The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-When Elvis (No Last Name Needed) Made All The Women Sweat-“Are You Lonesome Today”

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-When Elvis (No Last Name Needed) Made All The Women Sweat-“Are You Lonesome Today”   

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He’s Got It Bad-With Elvis’s Are You Lonesome Tonight -Take Two …he wondered, truly wondered, whether she missed him just then, missed her walking daddy, her walking daddy when they walked  down the street hand-in-hand and later when high as kites they messed up the pillows at her place, got those satin sheets all sweaty and love moist from their exertions when their fling was fresh and bright. Yes, he wondered for the millionth time that night, that seemingly endless sleepless night when he wondered once again whether  she missed him after all the slow meaningless time that had passed these past few months since their over-heated short love affair had gone down in flames almost as quickly as it had started. That walking daddy moniker by the way was a little term of endearment that she had tagged him with after they had, well, done the “do the do” and she though that she had him reined in, reined him in with kisses and a few little special things that he liked, and that she knew he liked even before he told her that he did. That “do the do” sex stuff was the least of their problems, he knew she liked his kisses and a few little special things that she liked, and that he knew she liked even before she told him that she did, although at the end maybe it was the sex stuff too that did them in when he started asking her to do stuff from the Karma Sutra and she who previously had been the aggressor practically pulling his pants down balked at a few of the kinkier positions described in that manual, it could have been everything jumbled together. But if anybody asked him he missed that part, no question.    He did not really believe underneath it all although he kept his doubts open based on a few odd facts about going the other way, that she did, did miss him. She was not built that way, had kind of a steel-trap mind on the subject of men and missing them after she was done with them (and others too, subjects she was steel-trapped about). He knew from the first, and she made the fact abundantly clear in all their conversations, that once she was done with a man that was that and she moved on, maybe to the next man, maybe just off to lick her wounds. She would illustrate the point  with examples citing, chapter and verse, whenever the subject came up ex-husbands and lovers, one husband of whom she said had asked if she needed a blackboard to help lecture him once she got on her high horse about the subject. Still he took a ticket, took a chance that he would be, what she called him at the beginning, oh yeah, her “forever” man and in a chillingly ironic shift a few short months later her “never” man although she did not say that word exactly he just plucked it out of the air one night, one early on sleepless night when he first thought about whether she missed him.  Yeah, so no question he was as sure as a man could be, a man who no longer was on speaking terms with her, that he would not be surprised to find out that she did not miss him. He wondered too whether she was lonesome tonight for her walking daddy, a very different proposition than whether she missed him. He was not sure on that score, although he thought in the far recesses of his brain she might. See as she also explained in detail with those same ex-husbands and major lovers example complete with blackboard remark even if she was through with a man, had moved on to another man, or just went off to lick her wounds the way she put the fact in those same conversations about her way with men, she was as likely to be licking her wounds as looking for another man. As likely to be filled with solitary sadness as out on the town, out with another man. That is where those two marriages and many love affairs came in, came in and softened rather than hardened her to life’s romantic ups and downs. She had mentioned to him one night that she had since childhood and a very savagely cruel upbringing had a   hard time letting go, letting the past fade, and that it took her a long time to get over a man once they were through. How did he say she put it one night, oh yeah, she was fast to love a man when he got under her skin and slow to forget him. That fast love start had been her way with him in their whirlwind love affair smothering him with all kinds of undeserved accolades based on fairly limited knowledge of who he was, what he had been through, and his own spoken appreciations of his worth which added up to a profile of the usual man of clay, nothing more. All of the above smotherings by her not giving him time to breathe, to think things through, before trying to plan   their future unto infinity after about a month into their relationship. Yeah, in the far recesses of her brain might be just the right way to put it about whether she might be lonesome that night he spoke of but let me tell you what he told me one night about that night he was wondering and many other nights before and after while we were sipping white wines at a Boston bar, listening to some old time piped-in jazz music as background (could have been Cry Me A River starting out, in fact I think it was), which started him off to tell me  what exactly had happened the previous few months. Let me give you some of the story and you try to figure the damn thing out:      He had met her sitting at the bar in Cambridge, a rock and roll bar, an “oldies but goodies” bar, a 1950s classic age of rock and roll bar that he frequented when he needed to hear Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Jerry Lee or some Warren Smith rockabilly beat after some hard court case was done or he just needed to blow off steam when some appeals case was slipping away from him for lack of presentable issues that could win. Some nights, like that night, he wound up just slugging quarters in the juke-box, others, mainly weekend nights he would wind up listening to a live band, The Rockin’ Ramrods, covering the classics. He   noticed that from his vantage point a few stools down she looked very familiar in a long ago way. After he slid down the few empty barstools between them to get beside her he had mentioned that fact to her as a come-on and offered and bought her a drink on that basis (a glass of red wine which she loved, loved to perdition as he would find out later) they spent the next several minutes trying to figure where that might have been. Work, no, some godforsaken political conference, no, another long ago bar, no, the Cape, no, College, no, and so on.  Strangely they found out once they discussed where they had grown up (she had told him at first she was from New Hampshire and he said that he lived in Cambridge so the subject of home towns did not come up on the first run) that the link had been  that they had gone to the same high school together, she a couple of years after him, North Adamsville High, located on the South Shore of Boston although they had not known each other, had not had any of the same classes back then (but since they had also gone to the same junior high school they agreed later after they were “smitten” with each other, her term, and wanted to make some symbolic “written in the wind” closeness count they must have been in the same space at some point if only the gym, auditorium or cafeteria). That revelation got them cutting up old touches that night for a while, well, a long while since they closed the bar that night. They agreed that they had some common interests and that they should continue the conversation further via e-mail and cellphone. See, since she lived up in New Hampshire in a town outside of Manchester, was a professor at the state university and had been in Cambridge to attend an education conference at Harvard getting together soon in person with her busy start of semester schedule was problematic. So for a while, a few weeks, they carried on an e-mail/cellphone correspondence. Both were however struck by the number of things they had in common, things from childhood like growing up poor, growing up in hostile and dangerous family environments, growing up insecure and with nothing and nobody to guide them left to their own resources. Moreover they found that they had many similar teenage angst and alienation episodes in high school in common as well as current political and academic interests. Both agreed that they should meet again in person since they had already “met” in high school (somehow in the rush of things they discounted that they had really met in Cambridge in a bar, but such are the ways of love in bloom go figure). And so they met again, met many times in neutral territory since they lived so far apart (they called their romance, the Merrimack romance for all the old mill towns they met in for half way convenient, Lowell, Nashua, Manchester, Haverhill, Amesbury and a couple of others I forgot), had many chatty dinners and did other things together like museums and took long walks along the river. He explained to me the powerful first dinner where they talked for hours and when he escorted her to her car in the parking lot for them to go their separate ways home she got teary-eyed and he caressed her hair to console   her. Yeah, it was like that when it was good.   Before long they agreed to meet at a hotel in New Hampshire to see if they had a spark that way. Well you know they did since otherwise there would be no story to tell. You also know, at least you know what he thought about the matter, that they did very well in bed together.  Yes, they, he and she, were both smitten, both felt very comfortable with each other and were heading forward with eyes open. Along the way she had discussed her two divorce-ended marriages, her serious love affairs and her attitudes toward relationships. Those were the times she would emphasize her take on men, her jealousies, expectations and her limitations. She also early on started her campaign to get him to go to stay with her in New Hampshire and leave Cambridge. He although not as well formed in his take on their relationship as she did likewise explained his two marriages, especially the hard fall of the second marriage which left him very stunned, and major love affairs, although he early on balked when she spoke of leaving the city for the Podunk country up north as he called her place, called the whole state of New Hampshire for that matter. So yes both sets of eyes were open, open wide. She pulled the hammer down, pulled it down early. Within a couple of months she spoke of love, of living together, of sailing out into the sunset together. He, slower on the uptake, slower having been more severely burned in his last marriage than he let on to her or had thought had been the case, was a bit bewildered by her speedy emotional attachments to him. They went on a couple of trips away to New York and Washington together, had some good times, had some rocky times interspersed in between too when she tried to rein him in. He wasn’t afraid to commit exactly (well maybe he was as he confessed to me although not to her when it could have helped, maybe had a little “cold feet” problem but he insisted it was a small blip) as much as he wanted the thing to develop naturally, give him time to breathe although I have already said that air to breathe thing before didn’t I, there always seemed to be an air of suffocation every time she got on her high horse, got her wanting habits on, got the best of him sometimes. Then he made his fatal mistake, or rather series of mistakes, starting with strong words one night at one of their Merrimack River trail dinner when they both had had a bit too much to drink, too much wine, and she was going on and on as she did after her second or third glass depending on how tired she had been after a long day’s work. He admitted he got snappy, told her they needed to slow down and enjoy each other. She responded with a blast that shook him up but they were able to kiss and make up that night. The real mistake though was one time after they had not seen each other for a week or so when he sent her an e-mail speaking in sorrow of the drift of their recent relationship and he wanted the spark back that had go them going. She exploded at that e-mail seeing that as a callous rebuke of her actions rather than as what he thought was a plaintive let’s go forward love letter. What did he say she had called it, oh yeah, a closing argument, a damn lawyer’s closing argument (the “damn” part a result of having been married to a lawyer the first time out and now being with him). They agreed to meet at a neutral restaurant to discuss the matter (on the Merrimack River of course but I will not give the location since there still may be blood on the water). When he thought about it later he could see where she had prepared herself to be confrontational toward him or at least be prepared to force the issue because the first words out of her mouth were an ultimatum-“come live with me or the affair is over.” The exchange got heated as she drank more wine on this night as well (he did not drink that night having learned a lesson from the last session). She said something that when we talked he could not for the life of him remember but they were fighting words. He exploded saying “I don’t need this,” threw money on the table and stormed out. That was the last he saw of her not even looking back to see how she took the matter.  Oh sure the next day he tried frantically to call several times knowing that a decisive turning point had been reached, no answer. Tried some e-mails-same response. Later that day he got a message on his voicemail from her giving her walking daddy his walking papers. She told him not to call, not to write as she would not respond. He never did. As he explained it to me he never did although he spent many a night thinking about whether he should call, about what he would say and thought too of an e-mail but he knew in his bones she would not answer like with his first attempts so he let it go. Knew her steel-trapped policies toward men, toward him in her walking papers summary. So he let it go to spend his time, his free time, fretting about what had happened. Jesus.    What he did do seriously in the few weeks after their break-up, what he was doing this night he spoke to me as well as months earlier  when he first fretted over what had gone wrong, was think through how it could have played out differently. Did that blame game in order to curb his own lonesomeness as he replayed their short affair, as he tried to try to figure out something that had bothered him since that fierce parting night. No, not about the specific details of what had caused his downfall, although he was still perplexed about why his concern about the over-heated pace of their relationship and his anger at that last meeting over her ultimatum should have been the irretrievable cause. He would accept that, had to accept that was the way she perceived the situation and that those were the causes of his downfall pure and simple. He didn’t like it but he has come to see where what she said in her voicemail message that she could never see him in the old way, the way she had in the beginning of their affair when their love flamed, precluded any future romantic relationship.  What he thought about mostly though concerned one point-how could two intelligent, worldly people, who individually had many strong and powerful inner resources gathered through surviving stormy childhoods and life’s hard knocks, not be able to figure a way to avoid letting their fragile relationship blow away in the wind, blow away without a trace after many professions of desire, devotion and fidelity. He fretted over how little energy they had devoted to using some of those personal inner resources in order to build the foundations of a strong relationship. He had been willing to take his fair share of the blame for his “cold feet” which had him, more often than not, attempting to walk away from not toward her. That last marriage had damaged him more than he had thought and it had still colored his worldview on intimacy, on commitment, no question. That walking away from her in fear as they got closer, as she started to get under his skin, always seemed strongest as he left her after some bad days when she was pushing him hard. Or when he thought the whole thing was hopeless since they lived too far away from each other to compromise on a living arrangement. Yeah, he would take his fair share of blame on that. She infuriated him though with her interminable future plans while disregarding the present, although he could not speak for her and whether she believed his house of card blown in the wind idea about what had happened. She had plans for them to go to live in California when they retired, deemed it mandatory that he spent a certain number of days up in New Hampshire even while he had pressing business to take care of in Boston, but best, best as an example, was that she had their next Christmas and New Year plans already mapped out in March. All the time not paying attention to the drift of the tempo of their day to day relationship where he was, frankly, unhappy, very unhappy. In the end he was shocked by how little there had been to hold them together in a serious crisis which he conceded, or would have conceded if she had ever decided to talk to him again, was a serious crisis. Now that he thought about it for a while he told me, now that he had talked it through with me, he decided, no, whether she had a new walking daddy or not (or whatever new moniker she would make up for him) she would not be lonesome for him that night.                         Are You Lonesome Tonight? Lyrics Are you lonesome tonight, Do you miss me tonight? Are you sorry we drifted apart? Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day When I kissed you and called you sweetheart? Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare? Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there? Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight? I wonder if you're lonesome tonight You know someone said that the world's a stage And each must play a part. Fate had me playing in love you as my sweet heart. Act one was when we met, I loved you at first glance You read your lin so cleverly and never missed a cue Then came act two, you seemed to change and you acted strange And why I'll never know. Honey, you lied when you said you loved me And I had no cause to doubt you. But I'd rather go on hearing your lies Than go on living without you. Now the stage is bare and I'm standing there With emptiness all around And if you won't come back to me Then make them bring the curtain down. Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight? Songwriters: ROY TURK, LOU HANDMAN Are You Lonesome Tonight? lyrics © BOURNE CO., CROMWELL MUSIC The Teen Scene In Between- With Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 In Mind

