| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Friday,
September 11, 2015 Remembering the Sept 11th AttacksSubmitted by VFP Board President, Gerry CondonBack to Top Call Out To VFP Members to Take Action On International Peace Day, Sep 21VFP National is asking Veterans For Peace members to celebrate International Day of Peace by sponsoring an event or supporting, joining with and promoting current Peace Day efforts underway in your city or town. It is the intent of Veterans For Peace National to help popularize International Day of Peace to the point that it becomes part of mainstream culture. International Day of Peace does not mean peace somewhere else.To hold meaning to the average person, it must also mean peace in their communities. <More> E-mail casey@veteransforpeace.org for ideas on what you can do in your community. Check out what the national office is doing! Back to Top Save the Dates: Nov 20-22 - SOA Watch VigilThe SOAW annual mobilization is one of the largest anti-militarization convergences in the US. It connects activists from across America who come together to denounce failed policies, the militarization of the hemisphere, and the daunting effects of imperialism as well as to remember the long and ongoing history of brutal US intervention in Latin America that the SOA/WHINSEC represents to perfection. BUT we also come together to listen, learn and be inspired by each other, to raise awareness about and draw connections between struggles, and to celebrate the beauty of creativity and resilience. The Vigil weekend is an opportunity to grow stronger together and to build grassroots power!Hourly Shuttle Info from Atlanta to Columbus Travel Opportunities for Activists
Back to Top |
In This Issue: Remembering the Sept 11th AttacksCall Out To VFP Members to Take Action On International Peace Day, Sep 21Save the Dates: Nov 20-22 - SOA Watch VigilTravel Opportunities for ActivistsImminent ThreatJoin the VFP Women's Facebook PageVeterans For Peace 2016 Annual Spring Tour to Viet Nam
Upcoming VFP Endorsed
Actions/Events
Imminent ThreatImminent Threat is a feature documentary about the War on Terror's impact on civil liberties executive produced by Academy Award nominee James Cromwell.The documentary examines legislation passed in the days after 9/11, foreign entanglements abroad, the war on journalism and the NSA. With interviews from prominent liberals (ACLU, CodePink) and conservatives (Cato Institute, Republican Congressmen), the film shows the unusual coalition being formed to challenge the two-party system and strike a better balance between security and liberty. Trailer for the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfTdLFo6QSM Join the VFP Women's Facebook PageThere is now a facebook page for VFP women members only. All women members are encouraged to participate.Veterans For Peace 2016 Annual Spring Tour to Viet NamDates of travel: Mar 14 - Mar 30, 2016Each year since 2012, members of Việt Nam's Hoa Binh (Peace) Chapter 160 of Veterans For Peace invite up to 20 veterans, non-veterans, spouses & peace activists to come to Việt Nam for an insider's 2-week tour. The Hoa Binh chapter is the first & only overseas VFP chapter of American veterans living in Việt Nam! The mission of the tour is to address the legacies of America’s war, as well as visit a beautiful country & form lasting ties of friendship & peace. For more information, email Nadya Williams @ nadyanomad@gmail.com
Upcoming VFP Endorsed
Actions/Events
Aug 28 -
Oct 15 - Golden Rule Schedule of EventsSep 21 - International Peace Day in your city Sept 24 - 30 - Iowa Speaking Tour with Ray McGovern and Coleen Rowley Oct 7 - Anniversary of U.S. Invasion of Afghanistan Oct 9-24 - Maine Walk For Peace Nov 20-22, 2015 - SOA Watch 25th Anniversary Vigil Did you know? In 1993, VFP Chapters promoted and distributed the video "Beyond Vietnam: Lessons Unlearned" in educational institutions. |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Veterans For Peace,
1404 N. Broadway, St. Louis, MO 63102
Veterans For Peace appreciates
your tax-exempt donations.
