From The Archives Of The Carter’ Variety Store 1950s Corner Boys-The “From Hunger” Boys Do, Well, Do The Best They Can-Except When Everything Comes Tumbling Down

  

By Sam Lowell

[A number of readers have written asking what happened to Carter’s Variety Store corner boy leader Ronnie Mooney written about by me in a recent series of recollections. This reader response after I alluded to the not uncommon fate of corner boys, and not just from our corners, who wasted away in jails or found some unwanted solace in an early grave. As far as I can tell the fate sisters, those goddam bitches, deemed if necessary for corner boys to fall under the bus before their times and that they  would far outnumber the relatively few of us who survived to tell the tale, although that was a very close thing not only in my case but most of the corner boys I knew. (I will be doing a few pieces related to our in-house intellectual the Scribe who despite a lot of good luck and intelligent fell under the bus too, causing many tears even now when I think about the crazy bastard.)     

The fact of the matter is that I am not sure what happened to Ronnie, or better that I only know stuff about his fate second-hand. Partially because as I mention in brackets at the end of each piece I would join the Scribe in moving out of the projects by the ninth grade and only heard about Ronnie from our mutual friend Billy Bradley (who would himself fall down as well) about his later exploits.

Here is what I know, really remember, sometime after Ronnie lost the area-wide talent show sponsored by primo rock and roll radio station WMEX in the summer of eighth grade something snapped in him, or maybe a shrink or social worker would say something already inside of him snapped. That “defeat” will be outlined below since I was in the audience when that dime turned. In any case according to Billy who would take the leadership role after Ronnie moved away from small time larcenies he started hanging with a rougher crowd, older guys led by biker Red Riley who wielded whipsaw chains and were people you would not want to meet in any dark alley, anywhere (that from Billy one of the toughest guys I ever knew pound for pound even back then.) Word got around that he was involved in what we would at Tonio’s call the “midnight creep,” hitting well-to-do houses with owners out of town, or just out. Started skipping school, started to wear better clothes and have dough in his pocket, maybe dangling some saucy girl on his arm (don’t believe the lie that girls, good girls too,  didn’t have traffic with the bad boys, okay).

Let me bring in Pretty James Preston now who was something like a folk hero for corner boys in our town, although he wasn’t from the town but Carver some thirty miles away. Here is Pretty James’ M.O. (everybody called him Pretty James and to not do so was the kiss of death). For a while he robbed banks, large and small when you could just walk in and say stick them up and some terrified clerk would give you whatever the fuck you wanted just please don’t kill me. This is Pretty James’ beauty though, what made him bigger than life, he did his jobs solo (mostly, although later I heard he had some red-headed girlfriend act as look-out), did it as well on a British motorcycle, a Vincent Black Lightning very fast that the cops could not catch up with in his glory days. In the end he fell down, got caught in a crossfire when some stupid bank guard at the massive Granite National Bank, some fucking rent-a-cop thought the bank’s money was his and went bang-bang nicking Pretty James before he wasted the guy. That slowed him down enough so that the town’s coppers had him cornered right in the public square, a hellish shoot-out occurred and Pretty James fell down.

All this bad end was later though because Ronnie was caught up in the Pretty James myth and decided that was the career for him. At seventeen out of nowhere he decided to rob some dink gas station, maybe he had done others but the one that counts was a dink station, and he got caught. That started his life in the legal system, started him spending more time in stir than out. Maybe he should have stuck with the tough boys, or given the music another chance, who knows. I think maybe ten years, no, about fifteen since I was living up in Maine then after I graduated from high school Rodger the Dodger who still lived in the town told me when I went I went back to the projects to see a friend who was in trouble that Ronnie had fallen down a couple of years before robbing some 7-11, some store like that in a strip mall down in Ohio I think and that he had made the mistake of doing so while the Lima, I think, police were having their coffee and crullers outside away from the entrance. I remember one weird night’s talk back in maybe fifth grade Ronnie said to us when we were deep into the silly clip stuff that when the deal went down he would not be taken alive, and he wasn’t. RIP, Ronnie, RIP]

Here is my last story which will feature Ronnie Mooney as mentioned in the brackets fell down after losing his way and as usual I will do a summary of how and why these pieces came together:      

       

