***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II- The Mills Brothers’ You Always Hurt The One You Love …

…he wished he had never been born, never, not after that stunt that he pulled that last leave he had before he shipped out, shipped out East on this damn floating bucket of a troop transport that was heading, heading to who knows where, and who cares, except it has hard fighting, slopping through some muddy roads, and hard death written all over wherever that it was. But what lied ahead was nothing compared to that foolish stunt. He didn’t have to even say that it involved a her, her his sweet Maggie, Maggie O’Leary to be exact because there are a lot of Maggies in the world, although now he knew, knew maybe too late that there was only one for him. He could not believe that he left her that night, that last gorgeous night telling her that given what was ahead for him he would rather she not wait for him. She cried, cried hard at that. But that was not the stunt, not by a long shot, since those kind of partings with this damn war on were a dime a dozen, maybe cheaper. What he did after he left her though, figuring he was a free man, was call up Daisy McNamara and spent the night at her place, spent it you know how so nobody has to go into details. And that next morning who sees him catting out of her place but Liam O’Leary, Maggie’s older brother. He tried to call her , no answer, he wrote, wrote about six times trying to explain what a cad he was and just this minute he was waiting as he had for the past several days for mail call. Yeah, he wished he had never been born…     

 

 *******

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

Whether we liked it or not, whether we even knew what it meant to our parents or not, or frankly, during that hellish growing up absurd teenager time in the 1950s trying to figure out our places, if any, in the cold war red scare world, if there was to be a world, and that was a close thing at times,  or whether we cared, music was as dear a thing to them as to us, their sons and daughters, who were in the throes of finding our own very different musical identities. As well, whether we knew it or not, knew what sacred place the music of the late 1930s and 1940s, swing, be-bop swing, be-bop flat-out, show tunes, you know jitter-bug stuff, and the like held in their youthful hearts that was the music, their getting through the tough times music, that went wafting through the house on the radio, on record player, or for some the television, of many of those of us who constitute the now graying fading generation of ‘68. And some of us will pass to the beyond clueless as to what our forebears were attuned to when they came of age in a world, a very darkly-etched world, which they too had not created, and had no say in creating.

Yes they were crazy for the swing and sway of bespectacled Benny Goodman blowing that clarinet like some angel- herald letting the world know,  if it did know already, that it did not mean a thing, could not possibly matter in the universe, if you did not swing, with and without Miss (Ms.) Peggy Lee, better with, better with, swaying slightly lips moistened, swirling every guy in the place on Why Don’t You Do Right vowing he would do just that for a smile and a chance at those slightly swaying hips. Mr. Harry James with or without the orchestra , better with, blowing Gabriel’s horn, knocking down walls, maybe Jericho, maybe just some Starlight Ballroom in Kansas City blasting the joint with his You Made Me Love You to the top of the charts. Elegant Duke Ellington with or without Mr. Johnny Hodges blowing that sexy sax out into the ocean air night in some Frisco club, blowing out to the Japan seas, on Taking The ‘A’ Train. Tommy Dorsey all banded up if there is such a word making eyes misty with I’ll Never Smile Again.  Jimmy Dorsey too with his own aggregation wailing Tangerine that had every high school girl throwing dreamy nickels and dimes into the jukebox, with or without fanfare, Glenn Miller, with or without those damn glasses, taking that Sentimental Journey before his too soon last journey. Miss (Ms.) Billie Holiday, Lady Day, with or without the blues, personal blues, strung out blues too, singing everybody else’s blues away with that throaty thing she had, that meaningful pause, yeah, Lady Sings The Blues. Miss Lena Horne with or without stormy weather making grown men cry (women too) when she reached that high note fretting about her long gone man, Jesus.  Miss (Ms.) Margaret Whiting going for that Old Black Magic. Mr. Vaughn Monroe with or without goalposts. Mr. Billy Eckstine, too. Mr. Frank Sinatra doing a million songs fronting for the Dorseys and anybody who wanted to rise in that swinging world, with or without a horde of bobbysoxers breaking down his doors, putting everybody else to shame (and later too). The Inkspots, always with that spoken refrain catch that nobody seemed to tire of, doing teary I’ll Get By or If I Didn’tCare. The Mills Brothers with or without those paper dolls. The Andrews Sisters with or without rum in their Coca-Cola, The Dewdrops with or without whatever they were doing with or without. Mr. Cole Porter, with or without the boys, writing the bejesus out of  Tin Pan Alley and Broadway tunes. Mr. Irving Berlin with or without the flag, ditto Mr. Porter. And Mr. George Gershwin with or without his brother, creating Summertime and a thousand other catchy tunes. Yeah, their survival music.  

We the generation of ’68, baby-boomers, decidedly not what Tom Brokaw dubbed rightly or wrongly “ the greatest generation,”  decidedly not your parents’  or grandparents’ (please, please do not say great-grandparents’ even if it is true) generation could not bear to hear that music, could not bear to think anybody in the whole universe would think that stuff was cool. Those of us who came of age, biological, political and social age kicking, screaming and full of the post-war new age teenage angst and alienation in the time of Jack Kennedy’s Camelot were ready for a jail-break, a jail-break on all fronts and that included from “their song” stuff. Their staid Eisenhower red scare cold war stuff (he their organizer of victory, their gentile father Ike), hell, we knew that the world was scary, knew it every time we were forced to go down into some dank school basement and squat down, heads down too, hoping to high heaven that the Russkies had not decided to go crazy and set off “the bomb,” many bombs. And every righteous teenager had a nightmare that they were trapped in some fashionable family bunker and those loving parents had thoughtfully brought their records down into the abyss to soothe their savage beasts for the duration. Please, please, please if we must die then at least let’s go out to Jerry Lee’s High School Confidential.  

We were moreover, some of us any way and I like to think the best of us, driven by some makeshift dream, ready to cross our own swords with the night-takers of our time, and who, in the words of Camelot brother Bobby, sweet ruthless Bobby of more than one shed tear, quoting from Alfred Lord Tennyson, were “seeking a new world.” Those who took up the call to action heralded by the new dispensation and slogged through that decade whether it was in the civil rights/black liberation struggle, the anti-Vietnam War struggle or the struggle to find one’s own identity in the counter-culture swirl before the hammer came down were kindred. To the disapproval, anger, and fury of more than one parent who had gladly slept through the Eisenhower times. And that hammer came down quickly as the decade ended and the high white note that we searched for, desperately searched for, drifted out into the ebbing tide. Gone. But enough about us this series is about our immediate forbears (but please, please not great grandparents) their uphill struggles to make their vision of the their newer world, their struggles to  satisfy their hunger a little, to stop that gnawing want, and the music that in their youth  they dreamed by on cold winter nights and hot summer days.

This is emphatically the music, the get by the tough times in the cities, on the farms, out in the wide spaces, of the hard born generation that survived the dust bowl all farms blown away when the winds gathered like some ancient locust curse to cleanse the earth and leave, leave nothing except silt and coughs. All land worthless no crops could stand the beating, the bankers fearful that the croppers would just leave taking whatever was left and the dusted crowd heading west with whatever was movable. They drifted west, west as far as California if the old buggy held up and they had enough gas in the tank, not knowing what some old time professor, from Harvard I think, knew about the frontier that it had been swallowed up, been staked out long ago and too bad. Not knowing as well what some old time Okie balladeer knew that if you did not have the dough California was just another Okie/Arkie bust.

