The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Old Man’s Old Sea- In Honor Of Our Homeland, The Ocean-With Phil Phillips’ Sea of Love In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Old Man’s Old Sea- In Honor Of Our Homeland, The Ocean-With Phil Phillips’ Sea of Love In Mind

"Sea Of Love" was written by Philip Baptiste, George Khoury. 

Do you remember when we met?
That's the day I knew you were my pet
I wanna tell you how much I love you

Come with me, my love, to the sea
The sea of love
I wanna tell you just how much I love you
Come with me to the sea of love

Do you remember when we met?
Oh, that's the day I knew you were my pet
I wanna tell you, oh, how much I love you

Come with me to the sea of love
Come with me, my love, to the sea
The sea of love
I wanna tell you just how much I love you
I wanna tell you, oh, how much I love you

Songwriters
PHILIP BAPTISTE, GEORGE KHOURY

Read more: Robert Plant - Sea Of Love Lyrics | MetroLyrics

 Introduction by Allan Jackson
[Sam Lowell who just came back from a trip up to ocean Maine with Laura Perkins his longtime companion, my friend and a fellow writer here for the past few years once she got her bearings after being at other more fruitful for her publications reminded that when we were growing up in the old run down Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville one of the things that got us through some tough spots was close access to the sea. Access to the briny Atlantic Ocean which I, we feared and loved. Feared either by personal misfortune such as the time I almost drowned at eight years old due to my impending hubris although I did not know that word then or by victimization by the furies of our father Neptune when a vagrant hurricane swept through the area. I had hardly forgotten that experience, but it did help that Sam reminded me of some of the good parts since climate change and every other kind of misfortune has been wreaked on that desolate land.

Kids, kids probably from any generation if my own brood of grandchildren are any indication are like lemmings to the sea once they get a whiff of that pungent air. (I always made whatever companion/wife I had at any given time laugh when we were within about fifty miles of the ocean whenever we were travelling, and I think I got them thinking that way too. Needless to say, on a less humorous note please, pretty please don’t bury me in Kansas, Oklahoma either if what Sam tells me about a musical he and Laura saw up in oceanside Maine has any truth to it.) As I write this short intro, short because in re-reading this sketch there is no more that I can worthily add that would give better insight in its effects I can plausibly add no more. I would suggest however that you pay special attention to the section about Angelica of the roses and sweet beds and her reaction to the fury of the seas from somebody who grew up in Indiana and did not see the seas until adulthood. Allan Jackson]
************

It is dawn, or maybe just those few minutes before the dawn, those dark light minutes when the sun’s battle for the day is set. The waves splash, today not so innocently, today not so tepidly like the past several days when the she sea sounds did not mercifully drown out traffics, construction hammers, or beach tractor clean-ups but swirling out from some hidden sea swells beyond the horizon against the defenseless waiting sand, sand beaten down since time immemorial. Or as long as anyone has been watching that feat, that seemingly endless feat.
This beach, this northern clime beach, the far end of Saco, Maine beach, is this day filled with empty clam shells from some timeless previous sea swirlings waiting sandification (is that right?), abandoned and mislaid lobster traps (and one up in lobster country had better know the difference, know the livelihood difference between the two conditions , just in case some irate craggy boat captain, aged liked the seas, decides to reclaim one over your head), occasional oil slicks spilled from the trawlers (and hopefully only small working  residues and not some monster slick by some tiny horizon tanker heading to oil depot ports further up the coast), working trawlers nearby, the flotsam and jetsam streamed here of a thousand ships, cargoes, careless throwaways and conscious, very conscious dumpings, like the sea was just another land-fill wanting filling.

Today though I am ready, ready for the hundredth hundredth time to walk the walk, the ocean walk that has defined more parts of me than heaven will ever know. As I button up my yellow slicker against the April winds that come here more often than, and can come out of the blue against the Bay of Fundy confusions, one minute eighty degrees the next thirty five, I see, see faintly in the distance, a figure, a fellow traveler taking his, her or its (don’t laugh I have seen horses, unridden horses, trotting these beaches, although no sea monsters), maybe also hundredth hundredth walking along the ocean sidewalk, and maybe, just maybe, for the same reason.
Today, hundredth, hundredth walk or not, I am in a remembering mood, a high dudgeon remembering mood that always gets triggered by proximity, fifty mile proximity if the truth be known, to the ocean. I have just finished up a piece of work that reminded me of seas, sea-sides, sea walks, sea rocks, ocean-side carnival amusement parks placed as if to mock the intrinsic interest that one would have in the sea, our homeland the sea, and I need to sort this out, also for that now familiar ten-thousandth time. But I best begin at the beginning, or try to, so I will be finished in that hour or so that it will take me to walk this walk, this rambling ocean walk, and I will pass that solitary walker coming the other way and be obliged under some law of the sea to break my train of thought and remark on the nature of the day, the nature of the ocean, and the joys of ocean-ness brought forth by old King Neptune to that passing stranger.

Ah, memory, jesus, just the names, Taffrail Road, Yardarm Lane, Captain's Walk, Quarterdeck Road, Sextant Circle, and the Snug Harbor Elementary School tell a story all on their own. Yes, those names, those seemingly misplaced, misbegotten names and places from the old housing project down in Adamsville, down in my old hometown, and where I came of age, sea-worthy age as well, surely evoke imagines of the sea, of long ago sailing ships, mast-strewn ships, and of desperate, high stakes battles fought off shrouded, mist-covered coasts by those hearty enough to seek fame and fortune. And agile enough to keep it. Almost from my first wobbly, halting baby steps down at “the projects” I have been physically drawn to the sea, a seductive, foam-flecked siren call that has never left me.
Needless to say, ever since I was a toddler my imagination, my sense of imagery, my sense of the nature of the world has been driven by the sea as well. Not so much of pirates and prizes, although those drove my youth a bit but of the power of nature, for good or evil. And on those long ago days, just like now, I dressed against the impending inclement weather with my mustard yellow rain slicker(French’s mustard color not Guiden’s, okay) complete with Gloucester fisherman’s rain floppy rain hat of the same color and rubber boots, black, knee-length boots that go squish, squish and have done so since before time immemorial.

