The Blues Aint Nothing But Lucille On Your Mind- With B.B. King’s Lucille In Mind

The Blues Aint Nothing But Lucille On Your Mind- With B.B. King’s 

Lucille In Mind

  

By Bradley Fox, Jr.  

Here is the drill. I started out life listening to singer like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby (and his brother Bob), Miss Patti Page, Miss Rosemary Clooney, Miss Peggy Lee, the Andrew, McGuire, Dooley sisters, and all the big swing bands from the 1940s like Harry James, Tommy Dorsey (and his brother Jimmy) as background music on the family radio in the 1950s which my mother had always during the day to get her workaday daytime household world and on Saturday night when my father joined in. Joined in so they could listen to Bill Marlowe on local radio station WJDA and his Memory Lane show from seven to eleven where they could listen to the music that got them (and their generation) through the “from hunger” times of the 1930s Great Depression and then when they slogged through (either in some watery European theater or Pacific one take your pick) or anxiously waited at home for the other shoe to drop during World War II. I am not saying that they should not have had their memory music after all of that but frankly that stuff then (and now although less) made me grind my teeth. But I was a captive audience then and so to this day I can sing off Rum and Coca Cola and Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree from memory. But that was not my music, okay. 

Then of course since we are speaking about the 1950s came the great musical break-out, the age of classic rock and roll which I “dug” seriously dug to the point of dreaming my own jailbreak dreams about rock futures (and girls) but that Elvis-etched time too was just a bit soon for me to be able unlike my older brother, Prescott, to call that the music that I came of age to. Although the echoes of that time still run through my mind and I can quote chapter and verse One Night With You, Sweet Little Sixteen, Let’s Have A Party, Be-Bop-a-Lula, Bo Diddley, Peggy Sue and a whole bunch more.   

The music that I can really call my own is the stuff from the folk minute of the 1960s which dovetailed with my coming of chronological, political and social age (that last in the sense of recognizing, if not always acting on, the fact that there were others, kindred, out there beside myself filled with angst, alienation and good will to seek solidarity with). You know the mountain tunes of the first generation of the Carter Family, Buell Kazell, Jimmy Rodgers, the old country Child ballads (Northwest Europe old country), the blue grass music , and the protest songs by the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Dave Von Ronk and Phil Ochs. The latter songs being what drove a lot of my interest once I connected their work with the Harvard Square coffeehouse scene (and the adjacent hanging out at the Hayes-Bickford Cafeteria which I have written plenty about elsewhere on poverty nights, meaning many nights).

A lot of the drive toward folk music was to get out from under the anti-rock and rock musical counter-revolution that I kept hearing on my transistor radio during that early 1960s period with pretty boy singers and vapid young female-driven female singer stuff. Also to seek out roots music that I kept hearing in the coffeehouses and on the radio once I found a station (accidently) which featured such music and got intrigued by the sounds. Part of that search, a big search over the long haul, was to get deeply immersed in the blues, mainly at first country blues and later the city, you know Chicago, blues. Those country guys though intrigued me once they were “discovered” down south in little towns plying away in the fields or some such work and were brought up to Newport to enflame a new generation of aficionados. The likes of Son House, Skip James, Bukka White and of course Mississippi John Hurt. But those guys basically stayed in the South and it took a younger generation like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the guy whose photograph graces this sketch, B.B. King, to move north, to follow the northern star to the big industrial cities (with a stop at Memphis going up river) to put some electric juice in those old guitars and chase my blues away just by playing like they had made their own pacts with the devil. Praise be.               

The Blues Aint Nothing But Lucille On Your Mind- With B.B. King’s Lucille In Mind

The Blues Aint Nothing But Lucille On Your Mind- With B.B. King’s 

Lucille In Mind

  

 By Bradley Fox, Jr.  

Here is the drill. I started out life listening to singer like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby (and his brother Bob), Miss Patti Page, Miss Rosemary Clooney, Miss Peggy Lee, the Andrew, McGuire, Dooley sisters, and all the big swing bands from the 1940s like Harry James, Tommy Dorsey (and his brother Jimmy) as background music on the family radio in the 1950s which my mother had always during the day to get her workaday daytime household world and on Saturday night when my father joined in. Joined in so they could listen to Bill Marlowe on local radio station WJDA and his Memory Lane show from seven to eleven where they could listen to the music that got them (and their generation) through the “from hunger” times of the 1930s Great Depression and then when they slogged through (either in some watery European theater or Pacific one take your pick) or anxiously waited at home for the other shoe to drop during World War II. I am not saying that they should not have had their memory music after all of that but frankly that stuff then (and now although less) made me grind my teeth. But I was a captive audience then and so to this day I can sing off Rum and Coca Cola and Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree from memory. But that was not my music, okay. 