We also encourage you to join our ranks.
|
This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Veterans For Peace Weekly E-News
Present At The Creation-The Penguins’ Earth Angel (1955)
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Deep in the dark red scare Cold War night, still brewing then even after Uncle Joe fell down in his Red Square drunken stupor one night and never came back, so yeah still brewing after he kissed off in his vast red earth, still brewing as a child remembered in dark back of school dreams about Soviet nightmares under Uncle Joe wondering how the kids got through it, and still brewing too when Miss Winot in her pristine glory told each and every one of her fourth grade charges, us, that come that Russkie madness, come the Apocalypse, come the big bad ass mega-bombs (of course being pristine and proper she did not dig down to such terms as “big bad ass” but let’s face it that is what she meant) that each and every one of her charges shall come that thundering god-awful air raid siren call duck, quickly and quietly, under his or her desk and then place his or his hands, also quickly and quietly, one over the other on the top of his or her head, a small breeze was coming to the land.
Maybe nobody saw it coming although the more I think about the matter somebody, some bodies knew something, not those supposedly in the know about such times, those who are supposed to catch the breezes before they move beyond their power to curtain them. Take guys like my older brother Franklin and his friends, Benny and Jimmy, who were playing some be-bop stuff up in his room (Ma refused to let him play his songs on the family record player down center stage in the living room or flip the dial on the kitchen radio away from her tunes of the roaring 1940s, her and my father’s coming of age time, so up his room like some mad monk doing who knows what because I was busy worrying about riding bicycles or something).Here’s the real tip-off though he and his boys would go out Friday nights to Jack Slack’s bowling alleys not to bowl, although that was the cover story to questioning mother, but to hang around Freddie O’Toole’s car complete with turned on amped up radio (station unknown then but later WMEX) and dance, dance with girls, get it, to stuff like Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 (a great song tribute to a great automobile which nobody in our neighborhood could come close to affording so reduced to cheapjack Fords and Plymouths), and guys who even today I don’t know the names of even with YouTube giving everybody with every kind of musical inclination a blast to the pass ticket. Or, how about the times we, the family would go up to Boston for some Catholic thing in the South End at Holy Cross Cathedral and smack across from the church was the later famous Red Hat Club where guys were blasting away at pianos, on guitars and on big ass sexy saxes and it was not the big band sound my folks listened to or cool, cool be-bop jazz either but music from jump street, etched in the back of my brain because remember I’m still fussing over bikes and stuff like that. Or how about every time we went down Massachusetts Avenue in Boston as the sun went down, the “Negro” part before Huntington Avenue (an area that Malcolm X knew well a decade before) and we stopped at the ten billion lights and all you would hear is this bouncing beat coming from taverns, from the old time townhouse apartments and black guys dressed “to the nines,” all flash dancing on the streets with dressed “to the nines” good-looking black girls. Memory bank.
So some guys knew, gals too don’t forget after all they had to dig the beat, dig the guys who dug the beat, the beat of out of some Africa breeze mixed with forbidden sweated Southern lusts if the thing was going to work out. And it wasn’t all dead-ass “white negro” hipsters either eulogized by Norman Mailer (or maybe mocked you never knew with him but he sensed something was in the breeze even if he was tied more closely to an earlier sensibility) or break-out “beats” tired of the cool cold jazz that was turning in on itself, getting too technical and losing the search for the high white note or lumpens of all descriptions who whiled away the nights searching their radio dials for something that they while away the nights searching their radio dials for something that they could swing to while reefer high or codeine low. If you, via hail YouTube, look at the Jacks and Jills dancing they mostly look like very proper well-dressed middle class kids who are trying to break out of the cookie-cutter existence they found themselves but they still looked pretty well-fed and well-heeled so yeah, some guys and gals and it wasn’t always who you might suspect that got hip, got that back-beat and those piano riffs etched into their brains.
Maybe though the guys in the White House were too busy worrying about what Uncle Joe’s progeny were doing out in the missile silos of Minsk, maybe the professional television talkers on Meet The Press wanted to discuss the latest turn in national and international politics for a candid world to hear and missed what was happening out in the cookie-cutter neighborhoods, and maybe the academic sociologists and professional criminologists were too wrapped up in figuring out why Marlon Brando was sulking in his corner boy kingdom (and wreaking havoc on a fearful small town world when he and the boys broke out), why Johnny Spain had that “shiv” ready to do murder and mayhem to the next midnight passer-by, and why well-groomed and fed James Dean was brooding in the “golden age” land of plenty but the breeze was coming.