Of course, anybody with any sense knows that anyone who had even a passing attachment to a place like Adamsville, tucked in a bay, an Atlantic bay, had to have an almost instinctual love of the sea; and, a fear of its furies when old Mother Nature turns her back on us. Yes, the endless sea, our homeland the sea, the mother we never knew, the sea... But, enough of those imaginings. If being determines consciousness, and if you love the ocean, then it does not hurt to have been brought up in Adamsiville with its ready access to the bay and water on three sides. That said, the focal point for any experience with the ocean in Adamsville centered, naturally, around its longest stretch of beach, Adamsville Central Beach. Puny by Saco beach far-as-the-eye-can-see standards, and Saco puny by Carlsbad (California Carlsbad) farther-than-the-eye-can-see standards but a place to learn the ropes of how to deal with the sea, with its pitfalls, its mysteries, it lure, and its lore.

For many of us of a certain age brought forth by the sea, including this writer, one cannot discuss Adamsville Central Beach properly without reference to such spots such as Howard Johnson's famous landmark ice cream stand (now a woe-begotten clam shack of no repute). For those who are clueless as to what I speak of, or have only heard about it in mythological terms from older relatives, or worst, have written it off as just another ice cream joint you can only dream of such heavens although someone, not me, not me today as I remembrance with a broad stroke and have no time for pretty descriptions, for literary flourishes, should really do themselves proud and write the history, yah, the child’s view history of that establishment. And make the theme, make the theme if you will, the bond between New England love of ice cream and of the sea (yes, it is true, other parts of the country, other ocean parts of the country as well, are, well, nonplussed by the ice cream idea, and it shows in their product).

Know this for now though: many a hot, muggy, sultry, sweaty summer evening was spent in line impatiently, and perhaps, on occasion, beyond impatience, waiting for one of those 27 (or was it 28?) flavors to cool off with. In those days the prize went to cherry vanilla in a sugar cone (backup: frozen pudding). I will not bore the reader with superlative terms and “they don’t make them like they used to”, especially for those who only know “Ho Jo’s” from the later, pale imitation franchise days out on some forsaken turnpike highway, but at that moment I was in very heaven.

Nor can one forget those stumbling, fumbling, fierce childish efforts, bare-footed against all motherly caution against the dreaded jellyfish (or motherly cautions against everything, everything even the slightest bit harmful in this dangerous old world), pail and shovel in hand, to dig for seemingly non-existent clams down toward the South Adamsville end of the beach at the, in those days, just slightly oil-slicked, sulfuric low tide (the days before dinosaur lament fossils fuels exploded the oceans). Or the smell of charcoal-flavored hot dogs on those occasional family barbecues (when one in a series of old jalopies, Nash Ramblers come to mind and disappear, that my father drove worked well enough to get us there) at the then just recently constructed old Treasure Island (now named after some fallen Marine) that were some of the too few times when my family acted like a family. Or, more vivid, the memory of roasted, really burnt, sticky marshmallows sticking to the roof of my mouth (and maybe still ancient wound stuck there).

But those thoughts and smells are not the only ones that interest me today. No trip down memory lane would be complete without at least a passing reference to high school Adamsville Central Beach. The sea brings out many emotions: humankind's struggle against nature ( a fitful and uneven struggle at best as a few over the top wave crashes have demonstrated to keep us on our toes, and humble), some Zen notions of oneness with the universe (and if not Zen then Kali, Misha or some Zoroastrian flaming fire god mad monk), the calming effect of the thundering waves (rule: speak no louder than the angriest wave in its presence, children under twelve excepted), thoughts of mortality (endless seas bring that notion to the fore and not just ancient wounds and sorrows), and so on. But it also brings out the primordial longings for companionship. And no one longs for companionship more than teenagers. So the draw of the ocean is not just in its cosmic appeal but hormonal, as well. Mind you, however, we, you and I, just in case a stray naive child of about eight is around, are not discussing the nighttime Adamsville Beach, the time of "parking" and the "submarine races.” Our thoughts are now pure as the driven snow. We will confine ourselves to the day time beach.

Virtually from the day we got out of school for the summer vacation I headed for the beach. And not just any section of that beach but the section directly between the John Adams and John Quincy Adams Yacht Clubs (yes, it was that kind of city touting ancient wise men long gone and not missed, not missed after the obligatory sixth grade crypt visit in the Center, not missed, hell, not even on the radar for heady 1960s teenagers. Now, I ask you, was situating myself in that spot done so that I could watch all the fine boats at anchor? Or was this the best swimming location on the beach? Hell no, this is where we heard (and here I include my old running pal and classmate, Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, the king of the North Adamsville corner boy night around Salducci’s Pizza Parlor of blessed memory and nothing but a flame-throwing lady-killer, uh, when his honey, Joanne Doyle was summering elsewhere) all the "babes" were. We were, apparently, under the influence of Beach Blanket Bingo or some such teenage beach film. (For those who are again clueless this was a grade B ‘boy meets girl’ saga the plot behind a thousand Hollywood films, except they exploded into song on the beach as well.)

Well, for those who expected a movie-like happy ending to this section of the remembrance piece, you know, where I meet a youthful "Ms. Right" to the strains of the song Sea of Love, forget it. (That is the original Sea of Love, by the way, not the one used in the movie of the same name sung by Tom Waits at the end, and a cover that you should listen to on YouTube.) I will keep the gory details short, though. As fate would have it there may have been "babes" aplenty down there but not for this lad. I don't know about you but I was just too socially awkward (read, tongue-tied) to get up the nerve to talk to girls (female readers substitute boys here). And on reflection, if the truth were to be known, I would not have known what to do about such a situation in any case. No job, no money and, most importantly, no car for a date to watch one of those legendary "submarine races" that we, you and I, have agreed that we will not discuss here. But we can hardly fault the sea for that, right?

But visions of nearly one-half century ago hardly exhaust the lure of the sea. And, speaking of visions, that fellow sea-seeker I mentioned a while ago, coming from the other end of the beach is starting to take shape, it is a he, I can tell by the walk, by the sea walk that men put on when they are alone with their thoughts, although beyond that he is too far away for me to determine age, class (this is a very democratic beach, in most spots, with few vulgar and almost universally disregarded no-trespassing-private property-keep out-beware-of-dogs-police-take-notice signs on some Mayfair swell properties), or physical description, as the suppressed light from the cloudy morning day gets a little brighter