The Golden Age Of….The American Family-Suburban Branch-Jimmy Stewart’s “Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation” (1962)- A Film Review

The Golden Age Of….The American Family-Suburban Branch-Jimmy Stewart’s “Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation” (1962)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

Mr. Hobbs Takes A Holiday, starring Jimmy Stewart, Maureen O’Hara, Fabian, 1962

My old friend and fellow writer here Sandy Salmon (and film critic formerly with the American Film Gazette but we aren’t supposed to say anything but the designated term writer since we cover all beats so just writer) always told me that the best kind of movie to review for him anyway was one which put the spotlight on some aspect of American life at a certain nodal point in our history. Basically a “slice of life” story told as much, or more about society, or as here in the film under review Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation a certain segment of that society at the time as any academic book or paper.

Within the plotline of this quasi-comic look at suburban America circa the late 1950 and early 1960s Sandy’s comment is spot on even if it’s a very glossy take on the mores of white middle class families in the “golden age” of American prosperity. It is almost a clinically pure example of the inward facing look of that segment during the heart of the Cold War red scare although you would hardly know it from the total lack of outside world reality intervention. I came up on the farm, a hard scrabble working truck farm outside of Albany in Dutch country upstate New York around the time of setting of this film and would have been the youngest daughter in this household, Katey, near contemporary. My world never came close to looking like that including all the alleged teen anagst and alienation traumas she faced.  Didn’t have time for that kind of thing.        

The plot is almost irrelevant here since it is pretty slim but the sociology is something to behold. An older white suburban couple, married, father Roger Hobbs, Jimmy Stewarts’ role, a successful banker, wife, Peggy, of Peg of my heart fame, played by Maureen O’Hara, successful housewife, one troubled boy teen, one very troubled girl teen, and no known dogs at home, along with two older married with children daughters also housewives with husbands who appear to be good providers for the next cookie cutter generation of one provider families already heading toward extinction to be replaced by two working parents also with no known dogs. Perfect sociological cohort of upwardly mobile America in a day when that dream had some realistic possibilities of achievement.