Survived empty bowls, empty plates, wondering where the next meal would come from, many times, too many times from some Sally soup-line, some praise the lord before thy shall eat soup-line. Survived that serious hunger want that deprives a man, a woman, of dignity scratching for roots like some porcine beast in some back alley lot, too weak to go on but too weak to stop as well. Survived, if not west, then no sugar bowl city street urchin corner boy hard times of the 1930s Great Depression, always with that vagrant foot up against some brick-laid wall, killing time, killing some dreams,  sleeping under soot-lined railroad trestles, on splintered park benches newspapers for a pillow’s rest (one eye open for swarming festering jack-rollers and club-wielding sadistic cops), and hard bench bus stations (ditto jack-rollers and cops).  Survive the time of the madness just then beating the tom-toms of war and degradation coming from a hungry want-infested Europe filled with venom, those drums heralding the time of the night-takers casting a shadow over the darkened world, portending the plainsong of the time of the long knives, outlawing dreams for the duration.

Building up a pretty list of those wants on cold nights , name them, food, shelter, sex, two- bits in the pocket, name those hungers, success, dignity, not having to struggle against the want night. Building that phantom list while among tree-lined Hudson River “hobo jungle” riverside fires stoked by fugitives, brethren, the fellahin of the world, upstream from the clogged city, upstream from clogged city prying eyes and prickly cops, cities clogged with broken dreams, or worse of late no dreams, and not enough food to go around, not enough work either and that ate at him, her more that the food hungers. Down in dusty arroyos, parched, no water, no agua aqui senor, lo siento, as they, the bracero brethren, passed the water jug between them and pointed him west, west you cannot stay here gringo, no way. Under forsaken silver-plated bridges, steel beams to rest a weary head, rolled blanket for his pillow, trying to keep the winds at bay.  Survived god knows how by taking the nearest freight west, some smoke and dreams freight, sleeping on some straw-scratched floor, plugging ears with napkins to drown out the rattling rails and deep sleep snores. Taking Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, B&O, Illinois Central, Penn Central, Empire State, Boston and Maine, or one of a million trunk lines to go out, and young as he was, desperate as he was, penniless as he was, search for, well, search for…

Searching for something that was not triple- decker bodies, three to a room sharing some scraggly blanket, an old worn out pillow for rest, the faint smell of oatmeal, twenty days in a row oatmeal, oatmeal with.., being cooked in the next room meaning no Pa work, meaning one jump, maybe not even that, ahead of the sullen dreaded bastard rent- collector (the landlords do not dare come in person so they hire the task out), meaning the sheriff, his damn auction, and the streets are closing in. (What did the Sheriff care that all meager life-times possessions were street-ward bound he was paid by the item tossed.) Bodies, brothers and sisters, enough to lose count, piled high, cold-water flat high, that damn cold water splash signifying how low things have gotten, not even hot water for the weekly bath, with a common commode for the whole floor and brown-stained sink.

Later moving down the scale, down to the lower depths as some Russian writer called them in a book of that name, a rooming house room for the same number of bodies, smudged prison-paned window looking out onto the air- shaft, dark, dark with despair, no air but some fetid foul breeze from the basement furnace, the very, very faint odor of oatmeal, thinned out even further, who knows how many days in a row, from Ma’s make-shift hot plate on its last legs.  Hell, call it what it was a flop house stinking of perspiration and low-shelf whiskeys and wines. Stinking of winos and riffraff in the hallways howling at the moon all night and jack-rollers preying on whoever was witless enough to walk into his lair. All around shadows, moonlight shadows, moonless night shadows the times when the midnight sifters plied their trade and snuck in, snuck in these damn one room hells looking for anything, anything to pawn, anything to feed that junk habit that had them in its grip. Ma, yelling at the kids, jesus, at the kids, milling around the room, that why didn’t they, the jack-rollers, the midnight sifters, the junkies, and the twisted sister street tricks (whores she called them when the kids got older and knew what that word meant) go uptown and bother the Mayfair swells who had dough and leave respectable people alone.        

Others had it worse, tumbled down shack, window pane-less some wax paper taped to hold off the winds and rains coming from the north, tarpaper siding leaving exposed wood to rot and provide homes for fugitive termites and vermin, roof tiles falling leaving poorly patched spots where the spring rains would wash through, wash through to the six buckets which were placed beneath the patches to hold off collapse, a lean-to ready to fall to the first wind, the first red wind, an ill wind, a land wind the old sailors, old tars called it and maybe they were right, coming out of the mountains and swooping down the hills and hollows, ready to fall to the first downpour rain, washed away. Cold water flat, flop house room, tumbled-down shack, leave them behind, get out on the open road, blow the stinks off, get that bindle stick together, a cup, a plate, spoon, a comb just in case you are in a town, some matches, keep dry matches, a pouch of Bull Durham and papers, maybe some change all wrapped in a handkerchief, the worldly possessions of the fellahin, the fugitive, the hobo, the tramp and the bum, grab that slow moving freight before she picks up steam, watch out for the “bulls” and search for the great promised American night that had been tattered by world events, and greed.

Survived the Hoovervilles, the great cardboard siding found in some orphan street, dilapidated, to serve as buffet against the hard winter winds, the spring rains and that damn relentless summer heat, tin can roof, slap-dash jerry-built camp explosions along rivers, mighty river like the Missouri and Mississippi and no account ones trickle ones like the Elko and the Dearborn, down in hard rock infested ,   ravines filled with brambles, snakes, gnarly insects ready to do battle once some fugitive arm or leg was exposed, and under railroad trestles, the clanking freight trains above, what did Shakespeare call it, yes, murdering sleep, and murdering dreams too no wonder some guy said that life, his life anyway, was nothing but train smoke and wishful thinking.

Tossed, hither and yon, cold water flats, flop-houses, tarpaper shacks, then the great outdoors, what did that guy call it, that writer guy, I forget his name, called it probably from his cozy fireplaced study, the romance of the road. Tossed around about six million different ways but it all came down to when the banks, yeah, the banks, the usual suspects, robbed people of their shacks, their cottages, their farm houses and left them with nothing but the romance of the road. Robbed them as an old-time balladeer, a free-wheeling, song-writing red, a commie, in the days when in some quarters sailing under that banner was a badge of honor, said at the time not with a gun but with a fountain pen, but still robbed them.

Survived the soup kitchens hungers, the gnawing can’t wait in the endless waiting line for scraps, dreaming of some by-gone steak or dish of ice cream, and always that hunger, not the stomach hunger although that was ever present, but the hunger that hurts a man, hurts his pride when he has to stick his hand out, stick it out and not know why. Planning the fruitless day, fruitless since he was born to work, took pride in work, planning around Sally breakfasts don’t be late, six to nine, but with sermon and song attached, mission stuff in heat-soaked rooms, men smelling of unwashed men, and drink. Planning around city hall lunches, peanut butter sandwiches, slapped slap-dash together with an apple, maybe. Worse, worse by far the Saint Vincent DePaul suppers, soup, bread, some canned vegetable, something they called meat but was in dispute, lukewarm coffee, had only, only if you could prove you were truly destitute with a letter from some churchman and, in addition, under some terrible penalty, that you had searched for work that day. A hard dollar, hard dollar indeed.

