Down And Out In Love Town-With David Bromberg’s Try
Me One More Time In Mind
From The Pen
Of Sam Lowell:
Several
years ago, maybe about eight years now that I think about it, I did a series of
sketches on guys, folk-singers, folk-rockers, rock-folkers or whatever you want
to call those who weened us away from the stale pablum rock in the early 1960s (Bobby
Vee, Rydell, Darin, et al, Sandra Dee, Brenda Lee, et al) after the gold rush
dried up in what is now called the classic age of rock and roll in the mid to
late 1950s when Elvis, Jerry Lee, Buddy, Chuck, Bo and their kindred made us
jump. (There were gals too like Wanda Jackson but mainly it was guys in those
days.) I am referring of course to the savior folk minute of the early 1960
when a lot of guys with acoustic guitars, some self-made lyrics, or stuff from
old Harry Smith Anthology times gave us a reprieve. The series titled Not
Bob Dylan centered on why those budding folkies like Tom Rush, Tom Paxton, Phil
Ochs, Jesse Winchester and the man under review David Bromberg to name a few
did not make the leap to be the “king of folk” that had been ceded by the media
to Bob Dylan and whatever happened to them once the folk minute went south
after the combined assault of the British invasion and the rise of acid rock
put folk in the shade. (I also did a series on Not Joan Baez, the “queen
of the folk minute” asking that same question on the female side but here
dealing with one David Bromberg the male side of the question is what is of
interest).
I did a
couple of sketches on David Bromberg back then, one reviewing an early album of his and the
other a sketch based on his version of the classic blues number, Try Me One
More Time. The latter sketch is what interests me here. See David Bromberg
after the flame flickered (and after a long stint as outlaw cowboy country
singer Jerry Jeff Walker’s side and vocals man) packed it in, said he had no
more spirit or some such and gave up the road, the music and the struggle to
made that music, as least professionally. As it turned out though he then,
along with a number of other performers from that period, took a long time,
many years off and pursued other things, mostly not involving the life blood
music. Then he, they had an epiphany or something, got the juices flowing again
and came back on the road. That fact is
to the good for old time folk aficionados like me.
What that
fact of returning to the road also means is that my friend and I, (okay, okay
my sweetie who prefers that I call her my soulmate but that is just between us
so friend) now have many opportunities to see acts like Bromberg’s to see if we
think they still “have it” (along with acts like Dylan’s who apparently is on an
endless tour whether we want him to do so or not). That idea got started about
a decade ago when we saw another come-back kid, Geoff Muldaur of the Jim
Kweskin Jug Band, solo. He had it. So we started looking for acts to check out that
question- with the proviso before they die (unfortunately the actuarial tables
took their tool before we could see some of them like Dave Von Ronk).
That brings
us to David Bromberg’s return. We had actually seen him back in 2002 when he
replaced the recently departed Von Ronk on the bill at Rosalie Sorrels’ Last
Go-Round Concert at Harvard’s Saunders Theater. He was pretty good there but he
was part of an ensemble as such tribute performances wind up being and so we
didn’t get a chance to see him for a full program (or with a back-up band).
Recently we did get a chance to see him in a cabaret setting at the Wilbur
Theater in Boston with a big five piece back-up band. Yeah Brother Bromberg
still has it (along with his mandolin player, fiddler, clarinet/sax player and
drummer). While every tune didn’t resonant most did and we walked out of the
theater with thumbs up. Bob Dylan move over, finally.
Which brings
us to that sketch I did based on Brother Bromberg’s version of the classic Try
Me One More Time. When I got home I began to revise that piece included
below. Now on to the next act in the great quest- a reunion of the three
remaining active members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim Maria Mulduar, and of
course Geoff at the Club Passim (which traces its genesis back to the folk
minute’s iconic Club 47 over on Mount Auburn Street in Harvard Square. We’ll
see if that is thumbs up too.
…he could hear her cry for liquor even
before she knocked at his four in the morning door, even before she came into
his walk up flat apartment building where they had started their, what did she
called it, their “love town love,” he could sense it in the walls or windows or
something. He too could almost smell that gardenia perfume smell that meant she
was coming back (and that always lingered a little in some corner of the
apartment air, her air), coming back for the he no longer could count how many
times, assured, always assured that she would have entrance and his bed when
she came back. Maybe, as many times as he had tried to spill the damn stuff
down the toilet, that is why he kept a flask for her, their, favorite scotch,
Haig &Haig Royal Bonded, in the back kitchen cupboard. So she would come
back, he did not know. One time he did spill it down the kitchen sink thinking
to exorcise the demons but ten minutes later he was down the street at Mel’s
Liquor buying another quart. Holding that thought sure enough a couple of
minutes later he heard the knock, knock three times, their knock, and her
patented purr, “Daddy, Daddy, let me in, your Laura’s back home, back home for
good.”