Then of course since we are speaking about the 1950s came the great musical break-out, the age of classic rock and roll which I “dug” seriously dug to the point of dreaming my own jailbreak dreams about rock futures (and girls) but that Elvis-etched time too was just a bit soon for me to be able unlike my older brother, Prescott, to call that the music that I came of age to. Although the echoes of that time still run through my mind and I can quote chapter and verse One Night With You, Sweet Little Sixteen, Let’s Have A Party, Be-Bop-a-Lula, Bo Diddley, Peggy Sue and a whole bunch more.   

The music that I can really call my own is the stuff from the folk minute of the 1960s which dovetailed with my coming of chronological, political and social age (that last in the sense of recognizing, if not always acting on, the fact that there were others, kindred, out there beside myself filled with angst, alienation and good will to seek solidarity with). You know the mountain tunes of the first generation of the Carter Family, Buell Kazell, Jimmy Rodgers, the old country Child ballads (Northwest Europe old country), the blue grass music , and the protest songs by the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Dave Von Ronk and Phil Ochs. The latter songs being what drove a lot of my interest once I connected their work with the Harvard Square coffeehouse scene (and the adjacent hanging out at the Hayes-Bickford Cafeteria which I have written plenty about elsewhere on poverty nights, meaning many nights).

A lot of the drive toward folk music was to get out from under the anti-rock and rock musical counter-revolution that I kept hearing on my transistor radio during that early 1960s period with pretty boy singers and vapid young female-driven female singer stuff. Also to seek out roots music that I kept hearing in the coffeehouses and on the radio once I found a station (accidently) which featured such music and got intrigued by the sounds. Part of that search, a big search over the long haul, was to get deeply immersed in the blues, mainly at first country blues and later the city, you know Chicago, blues. Those country guys though intrigued me once they were “discovered” down south in little towns plying away in the fields or some such work and were brought up to Newport to enflame a new generation of aficionados. The likes of Son House, Skip James, Bukka White and of course Mississippi John Hurt. But those guys basically stayed in the South and it took a younger generation like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the guy whose photograph graces this sketch, B.B. King, to move north, to follow the northern star to the big industrial cities (with a stop at Memphis going up river) to put some electric juice in those old guitars and chase my blues away just by playing like they had made their own pacts with the devil. Praise be.               

The Lady In The Bell Jar-The “One Life: Sylvia Plath” At The National Portrait Gallery

By Frank Jackman

I have known the name Sylvia Plath for a long time, maybe since the time of her suicide when I was still in high school and my senior year English who was a great influence on all her charges especially about literature was pretty broken up about that tragic event. While I may have known about Sylvia Plath and her well-known (and still well-known) book The Bell Jar and of her poetry in those days what she had to say, what poetry she wrote did not “speak” to me.

How could such a sensitive soul (but also much else as the exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery points out including a sense of humor, a wry sense) speak to a hard-bitten corner boy whose literary heroes if he had any centered on guys like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Tough guys writing for a tough hard-shell world. Even later, college later, when I had a girlfriend who was crazy for whatever Ms. Plath wrote (she did her senior thesis on Ms. Plath if I recall) and who endlessly coaxed me to at least read The Bell Jar I bucked her. (Needless to say that relationship did not last too long). It was not until later, not until after a whole bunch of Army experiences during the Vietnam War kind of broke a lot of my youthful prejudices did I finally read her work. That is when I got why that Plath-crazed young women was so insistent that I take the plunge. And it is not too late for you as well.   

    

When The Blues Was Dues- The Guitar Of Elmore James-About Who Put And When The Rock In Rock And Roll

When The Blues Was Dues- The Guitar Of Elmore James-About Who Put And When The Rock In Rock And Roll

I will get to a CD review of Elmore James’ work in a second. Now I want to tell, no retell, the tale that had me and a few of my corner boys who hung out in front of, or in if we had dough for food or more likely the jukebox, Jimmy Jack’s Diner in Carver where I came of age in the early 1960s going for a while. On one lonesome Friday night, lonesome meaning, no dough, no wheels, no girls, or any combination of the three, with time of our hands Billy Bradley, Jack Dawson and I went round and round about what song by what artist each of us thought was the decisive song that launched rock and roll. Yeah, I know, I know now, that the world then, like now, was going to hell in a hand-basket, what with the Russkies breathing hard on us in the deep freeze Cold War red scare night, with crazy wars going on for no apparent reason, and the struggle for black civil rights down in the police state South (that “police state" picked up later after I got wise to what was happening there) but what were three corner boys to do to while away the time.  

Here is the break-down though. We knew, knew without anybody telling us that while Elvis gave rock and roll a big lift in his time before he went on to silly movies that debased his talent he was not the “max daddy,” not the guy who rolled the dice. For one thing and this was Billy’s position he only covered Big Joe Turner’s classic R&B classic Shake, Rattle, and Roll and when we heard Joe’s finger-snapping version we flipped out. So Billy had his choice made, no question. Jack had heard on some late Sunday night radio station out in Chicago on his transistor radio a thing called Be-Bop Benny’s Blues Hour where he first heard this guy wailing on the piano a be-bop tune. It turned out to be Ike Turner (without Tina then) blasting Rocket 88. So Jack had his position firm, and a good choice. Me, well I caught this obscure folk music station (obscure then not a few years later though) which played not just folk but what would be later called “roots music.” And the blues is nothing but roots music in America. One night I heard Elmore James slide guitar his way through Look On Yonder Wall. That is the song I defended that night. Did any of us change each other’s mind that night. Be serious. I later, several years later, saw the wisdom of Jack’s choice and switched but old Elmore still was a close second. Enough said.       

