This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
When Eve Spanned-Katharine Hepburn And Spencer Tracy’s “Adam’s Rib” (1949)- A Film Review
DVD Review
By Associate Editor Alden Riley
Adam’s Rib, starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, directed by George Cukor, 1949
Recently the film editor of this blog (and of the on-line American Film Gazette) Sandy Salmon mentioned to me after I had reviewed the current version of the film Wonder Woman that strong women’s roles currently seem to bend over backward to prove that the women are not man-eaters (he used another phrase but since this is a user-friendly site I will refrain from using the expression but you can get the drift). He noted that I had also made that point in my review and then suggested that I go back to the 1930s and 1940s for my next review and check out how strong, independent women’s roles were handled by prominent female actors then. Since I was not all that familiar with older films not having grown up in the 1950s like he and former film editor Sam Lowell had when such films would form the core of Saturday afternoon retrospective matinees at the independent theaters they attended where the owners wanted to cut costs by showing such fare rather than the current expensive to show productions Sandy mentioned some female lead names to get me going. Among others like Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell and Bette Davis he mentioned the lead female role the film under review, Adam’s Rib, one Katharine Hepburn. After viewing a few examples I decided on this film since the storyline kind of fit in with the idea Sandy was trying to draw me to-these very independent women could strut their stuff without the appearance of threatening men but also without kowtowing either. And with a nice sense of style and grace too.
The story line here is admittedly a little goofy as a plot to display womanly independence but we will ignore than since the role played by Hepburn, Amanda, overrides that weakness. An overwrought can’t shoot straight New York housewife decided that she had had enough with her philandering husband and decided to put the fear of God in him by following him to his little love nest uptown. There she goes rooty-toot-toot on said husband and his paramour wounding the husband. The ensuing story made the headlines in all the Gotham newspapers and caught the eye of solo private attorney Amanda Bonner, the “Eve” of the rib. She decided that the duel standard about men getting away with straying from home and hearth scot free while women are branded with the scarlet letter needed a good airing out in court where the action will play out. She volunteered her services to the distract housewife. Problem: Adam Bonner, yes, the Adam of the rib, Amanda’s husband, played by Spencer Tracy, is a fellow lawyer working as an Assistant District Attorney. Guess who got assigned the case? Yes the battle of the sexes is on.
Needless to say the battle between the sexes over the case leads to a split, a temporary split, between the pair once Amanda makes Darwin’s monkey out of Adam in court by pointing out the duel standard but also pointing out some very relevant points about woman’s equality before the law-and before society. A worthy champion despite the tensions between her and Adam.
Amanda carried her case with grace and style, enough so that she was able to win an acquittal for the distraught housewife. Well done. Maybe not so well done was that lingering even at that time need to dress up the plot with some romantic added scenes between the pair with Amanda distressed over Adam’s coolness toward her which were a bow to the times when such conventions were necessary in romantic comedies. Still I see what Sandy (and before him Sam) meant when they say strong woman like Ms. Hepburn could carry the day without being man-eaters-and without pulling punches.
Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s
Song Of The Same Name In Mind
By Fritz Taylor
[Sam Lowell and I have known each other for a long time, since
a time back in the 1970s when our paths met at an anti-war veterans’ conference
in New York (a conference which would wind up setting up a Vietnam Veterans
Against the War [VVAW] chapter in his hometown area in Boston and mine in my
hometown Atlanta, Georgia area. We would see each in places we were protesting
one or another egregious acts of the American government, the American military
against some poor benighted country that got caught in the cross-hairs of some
fool president. Later, after the ebb tide of the anti-war, the Vietnam anti-war
had happened we connected in other ways via our veteran connection and I would,
at his request, write something veteran-related that he could not put a handle
on. Something that Allan Jackson, who was the editor then when this publication
was in hard-copy form, would accept and for when I needed some ready cash.
The subject matter of this piece, Sam’s not being at peace
with himself is done with his permission since it is such a personal and
emotional matter. None of us men from the Vietnam era, soldier or civilian, political
activist or not, have been as forthcoming as the younger men who have come
after us, our children and now grandchildren (I dare not say
great-grandchildren but I know some of us ae in that category). We were all
about change and seeking a newer world as a guy named Markin, also a vet, who
didn’t make it through used to say but we were more like our World War II
fathers when it came to speaking of personal matters. A shame. This piece while
not a breakthrough since we have been mulling things over the past few years,
is a big step for Sam and me, Sam to narrate and me to write about such
matters.