He opened the door and there she was, a
little drunk as always at that hour if she was up, and she usually was, a
slight whiff of reefer, low-grade reefer so he knew she was flat-busted, coming
off her clothes, and that sweet mama smile, the one that assured (and she knew
assured) that she had not knocked on the wrong door. He thought “here we go
again” with that here we go again feeling but he was glad this time to see her,
it had been a few months, maybe four. He noticed that her clothes, her low- cut
blouse, low-cut that he had insisted one time did not help enhance her small
breasts, and her skirt, her short skirt that did, no argument, highlighted by
her well-turned legs and ankles, were a little disheveled, a little back seat
of some car, back room of some gin mill, or of some flophouse room quickie
disheveled that meant she had either been working her butt or some pick-up guy
had gotten angry at some foolish stunt of hers and kicked her out early.
Probably the former since she liked, with every guy she tangled with
non-professionally anyway, to what she called “do the do” in the morning then
take a shower right after and wash that love sweat and jimson off.
Yah, as he had looked more closely, he
could tell that she had been doing a trick or two of late to keep her in liquor
and dope. Like he said he was glad to see her and although she looked a little
the worst for wear this time she still had that Anne Hathaway-like girlish look
that had attracted her to him when they first met at Jimmy’s Pony Lounge almost
four years before. He thought too though that at the rate she was going, as he
noticed small etched crow’s’ feet forming around her eyes, eyes puffy from lack
of sleep, too much liquor, high-shelf or not, and a little too many off-beat
bed tumbles as well, that she would not age well, not age well at all. And yet
she would still be attractive to him.
There she was though in all her Madonna
angel child street whore persona and as he invited her in (as if she needed an
invitation) she gave him that long wet kiss, a french kiss, that meant she was
back, back for a little while anyway. He noticed too while they were kissing
that she had something on her tongue. He asked her about it and she showed him
a pierced tongue ring, a fad among some women in the new multiple piercing
world after having seen Rosanna Arquette wearing one as a sexual stimulant in
the film Pulp Fiction. She also said, if he was good, she would show him how
she used it. Yah, Laura was her old self; ever inventive in every field she put
her mind too. After that introduction he went out to the kitchen to perform
step one of being good. As he went to that kitchen cabinet to get her a drink
he also thought back, as he always did when she came back, about their stormy history
right from the beginning.
That first night, a Monday night, as
usual a kind of slow Monday, at Jimmy’s he had heard her singing, singing the
blues, singing Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie –style barrelhouse blues. Stuff
like Me And My Gin, Bedbug Blues, and Bumble Bee in front of a pick-up blues
band, a pretty good band and her with a pretty good voice. Stuff that had
plenty of double entendre meaning with the crowd who came to Jimmy’s looking to
pick up a stray this or that, nothing serious, and known around town as a spot
for just that purpose. And that was the attraction for him then, and her too.
She with that doe-like sweet Madonna home to mother look and belting out those
very sexually suggestive lyrics with a look like maybe you could spend a lifetime
trying to figure out whether she was an angel or a whore. And not mind the
effort. He ordered her a drink, a scotch, after asking the waitress what she
drank, and had it sent over to her table at break. She came over and said thank
you but Haig &Haig was all she drank. He ordered the drink, and was hooked.
Hooked bad, hooked bad even when about
a fifteen minutes later as she went back the bandstand to do the last set she
said while leaving that if he waited she would go home with him but that the
band thing was just a guest gig and that she only did it that night because
work was slow. Work being, as she explained straight out, working the bar for
tricks. She said if he wanted a good time, and she knew how to give a guy a
good time, he would have to show his appreciation with some dough. They could
negotiate that later. Like he said he was hooked and so he waited for her,
waited to take the ticket and take the ride. Later, early that next morning,
after they had done the “do the do” (and she had taken her shower) as she was
leaving she threw the money he gave her back on the bed. She said her asking
for money was her way to be her own boss, in control of her own life, and if
she liked a guy, and she liked him, then that was that. A few weeks later she moved
in for the first time, and stayed, stayed until she found the next guy on whose
bed she threw the money back. But thereafter she always came back, came back to
walking daddy, her walking daddy who knew his sweet mama, and she always would.
And he thought as he passed her the
scotch that he always would take her back, take her back just like that first
time. What was a guy to do. And just then as if to weld that thought into his
brain she said, “daddy, walking daddy, the sun is almost up and I am sleepy,
let sweet mama show you what that tongue ring is all about.” Ah, Laura…
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