(And you could add in the same brother Franklin who as I was worrying about bikes, the two pedal two kind getting “from hunger” to get a Brando bike, a varoom bike, so this girl, Wendy, from school, would take his bait, a girl that my mother fretted was from the wrong side of town, her way of saying a tramp but she was smart as hell once I found out about her a few years later after she, they had left town on some big ass Norton but that is after the creation so I will let it go for now.)
And then it came, came to us in our turn, came like some Kansas whirlwind, came like the ocean churning up the big waves crashing to a defenseless shoreline, came if the truth be known like the “second coming” long predicted and the brethren, us, were waiting, waiting like we had been waiting all our short spell lives. Came in a funny form, or rather ironically funny forms, as it turned out.
Came one time, came big as 1954 turned to 1955 and a guy, get this, dressed not in sackcloth or hair-shirt but in a sport’s jacket, a Robert Hall sport’s jacket from the off the rack look of it when he and the boys were “from hunger,” playing for coffee and crullers before on the low life circuit, a little on the heavy side with a little boy’s regular curl in his hair and blasted the whole blessed world to smithereens. Blasted every living breathing teenager, boy or girl, out of his or her lethargy, got the blood flowing. The guy Bill Haley, goddam an old lounge lizard band guy who decided to move the beat forward from cool ass be-bop jazz and sweet romance popular music and make everybody, every kid jump, yeah Big Bill Haley and his Comets, the song Rock Around The Clock.
Came a little more hep cat too, came all duck walk and sex moves, feet moving faster than Bill could ever do, came out of Saint Loo, came out with a crazy beat. Came out in suit and tie all swagger. Came out with a big baby girl guitar that twisted up the chords something fierce and declared to the candid world, us, that Maybelline was his woman. But get this, because what did we know of “color” back then when we lived in an all-white Irish Catholic neighborhoods and since we heard what we heard of rock and rock mostly on the radio we were shocked when we found out the first time that he was a “Negro” to use the parlance of the times, a black man making us go to “jump street.” And we bought into it, bought into the beat, and joined him in saying Mister Beethoven you and your brethren best move over.
Came sometimes in slo-mo, hey remember this rock and roll was an ice-breaker with a beat you didn’t have to dance close to with your partner and get all tied up in knots forgetting when to twirl, when to whirl, when to do a split but kind of free form for the guys (or gals but mainly guys) with two left feet like me could survive, maybe not survive the big one if the Russkies decided to go over the top with the bomb, but that school dance and for your free-form efforts maybe that she your eyeballs were getting sore over would consent to the last chance last dance that you waited around for in case she was so impressed she might want to go with you some place later. But before that “some place later” you had to negotiate and the only way to do was to bust up a slow one, a dreamy one to get her in the mood and hence people have been singing songs from time immemorial to get people in the mood, this time Earth Angel would do the trick. Do the trick as long as you navigated those toes of hers, left her with two feet and standing. Dance slow, very slow brother.
Here is the funny thing, funny since we were present at the creation, present in spite of every command uttered by Miss Winot against it, declaring the music worse than that Russkie threat if you believed her (a few kids, girls mainly, did whether to suck up to her since she would take their entreaties although boys were strictly “no go” and I know having spent many a missed sunny afternoon doing some silly “punishment” for her). We were just too young to deeply imbibe the full measure of what we were hearing. See this music, music we started calling rock and roll once somebody gave it a name (super DJ impresario Alan Freed as we found out later after we had already become “children of rock and roll”) was meant, was blessedly meant to be danced to which meant in that boy-girl age we who didn’t even like the opposite sex as things stood then were just hanging by our thumbs.