The conversations we had around putting this piece together
actually happened a couple of years ago just after, as will be noted below, his
long-time companion, Laura Perkins, not wife, for he had had three of those and
they both agreed they were better off just living together since she had been
married twice had left their house (Sam had made us laugh one time when he
mentioned that it was cheaper too between alimony and child support). This
piece was, is something of a therapy session for Sam’s angst at Laura’s leaving
and his inability to put out the fire in his head. We decided to put it aside
for a while until it made sense to publish the results of those conversations.
Better Sam and Laura have been talking again since both recognized that the
bonds between them were very strong and they both, frankly, my frankly, missed
each other’s company. Sam is really sending Laura a bouquet on this one.And I am glad to play the florist. Fritz
Taylor]
************
Sam Lowell was, is a queer duck, an odd-ball kind of guy who
couldn’t stop keeping his head from exploding with about seventeen ideas at
once and the determination to do all seventeen come hell or high water. And not
seventeen things like mowing the lawn or taking out the rubbish but what he
called “projects” which in Sam’s case meant political projects and writings and
other things along that line. Yeah, couldn’t put out “the fire in his head” the
way he told it to his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, one night at supper
after she had confronted him with her observation, and not for the first time,
that he was getting more irritable, was more often short with her of late, had
seemed distant, had seemed to be drifting into some bad place, a place where he
was not at peace with himself. That not “at peace” with himself an expression
that Laura had coined that night to express the way that she saw his current
demeanor. That would be the expression he would use in his group therapy group
to describe his condition when they met later that week. Would almost shout out
the words in despair when the moderator-psychologist asked him pointedly
whether he felt at peace with himself at that moment and he pointed responded
immediately that he was not. Maybe it was at that point, more probably though
that night when Laura confronted him with his own mirror-self that told Sam his
was one troubled man.
Yea, it was that seventeen things in order and full steam
ahead that got him in trouble on more than on occasion. The need to do so the
real villain of the piece. See Sam had just turned seventy and so he should
have been trying to slow down, slow down enough to not try to keep doing those
seventeen things like he had when he was twenty or thirty but no he was not
organically capable of doing so, at least until the other shoe dropped. Dropped
hard.
It was that “other shoe” dropping that made him take stock
of his situation, although it had been too little too late. One afternoon a few
days after that stormy group therapy session he laid down on his bed to just
think through what was driving him to distraction, driving that fury inside him
that would not let him be, as he tried to put on the fire in his head. That
laying down itself might have been its own breakthrough since he had expected,
had fiercely desired to finish up an article that he was writing on behalf a
peace walk that was to take place shortly up in Maine, a walk that was
dedicated to stopping the wars, mostly of the military-type but also of
environmental degradation against Mother Nature.
Sam, not normally introspective about his past, about the
events growing up that had formed him, events that had as he had told Laura on
more than one occasion almost destroyed him. So that was where he started,
started to try to find out why he could not relax, had to be “doing and making”
as Laura called it under happier circumstances, had to be fueling that fire in
his head. Realized that afternoon that as kid in order to survive he had
learned at a very young age that in order to placate (and avoid) his
overweening mother he had to keep his own counsel, had to go deep inside his
head to find solace from the storms around his house. For years he had thought
the driving force was because he was a middle child and thus had to fend for
himself while his parents (and grandparents) doted on respectively his younger
and older brothers. But no it had been deeper than that, had been driven by
feelings of inadequacy before his mother’s onslaught against his fragile
head.
As Sam traced how at three score and ten he could point to
various incidents that had driven him on, had almost made him organically
incapable of not ever having an active brain, of going off to some dark places
where the devils would not let him relax, that kept him going around and around
he realized that he was not able to relax on his own, would need something
greater than himself if he was to unwind. Laura had emphatically told him that
he would have to take that journey on his own, would have to settle himself
down if he was to gain any peace in his whole damn world. Sam suddenly noticed
after Laura had expressed her opinion that she had always been the picture of
calm, had been his rock when he was in his furies. Funny he had always
underestimated, always undervalued that calmness, that solid rock. He, in
frustration, at his own situation asked Laura how she had maintained the calm
that seemed to follow her around her world.