“By now it has become something of a cliché as I have noted that out of the deep recesses of my mind I have dredged up some memories of my earliest corner boy experiences from down in the mud, down in the base society where some Hobbesian all against all is at work even if the players are clueless about social dread which befalls them of the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments, let’s not kid each other “the projects” which strikes fear in the timid and respectable now, as it did then. Those dredgings running rampant form the basics of yet another piece. Part of what has stirred up those memory jogs revolved around getting together with the still standing members of my high school corner boy gang from Tonio’s Pizza Parlor for drinks and a little food at Jimmy Jack’s Lounge a few towns over from where we grew up, came of age, came of age as the story below will tell much too young. That in turn got me thinking about genesis and the guys I hung with early on well before high school doing the “best we could,” legally or legally. Here is what I had to say in the prior piece, actually cobbled together from the three prior pieces still germane to fill in some background as to why I have decided to take the trip to way back when, back to “from hunger” days mercifully passed if still embedded in my psyche:      

“Of all the corner boys (read: juvenile delinquents in some quarters a big term, a big concern in 1950s sociologist, criminologist, school administration, court and cop circles; sullen schoolboys serious in feeding their “wanting” habits in an age when all around them was plenty so maybe not so much sullen as angry in some other quarters; and,  misunderstood youth in yet others the bailiwick of concerned teachers, social workers, and library personnel- all three probably true in some senses) who hung around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor while we were going to North Adamsville High in the early 1960s I am the only one still standing who started his corner boy career at Carter’s Variety Store across town in the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments (read: “the projects” and although I have already made the point a million times the unwanted fate of plenty down at the base of society, down in the mud where things and people are not pretty). That experience started when I was a student at the Snug Harbor Elementary School located just outside the projects.

“I am not quite sure how the Carter corner boys started since it was already formed when I started hanging out along with the Scribe. Let’s leave it that this store was the only one in the whole projects area (and sadly still is) where residents without cars, including my family many times, or in need of some quick item could shop. The urban legend folk lore if you will was that from about day one of the project’s opening some group of young men, boys really, somewhere about ten or eleven years old started hanging around there, to hang around which was alright with Mister Carter as long as we were respectful (which we always were-there). (I would not find out until later through my own progressions that Carter’s was step one in the corner boy stages in that part of town the denizens going to Bert’s Market on Sea Street in junior high school and Dexter’s Ice Cream Parlor in Adamsville Square in high school like in the Acre in North Adamsville the stages were Larry’s Variety, Doc’s Drugstore and Tonio’s.)   

“I met the Scribe the first day of school in fourth grade after my family had moved to the projects from another project in Riverdale west of Boston when my father’s company moved to the area and he needed the work. That was in Miss Sullivan’s class, an old biddy who trucked no nonsense and who made it her profession to keep us after school for detention-even that first day which was supposed to be easy stuff. The Scribe was looking at some book, forgotten now, and I commented that it looked interesting to start a conversation. That was all the Scribe needed as he wowed me with the contents.

“Later and elsewhere the Scribe, and to some extent me, would be the leaders of various corner boy combinations, would plan whatever needed to be planned, legal or illegal but then we were frankly naïve and really just foot soldiers. The deal was already set for leadership with Ronnie, George, Rodger, Lenny and a little later also the legendary Billy Bradley running the operations (all would later do various stretches of time in county and state prisons I think except Lenny who laid his head down in Vietnam during that war after having been given the “choice”-join the Army or do a nickel in some state jail). We had no problem with that since we were in thrall to the whole aura of the thing.”

In my first piece, important to set a certain tone for the bad karma fate of most corner boys and not just from my gang who wound up serving long jail time, or falling down to sullen and unwanted early deaths usually after some cop shoot-out, I mentioned how one pissed off Ronnie, Ronnie Mooney to give a last name since he is long dead from some failed armed robbery, gathered us together to seek revenge for some slight some teacher had given him, and he was going to burn down the school. Although the attempt, a very real attempt, failed we went along with his rage, with his plans since he was a fellow corner boy half-strange as that reason sounds today. (And as strange as I have mentioned previously how even today that does not seem irrational under the circumstances.)   


I have mentioned on a number of occasions and this is central to understanding Ronnie, later Billy and maybe even the Scribe in the end that they say, maybe they said is better, that juvenile delinquents are born not made. Have some genetic kink missing which throws everything off. That was true of Ronnie I believe for he had a really devious and sadistic bent but as a I noted in a subsequent piece about his musical abilities that was not all of what Ronnie was about then, if the bad side, the dark side came out more and more later. He, and we did too especially the Scribe and Billy Bradley, loved the emerging rock and roll that would define our generation’s main musical thrusts. Ronnie had a natural feel, a natural beat for the music and a very good voice. Ronnie lived to play the latest tunes for us by Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and what is important here the rise of doo-wop be-bop music.

