be passed”)

My understanding is that a few months ago as Greg Green was looking over the archives, he noted that there were very few pieces, sketches he calls them as did Allan before him, about art, by this he meant high art, cultured museum worthy art, except by way of making some political point. Not much what he called “art for art’s sake” stealing from some old time art theorist who hammered away at the idea that this was the artists highest duty (after getting paid the market rate for his or her work). Apparently, Greg had been getting some flak from the readership which given the demographics now has plenty of time to go to art museums or take that art class they meant to take about forty, fifty years ago (although now with very unsteady hand).

He called Sam Lowell in, now the head of the Editorial Board among his other duties, to see what to do about the deficiency. (One of the fall-outs from that fierce internal free-for-all which rattled the publication for months in 2017 was the institution of an Editorial Board which “theoretically” was to oversee the site manager’s work so that another Allan Jackson calling all the shots on his own hook would not lead to another “youth” uprising. Sam, have thrust the knife in his long-time friend’s back no matter the reason as recognized even by him in his candid moments was “rewarded” with the chair of the Board.) Greg’s idea was that he had heard that Sam had when he was in high school been directed by his art teacher to apply to his alma mater, Massachusetts School of Art in Boston, and he would grease the way for a scholarship or something.

Now Sam, as did some of the other older writers here came from desperate poverty in the working- class section, the Acre they called it, of North Adamsville south of Boston. His mother freaked out, a mother I never met since Sam and I did not take up company before he had gone through three failed marriages and was pretty estranged from his strait-laced Irish Catholic family. Her argument was that no way was a son of hers going to be some bohemian, beatnik is the word I think Sam said she used, starving artist in some cold-water flat garret with the rats and thugs for neighbors. That dampener plus his own inclinations toward cinema and politics pushed him in another direction. Still Sam was the only known candidate to unofficially lead the way to more art pieces and projects.         

Until recently that is when Sam started that slide down the food chain, my expression, after he decided that he had to playing avenging angel against the light-hearted harmless bill of fare that the Hallmark Channel presents at Christmas time. And of which I am a devoted follower of every year. Not the “fanatic” mentioned in one of his so-called reviews but having had a rough and tumble time growing up in upstate New York where my farmer father thought Christmas was an extra occasion to get drunk as a skunk with his farmer buddies I get some relief from the sad feelings I usually get this time of year by watching and “vegging out” while having the shows on in the background. Sam got some much blowback from his comments, including from me that he decided, and Greg approved, to do reviews of films with the idea of whether they would be Hallmark Channel-worthy or not. He is still working through that nonsense and good luck to him, no, bad luck to him on this one for posing the idea to Greg and for following through which has caused many a battle in the Perkins-Lowell household. And rightly so for the not so gentle into that good night bastard. I will, I have gotten even with him on that account.  

That left the art review spot open with no one to replace the self-inflicted wounded warrior. That is until Leslie Dumont, a good friend of mine, mentioned to Greg that I had taken an art class once, and maybe had gone to an art museum as well. With that resume he approached me with kid gloves and tried to coax me into doing the art stuff until he could find somebody else. I told him I had not taken an art class but an art appreciation class you know  a survey of what some art professor though we the great unwashed needed to see when I was at Rochester and had merely done some sketches, really some doodling at meetings when some windbag went on and one, on my own and had gone to an art museum or two in my time. That scant expertise was enough to get me the assignment. With the proviso that I could wander into whatever I liked and not have to make any disclaimer that I was some kind of art curator, had written a monogram or sometime.

Hence as my first subject, as noted in the headline of this piece, I am making commentary on American expatriate John Singer Sargent’s The Portrait Of Madame X another American expatriate which has intrigued ever since I was a young woman wondering about the X part, about why she had, or he, had to use an alias. Wondering too about those rumored affairs, about who she was sleeping with to get herself up the Parisian social ladder which had to say the least be tricky for even up and coming French women never mind an American who married her husband, a wheeler-dealer banker for his dough and his connections.