That was the sociology part the other part is the jack of all trades Mr. Fix it dad part. That much put upon Roger Hobbs who followed a long line of such dads from his own role in It’s a Wonderful Life to television’s Ward Cleaver, Fred McMurray, and Ozzie Nelson you get the picture. No child welfare department, no school counselors, no police intervention, no priest, nada. Just Pops, aka here Bumpah to grandchild. Old Hobbs takes the vacation from hell (in the future Chevy Chase would take up those same cudgels) and turns it into a one man’s family triumph. Young son alienated take him sailing. Young daughter ditto alienated and boy hungry no problem. Send a guy around (the guy turns out to be singer  Fabian heartthrob to young white suburban boy hungry white girls in the interest of transparency me too but here whose beard seems to make him cradle robbing). Daughter’s husband out of work get him work. Cook getting uppity no problem woo her back. Machinery out of whack-give the guy a wrench. An A number one Dad. Yeah, count this one if you really must see it as strictly a slice of life from a time which seems like a million years ago. Before rampart divorce, single parenthood, two worker households, and the like. Even the family station wagon has bitten the dust.                       

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-When Mister Warren Smith Fretted To Perdition Over His Rock ‘n Roll Ruby

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-When Mister Warren Smith Fretted To Perdition Over His Rock ‘n Roll Ruby

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

*********** He and She-With Warren Smith’s Rock and Roll Ruby In Mind  …he knew, knew deep in his bones, knew on the face of it too that he could not keep her, keep her to himself, keep her settled down and so he accepted that she would blow away like the wind on him sometime,   that same wind would take her away as the one on which they had proclaimed, or maybe better he had proclaimed and she went along with, that their love was written on, and it was just a matter of how long he could keep her. It was not that he was perceptive about women and their needs, wants, desires, nothing like that, not women in any case, girls really since he did not know anything at all about women who were older than say twenty, twenty-one except relative women, mothers, aunts, grandmothers and what was there to know about them to help him, help him with a wild side woman they all placid and proper, or about anything like that. And even on the girl thing he was filled with as much mystery and awe as with any real knowledge, his knowledge like everybody else, every guy, in town acquired on the street, in the boys’ sports locker rooms, and on the corner when he hung out with guys, or did before she took up his time but a lot of that was just flat-out wrong, half church-truth, half-just getting it wrong, about what made them tick, and about how to hang onto them. And it was not like he could lay claim to as a wet-behind-the ears high school kid trying to survive in the doldrums 1950s some inside knowledge about what was going to happen when his generation, the generation which would post-war born be called baby boomers and who would not fall into the false security, or at least he did not think that then, that their from hunger parents craved, broke out of the straitjacket but he just knew that she was like the wind and would get caught up in everything that was breezing across the land. He knew in his knotted stomach that what was happening in the cold war red scare night could not be the end of things, the end of the world and that when the time came for the break-out all hell would break loose. She would imbibe, joyfully imbibe the “newer world” was the way she put it to him one night when she wanted to go to a dance and he wanted to just hold hands or something at the movies (they went to the dance and she danced like Fred Astaire going up the walls in some movie they had seen), everything that was coming whether about ways of getting high not just the illicit liquor but some drugs that were beginning to make their way into the neighborhoods among the hipped; ways of dressing, especially ways of dressing sexy without old prudes scolding or guys leering; ways of dancing, dancing free from the old forms; and ways of hearing the music that always seemed to exist in her head just below the surface of what drove her personality.    Him, well, he was what she called when she was angry at him when he would not dance, wanted to square parent hold hands, or got mad when she did dance with other guys or he was smothering her with his forever plans (her take, not his) a “square.” Jesus, a square and with his strict Jehovah upbringing and his “get out of from hunger and get ahead dreams” maybe he was. He knew that he would not be able to go with her when she broke out, knew that for sure. Knew from that one time some guy at a dance at the Surf Ballroom down by the beach gave them a couple of shots of rotgut Southern Comfort which she dug and on which he just threw up, knew that other time in downtown Boston when some college guy was giving her the once over and passed them a “joint” (marijuana for the squares like him) and she got all high and flirty (and he did too except he could not go with the flow of the thing); knew when she started wearing her dresses shorter showing her well-turned legs and challenging guys to look; knew when she got all esoteric in her dancing like she was of the she with the seven veils; knew that when she began to dig electric blues and some helter-skelter hipster jazz, that he would not be able to go with her. No question.       It hadn’t started out that way, at least he did not see it like that at the beginning, see that she was a wayward wind, see that she had the desire to  deeply imbibe the new wave coming across the continent. That wind born of the wild reckless feckless boys sunk knee-deep in alienation and angst, of outlaw motorcycle bikers who played for real and played rough, of surf city guys searching for perfect waves with golden-haired girls waiting patiently on shore for that event, of hot rod Lincoln “chicken run” guys with boffo girls sitting high-breasted wearing cashmere sweaters in that coveted passenger seat turning the radio dial reaction against the staid Great Depression and World War II parents’ generation search for the security blanket in a hostile red scare Cold War world where they, the parents, just wanted their Johnny coming home from the war music, big Cadillac, two car garage with two cars and stardust memories. You know what he meant, don’t you, the undefined but vital mood change that started when Elvis and a bunch of other hungry guys [and a few women like Wanda Jackson and Laverne Baker] ripped it up with a new sound, a new not your parents’ tinny sound, but blessed, no, twice blessed rock and roll. And then other guys, other be-bop guys who had been around but were just then getting noticed called the beat, called the beat down to rise up and play themselves true, no hassles man, no hassles. All under the umbrella of dropping that dragged out, square, red scare cold war night thing the ancients had everybody stirred up about. Yeah and all their old has-been crowd. A little later, in Billy and Jenny time, the he and she here to introduce them but they could have been any of ten thousand kids hooked on the visual bible of the new religion American Bandstand, standing on corners looking be-bop beat, or throwing nickels and dimes at some Doc’s Drugstore jukebox complete with soda fountain to abate hungers in order to hear the latest about twenty times the music changed up again, and square was nowhere to be. Billy sensed it, sensed before Jenny even but he with ten thousand worries in his head blew it off, called it at first a passing fad then got real scared when his Jenny got testy with him more often.       They had met conventionally enough in senior year at old North Adamsville High, although they had seen each other around for ages as most of the kids in town had been at endless school assemblies, rallies, dances together but what of that in teen life had, for as such things go, they had not paid particular attention to kids they knew for ages, or kids that were not in their clique.. Had moreover grown up together on the wrong side of the tracks and wore a few scars to prove it although mostly they just acknowledged the slights from the Brahmins, noticed the no nods, the no look of approval, their slightly under-cool cheap Bargain Center dressing against the latest hip thing from Filene’s or Macy’s and didn’t talk about it thinking it was uncool to talk about roots, about yesterday, about anything but the moment, and Billy all bunched up about the future. Something clicked though in that senior year as they both had responded to each other’s furtive glances in Miss Williams’ study hall,   had furtively danced around each other at Doc’s Drugstore where all the kids hung out after school to listen the latest music, their music juke box, and had finally gone out on a double-date (he without a car at the time and so they had doubled up with her girlfriend Terry in her beau’s car, a “boss” Chevy since that beau was out of school and working as a welder down at the shipyard) at the local drive-in theater where she, sitting in the back seat with him, surprised him with her sexual advances. Stuff that Billy wasn’t all that familiar with but which he liked and which she knew that he liked. He, at least, was embarrassed when Terry and Eddie kept telling them to quiet down a little while Jenny was doing her thing on him. She on the other hand just to show how wild she could be if provoked took that as a signal to make him go   crazier. Terry later told Jenny there would be no more double-dates after she told her that Eddie had asked her to do what he called “doing the Jenny” on him before he left her off at her house. Terry said she did not know how to do that mouth thing and refused him flat when he said he would show her how. Jenny told Billy later after she had taught Terry the technique and Eddie coaxed her into doing it one afternoon after school she would chide Terry with a little “so did you do the Terry” again Saturday night down at the beach when they compared notes on their respective weekends before school on Monday morning. Somehow that “do the Terry” got around school and when Terry dumped Eddie guys would try to coax her into it. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. That is when Billy and Jenny would go back to double-dating with whatever new beau with a car that Terry had. Yeah, Billy liked it, liked it like any guy would, especially since Jenny was one of the prettiest girls in class and had a reputation for being kind of “unapproachable.”  (Billy later found out it was not so much the stuck-up thing as that she had been dating a college guy and at that time was strictly under his sway after they had a few sexual experiences which had kind of loosened her up. Joe College eventually took off with some girl from some college in Michigan once he was done with Jenny.) Yeah, he liked it but also thought to himself that night and the several other nights Jenny and he found themselves in some secluded spot on the beach (the Squaw Rock end not the Seal Rock end where parents and young kids hung out) when she did her thing to him, those times when she got all loud and screamy when he touched her where had she picked up that knowledge of what made a guy moan (and a girl all screamy). When he asked her about it later, not any of the nights when they were alone down the beach but a couple of weeks later, she just said girls knew stuff like that and she had learned it from her first boyfriend (that Joe College) who was older. Said that older guys, older guys who had been out in the world, guys who knew how to turn a woman on, and who expected to be turned on showed girls like her what was what. He let it pass.  So they were an “item” that last year of school and many a Monday morning before school when the other guys were speaking of so-called weekend conquests by the billion he just smiled a knowing silent smile.    Then, a couple, a few years out of high school, Billy working taking a few classes at the local junior college at night, Jenny working a couple or three nights a week as a high end restaurant waitress, the music at Doc’s jukebox changed, got more charged, frankly, got more sassy and sexual far different from their parents’ sappy sentimental stuff that didn’t get anybody’s heart rate up. And Jenny changed, well maybe not so much changed as got caught up in the new dispensation, the new moves. When they went on dates then it wasn’t to the movies or to some restaurant but to Smiley’s Bar & Grille on the outskirts of town where old Smiley had a hot new cover band, the Rocking Rockets, playing all the latest big beat stuff from guys like Warren Smith with his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby that she flipped out on. Not that she, like Warren said, would dance on the tables and stuff like that but that she would dance with lots of guys, would be flirty, tease flirty right before his eyes. When he questioned her on it she just said “don’t be a square, daddy” and refused to discuss it further. And then it began. Some nights when he called her mother answered to say she was not home, had gone out with the girls, or something like that. Yeah, he knew deep in his bones …        ******** …he had changed, Billy had changed too much for her tastes, changed into a “square” just like all the parents in town and all the kids who didn’t want to have fun and just be like them, be like their parents and worry like Billy’s parents’ Jehovah worried about the new devil’s music coming on the scene to replace, square, square Pat Boone and those clowns. Billy, Jesus, Billy worrying and just barely out of high school about some house, kids, dogs and two cars. Funny though he never complained, not one word, when she did her thing, her “doing the Jenny” thing they laughingly called it when they were in that mood, with him down at the beach. Oh, he asked, Jehovah hypocrite asked where she learned how to satisfy a man but he never asked her to stop but just moaned like every other man. She had learned all about sex from a college guy she had been dating before Billy when she was a sophomore in high school but who had ditched her for some college girl from Michigan. Had done a couple of sexy turn on one-night stands with some other college guys before latching onto Billy who she suddenly became attracted to senior year when they shared a study class together and she kept taking furtive glances his way until they began talking to each other after school at Doc’s Drugstore, the one place in town which had an up-to-date jukebox and a soda fountain, and that was that. He was fun at first, fun when she did her thing with him, went down on him, and he got all soft and stuff and she could have gotten anything she wanted from him. Then he started on his ten million plans for them. So she knew, knew sooner or later she was not sure which, she would have to drop him, drop him for somebody who was fun, who liked what she did and didn’t act the hypocrite about it. Hell, in one of her fantasy moments maybe drop him for the first guy who wanted to dance with her close and fast, maybe had some reefer or Scotch and didn’t ask forever how she knew what she knew about sex and just enjoy it (and enjoy her). The problem was that in square old North Adamsville that someone who was fun and the rest had not passed her door, but she had hopes. In the meantime she thought she would have to stick with old gloomy Gus as he fretted his life away.  As long as he kept his mouth shut  when she started swaying when the juke-box played some hot, latest rock and roll tune or the cover band at Smiley’s started her dancing to the beat on something like Warren Smith’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby. Started guys looking through Billy her way too, and licking their chops. Funny, as she thought back to that time a little over a year before when they had eyed each other in Miss Williams’ study hall that she was then attracted to his easy manner, his sly boyish-ness which she thought she could talk him out of with a little coaxing (he had made her laugh when after they became an “item” he said that the eyeing had really been furtive glances-he said funny things like that then). They had not spoken a word until they had spent what seemed like a lifetime dancing around each other at Doc’s Drugstore where he put in endless nickels and dimes in the juke-box and then just sat there dreamy-eyed looking at her until she had said enough and went over to him and stood right in front of him and dared him to ignore her with her look. He had surrendered easily enough and they became an “item” after a subsequent drive-in movie date where she had shown him a few things in the back seat of her friend Terry’s boyfriend’s car. He liked her doing that stuff and she knew he liked her doing that stuff although he was a very shy boy for the first few times. So this was how they had spent their last year of school together in some kind of bliss. Things changed though, changed a couple of years later when a new breeze came through the town, when Doc’s juke-box started to almost jump off the walls what with the latest rock tunes coming one right after another. But Billy did not catch on, wanted to stay mired in his parents’ music and so the frets began-his about marriage and settling down, hers about having fun rocking the night away. The worse times had been when  they went to Smiley’s, the hot-spot bar on the outside of town where there was plenty of booze and bop and guys who eyed her, maybe not  furtively shy like Billy had  but eyed her like they wanted to have a good time, wanted to have fun rather mope around and be square. He would just sit there and be mopey while she danced with a few guys, a couple of whom she had given her telephone number to although they in the end had not worked out. She began telling her mother sometimes that when Billy called to tell him she was out and to tell him that she didn’t know when she would be back.  Even when, like this night, she was just sitting up in her room waiting for a new guy who had danced her off her feet the night before who said he would definitely call and maybe, just maybe, want to have fun …      ***********  "Rock And Roll Ruby" Well I took my Ruby jukin' On the out-skirts of town She took her high heels off And rolled her stockings down She put a quarter in the jukebox To get a little beat Everybody started watchin' All the rhythm in her feet She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul Now Ruby started rockin' 'bout one o'clock And when she started rockin' She just couldn't stop She rocked on the tables And rolled on the floor And Everybody yelled: "Ruby rock some more!" She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul It was 'round about four I thought she would stop She looked at me and then She looked at the clock She said: "Wait a minute Daddy Now don't get sour All I want to do Is rock a little bit more" She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul One night my Ruby left me all alone I tried to contact her on the telephone I finally found her about twelve o'clock She said: "Leave me alone Daddy 'cause your Ruby wants to rock" She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul Rock, rock, rock'n'roll Rock, rock, rock'n'roll Rock, rock, rock'n'roll Rock, rock, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul

From The Marxist Archives- Under the Banner of the “Three L’s”(Lenin, Luxemburg, Liebknecht)

From The Marxist Archives- Under the Banner of the “Three L’s”(Lenin, Luxemburg, Liebknecht) 

Workers Vanguard No. 1125 12 January 2018 TROTSKY LENIN Under the Banner of the “Three L’s” (Quote of the Week) This month, we continue the communist tradition of honoring the “Three L’s”: V.I. Lenin, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. On 15 January 1919, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, founders of the German Spartakusbund and Communist Party, were murdered by counterrevolutionary troops unleashed by the Social Democratic Party-led capitalist government as it crushed a workers uprising. Five years later, on January 21, Lenin, head of the Bolshevik Party and Soviet workers state, died after suffering a series of strokes following an assassination attempt. Liebknecht and Luxemburg’s assassination exemplified “democratic” bourgeois rule, as Lenin noted in a resolution presented to the First Congress of the Communist International. In Germany, the most developed capitalist country of continental Europe, the very first months of full republican freedom, established as a result of imperialist Germany’s defeat [in World War I], have shown the German workers and the whole world the true class substance of the bourgeois-democratic republic. The murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg is an event of epoch-making significance not only because of the tragic death of these finest people and leaders of the truly proletarian, Communist International, but also because the class nature of an advanced European state—it can be said without exaggeration, of an advanced state on a world-wide scale—has been conclusively exposed. If those arrested, i.e., those placed under state protection, could be assassinated by officers and capitalists with impunity, and this under a government headed by social-patriots, then the democratic republic where such a thing was possible is a bourgeois dictatorship. Those who voice their indignation at the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg but fail to understand this fact are only demonstrating their stupidity, or hypocrisy. “Freedom” in the German republic, one of the freest and advanced republics of the world, is freedom to murder arrested leaders of the proletariat with impunity. Nor can it be otherwise as long as capitalism remains, for the development of democracy sharpens rather than dampens the class struggle which, by virtue of all the results and influences of the war and of its consequences, has been brought to boiling point.... In these circumstances, proletarian dictatorship is not only an absolutely legitimate means of overthrowing the exploiters and suppressing their resistance, but also absolutely necessary to the entire mass of working people, being their only defence against the bourgeois dictatorship which led to the war and is preparing new wars. —V.I. Lenin, “Theses and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (4 March 1919)