I have already told the story of how Ronnie (and later with Billy) would in the summer after Carter’s closed and we were looking for something to do would gather us behind the school (that almost burned down school) and we would sing whatever he knew from rock and roll which was extensive and at one point when doo-wop surfaced that genre. At a critical point and maybe by the sheer force of his voice girls would come around, a couple at first then a whole bevy. In the distance at first but before long right up with us clapping and tapping to the new age beat.

Of course the doo-wop sessions led to boy-girl stuff but also led then ambitious Ronnie (and later Billy but the reader will have to wait for that) to realize that maybe he had enough talent to go big, become a rock and roll star. That certainly drove him for a while. Ronnie seemed to think that doo-wop would be his way out of the mud, the way out of the rotten projects. And he, rightly I think, and probably said so then focused on that kind of future. Certainly he had the swoony girls swaying in the breezes part down. One night he won a school dance during intermission talent show doing Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven and netted a fifty- dollar savings bond as the prize. That set a course for him for a while.  

Although that might keep Ronnie’s eye on the prize for a while, he, and here he can stand in for every corner boy, every Carter’s corner boy always had a nagging sense that he was left out, had “wanting habits” that given his family’s standard of living meant that “no” was the answer when he asked either parent for anything beyond milk money for lunch (most of the times I never even got that). This where the wicked kink, the rotten DNA I guess came in whatever was happening. Ronnie won some of his leadership role by being smart, I would say now street smart, but also because he was both fearless in what he wanted to do and like the Scribe latter was always working up some plan, usually illegal or something like that.

The birth of rock and roll at least after it caught on big with Elvis and the proliferation of teenage-oriented dance shows like American Bandstand hit guys like Ronnie with a big bang. Gave them maybe a chance to break out of some lonely farm, avoid becoming a clerk in some hardware store, bagging groceries, or driving trucks, stuff like that. (We will ignore the corner boy fates of armed robbery and other felonies here). That is what drove Ronnie, for a while. From his start doing doo wop with his corner boys to a swaying girl audience in back of Snug Harbor Elementary to winning  a talent contest one night at the Saint James Catholic Church dance he plotted away his prospects (the reader always remembering that all things were financed by “the clip” to grab ready cash fast).

Rock and roll came on like gang-busters and so many radio stations, maybe television stations too, looking for new talent (looking for the next Elvis or Chuck, maybe Wanda Jackson) to feed the frenzy for new sounds, new voices were knee-deep in talent searches, were sponsoring such events in their listening areas. I would learn a lot more about the ins and outs of the record and film industries and their essentially exploitive ways much later when I because a free-lance music and film reviewer but back then I was as clueless as Ronnie about what was happening behind the scenes.  

In the spring of eighth grade before my family left the projects life for good (although it has left its mark on me to this day) the biggest radio station in Boston WMEX was staging a series of talent searches looking for that next best thing. The idea was that there were to be I think six such events in different areas held in some local facility like a high school auditorium with the winner of each section getting to go to Boston to audition for Delco Records, one of the biggest labels back then and the discoverers of Johnny Blaine and Cissy Lapin. The winner of the audition would get a contract for at least one heavily promoted record and see where that led.   

When Ronnie heard about the program on Arnie Ginsberg’s Hop Hour he went nuts, decided this was it-this was the way out although he probably didn’t put in it those words, words that the Scribe or me were more likely to use even then. (Ronnie would also go around town for days tearing down posters announcing the local event to as he would say later “cut down the competition”.) The event was to be held in a few weeks at the Adamsville High School auditorium on a Friday night. So Ronnie practiced like crazy, made us listen endlessly to Jerry Lee Lewis’ High School Confidential which he intended to cover. (I still love the song but can only stand one listen at a time.)       

On the big night Ronnie looked good, looked better even than the night he won the church talent show wearing an off-white shirt, still in style string tie, a borrowed sports coat and the inevitable holy black trousers without cuffs. I don’t know if WMEX limited the number of entrants but there were maybe twenty acts listed on the brochure. Ronnie was maybe number seven or eight so he had time. The way the scoring would go on this was that the judges carried maybe sixty percent of the vote and the audience applause the rest. Ronnie was on fire that night-Jerry Lee would have been proud of the cover. When it came audience applause time and even though you might call me prejudiced he won the biggest hand. But he did not win that night (and there would be no other such nights for him) the so-so Eva Sisters doing a cover of the Chiffons’ He’s So Fine did. They would go on to win the Boston record contract and have a fairly successful recording and concert career working Vegas and other high-end venues, get some play in rock and roll revival shows too.              