Jesus, out of work for another day, and with three hungry growing kids to feed, and a wife sickly, sick unto death of the not having he thought, little work waiting for anybody that day, that day when all hell broke loose and the economy tanked, at least that is what it said in the Globe (ditto New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Examiner if anybody was asking), said that there was too much around, too much and he with nothing for those kids, nothing and he was too proud to ask for some damn letter to give to those Vincent DePaul hard-hearts.  And that day not him, not him yet, others, others who read more that the Globe (and the dittos)  were dreaming of that full head of steam day to come in places like big auto Flint, waterfront Frisco town, rubber Akron, hog butcher to the world prairie Chicago, hell, even in boondock trucker Minneapolis, a day when the score would get evened, evened a little, and a man could hold his head up a little, could at least bring bread to those three hungry growing kids who didn’t understand the finer point of world economics just hunger. Until then though he is left shifting the scroungings of the trash piles of the urban glut, the discard of the haves, the have nots throw nothing away, and on other horizons the brethren curse the rural fallow fields, curse the banks, and curse the weather, but curse most of all having to pack up and head, head anyway, anywhere but the here, and search, search like that brother on that urban glut pile for a way to curb  that gnawing  hungry that cried out in the night-want, want that is all. 

Survived too the look, the look of those, the what did FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the young, or forgetful) call them, oh yeah, the economic royalists, today’s 1%, the rack-renters, the coupon-clippers, the guys, as one of their number said, who hired one half of the working class to fight the other, who in their fortified towers, their Xanadus, their Dearborns, their Beacon Hills, their Upper East Sides, their Nob Hills, and a few other spots, tittered that not everybody was built to survive to be the fittest. That crowd, and let’s name names, a few anyway, Ford, General Motors, Firestone, U.S. Steel, fought tooth and nail against the little guy trying to break bread. Fought that brother too out pounding the mean streets to proud to ask for a letter, Jesus, a letter for some leftover food, before he got “religion” about what was what in the land of “milk and honey.”  Wreaked havoc on that farmer out in the dust bowl not travelling some road, some road west knowing that the East was barred up, egging him on to some hot dusty bracero labor filed picking, maybe “hire” him on as a scab against those uppity city boys. Yes, fought every guy trying to get out from under that cardboard, tar paper, windowless soup kitchen world along with a hell of a lot of comrades, yes, comrades, not Russkie comrades although reds were thick in those battles, took their lumps in Frisco, Flint, Akron and Minneapolis, hell, any place where a righteous people were rising, kindred in the struggle to put that survival of the fittest on the back-burner of human history. To stand up and  take collective action to put things right, hell, made the bosses cry bloody murder when they shut down their factories, shut them down cold until some puny penny justice was eked out. And maybe just maybe make that poor unknowingly mean-street walking city brother and that sweated farm boy thing twice about helping those Mayfair swells.      

Survived but took time out too, time out if young perhaps, as if such things were embedded in some secret teen coda, to stretch those legs, to flash those legs, to sway those hips, to flash the new moves not, I repeat, not the ones learned at sixth grade Miss Prissy’s Saturday dance classes but the ones that every mother, every girl mother warned her Susie against, to a new sound coming out of the mist, coming to take the sting out of the want years nights, and the brewing night of the long knives. Coming out of New York, always New York then, Minton’s, Jimmy’s, some other uptown clubs,   Chicago, Chicago of the big horns and that stream, that black stream heading north, following the northern star, again, for jobs and to get the hell away from one Mister James Crow, from Detroit, with blessed Detroit Slim and automobile sounds, and Kansas City, the Missouri K.C. okay, the Bird land hatchery, the Prez’s big sexy sax blow home. Jesus no wonder that madman Hitler banned it, along with dreams.  

The sound of blessed swing, all big horns, big reeds, big, well big band, replacing the dour Brother, Can You Spare a Dime and its brethren , no banishing such thoughts, casting them out with soup lines (and that awful Friday Saint Vincent DePaul fish stew that even Jesus would have turned down in favor of bread, wine and a listen to Benny’s Buddha Swings) casting that kind of hunger out for a moment, a magical realistic moment, casting out ill-fitting, out of fashion, threadbare (nice, huh) second-hand clothes (passed down from out- the- door  hobo brothers and sisters tramping this good green earth looking for their place, or at least a job of work and money in their newer threadbare [still nice] clothes), and casting aside from hunger looks, that gaunt look of those who have their wanting habits on and no way to do a thing about it.  Banished, all such things banished because after all it did not mean a thing, could not possibly place you anywhere else but in squareville (my term, not theirs), if you did not have that swing. To be as one with jitter-buggery if there was (is) such a word (together, not buggery by itself, not in those days, not in the public vocabulary anyway). And swing as it lost steam with all the boys, all the swing boys, all oversea and the home fire girls tired of dancing two girl dancing, a fade echo of the cool age be-bop that was a-borning, making everybody reach for that high white note floating out of Minton’s, Big Bill’s Jimmie’s, hell, even Olde Saco’s Starlight Ballroom before it breezed out in the ocean air night, crashed into the tepid sea. Yeah.       

Survived, as if there was no time to breathe in new fresh airs, new be-bop tunes, new dance moves, to slog through the time of the gun in World War II.  A time when the night-takers, those who craved the revenge night of the long knives took giant steps in Europe and Asia trying to make that same little guy, Brit, Frenchie, Chinaman, Filipino, God’s American, and half the races and nationalities on this good green earth cry uncle and buckle under, take it, take their stuff without a squawk. It took a bit, took a little shock, to get those war juices flowing, to forget about the blood-letting that had gone on before when the flower of Europe, when the older brothers and fathers the generation before, had taken their number when they were called.  And so after Pearl, after that other shoe dropped on a candid world Johnnie, Jimmie, Paulie, Benny too, all the guys from the old neighborhood, the corner boys, the guys who hung around Doc’s hands in their pockets, guys trying to rub nickels together to play some jitter-buggery thing, guys who had it tough growing up hard in those bad Depression days, took their numbers and fell in line.

Guys too from the wheat fields, Kansas Iowa, you know places where they grow wheat, guys fresh from some Saturday night dance, some country square thing, all shy and with calloused hands, eyeing, eyeing to perdition some virginal Betty or Sue, guys from the coal slags, deep down in hill country, down in the hollows away from public notice, some rumble down shack to rest their heads, full of backwoods home liquor, blackened fingernails, never ever fully clean once the coal got on them, Saturday night front porch fiddlings wound up carrying a M-1 on the shoulder in Europe or the Pacific. Leaving all those Susies, Lauras, Betties, and dark-haired Rebeccas too waiting at home hoping to high heaven that some wayward gun had not carried off sweetheart Johnnie, Jimmy, Paulie, or young Benny.  Jesus not young Benny. Not the runt of the corner boy litter, not our Benny. Not carried off that sweet farm fresh boy with the sly grin, not carried off that coal-dust young man with those jet-black eyes, and fingers.  

Survived the endless lines of boys heading off East and West, heading off to right some wrongs, at least that is what the guys in charge said, put a big dent in the style of the night-takers, the guys who wanted to cut up the world into two to three pieces, and that was that, cutting the little guy, making the little guys like it, making them take it or else. Some of those little guys, after Pearl for sure, could hardly wait to get to the recruiting office, hardly wait to go mano y mano with the night-takers and their illicit dreams, went gladly from the farms, the factories and the mines, many to never look back, never to farm, to run a production line, or to dig from the earth but make new lives, or lay down their heads in some god forsaken piece of dirt, or some watery abyss. Others, well, others were hanging back waiting to be drafted by their friends and neighbors at the local draft board, hanging back just a little to think things over, to see if maybe they could be better used on the home front, scared okay (as if the quick-step volunteers were not afraid, or should have been) but who gave a good accounting of themselves when their number came up. Still others head over heels they were exempt, 4-F, bad feet, you see. Somebody had to keep the home fires, keeping the womenfolk happy.