Laura, after stating that she too had her inner demons, had
to struggle with the same kind of demons that Sam had faced as a child and that
she still had difficulties maintaining an inner calm, told Sam that her daily
Buddha-like meditations had carried her to a better place. Sam was shocked at
her answer. He had always known that Laura was drawn to the spiritual trends
around their milieu, the “New Age stuff” he called her interest since it seemed
that she had taken tidbits from every new way to salvation outside of formal
religion (although she had had bouts with that as well discarding her Methodist
high heavens Jehovah you are on your own in this wicked old world upbringing
for the communal comfort of the Universalist-Unitarian brethren). He had
respected her various attempts to survive in the world the best way she could
but those roads were not for him, smacked too much of some new religion, some
new road that he could not travel on. But he was also desperate to be at peace,
a mantra that he was increasing using to describe his plight.
Then Laura suggested that they attend a de-stress program
that was being held at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as part of what
was billed as HUB-week, a week of medical, therapeutic, technological and
social events and programs started by a number of well-known institutions in
the Boston area like MGH, Harvard, MIT and others. Sam admitted to being
clueless about what a de-stress program would be about and had never heard of a
Doctor Benson who a million years before had written a best-selling book about
the knot the West had put itself in trying to get ahead and offered mediation
as a way out of the impasse. Sam was skeptical but agreed to go.
At the event which lasted about two hours various forms of
meditative practice were offered including music and laughter yoga. Sam in his skeptical
mind passed on those efforts. The one segment that drew his attention, the
first segment headed by this Doctor Benson had been centered on a simple
technique to reduce stress, to relax in fact was called the relax response.
Best of all the Doctor had invited each member of the audience to sample his
wares. Pick a word or short phrase to focus on, close your eyes, put your hands
on your lap and consecrate, really try to concentrate, on that picked term for
five minutes (the optimum is closer to ten plus minutes in an actual
situation).
Sam admitted candidly to Laura that while attempting
fitfully focusing on one thing, in his case the phrase “at peace,” he had
suffered many distractions but that he was very interested in pursuing the
practice since he had actually felt that he was getting somewhere before time
was called. Laura laughed at Sam’s response, so Sam-like expecting to master in
five minutes a technique that she had spent years trying to pursue and had not
been anywhere near totally focused yet. He asked her to help him to get started
and they did until Sam felt he could do the procedure on his own.
We now have to get back to that “other shoe” dropping though.
Although Sam had expressed his good intentions, had felt better after a while
Laura had felt that he needed to go on his journey without her. She too now
felt that she had to seek what she was looking for alone in this wicked world
despite how long they had been together. So Laura called it quits, moved out of
the house that she and Sam had lived in for years. Sam is alone on his journey
now, committed to trying to find some peace inside despite his heartbreak over
the loss of Laura. Every once in a while though in a non-meditative moment he
curses that fire in his head. Yeah, he wished he could have put out that fire
in his head long ago.
The Magnificent Seven- Potshot-A
Spenser Crime Novel by Robert B. Parker-A Review
Book Review
By Sam Lowell
Potshot, Robert B. Parker, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York,
2001
Of late I have been on something of a Spenser crime
detection novel run, you know those sagas of the Boston-based P.I. with the big
burlyphysique and the no nonsense grit
and determination to see a case through to the end, the bitter end if
necessary, written by the late Robert B. Parker. I started out several reviews
of those books by explaining that most of the year when I review books I review
high-toned literary masterpieces or squirrelly little historical books fit for
the academy. I also said that come summer time you never know will turn up on
your summer reading list and why. So blame this run on the summer heat if you
must.I confessed that like any other
heated, roasted urban dweller I was looking for a little light reading to while
away the summer doldrums. Then I went into genesis about how I wound up running
the rack, or part of the rack, after all there were some forty Spenser books in
the series before Parker passed away in 2010.I will get to the review of his 2001 effort Potshot in a minute after I explain how I came to read yet another
Parker crime novel for crying out loud.