Here is the where the fate sisters, and you will see why I call them bitches now, did Ronnie dirty. The whole thing was a set-up. If Elvis had shown up that night the Eva Sisters would have beaten him. The fix was on, although I would not know the details of how it was done until years later. Too late, much too late for Ronnie who was smart enough to know a fix when he saw one. And acted another way on that premise.   

      

What Is In A Name-The Film Adaptation Of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance Of Being Earnest”(1952)-A Review

What Is In A Name-The Film Adaptation Of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance Of Being Earnest”(1952)-A Review

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

The Importance Of Being Earnest, starring Michael Redgrave, Michael Denison, Dame Edith Evans, directed by Anthony Asquith, 1952    

No question the great late 19^th century English playwright Oscar Wilde took a terrible beating from hypercritical late Victorian society for his little ‘vice’-“the act that dare not speak its name” to use the quant phrase used in polite society for homosexuality. (Victorian society hypercritical since as far as the upper crust and certainly in the literary and culture milieus there were plenty of closeted, and not so closeted in some places, homosexuals who were tolerated if not celebrated). Certainly today his activities would have drawn little attention in Western society anyway but then such exposure devastated his career.

Before Wilde’s fall, before he took his court room beating sending him to Reading Gaol and infamy he wrote and had produced the play upon which the film under review is based, The Importance Of Being Earnest. A play which was a humorous sent-up of all the hypocrisy, manners and tedium of upper-crust bourgeois society. There was not necessarily any great political message to the work but by virtue of the truly great use of dialogue Oscar was able to drive his spears in all the better. The film adaptation by Anthony Asquith is pretty fateful to the original play and the acting is of a high order so we get today a fairly decent sense of what was going on in some circles in those bygone days.             

Here’s the simple plotline on which the fast-paced dialogue rises and falls. A couple of free-wheeling gentleman, representing country and city, Jack and Algy having time on their hands and wicked senses of humor carry around some assumed names, Ernest for the former and Bunbury for the latter in order to brush off any untoward questions or people. They both have the same problem or aspects of the same problem. They long for female companionship, for proper marriages. Jack is in love with Algy’s cousin the aristocratic Gwendolyn and Algy is in love with Jack’s ward out in his country estate Cecily.Therein lies the dilemma. Jack is caught up in a bind because having under the assumed name Ernest he has caught Gwen’s attentions although she is fickle enough only to want to marry a man named Ernest. Cecily by a certain sleight of hand by Algy only wants to marry a man named Ernest as well.         

With that conundrum in mind the chase is on. Jack has to invent a younger brother Ernest whom he tries to kill off but who shows up at the country estate door but Algy posing as Jack’s supposedly late brother Ernest. Then Gwen, mother in tow shows up as well to find out whether Jack, who has willingly proposed to Gwen and she has accepted, has the correct lineage to betroth her daughter. Every social and cultural prejudice of the day gets a work-out as in the end love conquers all once Jack, who turned out to be a foundling, actually had been born with the name Ernest. Nice touch. A great sent-up and great fun if not a big time look at the foibles of late Victorian society.           

*From The Karl Marx- Friedrich Internet Archives- In Defense Of The Paris Commune And Defense Of Its Class-War Prisoners-Engels' 1891 Address

Click on the headline to link to the Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels Archive online copy of the material mentioned in the title on the defense of the Paris Commune and its class-war prisoners.

Markin comment:

Readers of this space are, by now, familiar with my interest in the defense of class-war prisoners and, perhaps, know that I express that interest through support to the efforts of the Partisan Defense Committee (PDC). One of the reasons for that support of the PDC is its commitment to the non-sectarian defense of all class-war prisoners, a tradition in which it follows the old Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) principle expressed in the slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all.” That principle also animated the early James P. Cannon-led work of the International Labor Defense, the legal defense arm of the American Communist Party and of the early legal defense work of the Trotskyist American Socialist Workers Party.

Perhaps not as well known, although it would seem axiomatic to their theories, is the even earlier class-war prisoner defense work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as an expression of their concept expressed in the slogan “workers of the world unite.” In no place was this work more ardently pursued that in their defense against all-comers of the Paris Commune during its short, historic existence and later, after it was crushed of its refugees, exiles, prisoners and their families. Much of this work was done early on through the Marx-created and led First International, and after its demise in the wake of that defeat through other Marx-influenced national organizations. I am posting some material here to provide some examples of their efforts.

The important point here is that, to my knowledge, there was, at most, only one proclaimed Marxist in the leadership of the Commune, and not much more adherence among the plebeians and artisans who heroically defended the Commune. So, mostly, those being defended by Marx and Engels were leftist political opponents, in some cases, severe political opponents. That approach is what has animated my own legal defense work and, hopefully, yours. Here, by the way, is another slogan to end this comment, fittingly I think-All Honor To The Paris Communards! Long Live The Memory Of The Paris Commune!