Funny, some people I have known, including some I grew up with, grew up with breathing ocean air embedded in their inner beings and who started with a love of the sea much as I did, moved to Kansas, Omaha, Peoria, Winnemucca or some such place, some such distinctly non-ocean place and never looked back. Christ, as is well known by one and all who know me I get very nervous even now when, as a city boy, I go to the country and do not have the feel of city lights to comfort me. Not as well- known is the fact, the hard fact that I get nervous, very nervous, when I am not within driving distance of some ocean, say that fifty miles mentioned above. So keep, please keep, your Kansas, your Omaha, your Peoria, and your damned Winnemucca (and that desolate bus station bench I slept on one night after giving up on the hitchhike road for the evening trying to head out of town to no avail, trying to head ocean west, and let me be, be in places like Bar Harbor, Maine, Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, Sanibel Island, Florida, Carlsbad, California (hell no, not the New Mexico one ), Mendocino, ditto California, Seattle, Washington just to name a few places on this continent, and there are many others, and on other continents, or the edges of other continents, as well. And stories, plenty of stories, which I don’t have time to tell you now except for one that will stand in as an exemplar for what I mean. By the way that form, that mannish form, coming toward me is looking more like a young man by the speed of his walk, and he too seems to have on a the favored sea dog yellow rain jacket. 
****
January 1970 visions of Angelica, Angelica of the homeland sea.
I waved good-bye to Angelica, once again, as she drove off from the ocean front campsite that we had been camping out on, the Leo Carrillo State Park near Point Magoo about fifty miles or so north of Los Angeles. She will now drive the road back in her green Ford Hertz unlimited mileage, mid-size rental (paid for, as she explained one night, by her parents whose golden age of the automobile-frenzied minds counted it as a strike against me, a very big strike, that when I had “kidnapped” their daughter on the 1969 blue-pink summer road west down in Steubenville, Ohio I didn’t even have a car). She planned (on my advice) to drive back mostly on the ocean-abutted, white-capped waves smashing against jagged ancient shore rocks, Pacific Coast Highway down through Malibu and Santa Monica to take one last look at the Pacific Ocean as the final point on her first look ocean trip, on the way to LAX to take a flight back to school days Muncie, Indiana.

She will also be driving back to the airport and getting on that miserable plane east knowing as I do since we talked about it incessantly during her stay, that some right things, or at least some maybe right things, like our being together last summer heading free west and for these two January weeks in front of the sea, our homeland the sea, before her classes started again, got caught up in the curious web of the human drama. For no understandable reason. Hey, you already knew this if you have ever had even that one teeny-weeny, tiny, minuscule love affair that just had no place to go, or no time to take root, or just got caught out there in the blue-pink night. Yah, you know that story. But let me take some minutes to tell you this one. If it seems very familiar and you “know” the plot line well then just move on.

To get you up to speed after Angelica and I had been on the heartland hitchhike road (and places like Moline, Neola, and Omaha are nothing but the heartland, good or bad), she, well, she just got tired of it, tired of the lacks, tired of the uncertainties of the road. Hell hell-on-wheels, I was getting tired of it myself except I was a man on a mission. The nature of that mission is contained in the words “search for the blue-pink great American West night” so the particulars of that mission need not detain us here. So in Neola, Iowa, Neola, Iowa of all places aided by “fairy grandmother” Aunt Betty, who ran the local diner where Angelica worked to help make us some dough to move on, and her own sense of dreams she called it quits back in September. Aunt Betty drove us to Omaha where Angelica took the bus back east, Indiana east from Nebraska, to hometown Muncie and I hit Interstate 80 West headed first to Denver before the snows, or so I hoped.

Honestly, although we exchanged addresses and telephone numbers where messages could be left, or where we could speak to each other (her parents’ house not being one of them), and made big plans to reunite in California in January during her school break, I didn’t really think that once we were off the road together that those plans would pan out.
Now I may not remember all my reasoning at the time this far removed, the now of my telling this story many years later, but I had had enough relationships with women to sense this one was good, very good, while it lasted but it could not survive the parting.
Not one of those overused “absence makes the heart grow fonder” things you hear about. And, truth to tell, because I thought that was the way things would play out, I started getting focused back on Boston Joyel more than a little as I walked a lot, stood at the shoulder of the hitchhike road a lot, and fitfully got my rides on the road west.

But see this is where you think you have something figured out just so and then it goes awry. Angelica called, left messages, sent letters, even a telegram, to Denver (to the commune where, Jack and Mattie, my traveling companions on the final leg west whom I had met earlier in the spring on a different trip down to D.C., were staying). She sent more communications in early December saying that she was still coming to Los Angeles as well where we three stayed with a few artistic friends of Jack and Mattie’s. Cinema-crazed artistic friends, including one budding film director who, moreover, had great dope connections right into the heart of Mexico. This is where they would stay while I planned to push the hitchhike road north heading to San Francisco.

I once, in running through one of the scenes in this hitchhike road show, oh yah, it was the Neola scene, mentioned that in Angelica what you saw was what you got, what she said was what she meant, and both those were good things indeed. And so if I had thought about it a minute of course she was coming to California in January and staying with me for her two week break, and maybe longer. So when January came she contacted me though John and Mattie, who like I said were now staying with this very interesting experimental film-maker, David, in the Hollywood hills and canyons. I started back south to L.A. in order to meet her at the airport. From there I had it planned that we would go to Point Magoo and camp out like in the “old days” at an ocean front state park.

Needless to say when I greeted her at LAX we both were all smiles, I was in more than all smiles mode, because I had been “stag” for a while and she was, well, fetching as always, or almost always. Here though is where I noticed that the road really is not for everyone. In Neola, and later getting on the bus back home in Omaha, poor Angelica looked pretty haggard but at the airport, well like I said, she was fetching.
And, guess what, she brought her sleeping bag that we had gotten for her in a Lexington, Kentucky Army-Navy Store when we first seriously started on the road west. The first thing she said about it was, referring to a little in-joke between us, “it fits two, in a pinch.” Be still my heart. So we gathered up her stuff, did the airport exit stuff (easier in those days) and picked up the outside shuttle to the Hertz car rental terminal. We were jabbering away like crazy, but best of all, we were like, a little, those first days last summer back in that old-time Steubenville truck stop diner and cabin when I first met her.

Of course, part of the trip for her, part of what she went as far as she could with me on the hitchhike road for, was to get to California and see what it was all about, and what the ocean was all about since she was a heartland girl who had never seen the ocean before. When we got to Point Magoo she flipped out, she flipped out mostly at the idea that we would stay, could stay right on the beach in front of the ocean. And just like a kid, just like I did when I was kid and saw the ocean, when she saw the Pacific, she jumped right in. Hell, she was so excited she almost got caught in a small riptide. I had to go drag her out. I won’t say we had fun every minute of those weeks acting out our ocean nomad existence, but most minutes, and I could see that she felt the same way.