CD REVIEW

The History of Elmore James: The Sky Is Crying, Elmore James, Rhino Records, 1993

When one thinks of the classic blues tune “Dust My Broom” one tends to think of the legendary Robert Johnson who along with his “Sweet Home, Chicago” created two of the signature blues songs of the pre-World War II period. However, my first hearing of “Dust My Broom” was on a hot LP vinyl record (the old days, right?) version covered and made his own by the artist under review, Elmore James. I have heard many cover versions since then, including from the likes of George Thoroughgood and Chris Smither, and they all reflect on the influence of Elmore’s amazing slide guitar virtuosity to provide the "heat" necessary to do the song justice. Moreover, this is only the tip of the iceberg as such blues masters and aficionados as B.B. King and The Rolling Stones have covered other parts of James’ catalog.

Perhaps because Elmore died relativity young at a time when blues were just being revived in the early 1960’s as part of the general trend toward “discovering” roots music by the likes of this reviewer he has been a less well-known member of the blues pantheon. However, for those who know the value of a good slide guitar to add sexiness and sauciness to a blues number James’ is a hero. Hell, Thoroughgood built a whole career out of Elmore covers (and also, to be sure, of the late legendary Bo Didderly). I never get tired of hearing these great songs. Moreover, it did not hurt to have the famous Broom-dusters backing him up throughout the years. As one would expect of material done in the pre-digital age the sound quality is very dependent on the quality of the studio. But that, to my mind just makes it more authentic.

Well, what did you NEED to listen to here? Obviously,” Dust My Broom". On this CD though you MUST listen to Elmore on "Standing At The Crossroads". Wow, it jumps right out at you. "Look On Yonder Wall" (a song that I used to believe was a key to early rock 'n' rock before I gravitated to Ike Turner's "Rocket 88" as my candidate for that role), "It Hurts Me Too" and the classic "The Sky is Crying" round out the minimum program here. Listen on.

Lyrics To "Dust My Broom"

I'm gonna get up in the mornin',

I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)

Girlfriend, the black man you been lovin',

girlfriend, can get my room

I'm gon' write a letter,

Telephone every town I know (2x)

If I can't find her in West Helena,

She must be in East Monroe, I know

I don't want no woman,

Wants every downtown man she meet (2x)

She's a no good doney,

They shouldn't 'low her on the street

I believe, I believe I'll go back home (2x)

You can mistreat me here, babe,

But you can't when I go home

And I'm gettin' up in the morning,

I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)

Girlfriend, the black man that you been lovin',

Girlfriend, can get my room

I'm gon' call up Chiney,

She is my good girl over there (2x)

If I can't find her on Philippine's Island,

She must be in Ethiopia somewhere

Robert Johnson

When The Blues Was Dues- The Guitar Of Elmore James-About Who Put And When The Rock In Rock And Roll

When The Blues Was Dues- The Guitar Of Elmore James-About Who Put And When The Rock In Rock And Roll

I will get to a CD review of Elmore James’ work in a second. Now I want to tell, no retell, the tale that had me and a few of my corner boys who hung out in front of, or in if we had dough for food or more likely the jukebox, Jimmy Jack’s Diner in Carver where I came of age in the early 1960s going for a while. On one lonesome Friday night, lonesome meaning, no dough, no wheels, no girls, or any combination of the three, with time of our hands Billy Bradley, Jack Dawson and I went round and round about what song by what artist each of us thought was the decisive song that launched rock and roll. Yeah, I know, I know now, that the world then, like now, was going to hell in a hand-basket, what with the Russkies breathing hard on us in the deep freeze Cold War red scare night, with crazy wars going on for no apparent reason, and the struggle for black civil rights down in the police state South (that “police state" picked up later after I got wise to what was happening there) but what were three corner boys to do to while away the time.  

Here is the break-down though. We knew, knew without anybody telling us that while Elvis gave rock and roll a big lift in his time before he went on to silly movies that debased his talent he was not the “max daddy,” not the guy who rolled the dice. For one thing and this was Billy’s position he only covered Big Joe Turner’s classic R&B classic Shake, Rattle, and Roll and when we heard Joe’s finger-snapping version we flipped out. So Billy had his choice made, no question. Jack had heard on some late Sunday night radio station out in Chicago on his transistor radio a thing called Be-Bop Benny’s Blues Hour where he first heard this guy wailing on the piano a be-bop tune. It turned out to be Ike Turner (without Tina then) blasting Rocket 88. So Jack had his position firm, and a good choice. Me, well I caught this obscure folk music station (obscure then not a few years later though) which played not just folk but what would be later called “roots music.” And the blues is nothing but roots music in America. One night I heard Elmore James slide guitar his way through Look On Yonder Wall. That is the song I defended that night. Did any of us change each other’s mind that night. Be serious. I later, several years later, saw the wisdom of Jack’s choice and switched but old Elmore still was a close second. Enough said.       