Happy Birthday Jim Kweskin-The Max Daddy Of Jug- *Eveybody's Going Back Home To Their Roots- Mississippi Sheiks Move On Over- Geoff Muldaur And The Texas Sheiks Are In Town

Click on the title to link to "TIMWITH"'s blog entry of Geoff Muldaur being interviewed about his new album, "Geoff Muldaur and The Texas Sheiks" on NPR's "Terry Gross Show".

CD Review

The Texas Sheiks, Geoff Muldaur and company, Tradition and Moderne, 2009


Recently in reviewing Maria Mulduar's latest CD, "Garden Of Joy", in which she goes back to the old Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band tradition I noted that the tide seemed to be drifting that way. And ex-husband and jug band member Geoff must have heard the siren call because this little treat that goes back to old time, old time music hits the spot. This thing is like a part recreation of the famous "Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music", including some from that series, like "Poor Boy".

Boy and girls, hear this thing if you want to know what music was like when you were left to your own devices and didn't have "MTV" or "YouTube" to make your selections from. The only question left, and one that I posed in reviewing Maria's album. Jim Kweskin is still performing. Geoff Muldaur is still performing. Maria Muldaur is still performing. Everybody's got a ton of great musicians to back them up. So I will let you guess what my next question was.

Below are some remarks that I made in reviewing some of Geoff Muldaur's earlier works.
CD Review

Over the past year or so I have been asking a recurring question concerning the wherewithal of various male folk performers from the 1960’s who are still performing today in the “folk concert” world of small coffeehouses, Universalist-Unitarian church basements and the like. I have mentioned names like Jesse Winchester, Chris Smither and Tom Paxton, among others. I have not, previously mentioned the performer under review, Geoff Muldaur, who is probably best known for his work in the 1960’s, not as solo artist, but as part of the famous Jim Kweskin Jug Band and later the equally famous Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Thus, in a way, I had no reason to place him in the pantheon of the solo performers from that period. But things sure are different now.

The following is a review of Geoff Muldaur's "Password" CD, Hightone Records, 2000, by way of an introduction:

“Since my youth I have had an ear for roots music, whether I was conscious of that fact or not. The origin of that interest first centered on the blues, then early rock and roll and later, with the folk revival of the early 1960's, folk music. I have often wondered about the source of this interest. I am, and have always been a city boy, and an Eastern city boy at that. Nevertheless, over time I have come to appreciate many more forms of roots music than in my youth. The subject of the following review is an example.

Geoff Muldaur took almost two decades off from the hurly-burly of traveling the old folk circuit. When I saw him at a coffeehouse upon his return to the scene I asked him what the folk revival of the 1960's was all about. He said it was about being able to play three chords to get the girls to hang around you. Fair enough. I KNOW I took my dates at the time to coffeehouses for somewhat the same reason. I guess it always comes down to that. Kudos to Freud.

Seriously though, Geoff Muldaur was and is about lots more than three chords. He has developed a style that reflects the maturation of his voice and of his interests. And beside that he has always, even in the crazy days of the 1960's, taken a serious attitude to the way that he interprets a song. And furthermore has a very deep knowledge of all sorts of music. Every time I think I know most of the artists in the blues genre he, at a concert, will throw out one more name that I have 'missed'. Example, "At The Christmas Ball" is an old Bessie Smith novelty tune. Geoff gives it his own twist. He likewise does that on "Drop Down Mama" the old Sleepy John Estes version of the tune (I think) and on fellow old time folkie Eric Von Schmidt's "Light Rain". Enough said. Listen.”

The above review was written sometime in 2006 several years after he had begun touring again and I had begun to attend his concerts again (Yes, in those small coffeehouses and church basements mentioned above). Recently I picked up at one of his concerts this following historically interesting CD, “Geoff Muldaur, Rare And Unissued-Collectors’ Items 1963-2008 (self-produced for a Japanese CD market of jug music aficionados)”. In this CD one gets all the sense of musical history, guitar virtuosity and wry humor that was mentioned in the above quoted review. There are many cuts from the Kweskin days like "Borneo" and Ukulele Lady", some later Butterfield work (especially a long cover of the blues classic “Boogie Chillin’”) and some dud stuff from the early 1980’s. A few others defy categorization like "Sweet Sue" and "Guabi Guabi". All in all well was worth the purchase.