See, as I have mentioned elsewhere of late in reviewing some
of the other Parker-etched books every year when the doldrums come I
automatically reach for a little classic crime detection from the max daddy
masters of the genre Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett from my library to
see the real deal, to see how the masters worked their magic, in order to
spruce up (and parse, if possible) my own writing. This summer when I did so I
noticed a book Poodle Spring by
Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker. This final Philip Marlowe series book
was never finished by Chandler before he died in 1959. Parker finished it up in
1989.
Robert B. Parker, of course, had been a name known to me as
the crime novel writer of the Spenser series of which I had read several of the
earlier ones before moving on to others interests. That loss of interest
centered on the increasingly formulistic way Parker packaged the Spenser
character with his chalk board scratching to my mind repetition of his eating
habits, his culinary likes and dislikes, his off-hand racial solidarity banter
with his black compadre Hawk, his continually touting Spenser’s physical and
mental “street cred” toughness and his so-called monogamous and almost
teenage-like love affair with Susan. They collectively did not grow as
characters but became stick figures serving increasingly less interesting
plots.
Checking up on what Parker had subsequently written in the
series to see if I had been rash in my judgment I noticed and grabbed another
Chandler-Parker collaboration or sorts reviewed in this space previouslyPerchance
To Dream: Robert B. Parker’s Sequel To Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Since
I was on a roll, was being guided by the ghost of Raymond Chandler maybe, I
decided to check out Spenser again. And because we still have several weeks
left of summer and crime novels have the virtue of not only being easy on the
brain in the summer heat but quick reads I figured to play out my hand a little
and read a few other Parker works. Now we are all caught up on genesis.
The Foibles Of The Mayfair Swells -The Film Adaptation Of Edith Warton’s The Age Of Innocence” (1934)-A Review
DVD Review
By Film Critic Sandy Salmon
The Age of Innocence, starring Irene Dunne, John Boles, based on Edith Wharton’s novel of the same name, 1934
A couple of points before I dig into a short review of the film under review, the cinematic adaptation of Edith Wharton’s classic Mayfair swells novel The Age Of Innocence (or maybe New York Knickerbocker society is better as a way to designate the high society in Manhattan around the turn of the 20th century). Edith Wharton like expatriate Henry James certainly knew the ins and outs, the mores, morals, and custom of New York high society and could write reams about it. Also I thought that only we Irish neighborhood bred denizens (brought up by grandparents Dan and Anna Riley in my case) were not the only ones who had a taboo against “airing dirty linen in public” if a view of the film is any true indication of what was going on in those inner city mansions and brownstones.
That said this story line done in a flashback form in a conversation between a grandfather and his errant grandson centers on the potentially illicit romance between a married woman, the Countess, played by Irene Dunne and a love struck high society lawyer, Newland Archer, played by John Boles who nevertheless is engaged to a proper young high society prospect which will unite two families like glue upon consummation. The drama, or maybe better put, melodrama, is the built up to the final decision by the Countess, a woman who has left her husband and was in the throes of seeking a divorce, very taboo in gentile society, hell, maybe all society then once she warms up to Newland. The tensions among the engaged and then newly-wedded couple, Newland’s infatuation with the Countess and the high society matrons attempts to put a lid on the affair drive the film. In the end Newland stays with his wife and spent the rest of his life longing for the Countess.
An Encore Presentation-“Searching
For The American Songbook” With New Introductions By Allan Jackson-Smokestack Lightning,
Indeed-
With Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf In Mind
Allan Jackson Introduction
I have been around the publishing,
editing, writing business a long time so I know when the dime drops it can drop
for thee. Know first-hand having been the subject of a vote of no confidence by
the younger writers at this publication aided and abetted by my long-time
hometown high school friend Sam Lowell who cast the deciding vote for my ouster
based on his notion that “the torch had to be passed.”Naturally I was pissed off although maybe in
the end Sam was half-right to do what he did. In any case that is politics in
this cutthroat business and it comes with the territory. After the purge and my
exile Sam sent out an olive branch to me in what he too called my “exile” and
got me back here to do a plum job doing the Encore
Introductions to the very successful and sweated out The Roots Are the Toots rock and roll series which I fathered and which
I claim was the best job of editing, cajoling, whipping, nagging, etc. I ever
did in my long career.