CD REVIEW

The History of Elmore James: The Sky Is Crying, Elmore James, Rhino Records, 1993

When one thinks of the classic blues tune “Dust My Broom” one tends to think of the legendary Robert Johnson who along with his “Sweet Home, Chicago” created two of the signature blues songs of the pre-World War II period. However, my first hearing of “Dust My Broom” was on a hot LP vinyl record (the old days, right?) version covered and made his own by the artist under review, Elmore James. I have heard many cover versions since then, including from the likes of George Thoroughgood and Chris Smither, and they all reflect on the influence of Elmore’s amazing slide guitar virtuosity to provide the "heat" necessary to do the song justice. Moreover, this is only the tip of the iceberg as such blues masters and aficionados as B.B. King and The Rolling Stones have covered other parts of James’ catalog.

Perhaps because Elmore died relativity young at a time when blues were just being revived in the early 1960’s as part of the general trend toward “discovering” roots music by the likes of this reviewer he has been a less well-known member of the blues pantheon. However, for those who know the value of a good slide guitar to add sexiness and sauciness to a blues number James’ is a hero. Hell, Thoroughgood built a whole career out of Elmore covers (and also, to be sure, of the late legendary Bo Didderly). I never get tired of hearing these great songs. Moreover, it did not hurt to have the famous Broom-dusters backing him up throughout the years. As one would expect of material done in the pre-digital age the sound quality is very dependent on the quality of the studio. But that, to my mind just makes it more authentic.

Well, what did you NEED to listen to here? Obviously,” Dust My Broom". On this CD though you MUST listen to Elmore on "Standing At The Crossroads". Wow, it jumps right out at you. "Look On Yonder Wall" (a song that I used to believe was a key to early rock 'n' rock before I gravitated to Ike Turner's "Rocket 88" as my candidate for that role), "It Hurts Me Too" and the classic "The Sky is Crying" round out the minimum program here. Listen on.

Lyrics To "Dust My Broom"

I'm gonna get up in the mornin',

I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)

Girlfriend, the black man you been lovin',

girlfriend, can get my room

I'm gon' write a letter,

Telephone every town I know (2x)

If I can't find her in West Helena,

She must be in East Monroe, I know

I don't want no woman,

Wants every downtown man she meet (2x)

She's a no good doney,

They shouldn't 'low her on the street

I believe, I believe I'll go back home (2x)

You can mistreat me here, babe,

But you can't when I go home

And I'm gettin' up in the morning,

I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)

Girlfriend, the black man that you been lovin',

Girlfriend, can get my room

I'm gon' call up Chiney,

She is my good girl over there (2x)

If I can't find her on Philippine's Island,

She must be in Ethiopia somewhere

Robert Johnson

When The Capitalist World Was On The Rise-The 16th and 17th Dutch And Flemish Paintings at the Museum Of Fine Arts In Boston –Art And The Revolution

When The Capitalist World Was On The Rise-The 16^th and 17^th Dutch And Flemish Paintings at the Museum Of Fine Arts In Boston –Art And The Revolution   

By William Bradley

I have not been a writer on this site for very long having just been hired by site manager Greg Green to give a younger view to the blog (and a few linked on-line publications) so I do not know unlike older writer Frank Jackman whether it is normal to response to something written by one of the other writers in this space as he did to me in recent exchange about art and the progress of early capitalism.  (I do know we are under mandate not to write about the previous site manager as I found out the hard way when I was blue-penciled for a reference to him for supporting articles about art.)

After having been given an assignment to view the Vermeer and friends exhibit down at the National Gallery in Washington since I was in that town on another matter I was looking at the archives here to find out if anybody had written about the high tide of Dutch and Flemish Art (you know the time of Rembrandt, Hals, Reubens, Van Dyck and their respective schools, workshops and progeny) and out popped an article by Frank Jackman then the senior political commentator under the old regime. Truly knowing nothing about the subject of Dutch and Flemish art other than liking some of it and being bored by the endless paintings of fruit and such perfectly detailed, I figured that I would ask Frank about his take. As it turned out I didn’t know much either about his so-called Marxist perspective combining art and the productive system in a way that seemed odd to me.