When The Fuse Burned Out On The Psycho-Thriller Genre-Diane Lane’s “The Glass House” (2001)-A Film Review

When The Fuse Burned Out On The Psycho-Thriller Genre-Diane Lane’s “The Glass House” (2001)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

The Glass House, starring Diane Lane, 2001

To be honest with you I think this scary psycho-thriller genre has been overplayed, has lost its ability to scare if that was the intention. That seems to me to be the case with the run-up on this latest thriller The Glass House that Greg Green threw at me since I was next in line to do one because it had been a while and Greg didn’t want me to go stale or something. I don’t know if there are any socially redeeming qualities to the psycho-thriller genre so I don’t feel any compulsion to add some weight by placing it in some outlandishly overrated cultural context. Let’s call it pure entertainment for a day when things didn’t go too badly at the office, school, golf course or whatever your social activity had been and can stand the weight of whatever some holy goof of a screenwriter decided would play in Peoria, or Pasadena which is probably more likely as an audience response testing site.

World weary teenager Ruby, all aflutter with the cares of the day to day existence of high school manias and getting through the day to hit the Valley Girl night comes up short, has to grow up really very quickly when her parents died in what turned out to be a mysterious car accident. That left her and her seriously holy goof brother Rhett with a ton of dough and no home. Enter Terry and Erin Glass and hence the film title, ex-neighbors of the family in the Valley who hit some dough and moved to the swanky districts of ocean view Malibu and a glass-encased house, or maybe that is the reference in the title. Who knows and in the end who cares except a lot of craziness goes on in that swanky house. The Glasses are deemed to be worthy of taking care of the kids and so that starts the ball rolling. But sharp Ruby full of angst, alienation and teen hubris (not to be confused with real hubris like from the actions of the Greek gods) begins very early on to suspect that not all is right with this picture. Helped of course by the foolery of Terry and the aid of junkie Erin.    

We are then taken on a roller coaster ride of twists and turns to what we already know, since Ruby is our indefatigable guide, that these people are frauds, are up to their necks in treachery (and Erin dope) and that in the end Terry and Erin will one way or another take the big step-off for their sins, mortal and venial. Will learn the hard way what comes to mind from the film’s title-people in glass houses should not throw stones-or something like that. We begin to learn that lesson, begin to learn not all is right in sweet paradise Malibu when dear sweet Ruby finds out that their old life is kaput, no more private schools, social activities as they are basically entombed in the glass cage. Reason: simple-Terry is up to his eyeballs to loan sharks and Erin, who in the end will commit suicide has nothing but a slow death junkie’s lament going for her.       

Along the way Terry tries to not so subtly seduce the winsome Ruby, attempts to kill her and her brother by various means, gains some reprieves from assorted social welfare agencies by ruse and fancy-footwork, runs afoul of the mob’s “repo” men and in a final confrontation Ruby wastes the wastrel Terry via a good kick in the police car butt. Maybe after twenty years of therapy and some serious forget drugs these kids will be able to sleep at night again without the nightmares but as we leave this scene I would not count on it. No way. Now way would I call this a great thriller by any means and the thing would not be unwelcome as yet another example of the overkill of the genre. Too bad.  

Poet's Corner-Langston Hughes' "One-Way Ticket"

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Langston Hughes' One-WayTicket.

The Poetry of Langston Hughes


A central figure of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s and 40s, Missouri-born Langston Hughes used his poetry, novels, plays, and essays to voice his concerns about race and social justice.

One Way Ticket

I pick up my life, And take it with me,
And I put it down in Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, Scranton,
Any place that is North and East, And not Dixie.
I pick up my life And take it on the train,
To Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Seattle, Oakland, Salt Lake
Any place that is North and West, And not South.
I am fed up With Jim Crow laws,
People who are cruel And afraid, Who lynch and run,
Who are scared of me And me of them
I pick up my life And take it away On a one-way ticket
Gone up North Gone out West Gone!

Happy Birthday Jim Kweskin-The Max Daddy Of Jug- In The Beginning Was The Jug- The Jim Kweskin Jug Band

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

As told to Alex Radley

Who knows how it happened maybe somebody in the band looked up some songs in the album archives, or found some gem in some record store, an institution now on the ropes what with Amazon and every other on-line music site to tear into the very marginal profits of record store brick and mortar operations, that sustained many for hours back then in the cusp of the 1960s folk revival when there were record stores on almost every corner in places like Harvard Square and you could find some gems if you searched long enough. That is where Si Lannon found Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music (although sometimes the search was barren or, maybe worse, something by Miss Patti Page or Tennessee Ernie Ford stared you in the face and you got pissed off that those selections were even in a record store). From there they found, maybe Cannon’s Stompers, the Mississippi Sheiks or the Memphis Jug Band, saw they could prosper going back to those days if they kept the arrangements simple, and that was that.