Yeah, was meant to be danced to at “petting parties” in dank family room basements by barely teenage boys and girls. Was meant to be danced to at teenage dance clubs where everybody was getting caught up on learning the newest dance moves and the latest “cool” outfits to go along with that new freedom. Was meant to serve as a backdrop at Doc’s Drugstore’s soda fountain where Doc had installed a jukebox complete with all the latest tunes as boys and girls shared a Coke sipping slowly with two straws hanging out in one frosted glass. Was meant to be listened to by corner boys at Jack Slack’s bowling alley where Jack eventually had set up a small dance floor so kids could dance while waiting for lanes to open (otherwise everybody would be still dancing out in front of O’Toole’s “boss” car complete with amped-up radio not to Jack’s profit). Was meant to be listened to as the sun went down in the west at the local drive-in while the hamburgers and fries were cooking and everybody was waiting for darkness to fall so the real night could begin, the night of dancing in dark corner and exploring the mysteries of the universe, or at least of Miss Sarah Brown. Was even meant to be listened to on fugitive transistor radios in the that secluded off-limits to adults and little kids (us) where teens, boys and girls, mixed and matched in the drive-in movie night (and would stutter some nonsense to questioning parents who wanted to know the plot of the movies, what movies, Ma).
Yeah, we were just a little too young even if we can legitimately claim to have been present at the creation. But we will catch up, catch up with a vengeance.
Juvenile Delinquent - Ronnie Allen
This one is on this site for the photos-hell half of them could be me and my corner boys
Rocket 88 (Original Version) - Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston
If this is not the start of rock and roll it will do until the real thing comes along. Catch those piano riffs and those big sexy saxes that held rock together in the beginning before multiple guitars took over. Listen to that back-beat though pure rock-yeah
Karl Marx Admirer Jeremy Corbyn Voted as Britain's Labour Party Leader
Frank Jackman comment
We may, and I emphasize may, be able to give Labor critical support in the next general elections if the new leader, and the party, really do break from being a poor second-cousin of the American Democratic Party, a course pursued to no avail for its supporters over the past couple of decades. We shall see.
Karl Marx Admirer Jeremy Corbyn Voted as Britain's Labour Party Leader
by Reuters
LONDON — Uncorking the spirit of British socialism was the masterstroke that handed Jeremy Corbyn the Labour Party's top job but he now faces a much bigger challenge — convincing voters that an admirer of Karl Marx should be Britain's next prime minister.
Virtually unknown just months ago, the 66-year-old won the crown of Britain's second largest political party with 59.5 percent of the votes cast in an internal party vote.
A vegetarian who initially did not expect to win the contest, Corbyn has struck a chord with many Labour supporters by repudiating the pro-business consensus of former Labour leader Tony Blair and offered wealth taxes, nuclear disarmament and ambiguity about EU membership.
The victory gives Corbyn a mandate to take the 115-year old party back to its socialist roots and throw out the political rulebook that says British elections can only be won with the support of the center ground.
"We challenge the narrative that only the individual matters, and the collective is irrelevant," Corbyn said at his last campaign rally on Thursday, drawing cheers from a crowd crammed into every corner of a former church in north London.
"Instead we say the common good is the aspiration of all of us," said the anti-war campaigner, who is an admirer of "Communist Manifesto" author Karl Marx and Hugo Chavez, the late Venezuelan leader who delighted in berating the United States.
Often dressed in the style of a university lecturer — complete with several pens visible in his shirt pocket — Corbyn has promised to renationalize privately-owned industries, print money to fund large-scale infrastructure investment, and raise taxes on businesses and the rich.
He rarely uses the first person 'I' — a trait that advisers say reflects his desire to lead Labour without what he calls "top-down control-freakery" — code for the tight control exercised when Tony Blair was Labour leader from 1994-2007.
"Things can and they will change," Corbyn, said in a victory speech which began with criticism of the British media and ended with a vow to achieve justice for the poor and downtrodden.
Virtually unknown just months ago, the 66-year-old won the crown of Britain's second largest political party with 59.5 percent of the votes cast in an internal party vote.
A vegetarian who initially did not expect to win the contest, Corbyn has struck a chord with many Labour supporters by repudiating the pro-business consensus of former Labour leader Tony Blair and offered wealth taxes, nuclear disarmament and ambiguity about EU membership.