I wrote an article about the Vermeer crowd basically on the like/don’t like aspects mentioned a minute ago since it had escaped me about putting the fight by capitalism against feudalism and art together except the Dutch and Flemish painters unlike the Italians weren’t hung up on Christian piety themes and Old Testament sagas. Frank responded that I had a lot to learn about milieu and its effect on artists which he explained in another way when I mentioned in that first article that I liked abstract expressionism and he mentioned back that you could not understand that milieu without knowing about the effect of the 20^th century wars and alienation produced by late capitalism which he called imperialism on the artists.

Greg Green recently asked me since I was going to be in Boston for the holidays to visit my sister to go check out the latest Dutch and Flemish exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts which some collectors had promised to the Museum and which they were going to display. Lance Lawrence when he heard about the assignment dubbed me “Leonard De Bois” whom I did not know by name but who is a big wheel in the Dutch and Flemish academic art field. My only comment was that it seemed in my experience that these museums seem to run into common exhibitionism. Washington and now Boston (and New York I think) are on a Dutch-Flemish jag. Last year half the world seemed to be featuring various stages of Matisse’s career. Japanese art seems to be the new up and coming thing. In any case now that I am an “expert” I can rehash my stuff about Vermeer and his crowd with the stuff in Boston. An honored academic tradition:            

“Frank did a whole series of articles under the title When The Capitalist World Was Young to be found in the archives making the connection between the artistic sensibilities of the rising bourgeoisie and their clamoring for paintings which showed that they were on the rise, that they were the new sheriffs in town and could afford like the nobles and high clergy in the ancient regime to show their new-found prosperity by paying for portraits, collective and singular, and displays of their domestic prosperity. Of course Frank, an old radical from the 1960s … was coming at his view from something that he called a Marxist prospective. A prospective which not knowing much about it except it had a lot to do with the demise of the old Soviet Union now Putin’s Russia and why it had failed I asked him about since I was clueless about how that artwork had anything to do with politics. What he told me, and I don’t want to get into a big discussion about it is that Marxism, Marx saw capitalism as a progressive force against the feudal society and that would get reflected in lots of things like art and social arrangements.      

“Under that set of ideas Frank was able to give a positive spin on a lot of the art from the 16^th and 17^th century, especially Dutch and Flemish art in the days when those grouping were leading the capitalist charge via their position in the shipping, transport and the emerging banking world. In one part of that above mentioned series Frank highlighted the connection between art and economics by referring to a famous painting in the National Gallery down in Washington, D.C. where some very self-satisfied burghers and civil officials were feasting and showing off their new found emergence as trend-setters. I took his point once I saw the painting he was referring to and noted that these guys and it was all guys except the hard-pressed wait staff really were self-satisfied even though I am still not sure that you can draw that close a connection between art and economics.    

“That discussion with Frank was in the back of my mind when I was assigned by Greg Green, since I was down in Washington for another reason, to check out the Vermeer and friend retrospective at the National Gallery (that Frank referred painting of the burghers was nowhere in sight and I wound up viewing it on-line while we were discussing it). I took a different view of what I saw there since I am not very political and certainly would not draw the same line as Frank did. What struck me, and I am willing to bet many others who viewed the exhibit as well, was the extreme attention to detail in almost all the paintings observed. The sense that the artists had to whether it was portraiture, domestic scenes, or landscape, including those famous frozen lakes and canal winter activity scenes, show in extreme detail and shadowing exactly what they were observing. I admit I am more interested in let’s say abstract expressionism that this kind of  imagery but my hat is off to those who were able to do such detailed and exact work. Whether or not they were rising with the high tide of capitalist expansion.”      

  

Frank left me with a few political ideas to think about which I can apply as well to the Boston clot. He told me to look at that self-satisfied burgher business, look at the pot-bellies of the men and the rounded face of the young women which indicated how well-fed they were, look at the very neat way they arranged their domestic lives. Most importantly look at those unadorned halls and churches which a very far away from the medieval overkill of the huge centuries to build cathedrals that kept everybody tied down to looking inward. Like he said these guys were the “elect,” knew they were the elect and they could push forward come hell or high water.  

From The Guys And Gals Who Know The Face Of War-The Smedleys-Veterans For Peace

From The Guys And Gals Who Know The Face Of War-The Smedleys-Veterans For Peace    

When The Capitalist World Was On The Rise-The Dutch And Flemish Paintings at the National Gallery-A Reply

When The Capitalist World Was On The Rise-The Dutch And Flemish Paintings at the National Gallery-A Reply

By Frank Jackman

Normally I don’t have occasion to response to something written by one of the other writers in this space but young William Bradley has set the pace by referring to your humble servant in his piece about his take on Vermeer and his cohort who after Rembrandt, Hals, Reubens, and Van Dyck lit up the firmament and kept the torch burning for the rest of that impressive Dutch and Flemish-driven century when they were kings of the hill. That Bradley reference to me came after he had seen Vermeer and crew in a big retrospective down at the National Gallery in Washington which since he was down there for another reason site manager Greg Green had assigned him. Somehow young Bradley had been thoughtful enough about his assignment to check the archives here to see if anybody had written anything about this period of Dutch-Flemish ascendancy in European art (and really the last time that this section of Europe made a big splash on the art world for reasons that I could speculate on but which don’t really concern us here so I will push on).    