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

So there was history there, certainly for the individual members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim, Geoff Mulduar, Mel Lymon, Maria Muldaur, Fritz Richmond , all well-versed in many aspects of the American Songbook (hell, I would say so, even old tacky Tin Pan Alley Irving Berlin and Cole Porter got a hearing), history there for the taking. All they needed was a jug, a good old boy homemade corn liquor jug giving the best sound and so they were off, off to conquer places like Harvard Square, like the Village, like almost any place in the Bay area. (That Bay Area a few years later a hub for all kinds of rock but also saved space for the Kweskin Band as a number of poster art concerts now considered high art would testify even in that Summer of Love craze, maybe because of it.)  And for a while they did, picking up chimes, kazoos, harmonicas, what the heck, even standard guitars and they made great music, great entertainment music, not heavy with social messages but just evoking those long lost spirits from the 1920s when jug music would sustain a crowd on a Saturday night out in the hinterlands. Yeah, in the beginning was the jug…    

*On The Anniversary Of The Beginning Of "The Troubles" In Northern Ireland

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for "The Troubles In Northern Ireland".

Markin comment:

Be careful in using this source, or almost any source for that matter, on this subject. I have linked to it merely because there is some good information about "the troubles" for those who do not know, or remember, those struggles by the Catholic minority and their allies in the North.. I have commented on this situation in previously blogs and in commemorating the Easter Uprising of 1916 and related events so no one has to guess where I stand. I would only add one comment here as I have noticed media commentators, especially on the BBC, have fallen all over themselves congratulating and patting each other on the back for the "progress" made in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. But tell me this, why is Northern Ireland, like Palestine and a goodly number of other places, heavily dotted with the ubiquitous "peace walls" that separate the two conflicted communities? Answering that question is only the beginning of political wisdom on starting to work on a real solution for bringing justice to these interpenetrated peoples.

Who Was That Guy With Jane Russell And Why Is He A Noir Guy- With Jane Russell And Robert Mitchum’s “His Kind Of Woman” In Mind

Who Was That Guy With Jane Russell And Why Is He A Noir Guy- With Jane Russell And Robert Mitchum’s “His Kind Of Woman” In Mind  

DVD Review, sort of

By Sarah Lemoyne

His Kind Of Woman, starring buxom and bubbly Jane Russell, jut-jawed barrel-chested Robert Mitchum, stone-cold evil gangster Raymond Burr and pussycat Vincent Price, directed by legendary director John Farrow, 1951  

Seth Garth, my dear friend and mentor help! No, not on advising me about what Sam Lowell, my newfound nemesis is gibbering about but how to tackle a film noir that is not a dark and mysterious presentation and one without a bad girl lure femme fatale. Sam, by the way paid me a left-handed compliment when he at least had the sense to understand that I have a future in the film review business whether he personally likes me or not. (Despite the lack of femme fatale I am sure than many a guy, maybe gals too like my companion, partner Clara who swooned over her, over lead female actor Jane Russell, Howard Hughes’ then, ah protégé, when we watched the film under review His Kind Of Women together one night when Greg Green assigned the review, commentary to me and Seth was out of town, was up in Maine trying to cajole Allan Jackson to come back and do the introductions to some 1960s throwback series about a couple of working class stiffs, maybe Robert Mitchum hunk -type guys who were still keeping whatever the 1960s faith was still around.)

Maybe I had better explain why I am in this conundrum, why I need once again like some maiden is distress Seth’s help in figuring out the intricacies of the film review profession. I know as I will explain a little below the cutthroat nature of the business, know it and through dueling with one Sam Lowell, back in the dark ages supposedly the max daddy, Seth’s term, of the critical world, especially after writing what was then considered the definitive study of film noir which everybody back then consulted to get an idea of what to write. Except “expert” Sam “forgot” to explain a film where there is a heavy who needs to be brought down not by the coppers but by a private citizen, usually a private investigator, a bad ass no holds barred criminal chieftain, where there is a guy, Mitchum, who could take a punch but who also certainly could have his buttons pushed by a femme fatale, where there are some funny, I can’t believe I am saying this about a noir, moments provided by a tin can actor on vacation, Mark Cardigan who I guess was the real deal swash-buckling hero when I looked up his bio on Wikipedia, played by usually scary bad boy Vincent Price, and most importantly for my purposes no femme fatale although Clara and I agreed that Jane Russell could have led almost any man by the nose-and made him like it.