The victory gives Corbyn a mandate to take the 115-year old party back to its socialist roots and throw out the political rulebook that says British elections can only be won with the support of the center ground.
"We challenge the narrative that only the individual matters, and the collective is irrelevant," Corbyn said at his last campaign rally on Thursday, drawing cheers from a crowd crammed into every corner of a former church in north London.
"Instead we say the common good is the aspiration of all of us," said the anti-war campaigner, who is an admirer of "Communist Manifesto" author Karl Marx and Hugo Chavez, the late Venezuelan leader who delighted in berating the United States.
Often dressed in the style of a university lecturer — complete with several pens visible in his shirt pocket — Corbyn has promised to renationalize privately-owned industries, print money to fund large-scale infrastructure investment, and raise taxes on businesses and the rich.
He rarely uses the first person 'I' — a trait that advisers say reflects his desire to lead Labour without what he calls "top-down control-freakery" — code for the tight control exercised when Tony Blair was Labour leader from 1994-2007.
"Things can and they will change," Corbyn, said in a victory speech which began with criticism of the British media and ended with a vow to achieve justice for the poor and downtrodden.
Reuters
Friday, September 11, 2015
Coke’s Colombian victims and their union
For the People's World
Coke’s Colombian victims and their union
By W. T. Whitney Jr.
797 words
A corporation currently ranking 32nd in the
world for market value and accumulating $7.1 billion in profits
in a recent year for decades has abused and even killed workers who want better
lives. Coca Cola, the Goliath in this Colombian story, has had to contend with
the Sinaltranail food and beverage workers’ union that, as David, defends the
Coca Cola workers.
On June 25, 2015 thugs killed retired Coca Cola worker Wilmer
Enrique Giraldo. Wilmer had been injured at work, was forced from his job,
received death threats, and fled in fear to Medellin. Luis Enrique Girado Arango, his father,
also worked
for Coca Cola and also belonged to Sinaltrainal. Paramilitaries assassinated
Luis Enrique Girado in 1994.
The 14 murders of Sinaltranail’s Coca Cola workers since
1990 represent a tiny fraction of the 2800 murders of Colombian unionists
occurring between 1984 and 2011. In addition during those years, tens of
thousands of other social movement activists and protesters met violent deaths.
The 105 Colombian unionists killed between
2011 and the present are of special significance. During that time the Labor Action Plan of the U. S. –
Colombian Free Trade Agreement has been in force. The Plan was a U. S. -
inspired effort “to stop violence against unionists,” according to a Colombian NGO.
Sinaltranail defends employees of
Nestle
Corporation, Nutresa,
and other Colombian companies in addition to Coca Cola. But the fight against
huge and famous Coca Cola is special, inasmuch as that corporation exemplifies
transnational corporations receiving support and protection from Colombia’s
neo-liberal government.
This is a big-league contest. Coca Cola in Colombia teams with the
giant Mexican food and beverage distributer FEMSA. Coca Cola claimed almost 50
million consumers there in 2013, 5000 employees, and “413,200 Points of Sale.” In fact, “Colombia made up 47.1 million (15%) of
Coca-Cola’s 313.7
million drinkers of the soft drink in Latin America and the Philippines.” Unfortunately
from the union’s point of view, Coca Cola farms out most of its workers to
subcontracted “facade companies.”
Sinaltranail has resisted the company’s
firing of new recruits and its refusal to relocate workers who’ve received
threats of violence. The union defends workers from intimidation at the hands of
private security firms and from real danger posed by militarized police attacks against striking
workers, in one instance with tanks. Over the years Coca Cola has used
paramilitary forces as its ultimate enforcer, not only as murderer, but once as
the means for forcing workers out of the union by entering a bottling plant.
Sinaltrainal has advocated for
the environment, notably in early 2015 when it protested Coca Cola’s having
diverted almost 70 percent of Tocancipá’s underground water supplies to its
plant there.