Of course in the gentile art world, the so-called academy, the tabloid critics and the erstwhile collectors who were clueless about what was good art and what was “going through the paces” centered in that late 19^th century in Paris and nowhere else the whole thing was a scandal, scandalous since our Madame was showing to little strap, or rather too wayward a strap suggesting, well I guess suggesting more problems keeping her clothes on as the wine and night wore on, that exquisite dress and maybe too much bosom as well in that well-padded upper dress section. (Believe me as a small-breasted woman fitted that way by nature and genetics when I was younger, I was looking for every advance short of surgical breast enlargement to enhance my figure in that area so I know padding when I see it. Recently in preparing this sketch I had a close look at the dresses some of Sargent’s Mayfair swell sitters wore at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston so yes Madame was well padded-and painted on those bare shoulders with some kind of exotic powders to get so her complexion so white. By the way observing the structure of the dresses no way was that whalebone going to “slip” except in the imagination of those three name men who were thinking such things, or maybe all men regardless of number of names in their monikers.)         

  

Scandal aside, which from what I gathered from one of her lovers who wrote one of those “tell-all” books after she passed away she saw as a selling point on her way up the social ladder, it is very interesting that she did not show her front face and left the profile in one direction and her posed body in another. Vanity thy name is Madame X. The real reason beyond the allure of the profile in contrast to her full-figured black gown was that she had and ever so slight wrinkle under her left eye and refused to let Sargent who was no gentleman in this matter paint a frontal face position with that hideous deformity. (I will for now not speak of an even more obvious reason for no frontal pose-that beak of a nose she was trying to downplay but will stick with the wrinkle which more women of a certain age these days can relate to-despite the beauties of plastic surgery and the like) This information on Madame’s distress over that sign of aging wrinkle from the guy who provided Sargent with his paint mixtures (and who also for a short time on the sly when Madame was in one of her “plebian” lover moods was her lover). Confirmed by the house maid who for a few francs (now Euros) would let the guy, name unmentionable because the family subsequently became very famous, into the back door to Madame’s boudoir.     

Frankly Madame looked like an “ice queen,” a kind that Sam jokingly mentioned to me one time before we were intimate that he sensed I was (wrongly as he will now freely admit). This Madame X ice queen is nothing but drop dead beautiful who holds that beauty like a sword which even now in the modern age among a certain set, actresses come to mind, is a very effective way to get up that ladder, she was always seeking. That “mystery” and our lady reeks of it no question got her as far as the finance minister in the Thier’s government which meant she was on her way. (Apparently her banker husband was happy since it solved a little solvency problem he was having which got smoothed over I assume during Madame’s calculated bed talk with that smitten finance minister). Some say, and I believe Sargent did too, think this work was his greatest portrait. Maybe even his best work. I will not argue with that estimation but to this day I still wonder how those women got those tiny waists without suffocating in those horrible corsets.  

In The Time Of The Second Mountain Music Revival- A Song-catcher Classic Song- "Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies"-Maybelle Carter-Style

In The Time Of The Second Mountain Music Revival- A Song-catcher Classic Song- "Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies"-Maybelle Carter-Style

By Alex Radley

Being very new here, brought in the past few months by Greg Green on the recommendation of his Editorial Board, I have nothing to say about the internal wrangling that has roiled this shop over the past several month even after the departure of the previous site manager. I am concerned though at a personal level about the talk, rumor I guess you would call it, ever since Phil Larkin, an older writer here and sort of a funny guy, started talking about purges and changes of direction which has a lot of writers and not just the older ones concerned about what and who will stay and what and who will go. I have heard from Bart Webber, a mainstay of this site from what some guys have told me, there are plans afoot to shut down, or deeply scale back the amount of reviews and reminiscences about the folk scene in the 1960s and the long string of such music prior to that which those folk aficionados gathered up and promoted.

This mountain music which certainly is folk music in an almost literal sense is the music of my grandfather who grew up down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia and attended those Saturday night fiddle, mandolin, mountain harp, red barn dances when he was young which he told me about when I was young. One of the junior editors here who shall remain nameless because as they say on all disclaimers he is not authorized to talk about it but who has been helpful on a couple of other reviews kind of off-handedly told me that this review might very well be the last, or close to the last time, mountain music gets anything but short shrift notice in passing on this site. Damn.         

A YouTube film clip of a classic Song-Catcher-type song from deep in the mountains, Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies. According to my sources Cecil Sharpe (a British musicologist in the manner of Francis Child with his ballads back in 1850s Cambridge hanging out with Longfellow and the Brattle Street crowd, Charles Seeger father of Pete Seeger a seminal force in folk music in his own right and key link to the folk music passing on of the 1960s my grandfather keeps telling me about when I go visit him in the nursing home, and the Lomaxes, father and son who whatever the son did to injure the career of a British folksinger of some note with his disregard for her feelings when they were companions did yeoman’s work collecting prison songs, Saturday night red barn hills and hollows song and a lot more)"discovered" the song in 1916 in Kentucky.