What William found in the archives was a short piece I did several years ago after I had been down at the National Gallery myself and was smitten by a huge mural-like painting at the 4^th Street entrance detailing in exhaustive fashion a banquet that a small cohort of self-satisfied Dutch burghers were attending and that sight sparked an idea that had been in my head for a while about the days when now wore out capitalism, worn out to do anybody but lift a few people up, was a progressive force in the world. That sense (along with that self-satisfied well-fed feeling that the world was their oyster) is what put pen to paper. Not so much for the art aspect, the painting was done by a lesser light and would if were judging on a scale was only so-so in the heady atmosphere of 17^th century Dutch painting, but for the way art intersects with economic forces. That (and I don’t know what else Bradley might have seen in the archives that would have helped him) was when he came to me to ask a few questions since his take as anybody could see from his short screed dealt with the art for art’s sake aspect of what he had seen at the Vermeer exhibit.

I had originally written that little nugget rank for the on-line edition of Progressive Nation when I was the senior political commentator here under the old regime, a time before Bradley came on boards so the art part was not fundamental to my idea.  I agree with him though that I liked to write about the proud beginnings when the rising bourgeoisie was going mano a mano (my words from the piece he saw in the archives and used in his article) against the old stagnant feudal society that depended on the static-and hard core universal church Catholic religion which promised the good life not now but in the great by and by. These guys were not worried about paying some middleman indulgence trafficker to insure their road to salvation. They were getting theirs in this world and if God approved so much the better if not well too bad.   

I did a whole series of articles under the title When The Capitalist World Was Young to be found in the archives making the connection between the artistic sensibilities of the rising bourgeoisie and their clamoring for paintings which showed that they were on the rise, that they were the new sheriffs in town and could afford like the nobles and high clergy in the ancient regime to show their new-found prosperity by paying for portraits, collective and singular, and displays of their domestic prosperity. Of course my perspective as an old radical from the 1960s was coming from something like a Marxist prospective. I had to laugh, laugh a bitter laugh that through no fault of his own Bradley was clueless about such a prospective. About not knowing much about Marxism except it had a lot to do with the demise of the old Soviet Union now Putin’s Russia so he was clueless about how that artwork had anything to do with politics. What I told him, and I don’t want to get into a big discussion about it is that Marxism, Marx saw capitalism as a progressive force against the feudal society and that would get reflected in lots of things like art and social arrangements.      

Under that set of ideas I was able to give a positive spin on a lot of the art from the 16^th and 17^th century, especially Dutch and Flemish art in the days when those grouping were leading the capitalist charge via their position in the shipping, transport and the emerging banking world. Funny young Bradley took my point once he saw the painting I was referring to and noted that these guys and it was all guys except the hard-pressed wait staff even though he was still not sure that you can draw that close a connection between art and economics.  We have a lot of make-up work to do for the lack of serious leftist perspectives the past couple of generations. 

I left William with a few political ideas to think about. Also told him to look at that self-satisfied burgher business, look at the pot-bellies of the men and the rounded face of the young women which indicated how well-fed they were, look at the very neat way they arranged their domestic lives. Most importantly look at those unadorned halls and churches which a very far away from the medieval overkill of the huge centuries to build cathedrals that kept everybody tied down to looking inward. Like I said these guys were the “elect,” knew they were the elect and they could push forward come hell or high water.  

The Jar Of Isabella X- A Journey Through The Arts-The Boston School, Ah, At The Museum Of Fine Arts-Thwarted Love With A Bizarre Twist- Alexander’s Keats’ Inspired Isabella And The Pot Of Basil

The Jar Of Isabella X- A Journey Through The Arts-The Boston School, Ah, At The Museum Of Fine Arts-Thwarted Love With A Bizarre Twist- Alexander’s Keats’ Inspired Isabella And The Pot Of Basil

By Laura Perkins    

I will get to the subject in hand, a take on the marvelous and mesmerizing Isabella, Or A Jar Of Basil seen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston a while back while on assignment for this upstart series which site manager has given to me under circumstances not of my own making. However the reaction I received to my first foray into this new review area for when in discussing John Singer Sargent’s The Portrait of Madame X has forced my hand to reply if that is the right word to all kinds charges of pandering to what is essentially soft-core pornography, or taking such a view of the painting. I might repeat for what it is worth that when I took this assignment, I told Greg Green that I would decide what I wanted to focus on in each painting, Not what the art world, the world of self-serving curators deemed the reason the damn things were in some museum other than as pace-fillers. So I will vent as is my prerogative. Laura Perkins]      