Beginning on April 13, 2015, five Sinaltrainal Coca Cola
workers carried out a hunger strike for ten days in Bogota’s Plaza Bolivar.
Acting for Coca Cola workers nationwide, they were protesting low wages, Coca
Cola’s sub-contracting for workers, its firing of 1500 workers at a closed –
down bottling plant, and abuse of water resources. The hunger strike ended with
an agreement on establishing a review board to monitor water use and deal with
environmental abuses. News reports
indicated that remaining issues, like
wages and sub-contracting, would be
discussed later.
On May 22, 2015, Coca Cola service workers
belonging to Sinaltranail chained themselves to Coca Cola factory entry ways in
Cúcuta, Bucaramanga,
Barrancabermeja, Cali, Medellín, and Barranquilla. They were reiterating demands
made a month earlier.
In this fight against long odds, Sinaltranail has gained
international solidarity. The United Steelworkers of America and the
International Labor Rights Forum filed lawsuits in the United States in 2001 and
2006. The charge, which did not prevail, was that Coca Cola in Colombia
"contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that
utilized extreme violence and murdered, tortured and unlawfully detained or
otherwise silenced trade union
leaders."
In a 2012 letter to President Obama, AFL-CIO
President Richard Trumka expressed his "profound shock" at the murder of a Coca
Cola worker and Sinaltranail leader in Barranquilla. Alleging that Coca Cola is “complicit in
violence against union leaders in Latin America, particularly Colombia and
Guatemala,” the American Federation of Teachers in late 2014 resolved to ban
Coca Cola products in schools. Since 2004, dozens of union locals and state and
central labor councils have issued similar statements. The American Postal
Workers Union, Communications Workers of America, International Longshore and
Warehouse Union, and Service Employees International Union have done likewise.
Yet the struggle continues and
the stakes are high. Or in the words of Sinaltranail leader Juan Carlos Galvis:
“If we lose this fight against
Coke, first we will lose our union, next we will lose our jobs, and then we will
all lose our
lives!"
Down At Duke’s Place-With Duke Ellington In Mind
Down At Duke’s Place-With Duke Ellington In Mind
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
One night Sam Eaton was talking on his cellphone to his old friend from high school (Carver High, Class of 1967), Jack Callahan about how his grandson, Brandon, his oldest grandson from his daughter Janice from his first marriage (first of three all ending in divorce but that is merely a figure for the Census Bureau and not germane to what following so enough) had beguiled him recently with his arcane knowledge of classical jazz (the jazz from the age of King Oliver say until the death of the big bad swings bands which died in the late 1940s for the most part giving way to cool ass be-bop and what followed). Jack braced himself for the deluge, got very quiet and did say word one, since lately the music Sam mentioned, maybe even thought about mentioning the slightest thing connected with jazz he knew he was in for it, in for a harangue of unknown duration on the subject. Sam, recently more conscious that Jack, who hated jazz, hated it worse when as a child of rock and roll as Sam was, his father would endlessly play Count this, King that, Duke the other thing and not allow the family record player centered in the family living room to be sullied (his father’s word) by heathen stuff like Roll Over Beethoven or One Night With You, would go silent at the word “jazz” said not to worry he would only say a few words from his conversation with Brandon:
No, Jack, my man, this will not be a screed about how back in the day, back in the 1950s the time of our complete absorption into rock and roll, when be-bop jazz was the cat’s meow, when cool was listening to the Monk trip up a note, consciously trip up a note to see if anybody caught it and then took that note to heaven and back, and worked it out from there or Dizzy burping then hitting the high white note all those guys were struggling against the limits of the instruments, high as hell on tea, you know what we called ganja, herb, stuff like that, to get to. Frankly I was too young, you too but I knew how you felt since I couldn’t listen to rock in my house either since the 1940s Andrews Sisters/Perry Como/Frank Sinatra/Peggy lee cabal were front and center in our living room and I was reduced to listening on my transistor radio, way too young to appreciate such work then and I only got the tail end, you know when Hollywood or the popular prints messed the whole be-bop jazz “beat” thing up and we got spoon-fed Maynard G. Krebs faux black and white television beatnik selling hair cream oil or something like that, and ten thousand guys hanging around the Village on Saturday night in full beret and whatever they could put together for a beard from the outreaches of Tenafly, New Jersey (sorry but Fort Lee was out) and another ten thousand gals, all in black from head to toe, maybe black underwear too so something to imagine at least from Norwalk, Connecticut milling around as well. Square, square cubed. No, this will not be some screed going back further in the hard times of the Great Depression and the slogging through World War II when “it did not mean a thing, if you ain’t got that swing” when our parents, the parents of the kids who caught the end of be-bop “swang,” did dips and twirls to counts, dukes, earls, princes, marquises even leading big band splashes to wash that generation clean. Come on now that was our parents and I wasn’t even born so no way I can “screed” about that. And, no, no, big time no, this will not be about some solitary figure in some dank, dusty, smoke-filled café, the booze flowing, the dope in the back alleys inflaming the night while some guy, probably a sexy sax player, blows some eternal high white note out against some bay, maybe Frisco Bay, and I was hooked, hooked for life on the be-bop jazz scene.