All, all except that last crew, the dodgers found in every war,  who got to sit a home with Susie, Laura, Betty and even odd-ball Rebecca were constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for their ships to sail or their planes to fly. Hanging in some old time corner boy drugstore, Doc’s, Rexall, name your drugstore name, just like when they were kids (a mere few weeks before), talking the talk like they used to do to kill time, maybe sitting two by two (two uniforms, two girls if anybody was asking) at the soda fountain playing that newly installed jukebox until the nickels ran out. Listened to funny banana boat songs, rum and coca cola songs, siting under the apple tree songs, songs to forget about the work abroad, and just some flat-out jitter-bugging stuff, frothy stuff in order to get a minute’s reprieve from thoughts of the journey ahead.

Listened too to dreamy, sentimental songs, Always, I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire, Sentimental Journey, songs that spoke of true love, their true love that would out last the ages, would carrying them through that life together if they could ever keep those damn night-takers at bay, songs about faraway places, We’ll Meet Again, Til Then, songs that spoke of future sorrows, future partings, future returnings (always implying though that maybe there would be no return), future sacrifices, future morale-builders, songs about keeping lamp- lights burning, songs to give meeting to that personal sacrifice, to keep the womenfolk, to keep her from fretting her life away waiting for that dreaded other drop, songs about making a better world out of the fire and brimstone sacrifice before them.

Songs to make the best out of the situation about Johnnie, Jimmie and the gang actually returning, returning whole, and putting a big dent in their dreams, that small white house with the white picket fence (maybe needing a little painting, maybe they could do that together), kids, maybe a new car once in a while you know the stuff that keeps average joes alive in sullen foxholes, sea-sick troop transports, freezing cargo planes, keeps them good and alive. Hell, songs, White Cliffs Of Dover songs, about maybe the damn wars would be over sooner rather than later. Listened, drawing closer, getting all, uh, moony-eyed, and as old Doc, or some woe-begotten soda jerk, some high school kid, wet behind the ears, with that white paper service cap at some obscure angle and now smudged white jacket implying that he was in the service too, told them to leave he was closing up they held out for one last tune. Then, well-fortified with swoony feelings they made for the beach, if near a beach, the pond, if near a pond, the back forty, if near the back forty, the hills, you know, or whatever passed for a lovers’ lane in their locale and with the echo of those songs as background, well, do I have draw you a map, what do you think they did, why do you think they call us baby-boomers.              

The music, this survival music, Harry James, Benny, the Dorsey boys, Bing, Frank, the Mills Brothers, the Inkspots, and on and on wafted (nice word, huh) through the air coming from a large console radio, the prized possession centered in the small square living room of my growing up house amid the squalor of falling roof tiles, a broken window or two patched up with cardboard and tape, a front door that would not shut, rooms with second-hand sofas, mattresses, chairs, desks, tables, mildewy towels, corroded sinks, barely serviceable bathtubs, and  woe-begotten stuffed pillows smelling of mothballs. My broken down, needs a new roof, random shingles on the ground as proof, cracked windows stuffed with paper and held with masking tape in need of panes, no proof needed, overgrown lawn in need of cutting of a shack (there is literally no other way to describe it, then or in its current condition) of a too small, much too small for four growing boys and two parents, house. The no room to breathe, no space but shared space, the from hunger look of all the denizens, the stink of my father’s war wounds that would not heal, the stink of too many people in too small a house, excuse me shack. The noise, damn the noise from the nearby railroad, putting paid to wrong side of the tracks-dom worst of all. Jesus.      

That wrong side of the tracks shack of a house surrounded by other houses, shack houses, too small to fit big Irish Catholic- sized families with stony-eyed dreams. Small dreams of Johnny or Jimmy getting on the force (cops, okay), and Lorrie and Pamela getting those secure City Hall jobs in the steno pool until some bright prospect came by and threw a ring at them but in the meantime shack life, and small faded dreams. Funny, no, ironic but these tumbled-down shacks which seemingly would fall with a first serious wind represented in some frankly weird form (but what knew I of such unnamed weirdness then I just cried out in some fit of angst, cried out against that railroad noise, and that sour smell of sweat) the great good desire of those warriors, and almost to a man they had served, and their war brides who had waited, had fretted while waiting, to latch onto a piece of golden age America.

And take their struggle survival music from Doc’s jukebox, from the Starlight Ballroom, from WDJA, with them as if to validate their sweet memory dreams, their youthful innocence before the guys got caught up, caught up close and personal, the ugliness of war, the things they would not speak of unto the grave, and the gals not asking, not asking for all the money in the world but sensing that he, they, had changed, had lost some youthful thing. That radio, that priceless radio console taking pride of place, as if a lifesaver, literally, tuned to local station WDJA in North Adamsville, the memory station for those World War II warriors and their war brides, those who made it back. Some wizard radio station manager knowing his, probably his in those days, demographics, spinned those 1940s platters exclusively, as well as aimed the ubiquitous advertisement at that crowd. Cars, sofas, beds, shaving gear, soap, department store sales, all the basics for the growing families spawned (nice, huh) by those warriors and brides.

My harried mother, harried like all the neighborhood large brood mothers, harried by the bleak wanting prospects of the day with four growing boys and not enough, nor enough food, not enough, well, just not enough and leave it at that. Maybe bewildered is a better expression for her plight, for her wartime young marriage adventure not wanting to be left with only a memory of my father if things went wrong in the Pacific. As so she took to turning the radio on to start her day, hoping that Paper Dolls, I’ll Get By, or dreamy Tangerine would chase her immediate sorrows away. Yea, a quick boost of their songs was called for, their spring youth meeting at some USO dance songs before he shipped out. Those songs   embedded deep in memory, wistful young memory, or so it seemed as she hummed away the day, used the music as background on her appointed household rounds. And whether she won or lost the day’s bout with not enough, with some ill-winded message from some bill due, seemingly always some four boy hurt, some bad father work news, the list of her daily sorrows and trepidations could have stretched to infinity she perked up, swayed even to those tunes.

 

That stuff, that mother dream stuff, that piano/drum-driven stuff with some torch-singer, Peggy Lee, Helen Morgan, Margaret Whiting, maybe even a sneak Billie thrown in bleeding all over the floor drove me crazy then  Some she bleeding with the pain of  her thwarted loves, her man hurts, her wanderings in search of something in this funny old world, her waitings, waiting for the good times, waiting in line for the rations, waiting, waiting alone mind you, for her man to come home, come home whole from some place whose name she could not pronounce, they should have called it the waiting generation, just flat-out drove me crazy then. Mush stuff at a time when I was craving the big break-out rock and roll sounds I kept hearing every time I went and played the jukebox at Doc’s Drugstore over on Walker Street down near the beach (not the old torn down Doc’s of their generation over on Billings Road if that is what you are thinking). As far as I know Doc (the son of their Doc), knowing his demographics as well as that radio executive at WDJA, did not, I repeat, did not, stock that stuff that, uh, mush for his rock-crazed after school soda fountain crowd, probably stocked nothing, mercifully before about 1955. Funny thing though while I am still a child of rock and roll this so-called mushy stuff sounds pretty good to these ears now long after my parents and those who performed this music have passed on. Go figure. 

***Out In The Torch Singer Be-Bop Blues Night- Blues Masters- The Women Hold Forth- A CD Review

A YouTube film clip of Billie Holiday holding forth, very holding forth on Stormy Blues.