You never know what will happen in this business. This latter-day publishing business where unlike the old days you can lose stuff in an instant, lose by an injudicious hit of the delete button. That happened to me of late in something of an omen when I tried to do a second installment of what is according to site manager Greg Green an on-going series of painting which I am at liberty to choose to get us up to date in the art world, an area woefully under- represented in this publication. If I behave myself of which more below. Without overestimating the old days and their sluggish technologies there was something to be said for hand-written yellow pads and carbon copy smudge typewritten materials even without all the comforts of what the new technology has brought us. In any case I am starting to get the hang of it, the last barrier of cyberspace, getting used to the idea that not every utterance, every word needs to be etched eternally in the ether. Strangely I did believe that proposition in yellow pad (some of which I still have from my 1970s days as a free-lancer) and typewriter times (some also when I was weaned off of the yellow pad which was both too cumbersome and too slow when I had to make a day to day living out of my words). That typewriter in turn gave way to word processor and such when that too proved too cumbersome and too slow to make a day to day living out of my words. I would also add as will become clear below that I miss the old days when a reader had something bilious to say, some vitriolic smattering of words she or he had to not only write the spiel out but put stamp to envelope and actually go mail the damn thing. Which meant that they had to put some effort into the task unlike today they can fire off some silly salvo and move on to the next target of their villainy.    

But enough of personal recollections in the dark ages of this “publish or perish” business. As one and all should know by my first foray into the subject, at least first foray since I was named “unofficial” art critic I am taking quirky looks at some of the great paintings that intertest me. And not for art curator purposes either. I became an Art critic by default when Sam Lowell, my longtime companion who balked at doing this assignment. Sam, for better or worse, balked since he is in hot pursuit of why famed California private detective Lew Archer, yes that Lew Archer, who if you are old enough to remember solved the Galton kidnapping case, the Carlton murders and the infamous wife-done Hallman serial killings all under the noises of the public coppers, never made the vaunted P.I. Hall of Fame after such a glorious start. Sam has a “theory” which he can tell the reader if interested all I know is that site manager Greg Green let him off the hook to pursue his leads. Let Sam off the hook and put me on the hook once he knew from Leslie Dumont I had taken some art classes and at least had gone to an art museum unlike his other potential candidates.

By the way Sam’s credentials are far greater than mind could ever be since I only took art appreciation classes in high school and college and since then have limited my experiences in the field to an infinite number of doodling sessions when some windbag is fouling up the air at one conference or another. Sam actually could have gone to art school, his high school art teacher encouraged him endlessly and would have paved the way for him. Actually, now that I think about it did pave the way for him at his alma mater the highly regarded Massachusetts School of Art. Sam, from the desperately poor Acre section of North Adamsville where he grew up got a serious chill, a serious no when his mother found out he had applied and been accepted. She painted, nice word although not literally true, a horrendous picture of him in some flea-bitten, rat-infested and crime-ridden cold-water flat garret with him barely able to hold his frozen hand brush to canvas for the rest of his life. Her idea, a not uncommon one in the Acre from what some of the other guys who grew up there have told me, was for him to be the first in the family to have a nice steady white-collar civil service job which would bring the family fortunes up a notch. He didn’t do that but neither did he to his sometimes-later regret pursue that art dream, cold water flat and frozen fingers or not. I got the job even though I made it clear to Greg that I would not pose as an art critic and would take my shots where they would lead me without any regard for what they meant for the greater art world.  

My first foray not so strangely was John Singer Sargent’s Portrait Of Madame X which now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. How it got there is a long story as is the story behind many art acquisitions but will not detain us because I have bigger fish to fry today. My main axis on that first assignment was to deal with the obvious sexual allure (circa the 1880s which was demurer than now) of the painting and of Madame’s scandalous sex life considering she was married to some French pillar of society, a well-heeled and connected banker. You can read my take in the archives (see January 8, 2019) but mostly what I have found out was that Madame Guiteau, no need to be coy about that “Madame X” business she foisted on a less than candid world was that she was so intend on being a social climber, of working her way up French high society that she slept with any guy who could get her moving up what Seth Garth calls “the food chain.”

Fair enough then if today not fair enough in a post-#MeToo world since beautiful women, perceived beautiful women were known to, for good or evil, use their “profession” beauty to get ahead in this wicked old world. I said some other stuff, but this is what has brought me a ton of blow-back, blow-back which Sam, dear Sam in this instance, warned me would happen when I laid out my argument. He always said reviewing was a tough cutthroat racket and now I have had my baptism of fire. The gist of the responses has dealt with exactly how John Singer Sargent (hereafter Singer Sargent we don’t have to go on endlessly with the robber baron era habit of three name monikers among the elite to show pedigree or prove legitimacy in or more democratic age) got the Madame to pose so provocatively in the first place.