That last point the real sticking point since in my very first film noir review a few weeks ago of another Robert Mitchum minor classic Where Danger Lives I made a very big point, a very big point against male interpretation of the role of a woman in a film noir as evil incarnate, made that point directly counterpoised to Sam Lowell’s silly theory of such efforts. There I noted that the Robert Mitchum character in that film, a budding young doctor named Jeff, had about seven places where he could have turned back, could have avoided almost taking the big step-off for a crime he did not commit and which his damsel in distress Margo had committed for her own insane, literally insane, reasons. Seth helped me through the finer points of that view, said he almost came to believe in my version against his old friend Sam’s demented sense that “the weaker sex” could only act as lure to some skirt-chaser, some long gone daddy sniffing jasmine scents and helpless against all male humankind history going back to Adam, maybe before, to resist.

Seth who has thoughtfully guided me along the way, and Sam too before he became my nemesis, said that when in trouble for a “hook, for a way to drag the reader kicking and screaming into your storyline. Look when all else fails to the tried and true Hollywood formula that has saved many a film with a worse plot that this one, has saved half of Western literature too if you really look deeply at the situation-boy meets girl. Bingo, thanks Seth in absentia, thanks too Sam if you will accept thanks. It may not fulfill my dreams of taking over the mantel of millennial film noir diva but it will let me float for another day until I get a better handle on some of these B-noirs that flooded the movie houses in the heyday 1940s and 1950s.

Of course it makes perfect sense to use the hook of the boy meets girl thing and if I hadn’t been so focused on the noir aspect and Clara hadn’t been Clara oohing and ahhing Jane Russell trying to make me jealous to counter her jealousy of my imaginary “romance” with grandfather Seth I would have seen it right away. Hell, I should have known when Robert was putting his moves on Jane in some dirt-water cantina buying expensive B-girl cheapjack champagne waiting for further instruction under mysterious conditions and she brought her own bottle up she was no femme, that this would work as a boy meets girl vehicle. When they wind up flying on the same small plane to renegade Baja California down in sunny Mexico then the deal was done, finished.

Let’s take a step back though. The reason Robert was hanging around some low-rent dive on the border was to head to Mexico on some unexplained but lucrative assignment which would get him off of cheap street. Jane was trying to woe that paper tiger hero actor Mark Cadigan to make her own way to easy street. Perfect. Along the way they take meaningful glances but for a while Robert is more intrigued by why he is down south of the border getting high society resort treatment and a fistful of cash. Trying, reasonably to figure out who he has to kill to keep afloat. Jane, for a while too was trying, God knows why, to lure Mark to the altar and easy street but was getting some resistance since Mark’s wifie was gumming up the works.

Jane’s case was easier to resolve when wifie showed up not wanting a divorce Jane was then mainly on the plane or something like that and was free to get her hooks, get her hooks deep into Robert. Robert’s was a tougher haul once he found out from a government agent who subsequently wound up very dead for his efforts that he had been in the employ of one Nick Ferraro, everybody remembers the minute his name comes up who he was and how much graft he poured around, slugs too,  a bad hombre who ran the rackets in Chi town, Seth’s term, before being deported, played by pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr. And trying might and main to get back to his own easy street via a little plastic surgery and Robert’s identity. Nice, except poor Robert takes a fistful of beatings, some of them bare-chested, barrel-chested I think his physique is called, which made me swoon a little quietly when Clara went to the bathroom. Not to worry Mark, Mark Cadigan, the papier Mache hero of many a Hollywood swash-buckling adventure saved the day-sort of. Saved the day as a gesture for love, for romance as Jane and Robert lighted up the screen with some torrid kiss at the end after Nick had gone to sleep with the fishes. This effort should get me at least one more noir assignment although I wish like crazy Seth was around to see if this is the right angle.                         

In Honor Of The King Of The Folk-Singing Hard-Living Hobos The Late Utah Phillips -From The Archives- * The Wobblies Still Going Along - The Newspaper "Industrial Worker"

Click on title to link to current issue of "Industrial Worker" the newspaper of the Industrial Workers OF The World (IWW, Wobblies). I am about a million miles away from this organization politically but every knowledgeable labor militant has to pay homage to their revolutionary past and the labor militants who passed through their gates. James P. Cannon, Vincent St. John, Big Bill Haywood, Frank Little, Ralph Chaplin and many more. Those are real heroes of the American and international labor movement. On the modern scene I would say , in passing, the name of the late folk singer/storyteller and performer Utah Phillips. Adieu old militants, rest easy the struggle is still being continued.