That assignment though whetted my
appetite to do more encore introductions (although definitely not looking to
get back the site manager’s job which fell to Greg Green whom I actually
brought in to do the day to day operation which I was heartily sick of and who
wound up with the whole ball of wax) and I was fortunate enough to get Sam, now
head of the Editorial Board put in place after my exile to ensure that there
would not be a return to “one man” rule, to get me an assignment doing the
encore intros for the Sam and Ralph
Stories about the improbable life-long friendship and political activism of
two very different working-class guys who met on the “battlefields” of the
struggle against the Vietnam War.
Then,
apparently, I pressed my luck when I asked to do the encore presentations for
the Film Noir series which really was my baby despite the fact that Sam Lowell
did all the heavy lifting and Zack James most of the best of the writings. I
tussled with both Sam and Greg over this to no avail. Sam for obvious reasons
wanted to do what he considered his baby and Greg because I don’t think he
though it was a good idea for me to be continuing to work here even as a
contributing editor. I proved to be wrong and I should have slapped my hand to
my head when I thought about it in this damn cutthroat business. Sam pulled
rank, pulled his chair of the Ed Board card and Greg fell down and payed homage
to his request. As the next best thing in the universe today I got this highly
regarded assignment which Si Lannon was supposed to do but begged off of having
been ill for a while and passed off to me.
Of course Searching for the American Songbook, the idea behind it anyway was,
is very far from the devotion that we of the Generation of ’68, those who came
of age in the mid-1950s paid to rock and roll, now called the classic age of
rock and roll, the age begat by Elvis. Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee
Lewis and a ton of other talent that got us on our dancing feet. Frankly, as
Sam mentioned in one of his introductions, we were rebelling, naturally
rebelling looking back on the times, against our parents’ slogging through the
Great Depression and World War II music from the likes of Frank Sinatra and the
Andrews Sisters heard wafting (Sam’s forever-etched in the brain word) through
the early 1950s house on the family radio). Having now gone through a couple of
generations of changes in musical taste, guess what, those latter generations
have up and rebelled against our “old fogie” music. What age and experience has
taught though is that the mystical mythical American Songbook is a very big
tent, has plenty for everyone. Even that music from our parents’ generation
that sounded so “square” has made a big “comeback” even if the emotional
roller-coaster for a lot of us who used that musical uprising as a big step
toward our own understandings of the world have never quite calmed down, the
battle of the generations never quite settled at anything but an “armed truce.”
(Truth to tell the passing on of that parental generation has left many of us
with things that now can never be resolved.)
Which brings us to the idea behind the
idea. This series for the most part was Bart Webber’s “baby” since he was the
first guy to “break-out” of the classic rock and roll music we lived and died
for in the 1970s. No, that is not true, not true as many things are not true in
dealing with events and personalities of guys from the old neighborhood, the
old Acre section of North Adamsville. The driving force toward the big tent
look at the American Songbook was done by one Peter Paul Markin, forever known
as the Scribe, who was the first guy out of the blocks to make the connection
between ancient blues and the roots of rock and roll. Was the first guy who
caught the whiff of that “folk minute” from the early 1960s and dragged some of
us in his wake. All Bart did was expand of those understandings to visit jazz,
Cajun music, Zydeco, be-bop, and a host of other musical genre including those
World War II pop hits that used to drive us crazy. Two things you need to know
going forward-the sketches will be very eclectic as the big tent idea implies and
the reason that Bart Webber was tagged with this assignment originally was the
still bitter fact that the Scribe had given up the ghost long ago murdered
through his own hubris and delusions down in Mexico on a busted drug deal in
the mid-1970s. A big fall from grace, a very big fall which we still mourn
today.
**********
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Sometimes a picture really can be worth
a thousand words, a thousand words and more as in the case Howlin’ Wolf doing
his Midnight Creep (the capitals no accident since we always reverently used
that term once we had heard in one of his songs) in the photograph above taken
from an album of his work but nowadays with the advances in computer technology
and someone’s desire to share also to be seen on sites such as YouTube where
you can get a real flavor of what that mad man was about when he got his blues
wanting habits on. In fact I am a little hesitate to use a bunch of words
describing Howlin’ Wolf in high gear since maybe I would leave out that drop of
perspiration dripping from his overworked forehead and that salted drop might
be the very thing that drove him that night or describing his oneness with his
harmonica because that might cause some karmic funk.