No, it never even came close to starting out like that, never even dreamed such scenes. Unlike rock and roll, the classic kind that was produced in our 1950s growing up time and which we have had a life-long devotion to or folk music which I came of age, political and social age to later in the early 1960s, jazz was a late, a very late acquisition to my understanding of the American songbook. Oh sure I would hear a phrase, a few bing, bang, bong notes blowing out the window, out the door, sitting in some bar over drinks with some hot date, maybe hear it as backdrop in some Harvard Square bookstore when I went looking for books (and, once somebody hipped me to the scene, looking for bright young women who also were in the bookstore looking for books, and bright young men but that scene is best left for another time), or at some party when the host tired of playing old-time folk music and decided to kick out the jams and let the jazz boys wreak their havoc. But jazz was, and to a great extent still is, a side bar of my musical tastes.
About a decade ago, a little more, I got seriously into jazz for a while. The reason: the centennial of the birth of Duke Ellington being celebrated when I was listening to some radio show which was commemorating that fact and I heard a few faint bars which required me to both turn up the volume and to listen to the rest of the one hour tribute. The show played a lot of Duke’s stuff from the early 1940s when he had Ben Webster, Harry Carney, and Johnny Hodges on board. The stuff blew me away and as is my wont when I get my enthusiasms up, when something blows me away, I grabbed everything by the Duke and his various groupings and marveled at how very good his work was, how his tonal poems reached deep, deep down and caught something in me that responded in kind. Especially when those sexy saxs, when Johnny or Cootie blew me away when they let it all hang out.
Funny though I thought at the time that I hadn’t picked up on this sound before, this reaching for the soul, for the essence of the matter, before since there are very definitely elements of the blues in Brother Duke’s work. And I have been nothing but a stone blown blues freak since the early 1960s when I first heard Howlin’ Wolf hold forth practically eating that harmonica of his on Little Red Rooster and Smokestack Lightnin’. Moreover I had always been a Billie Holiday fan although I never drew the connection to the jazz in the background since it usually was muted to let her rip with that throaty sultry voice, the voice that chased the blues, my blues, away.
So, yes, count me among the guys who
are searching for the guys who are searching for the great big cloud puff high
white note, guys who have been searching for a long time as the notes waft out
into the deep blue sea night. Check this out. Blowing that high white note out
into the surly choppy Japan deep blue seas foaming and slashing out into the
bay the one time I was sitting in fog-bound Frisco town, sitting around a North
Beach bar, the High Hat maybe, back when Jimmy La Croix ran the place and a guy
with a story, or a guy he knew could run a tab, for a while, and then settle up
or let the hammer fall and you would wind up cadging swigs from flea-bitten
raggedy- assed winos and sterno bums.