The Ghost Of Tom Joad…Dust-Bowl Broken-With The Boston Museum Of Fine Arts Exhibition On Families Conventional And Unconventional In Mind

The Ghost Of Tom Joad…Dust-Bowl Broken-With The Boston Museum Of Fine Arts Exhibition On Families Conventional And Unconventional In Mind

By Bart Webber

…the ghost of old Tom Joad followed their every footstep, followed their every mile in that broken old excuse for an automobile that sucked the life out of one of his progeny, Prescott Ayers by name, a wheat farmer by trade, huh, by professional except that goddam dust has eaten up that wheat turned it to dust too, turned it so bad Prescott like the Joads before him (and his) from up the road had taken that poor excuse for a car and hightailed it out of the barren Okie hills to head for the promise land wherever that might be and if wasn’t to be then he’d  just not have been buried in that fucking flatland anyhow. Yeah, Tom Joad who would have thought that the winds, the wicked heaven-sent winds, oh lord what did I do to deserve this, would have sent him on the road.

Got a West Coast guy, a guy named Johns Steinbeck, a writer out in the docks of sardine-smacked Monterey thinking about that dust, thinking about fleeing and how to get him the hell out before the whole world turns ash-can grey. Got another guy, an Okie brethren out of the reservation territories, out of the veil of tears, Woody Guthrie, a wild boy no question, to signing and humming about that brother Joad like he knew in his heart that going west was the best. Got another guy, a movie director, an oater by trade, John Ford,   out in mountebank Hollywood, Hollywood before Ed Ruscha, another Okie tramp, immortalized another setoff hill, thinking it might very well do to let the Saturday afternoon at the Bijou movie crowd see what stuff Mister Joad was made of, what Okie dust turned into out west. Unto the seventh generation, if you don’t believe me, making a Jersey guy, a fucking Jersey guy, used to singing about ’57 Chevy’s and the running kind walk the Highway 101 late at night looking across the arroyo skies for a sign of that father he never knew like something out of a Jack Kerouac novel. Jesus.        

…and Prescott Ayers, wheat farmer by professional and owner of a no excuse for a car except he (and his) had to get the hell out before he exploded and wound up in McAlister Prison himself all he got for his sullen efforts was a silly photograph poorly cropped from some Eastern city dame with a high-tail camera by the name of Dorothea Lange who gave his wife Matty a copy (one of the “and his” the others being the boy Lonny, girl Ella, and the girl Martha Jane-Prescott, Junior laid to rest before his second birthday eaten up by wind dust making Prescott damn the day he let Matty conceive him and damning the day he had decided that he wanted a large family to farm that wheat farm and pass on that land, that land that make him cry alone his own veil of tears cry). Matty and that goddam copy which she cherished all the way to Fresno and raisin pining away times as they headed west, headed clunker west in that no excuse for a car. Cherished, unknown to taciturn, no sentiment Prescott, and secretly passed on to Ella upon her death bed long after Prescott laid  his head down in raisin valley soil,  as long as she drew breathe and had a roof over her head.        

The photograph showing Prescott’s Matty all angular and care-worn, slightly slouching, hair not seeing washing or a beautician’s touch for many a mile (couldn’t that photo time since the money all got eaten up buying a new tire when that fixed to perdition tire he was eternally fixing finally gave its last breathe. Wondering, not some 16^th century Dutchman’s wondering (her people’s stock coming into New York Harbor, in the days when all you needed to do was show up on the docks to get into the freaking country and start looking for the streets paved with gold, not able to breath, city breath they from out in edam cheese land and farmers by trade, no, by profession, and heading west first to foreboding Kentucky coalmines and hard-scrabble leavings then across the Mississippi and no turning back into God’s country, Okie life), seeing what did that guy from Minneapolis, that F. Scott Fitzgerald who knew the distinction between rich and poor, call it, yes, the fresh green breast of land heading inland but where Lonny, Ella, Martha food was to be found for that night’s hell-broth stew.             

And that Lonny, Ella, Martha showing that mother angularity, and that haggard look like even a hell-broth stew would be a feast out in those broken down rutted roads not dreaming child dreams, not dreaming about those left behind (even they, even kids, know enough not to dream dust-bowl dreams) and just wishing that tire would hold up some miles and they with fatty meat could get acquainted. No fresh green breast of land to wound their dreams all to hell. Funny, Lonny destined to be an alienated youth in the post-World War II world firing up big hot rod engines out in the deserted desert roads, chicken run roads, east of Fresno and crashing his dreams in a 1949 Hudson all shiny and bright. Funny, star-struck, endlessly star-struck Ella, driving mother Matty crazy would be serving them off the arm in Phil’s Diner, turning part-time tricks for truckers to pull her own brood over the from hunger hump. Funny, Martha a dreary housewife living with husband and two kids in a ranch house (fake-Spanish design all the rage) on converted farm land wondering why the hell the whole tribe had headed west.

….yeah, the ghost of Tom Joad.       

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-When (the late) Mister Chuck Berry Told Mister Beethoven To Move Over A New Sheriff Was In Town

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-When (the late) Mister Chuck Berry Told Mister Beethoven To Move Over A New Sheriff Was In Town     

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Introduction

I recently completed the first leg of this series which is intended to go through different stages of the American songbook as it has evolved since the 19^th century, especially music that could be listened to by the general population through radio, later television, and more recently the fantastic number of ways to listen to it all from computers to iPods. That first leg dealt with the music of my parents’ generation, that being the parents of the generation of ’68, those who struggled through the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s. This leg, centered on the music of my generation growing up in the Cold War 1950s, is a natural progression from that first leg since a lot of what we were striving for was to make a big musical break-out from the music that was wafting through many of our houses in the early 1950s.

The pitter-patter sound of stuff from Tin Pan Alley and sometimes from Broadway if they were not one in the same once they hit our muffled ears. You know Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree, Rum and Coca Cola, Tangerine, I’ll Get By, If I Didn’t Care, tear the goalposts down, grab a Tennessee waltz, and swing and sway with Big Buddha and some guy chomping on the chop sticks. The music of our “square” parents which was driving us to desperation for a new sound just in case those threatened bombs that we kept being warned about actually were detonated. At least that musical jail-break is the way we will tell the story now, although I, for one, have a little more tolerance for some of their music, those square parents still square but maybe there was hope if they listened to the Ink Spots crooning away at about seven million different songs with that great harmony, or the Duke taking that A train or better, much better sweet junkie Billie swaying a dark fruit, day and night, all of me, and whatever else Cole Porter could button up the night with. Some, I said, since I am unabashedly a child of rock and roll, now denominated classic rock. Jesus.   

Whether we liked it or not, whether we even knew what it meant, or frankly, during that hellish growing up absurd teenager time in the 1950s trying to figure out our places, if any, in the cold war red scare world, if there was to be a world, and that was a close thing at times, or whether we cared, our tribal music was as dear a thing to us, we who were in the throes of finding our own very different musical identities. Whether we knew it or not in the big world- historic picture scheme of things, knew what sacred place the music of the 1950s, rhythm and blues, scat be-bop, rockabilly, doo wop, flat out pure rock and roll those tunes held a primordial place in our youthful hearts. That was our music, our getting through the tough times music of post-World War II teen alienation and angst, that went wafting through the house on the living room radio (when the parents were out), on the family record player (ditto on the parents), or, for some, the television (double ditto the parents out, especially when American Bandstand hit us like a hurricane and we breathlessly rushed home every afternoon after school to make sure we were hip to the latest songs, the latest dances, the latest hair styles, boys and girls, and whether that brunette with the boffo hair-do and showing an edge of cleavage was “going steady” or whether we has a dream chance at her, or her “sister,” same boffo hair-do sitting across from you in seventh grade English class), and best of all on that blessed transistor radio, compact enough to hide in shirt pockets but loud enough when placed next to your ear to block out that mother-father-brothers buzz that only disturbed you more, that allowed us to while away the time up in our rooms away from snooping parental ears. Yes, that was the pastime of many of those of us who constitute the now graying fading generation of ‘68.