Naturally, as time drifted away toward her return flight date we talked more and more about what the future, if any, held in store for us. She was adamant about not going back on the road, she was adamant as well that she wanted to finish school and make something of herself. I had no serious defense against that practical wisdom. And, truthfully, I wasn’t, toward the end of her stay, pushing the issue, partially because even I could see that it made sense but also, we had had a “flare-up” over the Boston Joyel question (I am being polite here).

But it was more than that; the flat out, hungry truth was that I really didn’t know how to deal with a Midwestern what you see is what you get woman like Angelica. I was more used to virtuous Irish Catholic girls who drove me crazy as a kid getting me all twisted up about religion, about nice girls, and about duplicity when I found out what the real score was with this type of young girl/ woman later. I was also, and Joyel was the epitome of this type, totally in sync (well, as much as a man can be) with the Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look-at-everything-from-twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of human relationships 24/7 kind of woman. And fatally attracted to them (and still am). This Angelica look at things only a couple of ways, let’s work things out easy-like, heavens, let’s not analyze everything to the nth degree flipped me out. Angelica was a breath of fresh air and, maybe, maybe, about ten years later, and two divorces later to boot, I would have had that enough sense god gave geese to hold onto her with both hands, tightly, very tightly. But I was in my blue-pink search phase and not to be detoured.

Of course all this hard work of trying to understand where we stood put a little crack in our reason for being together in the first place. The search for, search for something. Maybe, for her, it was just that life minute at the ocean and then on to regular life minutes out in the thickets of the white picket fences. She never said it then in so many words but that seemed to be the aim. And to be truthful, although I was only just barely thinking about it at the time, as the social turmoil of the times got weird, diffuse, and began to evaporate things started to lose steam. As we were, seemingly, endlessly taking our one-sided beatings as those in charge started a counter-offensive ( a counter-offensive still going on) people, good people, but people made of human clay nevertheless got tired of the this and that existence, even Joyel. Joyel of Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look-at-everything-from-twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of relationships 24/7 was also weary and wary of what was next and where she fit into “square” society. Christ, enough of that, we know, or knew, that song too well.

A couple of days before Angelica was to leave, and on a day when the sun seemed especially bright, especially bright for then smog-filled Los Angeles January, and warm, not resident warm but Boston and Muncie warm, sat like two seals sunning ourselves in the glow of mother ocean she nudged me and asked me if I had a joint. Now Angelica liked a little vino now and then but I can’t recall her ever doing a joint (grass, marijuana, herb, ganja, whatever you call it in your neck of the woods). So this is new. The problem, although not a big one in ocean-side state park 1970 Southern California, was that I was not “holding.” No problem though, a few spots down the beach was an old well-traveled, kind of beat-up Volkswagen van that I knew, knew just as sure as I was standing on that white sand beach, was “holding.” I went over, asked around, and “bingo” two nice big joints came traveling with me back to our campsite. Oh, daddy, daddy out in the be-bop blue-pink night thank you brother van man. For just a minute, just that 1970 California minute, the righteous did inherit the earth.

Back at our camp site Angelica awaited the outcome of my quest, although she also wanted to wait until later, until the day’s sun started going down a bit more to go into that smoked-filled good night. When that later came Angelica was scared/ thrilled, as she tried to smoke the one I lit up for her and started coughing like crazy, but that was nothing then. Everybody, at least everybody I knew, went through that same baptism. But Jesus, did we get mellow, that stuff, as was most stuff then, was primo, not your ragweed bull stuff that ran the rounds later. And why should it have not been so as we were so close to the then sane Mexican border of those days to get the good stuff.

But all of this build-up over this dope scene is so much filler, filler in those days when if you didn’t at least take a pipe full (inhale or not, like it or not) you were a square “squared.” What the stuff did for Angelica, and through Angelica to me, got her to open up a little. No, not about family, or old boyfriends, or her this and that problems. No, but kind of deep, kind of deep somewhere that she maybe didn’t know existed. Deep as I had ever heard her before. She talked about her fate, the fate of the fates, about what was going on in the world, no, not politics; she was organically incapable of that. Mystics stuff, getting in touch with the sea homeland stuff, earth mother stuff too in a way. Dope-edged stuff sure but when she compared the splashing foam-flecked waves to some cosmic force that I forget how she put it (remember I was dope-addled as well) then for just that moment, just that moment when the old red-balled sun started to dip to the horizon on one of those fairly rare days when it met the ocean I swear that Angelica knew, knew in her heart, knew in her soul even, what the blue-pink American West dream stuff I had bombarded her with was all about. That was our moment, and we both knew it.

So when leaving came a couple of days later and we both knew, I think, as we packed up her things, including that well-used sleeping bag, we had come to a parting of the roads. As I put her stuff in the rental car she sweetly blurted out something I was also thinking, “I’ll always remember that night we made the earth under the cabin in Steubenville shake.” And I thought I bet she will, although she forgot the part about the making the roof of the cabin move too. And so there I was, waving as she drove off to her Angelica dreams. And I never saw her again.
*********
But enough of ancient thoughts, of ancient sea thoughts, and ancient sea loves because just now I see that previously distant figure is none other than a young boy, a young boy of maybe six or seven, not older I am sure. About fifty yards away he stops, as boys and girls will when confronted with the endless treasures of the sea, and is intently looking at some sea object although I cannot make it out from this distance. What I can make out, make out very plainly, is that he is wearing a mustard yellow rain slicker (French’s mustard color not Guiden’s) complete with a Gloucester fisherman’s floppy rain hat of the same color and knee-deep rubber boots, black, of course. As we approach each other I notice that he has that determined sea walk that I have carried with me since childhood. I look at him intensely, he looks at me intensely, and we nod as we pass each other. No words, no remarks on the nature of the day, the nature of the ocean, and the joys of ocean-ness brought forth by old King Neptune need be spoken between us. The nod, the ocean swell, and the ocean sound as the waves crashed almost to the sand beneath our feet, spoke for us. The torch had been passed.

In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-David Gilbert

In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-David Gilbert 
 
http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
 
A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month 

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now! 
 