Blues Masters: Classic Blues Women: Volume 11, various artists, Rhino Records, 1993
I swear, I swear on a stack of seven bibles, I am off, finally off film noir femme fatales after watching (or rather , re-watching) Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, mainly Jane Greer, go round and round in the classic crime noir Out Of The Past. How could any rational man not think twice about following such femmes as Jane Greer’s Kathy who just happened to be a little gun happy (and a chronic liar to boot) who put a couple in Robert Mitchum’s Jeff after he did somersaults to try to save her bacon about six times. That’s gratitude for you.

Well, like I said I am off, done, finished with those two-timing dames, and good riddance. Now I have time, plenty of time, and my health to speak of blues in the night wailing female torch singers who, as far as I know, do not carry or do not need to carry guns, to do their business. Of course it was not big deal to change my allegiances because since I was a kid I have been nothing but putty in their hands for any torch singer who could throw away my blues with some sorrow laden tune.

Maybe it was in some back-drop Harvard Square coffeehouse in long mist time 1960s when I first heard such voices, first among them, Billie Holiday, late, early, whatever Billie Holiday singing of some man on her mind, mostly some no good man, some no dough man, who maybe took a couple of whacks at her for no reason, or just took her last dough to bet on that next sure thing…and happiness. Or maybe earlier when some home background 1940s we-won-the-war be-bop music filtered through the air my own childhood house from the local radio station playing Peggy Lee all Benny Goodman’d up, or Helen Whiting, or, or well, you get the drift. Stuff that would stop me in my tracks and ask, ask where did that sorrow come from.

Later, several years later, it blossomed fully when some now half-forgotten (but only half-forgotten) girlfriend gave me a complete Vanguard Record set of all of Bessie Smith’s recordings. Ah heaven, and ah the student neighbors who had to listen for half a day while I played the damn set through. So get it, get it straight I am a long-time aficionado of the genre and commenting on this Blues Masters CD about classic women blues singers is a piece of cake.

Strangely, although the bulk of the “discovered” blues singers of the folk revival minute of the 1960s were male (Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, Son House, Skip James, et. al) back in the serious heyday of the blues in the 1920s and early 1930s women dominated the blues market, the popular music of the day. And the women featured in this compilation were the most well-known of the myriad torch singers that lit up the concert hall, speakeasies and juke joints North and South. Mamie Smith, “Ma” Rainey, the divide Sippie Wallace, of course Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey (later to be one of the first women blues producers and record company owners), and Alberta Hunter are all rightfully and righteously here.

What, no Billie Holiday? Well yes she does Stormy Weather here so stay calm. I have singled her out because to me her voice, her phrasing, her half breath between notes is what torch singing was all about and all about whenever I felt (or feel) blue I just turned to Billie and she would sing your blues away (unfortunately not her own). Now if I could just get a torch singer who was also a non-gun- toting femme fatale I would be in very heaven. Ya, I know I said I was off femmes but what are you going to do.

***Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night- Thanksgiving Football Rally, 1963- An Encore

Peter Paul Markin, Class of 1964, comment:

Scene: Around and inside the old high school gym entrance on the Hamilton Street side the night before the big Thanksgiving Day football game against our cross town arch-rival, Adamsville High School, in 1963. (Yes, that above-mentioned street for the forgetful is the one that had the Merit gas station, now Hess, on the corner. The place where every self-respecting be-bop high school guy “filled up,” his “boss” car, or his father’s on Friday or Saturday night, cheaply, so that he had enough dough to “spurge” at the end of that “hot date” night for burgers, fries and tonic, you remember soda, at Adventure Car Hop down on the Southern Artery.)

This ancient 1963 time, for the younger reader, was a time before they built what is apparently an addition, including a newer gym and cafeteria, modeled on the office buildings across the street from the school behind the MBTA stop and a tribute to “high” concrete construction, and lowest bidder imagination. But this could have been a scene from any one of a number of years in those days. And I am willing to bet six-two-and-even with cold hard cash gathered from my local ATM against all takers that this story “speaks,” except for the names, to what is up today at Thanksgiving football rally time as well:

Sure the air was cold, you could see your breath making curls before your eyes no problem, and the night felt cold, cold as one would expect from a late November New England night. It was also starless, as the weather report had projected rain for the big game. Damn, not, damn, because I was worried about, or cared about a little rain. I’ve seen and done many things in a late November New England winter rain, and December and January rains too, for that matter. No, this damn, is for the possibility that the muddy Veterans Stadium field would slow up our vaunted offensive attack. And good as it is a little rain, and a little mud, could prove to be a great equalizer.

This after all was class struggle. No, not the kind that you might have heard old Karl Marx and his boys talk about, although now that I think of it there might be something to that here as well. I’ll have to check that out sometime but right then I was worried, worried to perdition, about the battle of the titans on the gridiron, rain-soaked granite grey day or not. See, this particular class struggle was Class A Adamsville against Class B North Adamsville and we needed every advantage against this bigger school. (Yes, I know for those younger readers that today’s Massachusetts high schools are gathered in a bewildering number of divisions and sub-divisions for some purpose that escapes me but when football was played for keeps and honor simpler alphabetic designations worked just find.)

Do I have to describe the physical aspects of the gym? Come on now this thing was (is) any high school gym, any public high school gym, anywhere. Foldaway bleachers, foldaway divider (to separate boys for girls in gym class back in the day, if you can believe that), waxed and polished floors made of sturdy wood, don’t ask me what kind (oak, I guess) with various sets of lines for its other uses as a basketball or volleyball court. But enough of paid by the word stuff to add color to this sketch. The important thing was that guys and gals, old and young, students and alumni and just plan townies were milling about waiting for the annual gathering of the Red Raider clan, those who have bled, bleed or want to bleed Raider red and even those oddballs that don't. This one stirs the blood of even the most detached denizen of the old town.

This night of nights, moreover, every unattached red-blooded boy student, in addition to his heavy dose of school patriotism and wishful wishing that he had been just a little stronger, faster or agile to have made the team, was looking around, and looking around frantically in some cases, to see if that certain she has come for the festivities. And every unattached red-blooded girl student was searching for that certain he (and maybe wishing that just that moment the one she was interested in has been just a little stronger, faster or agile so she could bask in his reflected glory). Don’t tell me, boy or girl, agile or not, you didn’t take a peek, or at least a stealthy glance.

Among this throng of peekers, half-peekers and wannabe peekers were a couple of fervent not fast enough, strong enough, agile enough quasi-jock male students, one of them is writing this entry, the other the great long distance track man, Josh Breslin, was busy getting in his glances. Both were (are) members of the Class of 1964 who with a vested interest in seeing their football-playing fellow classmates pummel the cross town rival, and also, in the interest of full disclosure, are deeply emerged in the hunt for those elusive shes. I do not see the certain she that I am looking for but, as was my style then, I have taken a couple of stealthy glances at some alternate prospects. (This led, on more than one occasion, including one “oh, damn” occasion, to have a very special she accuse me of perfidy, although she did not use that word, and dismissed me, words she did use, out of hand).

This was the final football game of our final football-watching season, as students anyway, as well so we had brought extra energy to the night’s performance. We were on the prowl and ready to do everything in our power to bring home victory…, well, almost everything except donning a football uniform to face the monstrous goliaths of the gridiron. We fancied ourselves built for more "refined" pursuits like those just mentioned stealthy glances, perfidious or not, and the like.

Finally, after much hubbub (and more coy and meaningful looks all around the place than one could reasonably shake a stick at) the rally began, at first somewhat subdued due to the then very recent trauma of the Kennedy assassination, the dastardly murder of one of our own, for the many green-tinged Irish partisans among the crowd, as well as the president. But everyone, seemingly, had tacitly agreed for this little window of time that the outside world and its horrors would not intrude. A few obligatory (and forgettable) speeches by somber and lackluster school administrators, headed by Principal Kelley, and their lackeys in student government and among the faculty stressing good sportsmanship and that old chestnut about it not mattering about victory but how you play the game drone away.