So, no, I am not really going to go on
and on about his midnight creep but when the big man got into high gear, when
he went to a place where he sweated (not perspired) profusely, a little ragged
in voice and eyes all shot to hell he roared for his version of the high white
note. Funny, a lot of people, myself for a while included, used to think that
the high white note business was strictly a jazz thing, maybe somebody like the
“Prez” Lester Young or Duke’s Johnny Hodges after hours, after the paying
customers had had their fill, or what they thought was all those men had in
them, shutting the doors tight, putting up the tables leaving the chairs for
whoever came by around dawn, grabbing a few guys from around the town as they
finished their gigs and make the search, make a serious bid to blow the world
to kingdom come. Some nights they were on fire and blew that big note out in to
some heavy air and who knows where it landed, most nights though it was just
“nice try.” One night I was out in Frisco when “Saps” McCoy blew a big sexy sax
right out the door of Chez Benny’s over in North Beach when North Beach was
just turning away from be-bop “beat” and that high white note, I swear, blew
out to the bay and who knows maybe all the way to the Japan seas. But see if I
had, or anybody had, thought about it for a minute jazz and the blues are
cousins, cousins no question so of course Howlin’ Wolf blew out that high white
note more than once, plenty including a couple of shows I caught him at when he
was not in his prime.
The photograph (and now video) that I
was thinking of is one where he is practically eating the harmonica as he
performs How Many More Years (and now like I say thanks to some
thoughtful archivist you can go on to YouTube and see him doing his devouring
act in real time and in motion, wow, and also berating the father we never knew
Son House for showing up drunk). Yes, the Wolf could blast out the blues and on
this one you get a real appreciation for how serious he was as a performer and
as blues representative of the highest order.
Howlin’ Wolf like his near contemporary
and rival Muddy Waters, like a whole generation of black bluesmen who learned
their trade at the feet of old-time country blues masters like Charley Patton,
the aforementioned Son House who had his own personal fight with the devil,
Robert Johnson who allegedly sold his soul to the devil out on Highway 61 so he
could get his own version of that high white note, and the like down in
Mississippi or other southern places in the first half of the twentieth
century. They as part and parcel of that great black migration (even as
exceptional musicians they would do stints in the sweated Northern factories
before hitting Maxwell Street) took the road north, or rather the river north,
an amazing number from the Delta and an even more amazing number from around
Clarksville in Mississippi right by that Robert Johnson-spooked Highway 61 and
headed first maybe to Memphis and then on to sweet home Chicago.
They went where the jobs were, went
where the ugliness of Mister James Crow telling them sit here not there, walk
here but not there, drink the water here not there, don’t look at our women
under any conditions and on and on did not haunt their every move (although
they would find not racial Garden of Eden in the North, last hired, first
fired, squeezed in cold water flats too many to a room, harassed, but they at
least has some breathing space, some room to create a little something they
could call their own and not Mister’s), went where the big black migration was
heading after World War I. Went also to explore a new way of presenting the
blues to an urban audience in need of a faster beat, in need of getting away
from the Saturday juke joint acoustic country sound with some old timey guys
ripping up three chord ditties to go with that jug of Jack Flash’s homemade
whiskey (or so he called it).
So they, guys like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy
Waters, Magic Slim, Johnny Shines, and James Cotton prospered by doing what
Elvis did for rock and rock and Bob Dylan did for folk and pulled the hammer
down on the old electric guitar and made big, big sounds that reached all the
way back of the room to the Red Hat and Tip Top clubs and made the max daddies
and max mamas jump, make some moves. And here is where all kinds of thing got
intersected, as part of all the trends in post-World War II music up to the
1960s anyway from R&B, rock and roll, electric blues and folk the edges of
the music hit all the way to then small white audiences too and they howled for
the blues, which spoke to some sense of their own alienation. Hell, the Beatles
and more particularly lived to hear Muddy and the Wolf. The Stones even went to
Mecca, to Chess Records to be at one with Muddy. And they also took lessons
from Howlin’ Wolf himself on the right way to play Little Red Rooster
which they had covered and made famous in the early 1960s (or infamous
depending on your point of view since many radio stations including some Boston
stations had banned it from the air originally).
Yes, Howlin’ Wolf and that big bad
harmonica and that big bad voice that howled in the night did that for a new
generation, pretty good right.