On Monday nights, a slow night in every
venue you can name except maybe whorehouses and even then the business would
only fall off a little since guys had to see their wives or girlfriends or both
sometime, Jimmy would hold what is now called an “open mic” but then, I forget,
maybe talent search something like that but the same thing. The “Hat” as everybody
called it was known far and wide by ex hep-cats, aging beats, and faded flower
child ex-hippies who had not yet got back to the “real” world once those trends
petered out but were still looking, as I was, looking for something and got a
little solace from the bottle and a dark place to nurse the damn thing where
you could be social or just hang out was the place around North Beach where
young talent took to the boards and played, played for the “basket” just like
the folkies used to do back in the 1960s when that genre had its heyday, and
probably get a few dollars from the mostly regular heavy drinker crowd that
populate any gin mill on Monday, whether they have seen their loved ones or not.
Jimmy would have Max Jenny on drums and Milt Bogan on that big old bass that took
up half the stage, if you remember those guys when West Coast jazz was big, to back-up
the talent so this was serious stuff, at least Jimmy played it that way.
Most of the stuff early on that night was
so-so some riffs stolen from more famous guys like Miles Davis, Dizzie,
Coltrane, the cool ass jazz from the fifties that young bud talent imitates
starting out, maybe gets stuck on those covers and wind up, addled by some sister
habit, down by the trolley trains on Market hustle dollars from weary tourists
waiting to get up the damn hill. So nothing that would keep a steady drinker,
me, from steady drinking in those days when I lifted low-shelf whiskeys with
abandon. Maybe half a dozen other guys spread out around bar to prove they were
there strictly for the drinking and chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes to fill
up Jimmy’s ashtrays and give Red the bartender something to do between pouring
shots (otherwise the guys hungry for women company would be bunched near the
dance floor but they must have had it bad since Monday night the serious honeys
were not at the “Hat” but home getting rested up for the long week ahead of
fending guys off).
Then I turned around toward the stage,
turned around for no particular reason, certainly not to pay attention to the
talent, when this young guy, young black guy, barely out of his teens, maybe
sixteen for all I know and snuck out of the house to play, Jimmy wasn’t taking
ID cards in those days and if the kid wasn’t drinking then what did it matter, to
get play to reach the stars if that is what he wanted, slim a reed, dressed
kind of haphazardly with a shiny suit that he probably wore to church with
grandmother, string tie, clean shirt, couldn’t see his feet so can’t comment on
that, maybe a little from hunger, or had the hunger eating him up. Kind of an unusual
sight for ‘90s Frisco outside of the missions. But figure this, figure his eyes,
eyes that I know about from my own bouts with sister, with the just forming sad
sack yellow eyes of high king hell dope-dom and it all fit.
The kid was ready though to blow a big
sexy tenor sax, a sax as big as he was, certainly fatter, blew the hell out of
one note after another once he got his bearings, then paused, paused to suck up
the universe of the smoke filled air in the place (a whiff of ganja from the
back somewhere from some guy Jimmy must have known since usually dope in the
place was a no-no), and went over to the river Jordan for a minute, rested,
came back with a big blow that would get at least to Hawaii, rested again,
maybe just a little uncertain where to go like kids always are, copy some somebody
and let it go at that for the Monday crowd or blast away, but even I sensed
that he had something going, so blew up a big cloud puff riff alternating with
pauses hard to do, went at it again this time to the corner of paradise.
Stopped, I thought he was done, he looked to hell like he was done, done in
eyes almost closed, and then onward, a big beautiful dah, dee, dah, dee, dah,
dee, blow, a “max daddy” blow then even this old chattering wino in a booth
stopped to wonder at, and that big high white note went ripping down Bay
Street, I swear I could see it, on into the fog-bound bay and on its way, not
stopping until Edo, hell maybe back to Mother Africa where it all started.
He had it, that it means only “it” and if he never blew again he had that
“it” moment. He left out the back door and I never saw him at the “Hat” again
so maybe he was down on Mission or maybe he went somewhere, got some steady
work. All I know was that I was there when a guy blew that high white note,
yeah, that high white note. So yeah count me too among Duke’s boys, down at
Duke’s place where he eternally searched for that elusive high white note.
See I didn’t take too long, right.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)