Even Sam was surprised though at the apparent source of the criticism not of me, although that may be in question the evangelicals. People not known to frequent this publication but who saw an opening to see who was, or was not, doing Satan’s work, who was damned and why. Here is where we get into what Sam and others call the “trolls” and their “alternate facts,” actually alternate universe outlook. A major rash of e-mails pointed out that Singer Sargent had obviously picked his model up out of the gutter and gave her a few sous, francs, some French money to pose for him, that he got some kind of sexual pleasure out of what he was doing as well as painting a great if toilsome masterpiece. Those skimpy straps ready to tell all, something like that. Certainly the gown and her provocative pose spoke of eternal damnation to these mob. The other big “school of thought” was that the model, nobody wanted to tie Madame Guiteau, a well-oiled member of high society looking to move upward with the age old art of using her professional beauty to work her way up that chain, had been tossed out of a high-end bordello in New York City after she had “stolen” some dough from one of the customers. Jay Gould, yes, the robber baron Jay Gould, and had to flee to avoid his wrath and her imprisonment.        

            

Under either theory what these ding-dongs have in common is the erroneous idea that Singer Sargent was getting sexual pleasure out of the provocative poses of the model, especially that very suggestive slipping of one of the straps of her evil thought jet black evening gown. What they could not factor in was the idea that Singer Sargent, as was well know, had a number of “assistants,” male and female, who found his bed. Which ones, which sex is problematic but most people with an opinion have mentioned that the females acted as cover. I have uncovered some useful information in that regard. The great English poet and self-acknowledged gay man when that was not cool to say in polite society, when it was the love  “that dare not speak its name,”    W.H. Auden had always claimed Singer Sargent for the “Homintern,” a name which he or one of his crowd, one of his gay friends maybe Christopher Isherwood or Stephen Spender, coined as a spin-off from the Comintern which both had at one time supported to mean that the guy was a member of the fraternity, was gay in the cloaked terminology of the times. Yes, the evangelicals will have a field day with this one if they can figure it out. What I don’t get is people who are ready to absolve every sexual predator alive if he or she repents has no mercy for somebody who used their sex, as with Madame X, to get ahead whether we agree or not.      

Most of the other comments descended downward from that Madame is a whore trope and are not worthy of comment. What is worthy is one that attempted to take the high road, attempted to in the end try to whitewash the whole sordid affair. One Arthur Gilmore Doyle, here we go with the “three name” Brahmin (although not all the “three name” crowd were Brahmins, Boston variety since Singer Sargent would trace his lineage from the Philadelphia Main Line crowd but they are all of a piece), who argued, if that is the right word, that Singer Sargent would not stoop to having some “fallen woman,” his term, pose for him under any circumstances. So here we have the class line drawn in lieu of the sex line. Or maybe both lines since he seemed very fussy about the whole matter.

Doyle further mentioned that Madame X if she posed for Singer Sargent was a pure as the driven snow. Worse disputed the evidence presented by the famous Parisian paint-maker Bleu who provided Singer Sargent (and others) with his paints in his memoir that when Madame was in her plebian wants mood he was her lover. Going up the back stairway to her boudoir, sometimes when her husband was down in his study figuring out ways to make money to keep his growing number of creditors at bay. Disputed as well, the testimony of Madame’s personal maid that she let him in and further, under orders from Madame, had cut that provocative gown strap with her own scissors. You see according to Doyle one   could never believe the hired help, not even somebody who had to change the sweaty sheets after each exhortation. Yes, the class line indeed.

We have already dealt with the predilections of Singer Sargent for his male “assistants” which may not freak out Brother Doyle as much as it was the gay-bashing evangelicals since it was an open secret that half the bluebloods were same-sex inclined. And everybody knew and accepted it unlike in poor Oscar Wilde’s irate father of Lord Alfred Douglas who was crazy with hate about the whole matter. Where the heck do you think they got the term “Boston marriage” when two unmarried women lived together lesbian splendor.

What has amazed me about this first volley into the art world, or the social aspect of it is that nobody thus far has mentioned word one about why Madame had not allowed herself to be posed in a frontal position by Sargent (and upon further investigation by any other artist with one possible later exception to be mentioned below). That is she did not want her beak-like nose to be fully exposed to the light of day. Apparently Madame was so vain to have that horrendous little pointed nose shown too prominently would have detracted from his sullen suggestive pose. Remember she was using her professional beauty to advance in the world, a hard task for an “ice queen” and so that was her order. Upon further investigation there is some evidence that later in life, in 1907 she did pose in a frontal position but by that time the wear and tear of using her beauty for social advantage, the dissipation showed through. And the nose was even more hideous that I expected. So Madame did make a smart move, very smart. Still I don’t know why nobody in the flutter of responses picked up on that beak even to defend her against my charges that maybe men liked that kind of nose then. Fashion and beauty tend to change with the ages, with time.   

But let’s move on. Finally I can get to the subject matter for today’s piece, John White Alexander’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil which is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (here we go again with the three name moniker business that drives me crazy so let’s call him Alexander and be done with it). Alexander was linked to the Boston School who were for the most part interested in realistic portrayal of whatever subject matter they were painting. When you first go into the room where the painting is located you are immediately drawn to this high Victorian beauty in a great gauzey with sharply drawn flowing lines dressing gown strangely caressing a jar, a big jar with