Some of us will pass to the beyond clueless as to why we were attuned to this music when we came of age in a world, a very darkly-etched world, which we too like most of our parents had not created, and had no say in creating. That includes a guy, me, a coalminer’s son who got as caught up in the music of his time as any New York City Jack or Jill or Chi town frat or frail whose father busted out of the tumbled down tarpaper shacks down in some Appalachia hills and hollows, headed north, followed the northern star, his own version, and never looked back and neither did his son.

Yes we were crazy for the swing and sway of Big Joe Turner snapping those big fingers like some angel- herald letting the world know, if it did not know already, that it did not mean a thing, could not possibly matter in the universe, if you did not whether your young febrile brain caught any or all of the not so subtle to experienced ears sexual innuendoes that drove Shake, Rattle, and Roll, if you did not rock with or without Miss La Vern Baker, better with, better with, her hips swaying slightly, lips moistened, swirling every guy in the place on Jim Dandy vowing be her man just for that smile and a chance at those slightly swaying hips. Mr. Elvis Presley, with or without the back-up boys, better with because they held the key to the backbeat that drove Elvis just a little bit harder, rockier, and for the girls from about ten to one hundred sexier, belting out songs, knocking down walls, maybe Jericho, maybe just some teen-struck Starlight Ballroom in Kansas City blasting the joint with his Jailhouse Rock to the top of the charts. Elegant Bill Haley, with or without that guy blowing that sexy sax out into the ocean air night in some Frisco club, blowing out to the Japan seas on Rock Around The Clock. Bo Diddley, all banded up if there is such a word, making eyes wild with that Afro-Carib beat on Who Do You Love. A young Ike Tina-less Turner too with his own aggregation wailing Rocket 88 that had every high school girl throwing dreamy nickels and dimes into the jukebox, with or without fanfare. Buddy Holly, with or without those damn glasses, talking up Peggy Sue before his too soon last journey. Miss Wanda Jackson, the female Elvis, with or without the blues, personal blues, strung out blues too, singing everybody else’s blues away with that throaty thing she had (and that long black hair and ruby red lips to make a schoolboy dream funny dreams), that meaningful pause, on yeah, Let’s Have A Party. Miss (Ms.) Patsy Cline, with or without the bad moments, making grown men cry (women too) when she reached that high note fretting about her long gone man on She’s Got You, Jesus. (And you not caring for all the strung-out emotion, or hubris, still wanting Patsy for a last chance last dance close up song to take a whirl at that she you had been eying until your eyes got sore all night.)  

Miss (Ms.) Brenda Lee too chiming in with I’m Sorry. Mr. Jerry Lee Lewis doing a million songs fronting that wild piano off the back of a flat-bed truck in High School Confidential calling out, no preaching out the new dispensation to anybody who wanted to rise in that rocking world, with or without a horde of cashmere sweater girls breaking down his doors, putting everybody else to shame. The Everly Brothers, always with that soft -spoken refrain catch that nobody seemed to tire of, getting everybody nervous, everybody who had gone past curfew looking for a little, well, looking okay, and not reflecting enough on damn reputations except in the school pecking order determined first week of ninth grade in the girls’ lounge and boys’ “lav,” doing teary Wake Up Little Susie. The Drifters with or without those boardwalks. The Sherilles with or without the leader of the pack, the Dixie Cups with or without whatever they were doing at that chapel. Miss Carole King, with or without the boys, writing the bejesus out of last gasp Tin Pan Alley. Yeah, our survival music. 

We, the generation of ’68, baby-boomers, decidedly not what Tom Brokaw dubbed rightly or wrongly “the greatest generation,” decidedly not our parents’ generation, finally could not bear to hear their music, could not bear to think anybody in the whole universe would think that stuff was cool. Those of us who came of age, biological, political, and social age kicking, screaming and full of the post-war new age teenage angst and alienation in the time of Jack Kennedy’s Camelot were ready for a jail-break, a jail-break on all fronts and that included from “their song” stuff. Their staid Eisenhower red scare cold war stuff (he their organizer of victory, their gentile father Ike), hell, we knew that the world was scary, knew it every time we were forced to go down into some dank school basement and squat down, heads down too, hoping to high heaven that the Russkies had not decided to go crazy and set off “the bomb,” many bombs. And every righteous teenager had a nightmare that, he or she, was trapped in some fashionable family bunker and those loving parents had thoughtfully brought their records down into the abyss to soothe their savage beasts for the duration. Yelling in that troubled sleep please, please, please if we must die then at least let’s go out to Jerry Lee’s High School Confidential.  

We were moreover, some of us anyway, and I like to think the best of us, driven by some makeshift dreams, ready to cross our own swords with the night-takers of our time, and who, in the words of Camelot brother Bobby, sweet ruthless Bobby of more than one shed tear in this quarter, quoting from Alfred Lord Tennyson, were “seeking a new world.” Those who took up the call to action heralded by the new dispensation and slogged through the 60s decade whether it was in the civil rights/black liberation struggle, the anti-Vietnam War struggle or the struggle to find one’s own identity in the counter-culture swirl before the hammer came down were kindred. To the disapproval, anger, and fury of more than one parent who had gladly slept through the Eisenhower times. And that hammer came down quickly as the decade ended and the high white note that we searched for, desperately searched for, drifted out into the ebbing tide. Gone.

These following sketches and that is all they are, and all they pretend to be, link up the music of the generation of ‘68s coming of age time (and a few post-coming of age sketches as well) gleaned from old time personal remembrances, the remembrances of old time corner boys whom I hung around with on lonesome, girl-less Friday nights at Jack Slack’s bowling alleys just off Thornton Street in the Dorchester section of Boston, and from remembrances of events and personalities that I, we, heard about through the school grapevine (especially those obligatory Monday morning before school talkfests where everybody, boy or girl, lied, or half-lied about what they did, or did not do, over the steamy weekend), the media (newspapers or radio and television in those days) or through what is now called the urban legend network but then just called “walking daddy” talk.

The truth, the truth of each sketch is in the vague mood that they invoke rather than any fidelity to hard and fast fact. They are all based on actual stories, more or less prettified and sanitized to avoid any problems with lose of reputation of any of the characters portrayed and any problems with some lingering statute of limitations. That truth, however, especially in the hands of corner boys like Jimmy Jenkins, our leader Frankie Riley, Sam Lowell, Pete Markin, Billy Bradley, Dime Store Benny Kidd, myself and the other guys who passed through the corner at Jack Slack’s must always be treated like a pet rattlesnake. Very carefully. Still the overall mood should more than make up for the lies thrown at you, especially on the issue of sex, or rather the question of the ages on that issue, who did or did not do what to whom on any given occasion. The lies filled the steamy nights and frozen days, and that was about par for the course wasn’t it.    

But enough of that for this series is about our uphill struggles to make our vision of the our newer world, our struggles to  satisfy our hunger a little, to stop that gnawing want, and the music that in our youth  we dreamed by on cold winter nights and hot summer days.  

Tongue And Cheek In The Victorian Age-With The Film Adaptation Of Oscar Wilde’s Play “An Ideal Husband” In Mind (1999)-A Film Review

Tongue And Cheek In The Victorian Age-With The Film Adaptation Of Oscar Wilde’s Play “An Ideal Husband” In Mind (1999)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

An Ideal Husband, starring Julianne Moore, Jeremy Northam, Minnie Driver, Cate Blanchett, Rupert Everett, 1999

Oscar Wilde certainly took a beating, a serious beating including some jail time in Reading Gaol which he wrote about, for his sexual preferences in late 19^th century Victorian England. Stuff that today would draw a yawn in most quarters but which then was scandalous. (As we all know not everybody is on board with the idea that you should be able to love whomever you want to love even in the 21^st century.) Moreover showing the sheer hypocrisy of the times Mr. Wilde took a beating for doing what a good portion, a greater portion than I would have thought, of the gentry and ruling class were doing themselves, especially coming out of the segregated by sex public schools (in America private schools). And nobody thought much about it except you had best stay in the closet-or else. A whole identification underground sub-culture grew up around that closet for both same-sex attraction cultures.