GILBERT, DAVID

When Cowboy Angels Roamed The Wide World Wicked West-With The 75th Anniversary Of The Musical “Oklahoma!” In Mind-Okay

When Cowboy Angels Roamed The Wide World Wicked West-With The 75^th Anniversary Of The Musical “Oklahoma!” In Mind-Okay

By Sam Lowell

Everybody has been fretting about the freight car full of 50^th anniversary commemorations over the past couple of years starting with 2017s Summer of Love, 1967 (the obsessive devotion to honor which was the undoing of long time site manager here Allan Jackson but that is a tale already told) and now knee deep in the 2018 ones with the sad recent commemoration of Bobby, you know beloved Bobby Kennedy of the “seek a newer world” idea. Earlier in the year Si Lannon was beside in commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the musical Hair and a couple of years ago Sandy Salmon went nuts over the 75^th anniversary commemoration of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s Casablanca. So I am in good company in running an account of the 75^th anniversary of the musical Oklahoma! Which is in revival at the famous summer stock Ogunquit Playhouse up in the Maine town of the same name.

Frankly I had no intention of going to the revival or of commenting on the production here in this space but I have had more onerous tasks under more trying conditions, so I am not complaining. See my long- time companion Laura Perkins wanted to go to Maine as is her wont to get some sunlight and fresh ocean air before the places get crowded with people from all over including those denizens of landlocked Quebec nation who seek the Maine shore as their own come July and August. As is well known by those who have even glanced at this space over the years I am crazy for the ocean so it was a no-brainer. As we prepared for the short trip Laura mentioned how much she has liked the production o of The Million Dollar Quartet about the minute at the Sun Records studio in Memphis Elvis, I hope I need not give a surname, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis blew out the rock and roll lights early in their careers and wondered aloud whether we might see something at the Playhouse while we were up there. I checked and it came out Oklahoma!, or rather the last preview of the production. I got the tickets and we were off.

Now Laura knows all kinds of good things about music, books, art, culture in general as she has displayed here over the past year or so since she has come back to write reviews that have suited her talents. What she knew nada, nothing, no way about was Broadway musicals and show tunes. Clueless from how they are produced and the norm of how their creators divide up the labor as here with Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers doing music and lyrics a thing they did many times to good effect on the Great White Way. So this production was something of a primer about how said musicals come together in the modern theater. Previously to this very musical most of them starred well-known singers who sang their hearts out behind a thinly veiled script, usually so hokey boy meets girl thing although that has been the staple of many creative ventures in books and film as well. Without getting bogged down in technical stuff this pair, Oscar and Richard if I may be so bold, decided to grab unknown singers and dancers and do an ensemble performance around what is frankly still a pretty thin plotline-yes that tried and true boy meets girl thing that has keep half of Western civilization on the edge of their seats form millennia plopping it down in the West as an add on.

Of course, in America, the America of the original conception you could not go wrong by heading out to the Wild West, well sort of wild west to do a tribute to the rugged individuals who went there-and survived. Went to the Oklahoma Territory early on before statehood cast its shadow on the land, on the Native American land if you think about it. Land from the trail of tears now with white value as the teeming Eastern cities filled up and some looked for that legendary pot of gold and streets paved that way too away from all of that grit and grime to breathe free at last. Still remember as everybody should and as a god friend of mine learned the hard way out in Standing Rock when they were trying to stop the goddam pipeline going through their sacred lands, remember it was Native American sacred land, their sacred lands. Some are juts now starting to do their invocations around that theme just so the unknowing get to know what is what. Kids of my generation, the vaunted Generation of ’68 which is beginning to tire and peter out, and maybe the generation before learned, the one the media have declared the greatest generation based on scant evidence beyond the Great Depression and World War II after which they fell asleep, a drugged sleep if you ask me, their idea of the West, the only good Indian is a dead one, good guys wear white hats and bad guys from Hollywood movies, the ubiquitous television and less so from book by guys like Zane Grey and his crowd.  

       

That was not the real West as more recent Hollywood productions and books have underscored but the West of the 1940s understanding that city guys like Rodgers and Hammerstein has in mind. The real deal though beside touting the virtues of the West is the inevitable romance between the two main characters handsome singing cowboy angel to make Tex Ritter blush angel Curly and his dead aim at Laurie who for much of the production does not give him the time of day despite her love for the big goof. Along the way though there is a dark spot in the person of the crazy maniac Jud who also has a hankering for Laurie, a murderous hankering. This Jud represents the uncivilized part of the West but for purposes of the musical also is the center of a dream sequence which I thought was rather amazing for what had started outlooking like a light look at the West draped around the romance. Of course there was the usual amount of singing especially the title tune and Oh What a Beautiful Morning as the newly wedded part after fighting off the dark spirits of Jud in their very own surrey with the fringe on top.

P.S. I note that one Laura Perkins. She of the nada, nothing, no way has ordered Camelot, An American in Paris, and a couple of Miss Judy Garland musicals, the latter after I tipped her to the fate of one of our old corner boys Timmy Riley who eventually came out of the closet in San Francisco and is running the most popular tourist attraction drag queen show in that town with him occasionally headlining with his take on Miss Judy Garland which had made him the toast of the town.       

Rosalie Sorrels Passes At 83 (2017)- The Long Labor Memory, Indeed- The Music Of Rosalie Sorrels and Utah Phillips

Rosalie Sorrels Passes At 83 (2017)- The Long Labor Memory, Indeed- The Music Of Rosalie Sorrels and Utah Phillips

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in (and the former two never got over since they will still tell a tale or two about the times if you go anywhere within ten miles of the subject-I will take my chances here because this notice is important) all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. That is where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers who sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.  

But there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some other colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s where some of those names played but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is different, where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes.   

The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. She was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember her cover of Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels

CD REVIEWS

Every Month Is Labor Month

The Long Memory, Indeed

The Long Memory, Rosalie Sorrels and Utah Phillips, Red House Records, 1996

The first paragraph here has been used in reviewing other Rosalie Sorrels CDs in this space.

“My first association of the name Rosalie Sorrels with folk music came, many years ago now, from hearing the recently departed folk singer/storyteller/ songwriter and unrepentant Wobblie (IWW) Utah Phillips mention his long time friendship with her going back before he became known as a folksinger. I also recall that combination of Sorrels and Phillips as he performed his classic “Starlight On The Rails” and she his also classic “If I Could Be The Rain” on a PBS documentary honoring the Café Lena in Saratoga, New York, a place that I am also very familiar with for many personal and musical reasons. Of note here: it should be remembered that Rosalie saved, literally, many of the compositions that Utah left helter-skelter around the country in his “bumming” days.”