Of course, no self-respecting “true” Red Raider had (has) anything but thoughts of mayhem and casting the cross-town rivals to the gates of hell in his or her heart so this speechifying was so much wasted wind. This “bummer,” obligatory or not, was followed with a little of this and that, mainly side show antics. People, amateurishly, twirling red and black things in the air, and the like. Boosters or Tri-Hi-Yi types, somebody’s girlfriend or some important alum’s daughter for all I knew. Certainly not in a league with the majorettes, who I will not hear a word against, and who certainly know how to twirl the right way. See, I was saving one of my sly, coy and not perfidious glances for one of them right then.

What every red-blooded senior boy, moreover, and probably others as well, was looking forward to get things moving though was the cheer-leading, led by the senior girls like the vivacious Roxanne Murphy ( who, if you can believe this, dismissed me out of hand, although not for perfidiousness( ouch), the spunky Josie McCarthy, and the plucky Linda Kelly. And when they hit center court they did not fail us with their flips, dips, and rah-rahs. Strangely, the band and its bevy of majorettes when it is their turn, with one noted exception, did not inspire that same kind of devotion, although no one can deny that some of those girls can twirl.

But this entire spectacle was so much, too much, introduction. For what was wanted, what was demanded of the situation, up close and personal, was a view of the Goliaths that will run over the cross town arch-rival the next day. A chance to yell ourselves silly. The season had been excellent, marred only by a bitter lost to a bigger area team on their home field, and our team was highly regarded by lukewarm fans and sports nuts alike. Naturally, in the spirit, if not the letter of high school athletic ethos, the back-ups and non-seniors were introduced by Coach Leahy. Then came the drum roll of the senior starters, some of whom have been playing for an eternity it seems. Names like Tom Kiley, Walt Simmons, Lee Munson, Paul Duchamp, Joe Zona, Don McNally, Jim Fallon, Charlie McDonald, Stevie Chase, "Woj" (Jesus, don’t forget to include him. I don't need that kind of madness coming down on my face, even now.) and on and on.

Oh, yes and “Bullwinkle”, Bill Curran, a behemoth of a run-over fullback, even by today’s standards. Yes, let him loose on that arch-rival's defense. Whoa. But something was missing. A sullen collective pout filled the room. After the intros were over the restless crowd needed an oral reassurance from their warriors that the enemy was done for. And as he ambled up to the microphone and said just a couple of words we get just that reassurance from “Bullwinkle” himself. That is all we need. Boys and girls, this one is in the bag. And as we head for the exits to dream our second-hand dreams of glory the band plays the school fight song to the tune of On Wisconsin. Yes, those were the days when boys and girls, young and old, wise or ignorance bled raider red in the old town. Do they still do so today? And do they still make those furtive glances? I hope so.

***Out In The Be-Bop Night- Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-Hayes Bickford Breakout 1962

The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.

Scene Two: Got The Urge For Going In Search Of The Blue- Pink Great American West Night- Hayes-Bickford Breakout 1962
Here I am again sitting, 3 o’clock in the morning sitting, bleary-eyed, slightly distracted after mulling over the back and forth of the twelve hundredth run-in (nice way to put it, right?) with Ma that has driven me out into this chilly early October 1962 morning. And where do I find myself sitting at this time of morning? Tired, but excitedly expectant, on an uncomfortable, unpadded bench seat on this rolling old clickity-clack monster of a Red Line subway car as it now waggles its way out past Kendall Station on its way to Central Square and then to the end of the line, Harvard Square. My hangout, my muse home, my night home, at least my weekend night home, my place to make sense of the world in a world that doesn’t make much sense, at least not enough much sense. Sanctuary, Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford sanctuary, misbegotten teenage boy sanctuary, recognized by august international law, recognized by sanctified canon law, or not.

That beef with Ma, that really unnumbered beef, forget about the 1200 I said before, that was just a guess, has driven me to take an “all-nighter” trip away from the travails of the old home town across Boston to the never-closed Hayes-Bickford cafeteria that beckons just as you get up the stairs from the Harvard Square subway tunnel. Damn, let me just get this off my chest and then I can tell the rest of the story. Ma said X, I pleaded for Y (hell this homestead civil war lent itself righteously to a nice algebraic formulation. You can use it too, no charge). Unbeknownst to me Y did not exist in Ma’s universe. Ever. Sound familiar? Sure, but I had to get it off my chest.

After putting on my uniform, my Harvard Square “cool” uniform: over-sized flannel brownish plaid shirt, belt-less black cuff-less chino pants, black Chuck Taylor logo-ed Converse sneakers, a now ratty old windbreaker won in a Fourth of July distance race a few years back when I really was nothing but a wet-behind-the ears kid to ward off the chill, and, and the absolutely required midnight sunglasses to hide those bleary eyes from a peeking world I was ready to go. To face the unlighted night, and fight against the dawn’s rising for another day. Oh ya, I forgot, I had to sneak out of the house stealthily, run like some crazed broken- field football player down the back of the property, and, after catching my breathe, walk a couple of miles over the North Adamsville Bridge and nasty, hostile (hostile if anyone was out, and anyone was sniping for a misbegotten teenage boy, for any purpose good or evil) Dorchester streets to get to the Fields Corner subway stop. The local Eastern Mass. bus had stopped its always erratic service hours ago, and, anyway, I usually would rather walk, in any case, than wait, wait my youth away for those buses to amble along our way with their byzantine schedules.

Right now though I am thinking, as those subway car wheels rattle beneath my feet, who knows, really, how or why it starts, that wanderlust start, that strange feeling in the pit of your stomach that you have to move on, or out, or up or you will explode, except you also know, or you damn well come to know that it eats away at a man, or a woman for that matter, in different ways. Maybe way back, way back in the cradle it was that first sense that there was more to the world that the four corners of that baby world existence and that if you could just, could just get over that little, little side board there might be something better, much better over the horizon. But, frankly that just seems like too much of a literary stretch even for me, moody teenage boy that I am, to swallow so let’s just say that it started once I knew that the ocean was a way to get away, if you needed to get away. But see I didn’t figure than one out for myself even, old Kenny from the old neighborhood in third grade is the one who got me hip to that, and then Johnny James and his brother filled in the rest of the blanks and so then I was sea-worthy, dream sea-worthy anyway.

But, honestly, that sea dream stuff can only be music for the future because right now I am stuck, although I do not always feel stuck about it, trying to figure my way out of high school world, or at least figure out the raging things that I want to do after high school that fill up my daydream time (study hall time, if you really want to know). Of course, as well, that part about the ocean just mentioned, well there was a literal part to the proposition since ocean-at-my-back (sometimes right at my back) New England homestead meant unless I wanted to take an ill-advised turn at piracy or high-seas hijacking or some such thing east that meant I had to head west. Right now west though is Harvard Square, its doings and not doings, it trumpet call to words, and sounds, and actions in the October Friday night all-night storm brewing.

The train now rounds the squeaky-sounding bend out of Central Square and stops at the underground Harvard Square station. So now I leave my pensive seat and stand waiting, waiting for the driver to release the pressure to let the sliding train door open, getting ready to jump off the old subway, two-step-at-a-time my way up the two flights of stairs and head for mecca to see if things jump for me tonight. The doors open at last. Up the two-stepped stairs I go, get to the surface and confront the old double-glassed Hayes door entrance and survey the vast table-filled room that at this hour has a few night owl stranglers spotted randomly throughout the place.