Before I get to the review of the film adaptation of Mr. Wilde’s ironic take on the courting rituals and expectations of late Victorian society among the straights, An Ideal Husband, in the interest of transparency I should note that growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the mid- 1970s I shared all the prejudices that were prevalent in my neighborhood on the question of sexual preference. That despite, and maybe because of, Cambridge a progressive center for gay and lesbian rights and life-style in the post-Stonewall riots world. I am ashamed to admit now that back then I had a boyfriend, a high school boyfriend, who with his buddies would go down to Provincetown, a historically friendly summer watering hole for gays and lesbians from elsewhere, for the sole purpose of taunting and beating up gay guys in back alleys. And, then, I thought nothing of it. Well, as Josh Breslin my old companion and current fellow writer here loved to say “you can learn some things in this wicked old world.”

On to the story now, the idea behind the sardonic appearances of the ideal husband when among the upper crust making a good marriage for every reason except maybe love was in order. One stem of this plot revolves around the role of women in late Victorian society. On the one hand Lady Chiltern, played by Cate Blanchett, is something of a suffragette, independent political factor and high end moral force on the other she is subordinately devoted to husband Sir Robert’s, played by Jeremy Northam, rising political career. On the one hand Mabel Chiltern, Sir Robert’s sister, played by Minnie Driver, is a strong and determined independent young women and on the other she is fatally attracted to cad and gadabout Lord Goring, Sir Robert’s close friend, played by Rupert Everett. He, in turn is a committed gadabout but also a pillar of friendship to his friend Sir Robert when the deal goes down.

A second stem is the duplicity of politics and political power when a worldly and wary Mrs. Cheveley, played by Julianne Moore, enters the lists with a bogus proposition about governmental funding of another one of those can’t miss canal schemes which dotted later Victorian life as the British Empire reached it high side. To grease her skids she has damming evidence against the upstart Sir Robert whose original sin was that he had insider knowledge of deals going down and made the killing on the stock market that started his upward career march. Lastly this is also a send-up on class, on the strange mores of the upper crust, their mating rituals, and their willingness to bend with the breezes to keep their respective places. That attitude and an undertow by Wilde who would soon see just how that high society could be the frivolous existences that a goodly number of the upper crust lived.

Yes, Oscar Wilde knew what castles he was setting on fire with this look (and with The Importance Of Being Ernest), although he probably didn’t know that they would break him, that those works would be the high side of his literary output.        

Smokestack Lightning, Indeed- With Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf Coming Up The Mississippi From The Mister James Crow South And Blowing High White Notes In Mind

Smokestack Lightning, Indeed- With Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf Coming Up The Mississippi From The Mister James Crow South And Blowing High White Notes In Mind

Sometimes a picture really can be worth a thousand words, a thousand words and more as in the case Howlin’ Wolf doing his Midnight creep in the photograph above taken from an album of his work but nowadays with the advances in computer technology and someone’s desire to share also to be seen on sites such as YouTube where you can get a real flavor of what that mad man was about when he got his blues wanting habits on. In fact I am a little hesitate to use a bunch of words describing Howlin’ Wolf in high gear since maybe I would leave out that drop of perspiration dripping from his overworked forehead and that salted drop might be the very thing that drove him that night or describing his oneness with his harmonica because that might cause some karmic funk. So, no, I am not really going to go on and on about his midnight creep but when the big man got into high gear, when he went to a place where he sweaty profusely, a little ragged in voice and eyes all shot to hell he roared for his version of the high white note. Funny, a lot of people, myself for a while included, used to think that the high white note business was strictly a jazz thing, maybe somebody like the “Prez” Lester Young or Duke’s Johnny Hodges after hours, after the paying customers had had their fill, or what they thought was all those men had in them, shutting the doors tight, putting up the tables leaving the chairs for whoever came by around dawn, grabbing a few guys from around the town as they finished their gigs and make the search, make a serious bid to blow the world to kingdom come. 

Some nights they were on fire at blew that big note out in to some heavy air and who knows where it landed, most nights though it was just “nice try.” One night I was out in Frisco when “Saps” McCoy blew a big sexy sax right out the door of Chez Benny’s over in North Beach when North Beach was just turning away from be-bop “beat” and that high white, I swear, blew out to the bay and who knows maybe all the way to the Japan seas. But see if I had, or anybody had, thought about it for a minute jazz and the blues are cousins, cousins no question so of course Howlin’ Wolf blew out that high white note more than once, plenty including a couple of shows I caught him at when he was not in his prime.         

The photograph (and now video) that I was thinking of is one where he is practically eating the harmonica as he performs How Many More Years (and now like I say thanks to some thoughtful archivist you can go on to YouTube and see him doing his devouring act in real time and in motion, wow, and also berating father Son House for showing up drunk). Yes, the Wolf could blast out the blues and on this one you get a real appreciation for how serious he was as a performer and as blues representative of the highest order.

Howlin’ Wolf like his near contemporary and rival Muddy Waters, like a whole generation of black bluesmen who learned their trade at the feet of old-time country blues masters like Charley Patton, the aforementioned Son House who had his own personal fight with the devil, Robert Johnson who allegedly sold his soul to the devil out on Highway 61 so he could get his own version of that high white note, and the like down in Mississippi or other southern places in the first half of the twentieth century. They as part and parcel of that great black migration (even as exceptional musicians they would do stints in the sweated Northern factories before hitting Maxwell Street) took the road north, or rather the river north, an amazing number from the Delta and an even more amazing number from around Clarksville in Mississippi right by that Highway 61 and headed first maybe to Memphis and then on to sweet home Chicago.  

They went where the jobs were, went where the ugliness of Mister James Crow telling them sit here not there, walk here but not there, drink the water here not there, don’t look at our women under any conditions and on and on did not haunt their every move (although they would find not racial Garden of Eden in the North, last hired, first fired, squeezed in cold water flats too many to a room, harassed, but they at least has some breathing space, some room to create a little something they could call their won and not Mister’s), went where the big black migration was heading after World War I. Went also to explore a new way of presenting the blues to an urban audience in need of a faster beat, in need of getting away from the Saturday juke joint acoustic country sound with some old timey guys ripping up three chord ditties to go with that jug of Jack Flash’s homemade whiskey (or so he called it).

So they, guys like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Magic Slim, Johnny Shines, and James Cotton prospered by doing what Elvis did for rock and rock and Bob Dylan did for folk and pulled the hammer down on the old electric guitar and made big, big sounds that reached all the way back of the room to the Red Hat and Tip Top clubs and made the max daddies and max mamas jump, make some moves. And here is where all kinds of thing got intersected, as part of all the trends in post-World War II music up to the 1960s anyway from R&B, rock and roll, electric blues and folk the edges of the music hit all the way to then small white audiences too and they howled for the blues, which spoke to some sense of their own alienation. Hell, the Beatles and more particularly lived to hear Muddy and the Wolf. The Stones even went to Mecca, to Chess Records to be at one with Muddy. And they also took lessons from Howlin’ Wolf himself on the right way to play Little Red Rooster which they had covered and made famous in the early 1960s (or infamous depending on your point of view since many radio stations including some Boston stations had banned it from the air originally).Yes, Howlin’ Wolf and that big bad harmonica and that big bad voice that howled in the night did that for a new generation, pretty good right.  