That said, what could be better than to have Rosalie and Utah on the same CD (although not together) singing and telling stories about the old days in the labor movement, mainly the labor movement of the American West that was instrumental in creating the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW, Wobblies). Listen to Rosalie on the story of Aunt Molly Jackson and the National Miners’ Union (NMU) (a Stalinist ‘third period’ “red union” that took over when John L. Lewis’ UMW left the miners in the lurch-sound familiar). Or the saga of a mill closing in an earlier version of runaway factories (then mainly to the south of this country) in “Aragon Mills”.

A nice story told by Utah is that of the genesis of soap box oration as is his singing of his classic “All Used Up”. Utah here pays tribute to the heroic exploits of Mother Jones, one of our early real militant labor leaders (by example, I should add). And also notes what happens when there are no (or few, as today) militant unions to fight for decency and justice in “No More Reds In The Union”. I give special attention here to “Nevada Jane” a song that Utah wrote based on stories told to him in Butte, Montana about the legendary “Big Bill” Haywood , probably the best labor leader, pound for pound, produced by the American labor movement I the 20th century and his wife Nevada Jane. Whether the stories were true and the song has it right about the relationship between the pair is separate question but I still like it. While Utah and I had a very wide political gap between us we shared one thing in common- a long, long memory about the fate of the international labor movement. Adieu, Utah.

If I Could Be The Rain-"Utah Phillips"

Everybody I know sings this song their own way, and they arrive at their own understanding of it. Guy Carawan does it as a sing along. I guess he thinks it must have some kind of universal appeal. To me, it's a very personal song. It's about events in my life that have to do with being in love. I very seldom sing it myself for those reasons.


If I could be the rain, I'd wash down to the sea;
If I could be the wind, there'd be no more of me;
If I could be the sunlight, and all the days were mine,
I would find some special place to shine.

But all the rain I'll ever be is locked up in my eyes,
When I hear the wind it only whispers sad goodbyes.
If I could hide the way I feel I'd never sing again;
Sometimes I wish that I could be the rain.

If I could be the rain, I'd wash down to the sea;
If I could be the wind, there'd be no more of me;
If I could hide the way I feel I'd never sing again;
Sometimes I wish that I could be the rain.

Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips


THE TELLING TAKES ME HOME
(Bruce Phillips)

Let me sing to you all those songs I know
Of the wild, windy places locked in timeless snow,
And the wide, crimson deserts where the muddy rivers flow.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.

Come along with me to some places that I've been
Where people all look back and they still remember when,
And the quicksilver legends, like sunlight, turn and bend
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.

Walk along some wagon road, down the iron rail,
Past the rusty Cadillacs that mark the boom town trail,
Where dreamers never win and doers never fail,
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.

I'll sing of my amigos, come from down below,
Whisper in their loving tongue the songs of Mexico.
They work their stolen Eden, lost so long ago.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.

I'll tell you all some lies, just made up for fun,
And the loudest, meanest brag, it can beat the fastest gun.
I'll show you all some graves that tell where the West was won.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.

And I'll sing about an emptiness the East has never known,
Where coyotes don't pay taxes and a man can live alone,
And you've got to walk forever just to find a telephone.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.

Let me sing to you all those songs I know
Of the wild, windy places locked in timeless snow,
And the wide, crimson deserts where the muddy rivers flow.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STARLIGHT ON THE RAILS
(Bruce Phillips)

I can hear the whistle blowing
High and lonesome as can be
Outside the rain is softly falling
Tonight its falling just for me

Looking back along the road I've traveled
The miles can tell a million tales
Each year is like some rolling freight train
And cold as starlight on the rails

I think about a wife and family
My home and all the things it means
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams

A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time
A man who spends his life just rambling
Is like a song without a rhyme


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALL USED UP
( U. Utah Phillips)

I spent my whole life making somebody rich
I busted my ass for that son of a bitch
He left me to die like a dog in a ditch
And told me I'm all used up

He used up my labor, he used up my time
He plundered my body and squandered my mind
Then he gave me a pension, some handouts and wine
And told me I'm all used up

My kids are in hock to a god you call Work
Slaving their lives out for some other jerk
And my youngest in 'Frisco just made shipping-clerk
He don't know I'm all used up

Some young people reach out for power and gold
And they don't have respect for anything old
For pennies they're bought, for promises sold
Someday they'll be used up

They use up the oil, they use up the trees
They use up the air and they use up the seas
But how about you, friend, and how about me
What's left, when we're all used up

I'll finish my life in this crummy hotel
It's lousy with bugs and my God, what a smell
But my plumbing still works and I'm clear as a bell
Don't tell me I'm all used up

Outside my window the world passes by
It gives me a handout, then spits in my eye
And no one can tell me, 'cause no one knows why
I'm still living, but I'm all used up

Sometimes in a dream I sit by a tree
My life is a book of how things used to be
And the kids gather 'round and they listen to me
They don't think I'm all used up

And there's songs and there's laughter and things I can do
And all that I've learned I can give back to you
And I'd give my last breath just to make it come true
And to know I'm not all used up

They use up the oil, they use up the trees
They use up the air and they use up the seas
But as long as I'm breathing they won't use up me
Don't tell me I'm all used up

@aging @work

Nevada Jane
I've been told that I'm wrong about this song. I don't know whether I am or not, since Bill Haywood, who was with the Western Federation of Miners and was the first Secretary-Treasurer of the Industrial Workers of the World, never mentioned his wife in his autobiography except very briefly, so I can't tell whether he really loved his wife or not.

I do have stories from old-timers who tell me about when Bill Haywood was working in a mine camp, basically doing a job of de-horning. His wife, Nevada Jane, had been crippled by a fall from her pony, so she couldn't walk. Bill had a house on the edge of town, and he would carry his wife down to the railroad station every morning. She would sit there and talk to the women of the town about what they could do to help organize the town, while Bill was brawling at the bars. He'd come back at the end of the day, pick Nevada Jane up, hang one of their kids off of each shoulder, and every night you'd see him carrying the wife and kids up to the house.

Most of the songs about labor struggles are full of loud shouting and arm-waving and thunder and rhetoric. It's good for me, every now and then, to try to take a look at the human side of it, right or wrong.

The tune is by one of my favorite songwriters, Stephen Foster. I first heard "Gentle Annie" from Kate McGarrigle of Canada. The tune has too many wide-apart changes in it for me to sing the way Stephen Foster wrote it, so I changed it some.


And when he stumbles in with blood upon his shirt,
Washing up alone, just to hide the hurt,
He will lie down by your side and wake you with your name,
You'll hold him in your arms, Nevada Jane. (Chorus)

Nevada Jane went riding, her pony took a fall,
The doctor said she never would walk again at all;
But Big Bill could lift her lightly, the big hands rough and plain
Would gently carry home Nevada Jane.