Of course my first connection to the song had nothing to do with the mountains, or mountain origins, or so I though at the time but was heard the first time long ago in my grandfather in his ill-spent 1960s youth (that expression his not mine) listening to a late Sunday night folk radio show on WBZ in Boston hosted by Dick Summer (who is now featured on the Tom Rush documentary No Regrets about Tom’s life in the early 1960s Boston folk scene that my grandfather has also gone on and on about) and hearing the late gravelly-voiced folksinger Dave Van Ronk like some latter-day Jehovah doing his version of the song. Quite a bit different from the Maybelle Carter effort here. I'll say.

[By the way that “or so I thought” about mountain music later turned out to be not quite true. My grandfather originally from coal country down in Prestonsburg, Kentucky out by the hills and hollows (I refuse to write “hollas” which is the way grandfather pronounces it and from him it sounds right) and my grandmother left Carville for a time to go back to his growing up home to see if they could make a go of it there after World War II. They could not but while they were there my father was conceived and being carried in my grandmothers’ womb so it turned out the damn stuff was in my DNA going back some distance. Go figure, right.]     

COME ALL YE FAIR AND TENDER LADIES

(A.P. Carter)

The Carter Family - 1932

Come all ye fair and tender ladies

Take warning how you court young men

They're like a bright star on a cloudy morning

They will first appear and then they're gone

They'll tell to you some loving story

To make you think that they love you true

Straightway they'll go and court some other

Oh that's the love that they have for you

Do you remember our days of courting

When your head lay upon my breast

You could make me believe with the falling of your arm

That the sun rose in the West

I wish I were some little sparrow

And I had wings and I could fly

I would fly away to my false true lover

And while he'll talk I would sit and cry

But I am not some little sparrow

I have no wings nor can I fly

So I'll sit down here in grief and sorrow

And try to pass my troubles by

I wish I had known before I courted

That love had been so hard to gain

I'd of locked my heart in a box of golden

And fastened it down with a silver chain

Young men never cast your eye on beauty

For beauty is a thing that will decay

For the prettiest flowers that grow in the garden

How soon they'll wither, will wither and fade away

******

ALTERNATE VERSION:

Come all ye fair and tender ladies

Take warning how you court young men

They're like a star on summer morning

They first appear and then they're gone

They'll tell to you some loving story

And make you think they love you so well

Then away they'll go and court some other

And leave you there in grief to dwell

I wish I was on some tall mountain

Where the ivy rocks are black as ink

I'd write a letter to my lost true lover

Whose cheeks are like the morning pink

For love is handsome, love is charming

And love is pretty while it's new

But love grows cold as love grows old

And fades away like the mornin' dew

And fades away like the mornin' dew

When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of Folksinger/Song-Writer/Folk Historian Dave Van Ronk’s Time

When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of Folksinger/Song-Writer/Folk Historian Dave Van Ronk’s Time

By Bart Webber

I have not much to say that already has not already been said by me or others about the recent shake-up and turn-over of regimes at this site. I am sure that most readers would be more than happy not to see a supposedly bright cohort of writers acting like this was electoral politics and a fight over spoils or worse some fight in academic circles  where there really are no holds barred when somebody get their hackles up. However, I, like Jack Callahan, another old-timer who was both friends with the previous site manager whose name I will not use since there had been a recent mandate to be stop doing so further to be commented on in a minute and a big financial backer of this and several other linked sites are concerned about the drift as exemplified by that “notice” and, more importantly, rumors of dramatic changes in the subject matter and emphasis of this blog away from the original purposes also to be commented on below.

Funny democracy, or the democratic façade, works in mysterious ways-or stops working. During the height of the internal fight which as everybody now should know was a knockdown, drag out fight essentially between the younger and older writers concerning who was in charge and what was to be written about everybody for a period was encouraged to freely write about their takes on the situation under some theory that the yakking out loud might be of interest to the readership about the inner workings of social media sites.  When Greg Green took over day to day operations aided by his hand-picked and some say toady Editorial Board he further encouraged such discussion. Until he, they, that supposedly independent and liberal Board didn’t. Put out the word, the “notice” which everybody young and old took as a “warning” to cease and desist using the old site manager’s name (and accomplishments which were many) in the interest  of “moving on.” So much for democracy, or better democratic façade.