You know the old Hayes-Bickford, or one of them, if you live in Boston or New York City, or a few other places on the East Coast, don’t you? Put your tray on the metal slider (hey, I don’t know what you call that slider thing, okay) and cruise down the line from item to item behind the glass-enclosed bins of, mostly, steamy food, if you are looking for fast service, for a quick between doing things, pressing things, meal. Steamed and breaded everything from breakfast to lunch to dinner anytime topped off by dishwater quality coffee (refills on demand, if you feel lucky).

This is not the place to bring your date, certainly not your first date, except maybe for a quick cup of that coffee before going to some event, or home. What this is, really, is a place where you can hang out, and hang out with comfort, because nobody, nobody at all, is going to ask you to leave, at least if you act half-way human. And that is what this place is really about, the humans in all their human conditions doing human things, alien to you or not, that you see floating by you, as you take a seat at one of the one-size-fits all wooden tables with those red vinyl seat covered chairs replete with paper place settings, a few off-hand eating utensils and the usual obligatory array of condiments to help get down the food and drink offered here.

Let me describe who is here at this hour on an early Saturday morning in October 1962. I will not vouch for other times, or other days, but I know Friday and Saturday nights a little so I can say something about them. Of course there is the last drink at the last open barroom crowd, said bar already well-closed in blue law Massachusetts, trying to get sober enough by eating a little food to traverse the road home. Good luck. Needless to say eating food in an all-night cafeteria, any all-night cafeteria, means only one thing-the person is so caught up in a booze frenzy that he (mainly) or she (very occasionally) is desperate for anything to hang the name food on to. Frankly, except for the obligatory hard-dollar coffee-steamed to its essence, then through some mystical alchemic process re-beaned, and served in heavy ceramic mugs that keep in the warmth to keep the eyes open the food here is strictly for the, well, the desperate, drunk or sober.

I might mention a little more about the food as I go along but it is strictly to add color to this little story. Maybe, maybe it will add color to the story but this is mainly about the “literary” life at the old Hayes and the quest for the blue-pink night not the cuisine so don’t hold me to it. Here is the kicker though; there are a few, mercifully few this night, old winos, habitual drunks, and street vagabonds (I am being polite here) who are nuzzling their food, for real. This is the way that you can tell the "last drink" boys, the hail fellows well met, who are just out on the town and who probably go to one of the ten zillion colleges in the area and are drawn like moths (and like wayward high schools kids, including this writer) to the magic name, Harvard Square. They just pick at their food. Those other guys (again, mainly, guys) those habituals and professional waywards work at it like it is their last chance for salvation.

Harvard Square, bright lights, dead of nights, see the sights. That vision is nothing but a commercial, a commercial magnet for every young (and old) hustler within fifty miles of the place to come and display their “acumen”. Their hustle. Three card Monte, quick-change artistry, bait and hook, a little jack-rolling, fake dope-plying, lifting an off-hand wallet, the whole gamut of hustler con lore. On any given Harvard Square weekend night there have got to be more young, naïve, starry-eyed kids hanging out trying to be cool, but really, like me, just learning the ropes of life than you could shake a stick at to set a hustler’s heart, if he (mainly) or she (sometimes) had a heart.

I’ll tell you about a quick con that got me easy in a second but right now let me tell you that at this hour I can see a few con artists just now resting up after a hard night’s work around a couple of tables, comparing notes (or, more likely, trying to con each other, there is no honor among thieves in this little night world. Go to it boys). As to the con that got me, hey it was simple, a guy, an older guy, a twenty-five year old or something like that guy, came up to me while I was talking to a friend and said did I (we) want to get some booze. Sober, sixteen years old, and thrill-seeking I said sure (drinking booze is the coin of the realm for thrills these days, among high school kids that I know, maybe the older set, those college guys, are, I hear, experimenting with drugs but if so it is very on the QT).

He said name your poison, I did, and then he “suggested” a little something for himself. Sure, whatever is right. I gave him the money and he returned a few minutes later with a small bag with the top of a liquor bottle hanging out. He split. We went off to a private area around Harvard Yard (Phillips Brook House, I think) and got ready to have our first serious taste of booze, and maybe get rum brave enough to pick up some girls. Naturally, the bottle is a booze bottle alright but it had been opened (how long before is anyone’s guess) and filled with water. Sucker, right. Now the only reason that I am mentioning this story right now is that the guy who pulled this con is sitting, sitting like the King of Siam, just a few tables away from where I am sitting. The lesson learned for the road, for the future road that beckons: don’t accept packages from strangers without inspecting them and watch out for cons, right? No, hell no. The lesson is this: sure don’t fall for wise guy tricks but the big thing is to shake it off, forget about it if you see the con artist again. You are way to cool to let him (or occasionally her) think that they have conned you. Out loud, anyway.

But wait, I am not here at almost four o’clock in the Hayes-Bickford morning, the Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford morning, to talk about the decor, the food if that is what it is, about the clientele, humble, slick, or otherwise. I am here looking for “talent,” literary talent that is. See, I have been here enough, and have heard enough about the ”beats” (or rather pseudo-beats, or “late phase” beats at this time) and the “folkies” (music people breaking out of the Pop 40 music scene and going back to the roots of America music, way back) to know that a bunch of them, about six in all, right this minute are sitting in a far corner with a light drum tapping the beat listening to a guy in black pants(always de rigueur black), sneakers and a flannel shirt just like me reciting his latest poem. That possibility is what drove me here this night, and other nights as well. See the Hayes is known as the place where someone like Norman Mailer has his buttered toast after one of his “last drink” bouts. Or that Bob Dylan sat at that table, that table right over there, writing something on a napkin. Or some parallel poet to the one now wrapping up his seventy-seven verse imitation Allen Ginsberg's Howl master work went out to San Francisco and blew the lid off the town, the City Lights town, the literary town.

But I better, now that the five-ish dawn light is hovering after my dawdlings, trying to break through the night wars, get my droopy body down those subway stairs pretty soon and back across town before anyone at home notices that I am missing. Still I will take the hard-bitten coffee, re-beaned and all, I will take the sleepy eyes that are starting to weigh down my face, I will even take the con artists and feisty drunks just so that I can be here when somebody’s search for the blue-pink great American West night, farther west than Harvard Square night, gets launched.

***An Encore –Singing The Blues For His Lord- The Reverend Gary Davis Is On Stage

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Reverend Gary Davis Performing On Pete Seeger's "Rainbow Quest".

CD Review

Reverend Gary Davis: At Home:1964-1966, Shanachie Records, 2000

I have mentioned many of the old time black male country blues singers in this space, for example, Son House, Bukka White and Skip James. I have also mentioned the close connection between this rural music, the routine of life on the farm (mainly the Mississippi Delta plantations or sharecropping) and simple religious expression in their works. The blues singer under review meets all of those criteria and more. The Reverend Gary Davis, although not as well known in the country blues pantheon, has had many of his songs covered by the denizens of the folk revival of the 1960's and some rock groups, like The Grateful Dead, looking for a connection with their roots. Thus, by one of the ironies of fate his tradition lives on in popular music. I would also mention here that his work was prominently displayed in one of Stefan Grossman’s Masters Of The Blues documentaries that I have reviewed in this space. That placement is insurance that that the Reverend's musical virtuosity is of the highest order. As an instrumentalist he steals the show in that film. Enough said.