The storms of Colorado rained for ten long years,
The mines of old Montana were filled with blood and tears,
Utah, Arizona, California heard the name
Of the man who always loved Nevada Jane. (Chorus)

Although the ranks are scattered like leaves upon the breeze,
And with them go the memory of harder times than these,
Some things never change, but always stay the same,
Just like the way Bill loved Nevada Jane. (Chorus)

Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips

Yeah, That Long Hot Summer-With Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s Film Adaptation of William Faulkner’s Work In Mind

Yeah, That Long Hot Summer-With Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s Film Adaptation of William Faulkner’s Work In Mind 

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

“Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, have things gone to hell in a handbasket now that old Will Varner has gone to meet his maker, has gone to the shades, the shades of hell most likely” shouted Jefferson Baker out across the length of Varner’s General Store where he was the manager of just one of the late Will Varner’s enterprises in the holy of holies town of Frenchman’s Bend, which might have well have been called Varner’s Bend since every civil institution, and some not so civil like Minnie Littlejohn’s high class whorehouse on the edge of town, had the Varner brand attached to it some which way. (That whorehouse by the way Varner’s most lucrative business after the cotton fields, after that best 28,000 acres of sweet Mississippi bottomland in the great state of Mississippi and run by Minnie, his sweetie before he passed away although they never did get married like she was always badgering him to do, so everything was on the up and up except maybe the whores).

Jefferson Baker was doing all that confounded yelling in the direction of one Johnny Hodges from the American Literary Gazette who was in Frenchman’s Bend to do a story on the Varner legacy since Varner had been the real life redneck landowner model for some of the short stories that his old friend William Faulkner had done before he had hung up his shingle. (Between themselves ever since undergraduate days at Oxford, Oxford, Mississippi the home of the state university not the other one over in England or someplace like that they were Will and Hod but here William and Johnny will do.). Johnny was looking for background about how a low-rent redneck like Will Varner was able to hoodwink everybody in that part of the state, in that bottomland blessed county into acknowledging him as the leading figure. The leading figure as against what he, Varner, and maybe William too when he was creating his off-beat oafish characters, the “decaying gentry” that had run the county and state since about Robert E. Lee’s surrender.              

That part of the story, that fly-catching the old staid rabble gentry was not some much what interested Johnny since William had pretty much covered those bases in his works wand which when all was said and done was a pretty straight story of a grizzled upstart grabbing those decaying gentry by the balls and squeezing them in the only way they understood trading their lands for leisure time money, but about the guy who inherited all those acres and the town’s major enterprises. That would be one Ben Quick who had had the sense to marry Will’s schoolmarm daughter, Miss Clara always called Miss Clara even long after she was married. Had by guile and wit shut out Will’s legitimate son, Jody, who was essentially an emotional cripple who couldn’t keep up the pace that Will and later as Ben took over more and more of the day to day running of the operations were able to keep up. Didn’t have that merciless mercenary take no prisoners and let the devil take the hinter post as he himself in his more candid if increasingly drunken moments would weep out to anybody who would listen, including his disgusted father.

The mention of the name Ben Quick, now his boss, by Johnny sent Jefferson Baker into spasms of shuttled speech, “That barn-burner, that bastard barn-burner and son of a barn-burner taking over is the end, is the end of whatever Will Varner had put together. You know Ben’s old man, Shep Quick, got killed one reckless night when he got caught with a can of kerosene going after Bill Monroe’s barns when Bill wouldn’t give him some payment for some service that he had never provided. If you interview Ben don’t tell him I told you what happened to the old man. Don’t tell him that it was Will Varner, and a lot of the rest of us acting as his posse, sent him to the shades, shades of hell, maybe Will and Shep will meet there. Kind of some kind of justice when you think a minute. That was long ago and Ben’s wife, Miss Clara, you know Will’s schoolmarm daughter, told me one time when she was helping me with inventory that Ben had told her one night when he had been unjustly accused of being an active barn-burner that Ben’s father, Shep, just up and left, maybe with a woman, maybe with just a jug of fuel, never to return leaving a wife and seven kids to be cared for. That won’t add anything to your story and I and every other person in town who either knew, or was there when they shot him down like a rabid dog will deny that story was true. So just know that maybe longing for his long lost old man or something like that, you with your book-learning may know what ailed him better than I do, was part of what made Ben tick, made him hungry to get out from the rushes.”     

Johnny told Jefferson that he would not betray a confidence and that he, Johnny had a feeling that Ben’s rise had a lot more to do with him being a chip off of old Will Varner’s block, a ruthless wheeler-dealer and cutthroat artist than any misanthropic gasoline genes his old man left him.    

Jefferson continued, “You know it was Jody Varner, Will’s legitimate son and ne’er do well who kept Ben in Frenchman’s Bend, kept a known barn-burner known far and wide by anybody paying attention from across the county on our doorsteps. Will had been away in Jackson the first time they found cancer in his bloated festered body and Jody had been left in charge when Ben came walking up to the door looking for a place to work. Smartass Jody figured the guy looked like he was from hunger, looked like a million other drifters when it came right down to it and offered him a shack as a tenant farmer for the Varner estates. Ben accepted although he probably already had a good idea that this Jody was a light-weight, maybe a mommy’s boy from the look of it all dressed up like a sportsman and displacing him would be merely a matter of time and circumstances. When the old man, when Will got home, home amid all this damn fanfare like he was the Pharaoh back in Egypt times he blew his top at Jody. Made him feel about two inches tall in front of his wife, this lustrous Eula who I will talk about more later and his big sister Clara, you know the schoolmarm, the local ice queen if you wanted to know the truth back then.”              

“But I will say this for Will, a contract’s a contract even if Jody and Ben only shook on it and he let Ben stay on after he sized him up. Maybe that sizing up time is what made him think about advancing Ben’s future. The whole thing got a little mixed up probably because Will was flying by the seat of his pants. See that cancer business, that dying business when it came right down to it since that cancer eventually did get him scared Will silly. Got him suddenly looking for heirs, grandkids who would keep the Varner name going to infinity in Mississippi and maybe beyond you never know with these wheeler –dealer types. So Clara not being married and with no grands kids in the background he was placing his bet, maybe a series of bets, on this Ben Quick. You might ask about Jody at this point. Jody and that hot little number of a wife of his, that Eula who had the sweetest walk this side of the Mississippi if you know what I mean.” Baker insinuated with the beginning of a big ass leer like guys get when their thoughts turn to luscious little pieces of the Sunflower state, maybe anywhere, any state.   