More troubling since even a fair number of the younger writers, including a couple who sit on that august Ed Board, are shocked by the rumors that soon there will be dramatic changes in what is presented here and who will present the material. One of the big complaints that the younger writers had, which in truth had some merit, was that the site was too, way too mired in the past. Specifically that the older writers were tending to crawl back into their nostalgic 1960s coming of age roots reflected in the incredible number of old-time films, books, music, political dreams, and cultural events reported on. That the younger writers were forced to write about stuff that didn’t experience or know about and in the words of more than one in the heat of battle didn’t give a f- -k about. That came to a head with the massive coverage of the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love, 1967 which most of them were either too young to remember or were not even born yet.

Now the wheel seems to be turning the other way which I with which have just had some direct experience. When I attempted to submit this piece about Dave Van Ronk, a pivotal figure in the early 1960s folk music world, I was told by Greg (who invoked that flunky Ed Board over-filled with his internal fight supporters) that it might not run since the Board was concerned that there had already been too much on this site about that minor musical genre. Moreover I was told to cut it to about three hundred words if they decided to post the piece. I have refused to cut except for some tightening of a few parts suggested by a helpful junior editor. That refusal bought some space for this piece but also another “notice” about “broadening our horizons.” This is, what did Jack Callahan call it, yeah, the opening shot of my campaign to save this important genre on the American and cultural landscape if not so much now then in earlier times.     

******

      

      

Sure everybody, everybody over the age of say fifty to be on the safe side, knows about Bob Dylan. About how he, after serving something like an apprenticeship under the influence of Woody Guthrie in the late 1950s, became if not the voice of the Generation of ’68, my generation, which he probably did not seriously aspire in the final analysis, then the master troubadour of the age. (Troubadour in the medieval sense of bringing news to the people and entertaining them as well.) So, yes, that story has been pretty well covered. But of course that is hardly the end of the story since Dylan did not create that now hallowed folk minute of the early 1960s but was washed by it when he came East into the Village where there was a cauldron of talent trying to make folk the next big thing, big cultural thing for the young and restless of the post-World War II generations. And one of the talents who was already there, lived there, came from around there was the late Dave Van Ronk who deservedly fancied himself a folk historian as well as musician.    

That former role is important because we all know that behind the “king” is the “fixer man,” the guy who knows what is what, the guy who tells one and all what the roots of the matter were. Dave Van Ronk was serious about that part, serious about imparting that knowledge about the little influences that had accumulated during the middle to late 1950s especially around New York which set up that folk minute.

He told a funny story, actually two funny stories about the folk scene and his part in which will give you an idea about his place in the pantheon. During the late 1950s after the publication of Jack Kerouac’s ground-breaking road wanderlust adventure novel that got young blood stirring, On The Road, the jazz scene, the cool be-bop jazz scene and poetry reading, poems reflecting off of “beat” giant Allen Ginsberg’s Howl  the clubs and coffeehouse of the Village were ablaze with readings and cool jazz, people waiting in line to get in to hear the next big poetic wisdom if you can believe that. The crush meant that there were several shows per evening. But how to get rid of one audience to bring in another in those small quarters was a challenge.

Presto, if you wanted to clear the house just bring in some desperate from hunger snarly nasal folk singer for a couple, maybe three songs, and if that did not clear the high art poetry house then that folk singer was a goner. A goner until the folk minute of the 1960s who probably in that same club played for the “basket.” And so the roots of New York City folk. The second story involved his authoritative role as a folk historian who after the folk minute had passed became the subject matter for, well, for doctoral dissertations of course. Eager young students breaking new ground in folk history who would come to him for the “skinny”. Now Van Ronk had a peculiar if not savage sense of humor and could not abide academia and its’ barren insider language so when those eager young students came a calling he would give them some gibberish which they would duly note and footnote. Here is the funny part. That gibberish would then be cited by some other young and eager student complete with the appropriate footnote. Nice touch, nice touch indeed on that one.       