 

 

In The Hills And Hollows Again- With Mountain Music Man Norman Blake And Satruday Red Barn Dances And White Lightning Dreams In Mind

In The Hills And Hollows Again- With Mountain Music Man Norman Blake And Satruday Red Barn Dances And White Lightning Dreams In Mind    

Recently in discussing Sam Lowell’s relationship with mountain music, the music from down in the hills and hollows of Kentucky where his father and his people before him had lived dirt poor for generations eking almost nothing out of the land that had been abandoned decades before by some going west driven spirits who played the land out and moved on, some moving on until they reached ocean edge California, Bart Webber noticed that he had concentrated a little too heavily on Sam’ s father’s  Kentucky hills and hollows. There were places like in the Piedmont of North Carolina with a cleaner picking style as exemplified more recently by Norman Blake who has revived the work of performers like Edda Baker and Pappy Sims by playing the old tunes. Also places like the inner edges of Tennessee and Georgia where the kindred also dwelled, places as well where if the land had played out there they, the ones who stayed behind in there tacky cabins barely protected against the weathers, their lack of niceties of modern existence a result not because they distained such things but down in the hollows they did not know about them, did not seem to notice the bustling outside world.

They all, all the hills and hollows people, just kept plucking away barely making ends meet, usually not doing so in some periods, and once they had abandoned cultivating the land these sedentary heredity “master-less men” thrown out their old countries, mainly the British Isles, for any number of petty crimes, but crimes against property and so they had to go on their own or face involuntary transportation they went into the “black god” mines or sharecropping for some Mister to live short, nasty, brutish lives before the deluge. But come Saturday night, come old Fred Brown’s worn out in need of paint red barn the hill people, the mountain people, the piedmont brethren, hell, maybe a few swamp-dwellers too, would gather up their instruments, their sweet liquor jugs, their un-scrubbed bare-foot children or their best guy or gal and play the night away as the winds came down the mountains. This DNA etched in his bones by his father and the kindred is what Sam had denied for much of his life.          

But like Bart said when discussing the matter with Sam one night sometimes what goes around comes around as the old-time expression had it. Take for example Sam Lowell’s youthful interest in folk music back in the early 1960s when it had crashed out of exotic haunts like Harvard Square, Ann Arbor, Old Town Chi Town and North Beach/Berkeley out in Frisco. Crashed out by word of mouth at first and ran into a lot of kids, a lot of kids like Sam, who got his word from Diana Nelson who got it from a cousin from North Adamsville nearer Boston who frequented the coffeehouse on Beacon Hill and Harvard Square hipped her to this new folk music program that he had found flipping the dial of his transistor radio one Sunday night.

See Sam and Diana were tucked away from the swirl down in Carver about thirty miles as the crow flies from Boston and Cambridge but maybe a million social miles from those locales and had picked up the thread somewhat belatedly. He, along with his corner boys, had lived in their little corner boy cocoon out in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner figuring out ways to get next to girls like Diana but who were stuck, stuck like glue to listening to the “put to sleep” music that was finding its way to clog up Jimmy Jack’s’ hither-to-fore “boss” jukebox. Christ, stuff like Percy Faith’s Moon River that parents could swoon over, and dance to. Had picked the sound up belatedly when they were fed up with what was being presented on American Bandstand and WJDA the local rock station, when they were looking for something different, something that they were not sure of but that smelled, tasted, felt, and looked different from a kind of one-size-fits-all vanilla existence.

Oh sure, as Bart recognized once he thought about it for a while, every generation in their youth since the days when you could draw a distinction between youth and adulthood a century or so ago and have it count has tried to draw its own symbolic beat but this was different, this involved a big mix of things all jumbled together, political, social, economic, cultural, the whole bag of societal distinctions which would not be settled until the end of that decade, maybe the first part of the next. That big picture is what interested him. What Sam was interested then down there in Carver about thirty miles south of Boston was the music, his interest in the other trends did not come until later, much later long after the whole thing had ebbed and they were fighting an unsuccessful rearguard action against the night-takers and he was forced to consider other issues. And Sam had been like that ever after. 

The way Sam told it one night a few years back, according to Bart, some forty or so years after his ear changed forever that change had been a bumpy road. Sam had been at his bi-weekly book club in Plymouth where the topic selected for the next meeting was the musical influences, if any, that defined one’s tastes and he had volunteered to speak then since he had just read a book, The Mountain View, about the central place of mountain music, for lack of a better term, in the American songbook. He had along with Bart and Jack Dawson also had been around that time discussing how they had been looking for roots as kids. Musical roots which were a very big concern for a part of their  generation, a generation that was looking for roots, for rootedness not just in music but in literature, art, and even in the family tree.

Their parents’ generation no matter how long it had been since the first family immigration wave had spilled them onto these shores was in the red scare Cold War post-World War II period very consciously ignoring every trace of roots in order to be fully vanilla Americanized. So their generation had had to pick up the pieces not only of that very shaky family tree but everything else that had been downplayed during that period.

Since Sam had tired of the lazy hazy rock and roll that was being produced and which the local rock radio stations were force- feeding him and others like him looking to break out through their beloved transistor radios he had started looking elsewhere on the tiny dial for something different after Diana had clued him in about that folk music program. Although for a while he could not find that particular program or Carver was out of range for the airwaves. But like a lot of young people, as he would find out later when he would meet kindred in Harvard Square, the Village, Ann Arbor, Berkeley he fortunately had been looking for that something different at just that moment when something called folk music, roots music, actually was being played on select stations for short periods of time each week and so it was before long that he was tuned in.

His own lucky station had been a small station, an AM station, from Providence in Rhode Island which he would find out later had put the program on Monday nights from eight to eleven at the request of Brown and URI students who had picked up the folk music bug on trips to the Village (Monday a dead music night in advertising circles then, maybe now too, thus fine for talk shows, community service programs and odd-ball stuff like roots music to comply with whatever necessary FCC mandates went with the license.) That is where he first heard the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Dave Von Ronk, a new guy named Tom Rush from Harvard whom he would hear in person many times over the years, and another guy, Eric Von Schmidt whom he would meet later in one of the Harvard Square coffeehouses that were proliferating to feed the demand to hear folk music. Those coffeehouses were manna from heaven, well, because they were cheap for guys with little money. Cheap alone or on a date, basically as Sam related to his book club listeners for a couple of bucks at most admission, the price of a cup of coffee to keep in front of you and thus your place, maybe a pastry if alone and just double that up for a date except share the pasty you had your date deal all set for the evening hearing performers perfecting their acts before hitting the A-list clubs.

He listened to it all, liked some of it, other stuff, the more protest stuff he could take or leave depending on the performer but what drew his attention, strangely then was when somebody on the radio or on stage performed mountain music, you know, the music of the hills and hollows that came out of Appalachia mainly down among the dust and weeds. Things like Bury Me Under The Weeping Willow, Gold Watch and Chain, Fair and Tender Ladies, Pretty Saro, and lots of instrumentals by guys like Buell Kazee, Hobart Smith, The Charles River Boys, Norman Blake just starting his rise along with various expert band members to bring bluegrass to the wider younger audience that did not relate to guys like Bill Monroe and his various band combinations, and some other bluegrass bands as well that had now escaped his memory.

This is where it all got jumbled up for him Sam said since he was strictly a city boy, made private fun of the farm boys, the cranberry boggers, who then made up a significant part of his high school. He furthermore had no interest in stuff like the Grand Ole Opry and that kind of thing, none. Still he always wondered about the source, about why he felt some kinship with the music of the Saturday night red barn, probably broken down, certainly in need of paint, and thus available for the dance complete with the full complement of guitars, fiddles, bass, mandolin and full complement too of Bobby Joe’s just made white lightening, playing plainsong for the folk down in the wind-swept hills and hollows.  

Then one night, a Sunday night after he had picked up the Boston folk program station on the family radio (apparently the weak transistor radio did not have the energy to pick up a Boston station) he was listening to the Carter Family’s Wildwood Flower when his father came in and began singing along. After asking Sam about whether he liked the song and Sam answered that he did but could not explain why his father told him a story that maybe put the whole thing in perspective. After Sam’s older brother, Lawrence, had been born and things looked pretty dicey for a guy from the South with no education and no skill except useless coal-mining his father decided that maybe they should go back to Kentucky and see if things were better for a guy like him there. No dice, after had been in the north, after seeing the same old tacky cabins, the played out land, the endless streams of a new generation of shoeless kids Sam’s father decided to head back north and try to eke something out in a better place. But get this while Sam’s parents were in Kentucky Sam had been conceived. Yeah, so maybe it was in the genes all along.