Stick out songs here which have a decidedly more religious bent than a previously reviewed “Twelve Keys To The City” CD are “I Am The True Vine", "Soon My Work Will Be Done" , "I Want To Be Saved,” the gospelly "Blow Gabriel" and “Tired, My Soul Needs Resting”

Some Biographical Information From the Back Cover

Durham, North Carolina in the 1930's was a moderate sized town whose economy was driven by tobacco farming. The tobacco crop acted somewhat as a buffer against the worst ravages of the Depression. During the fall harvest, with its attendant tobacco auctions, there was a bit more money around, and that, naturally, attracted musicians. Performers would drift in from the countryside and frequently took up residence and stayed on. Two master musicians who made Durham their home, whose careers extended decades until they become literally world famous, were Reverend Gary Davis and Sonny Terry.

REV. GARY DAVIS

Reverend Gary Davis was one of the greatest traditional guitarists of the century. He could play fluently in all major keys and improvise continually without repetition. His finger picking style was remarkably free, executing a rapid treble run with his thumb as easily as with his index finger and he had great command of many different styles, representing most aspects of black music he heard as a young man at the beginning of the century. Beyond his blues-gospel guitar, Davis was equally adept at ragtime, marches, breakdowns, vaudeville songs, and much more. Born in Lawrence County, South Carolina in 1895, Davis was raised by his grandmother, who made his first guitar for him. Learning from relatives and itinerant musicians, he also took up banjo and harmonica. His blindness was probably due to a congenital condition. By the time he was a young man he was considered among the elite musicians in his area of South Carolina where, as in most Southern coastal states, clean and fancy finger picking with emphasis on the melody was the favored style. Sometime in the early 1950's, Davis started a ministry and repudiated blues. In 1935, he recorded twelve gospel songs that rank among the masterpieces of the genre. In 1944, he moved to New York where he continued his church work, and sometimes did some street singing in Harlem. By the early 1960's, with the re-emergence of interest in traditional black music, Davis finally received the recognition and prominences he so richly deserved.
*******
Blow, Gabriel, Blow Lyrics


[RENO]
Brothers and sisters, we are here tonight to fight the devil...
Do you hear that playin'?

[COMPANY]
Yes, we hear that playin'!

[RENO]
Do you know who's playin'?

[COMPANY]
No, who is that playin'?

[RENO]
Well, it's Gabriel, Gabriel playin'!
Gabriel, Gabriel sayin'
"Will you be ready to go
When I blow my horn?"

Oh, blow, Gabriel, blow,
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp,
But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp,
So blow, Gabriel, blow!

Oh, I was low, Gabriel, low,
Mighty low, Gabriel, low.
But now since I have seen the light,
I'm good by day and I'm good by night,
So blow, Gabriel, blow!

Once I was headed for hell,
Once I was headed for hell;
But when I got to Satan's door
I heard you blowin' on your horn once more,
So I said, "Satan, farewell!"

And now I'm all ready to fly,
Yes, to fly higher and higher!
'Cause I've gone through brimstone
And I've been through the fire,
And I purged my soul
And my heart too,
So climb up the mountaintop
And start to blow, Gabriel, blow

[ALL]
Come on and blow, Gabriel, blow!

[RENO]
I want to join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land.
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Come on you scamps, get up you sinners!
You're all too full of expensive dinners.
Stand up on your lazy feet and sing!

[ALL]
Blow, Gabriel, blow, (Blow, Gabriel!)
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow. (Blow, Gabriel!)
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp,
But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp,
So blow, Gabriel, blow.

I was low, Gabriel, low, (Low, Gabriel!)
Mighty low, Gabriel, low.
But now since that I have seen the light
I'm good by day and I'm good by night
So blow, Gabriel, blow.

[RENO]
Once I was headed for hell,
Once I was headed for hell;
But when I got to Satan's door
I heard you blowin' on your horn once more,
So I said, "Satan, farewell!"

And now I'm all ready to fly,
Yes, to fly higher and higher!
'Cause I've gone through brimstone
And I've been through the fire,
And I purged my soul
And my heart too,
So climb up the mountaintop
And start to blow, Gabriel, blow

[ALL]
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow!

[RENO]
I want to join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land.
So blow, Gabriel!

[ALL]
Go on and...
Blow, Gabriel, blow
Blow, Gabriel, blow
Blow, Gabriel, blow
I wanna join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land,
So blow, Gabriel, blow, Gabriel, blow, Gabriel, blow!

***Poet's Corner- The German Poet Friedrich Holderlin

In Honor Of Long Ago Marianne, Marianne Who Came Out Of The West Texas Winds In The 1960s Spouting Goethe, Schiller And Holderlin, When We Were Young    

Hölderlin's poems in English translations:

Da ich ein Knabe war ... Da ich ein Knabe war Rettet´ ein Gott mich oft Vom Geschrei und von der Ruthe der Menschen, Da spielt ich sicher und gut Mit den Blumen des Hains, Und die Lüftchen des Himmels Spielten mit mir. Und wie du das Herz Der Pflanzen erfreust, Wenn sie entgegen dir Die zarten Arme streken, So hast du mein Herz erfreut Vater Helios! und, wie Endymion, War ich dein Liebling, Heilige Luna! O all ihr treuen Freundlichen Götter! Wie euch meine Seele geliebt! Zwar damals rieff ich noch nicht Euch mit Nahmen, auch ihr Nanntet mich nie, Wie die Menschen sich nennen Als kennten sie sich. Doch kannt´ ich euch besser, Als ich je die Menschen gekannt, Ich verstand die Stille des Aethers Der Menschen Worte verstand ich nie. Mich erzog der Wohllaut Des säselnden Hains Und lieben lernt´ ich Unter den Blumen. In den Armen der Götter wuchs ich groß. Hälfte des Lebens Mit gelben Birnen hänget Und voll mit wilden Rosen Das Land in den See, Ihr holden Schwäne, Und trunken von Küssen Tunkt ihr das Haupt Ins heilignüchterne Wasser. Weh mir, wo nehm´ ich, wenn Es Winter ist, die Blumen, und wo Den Sonnenschein, Und Schatten der Erde ? Die Mauern stehn Sprachlos und kalt, im Winde Klirren die Fahnen. Half of Life With its yellow pears And wild roses everywhere The shore hangs into the lake, O gracious swans, And drunk with kisses You dip your heads In the sobering holy water. Ah, where will I find Flowers, come winter, And where the sunshine And shade of the earth ? Walls stand cold And speechless, in the wind The wheathervanes creak. I tried to select two translations which seem to capture most of the quality of the original poems. They are by Michael Hamburger (In my boyhood days ...) and Richard Sieburth (Half of Life), respectively. Since this probably represents a copyright violation, I guess I should at least try to make up for this by providing links to order the books from which the translations were taken. Both books also include quite nice introductions to Hölderlin's life and works: Friedrich Hölderlin, Hymns and Fragments, translated and introduced by Richard Sieburt, Princeton University Press Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments, translated by Michael Hamburger, Penguin Books Page provided by Hermann Brunner.

In my boyhood days ... In my boyhood days Often a god would save me From the shouts and from the rods of men; Safe and good then I played With the orchard flowers And the breezes of heaven Played with me. And as you make glad The hearts of the plants When toward you they stretch There delicate arms. So you made glad my heart, Father Helios, and like Endymion I was your darling, Holy Luna. O all you loyal, Kindly gods! Would that you knew how My soul loved you then. True, at that time I did not Evoke you by name yet, and you Never named me, as men use names, As though they knew one another. Yet I knew you better Than ever I have known men, I understood the silence of Aether, But human words I´ve never understood. I was reared by the euphony Of the rustling copse And learned to love Amid the flowers. I grew up in the arms of the gods.