As for Van Ronk’s music, his musicianship which he cultivated throughout his life, I think the best way to describe that for me is that one Sunday night in the early 1960s I was listening to the local folk program on WBZ hosted by Dick Summer (who was influential in boosting local folk musician Tom Rush’s career and who is featured on a recent Tom Rush documentary No Regrets) when this gravelly-voice guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, sang the Kentucky hills classic Fair and Tender Ladies. After that I was hooked on that voice and that depth of feeling that he brought to every song even those of his own creation which were spoofs on some issue of the day. I saw him perform many times over the years and had expected to see him perform as part of Rosalie Sorrels’ farewell concert at Saunders Theater at Harvard in 2003. He had died a few weeks before. I would note when I had seen him for what turned out to be my last time he did not look well and had been, as always, drinking heavily and his performance was subpar. But that is at the end. For a long time he sang well, sang us well with his own troubadour style, and gave us plenty of real information about the history of American folk music.                   

Howling At The Moon-When Howlin’ Wolf Held Forth

Howling At The Moon-When Howlin’ Wolf Held Forth  

By Jack Callahan

I have been encouraged by fellow older writers in this space to not put my extraneous remarks about the turmoil, the now vaunted internal in-fighting at this blog over the past several months, in brackets but let it flow as part of the narration for the piece. Their idea is that the remarks are more likely not to be famously red-penciled (famous since most editor like to use blue pencil to cut out parts they don’t like for whatever reason) by the current site manager Greg Green who gained his position as a direct result of that faction fight. And it really was a faction fight since it pitted the so-called “Young Turk” younger writers against the old guard around the previous manager whose name I will not use here as an added guarantee that the piece will be posted although my real ace in the hole is my serious financial backing for this site, and on-line American Folk Gazette, American Film Gazette and Progressive Nation. 

This is my opening shot in defense of those older writers who rely on these outlets for their daily bread and to get their material before as Seth Garth always likes to say “a candid world.” I am a very sporadic article contributor here but the latest rumors which are persistent that the “winning” side is planning a “purge” of the older writers (and any other writers who disagree with the direction of the current site manager and his hand-picked Editorial Board created in the wake of the dispute to “guide” the work) and a serious change of direction in the political, cultural, music, film and book material presented has me very concerned both for the older writers and for the direction of the blog. For example the notion which I am not sure how far it has been discussed to eliminate coverage of the classic blues, electirc blues which forms the basis for this short review. My God eliminating one of the central organic Amercian musical forms. I will expand on this more in a review I am writing for the book version of Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show. Hopefully this opening shot will get by the more “democratic red pencil of the current regime.

********

 Some music you acquired naturally, you know like kids’ songs learned in school (The Farmer in the Dell, etc. in case you forgot) and embedded in the back of your mind even fifty years later. Some reflected the time period when you were growing up but were too young to call the music your own like the music that ran around the background of your growing up house on the mother housewife radio or evening record player which in my case was the music that got my parents through my father’s slogging and mother anxiously waiting World War II. You know, Frank, The Andrew Sisters, Peggy Lee, etc.   Other music, the music of my generation, classic rock and rock came more naturally since that is what I wanted to hear when I had my transistor radio to my ear up in my bedroom. Yeah, Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Buddy, Jerry Lee, etc. again. The blues though, the rarified country and electric urban blues of the likes of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf was an acquired taste.       

Acquired through listening to folk music programs which I had been turned onto by Sam Lowell, another older writer here who sided with the “Young Turks” against his old friend the previous site manager on that very same transistor radio in the early 1960s when they would take a break from down home mountain music, western swing ballads, and urban protest music to play some cuts of country or electric blues. See all the big folkies, Dylan, Tom Rush, Dave Van Ronk, people like that were wild to cover the blues in the search for serious roots music from the American songbook. So somebody, I don’t know who, figured if everybody who was anybody was covering the blues in that minute then it made sense to play the real stuff.

The real stuff having been around for while, having been produced by the likes of Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf, going back to the 1940s big time black migration to the industrial plants of the Midwest during World War II when there were plenty of jobs just waiting. But also having been pushed to the background, way to the background with the rise of rock and roll. So it took that combination of folk minute and that then well-hidden electric blues some time to filter through my brain. What did not take a long time once I got “religion” was going crazy over Howlin’ Wolf when I saw him perform. Once I saw him practically eat that harmonica he was playing on How Many More Years down in Newport and which is now immortalized, immortalized as far cyberspace will be able to accomplish that feat on YouTube clips which will allow younger and future generations to see and hear what it was like when men and women played the blues for keeps.  Played like that was the last chance stance. Yes, that is an acquired taste and a lasting one.