Putting that leer aside when Johnny formally failed to recognize lecherous look Baker continued, “One day she just showed up with Jody after he had gone to Jackson on some family business and he told the old man that he/they had gotten married. The old man for a while was tickled pink, was expecting to see those grandchildren and his legacy pushed forward. But I guess Jody for all his sexual appetites and playboy manners was shooting blanks, had no spunk, maybe really was a mommy’s boy in all departments although it would not have suited Will Varner to have his boy called a “sissy,” maybe be light on his feet and so nobody called him anything but Will Varner’s boy to his face or behind his back. But you can see where a young blue-eyed stud like Ben Quick, barn-burner pedigree or not, came prancing around that Will started to get ideas, started planning something.”

“Hey, I said I would mention Eula and I will now. Like I said that young Jody Varner picked her up out of some whorehouse or something on one of his sprees to Jackson, maybe I have it wrong and it was New Orleans. Get this though they were for public consumption they were prancing her around as a product of Miss Farmer’s Boarding School over in Vicksburg. Everybody who got one look at her, one watch through of that divine ass walk knew she hadn’t been within ten miles of a boarding school except maybe to give the boys a treat or two. For a while things were okay, Jody and Eula I heard spent most of their time up in their bedroom. Will was pleased as punch assuming that they were sweating on the satin sheets, on his satin sheets, enough to produce that first grandson Will forever dreamed of to insure what he called his immortality. I wish I could convey the way he dragged that word out like it was a feast day celebration. But I guess Jody was shooting blanks because after a while Eula never produced the bump associated with child production. That is when the young boys started showing up in the heat of the night calling her name and driving Jody to distraction. Before long word started seeping around, hell I learned about it from my son who claimed he had been one of her victims, that Eula was taking the youngsters out back after Jody went to bed and showing them what was what. “Playing the flute” my son said she called it so you know she was well-versed in all the sexual arts probably did do some time in a finishing school, some high-end whorehouse. Will found out about it from the guys hanging around the porch of the Varner General Store but by then he had given up on Jody’s prowess to produce an heir, had always thought that his late wife Emma had turned Jody into a mommy’s boy anyway, and had moved on in his planning to Miss Clara, to his ice cold but smoldering inside daughter to grab some young stud and do his magical work for him.

“Of course getting an ice queen off her high moral and idealistic horse long enough to take the measure of a man, to take what a man was built to give, was no simply chore, especially since for some reason she had since high school  lammed onto Alan, Alan Winter, the son of what Will always laughing called one of the “decayed gentry” family without a pot to piss in who had been living off parsimony since Grant came through on his way to Vicksburg town and some Winter freed all his slaves shaking in his boots that he would be executed by the Yankees if he didn’t. So the story went. Will had this Alan figured as more than just a mommy’s boy, had him figured as “light on his feet,” a fairy and that Miss Clara, Sister his pet name for her was wasting her time pursuing a guy who probably was sneaking off to New Orleans to see what the young studs were up to when they came into port off the ships and freighters.                         

“Then almost out of the blue, almost like manna from heaven tainted, threadbare, bedraggled Ben Quick came waltzing down the road after having been thrown out of more towns in the county than you could shake a stick at. Sometimes for just lighting a cigarettes if the town fathers were a bit high strung and nervous. But Will saw something, correctly saw something in Ben like himself. A young man from hunger.” 

Johnny knew from his own observations around that time what those hungers meant to a lot of young men freshly back from the war, from World War II, after they had had their paths altered for a while, or twisted a bit. At just that moment he wished that he could converse with the “ghost” of William who could tell him what it was like for guys like Will Varner to come out of the mud and slime sometime after the First World War and stake claim to whatever they could stake claim to. Then he might get a handle on what Will had seen in Ben’s steely-blue eyes. Maybe it was something in the genes and he could then just sit at William’s feet and get the lowdown on Will and transfer those qualities to Ben. What he sensed of Ben from Jefferson’s description of the rise of one Ben Quick in the local scene was that whatever hurts he had received from knowing what his father was, from being a barn-burner’s son, and a fair one himself that what really drove him was the fact that he was a lot smarter, street smarter, than guys like Jody, or that faggot Alan whom he had to turn Miss Clara against if he was to make his way in the world. If he was to consume any of that unspent energy he had powerfully stored to make something of himself.

Not having William around and depending on what Baker could tell him he was able to piece together what a new son of the South, a new Mississippi boy looking to make good, could do. Of course this New South, this new Mississippi was all about white Mississippi boys, blacks of any persuasion did not count for jack, were hoers and carriers under the strict precepts of Mister James Crow and nothing more, as William would say, need be said about those who were in the shadows, what didn’t count except to be of no account.                

Jefferson picked up the thread of the conversation, “It was not long after Jody contracted for Ben’s tenancy that Will and Ben had had their conversation and the next thing anybody knew Ben was in turn selling untamed horses for the old man to his neighbors and had been brought into the general store to show what contempt Will had had for Jody since Jody had assumed he was the king of the store. It was around this time as well that rumors began to spread that Eula was going by the store more frequently when Jody was travelling to get goods and she was teaching Ben how to “play the flute” as they say (as if he needed any such instruction). Rumors or not, true or not, Ben knew, Will knew, as well, that some misbegotten dalliance with Eula was not going to go anywhere not matter how sweaty she got those sheets. So Ben took dead aim at Miss Clara.

“Like I said this Miss Clara while pleasant enough to talk to as long as you were not interested in grabbing some hay with her was a serious ice queen, didn’t want to get involved with any of the local studs who would have been glad to give her tumble if only to spite Will for some grievance done to them by him. She only had eyes for this Alan, this mommy’s boy and so Ben had his work cut out for him. Those steely-blue eyes, muscular body and wavy hair wouldn’t be enough against Miss Clara’s expectations. At least that was what the speculation was after Ben Quick had foolishly spent his whole month’s pay in order to have a Miss Clara-prepared luncheon at the Sunday church social. He had outbid that sissy Alan and got to have that dainty lunch. Although just that moment she was fuming since she had wanted and expected Alan to be her lunch partner.      

“Something, nobody is quite sure what, but something happened between Ben and Miss Clara when they went off by themselves to have the contents of that expensive luncheon basket. All anybody had heard was the pair in loud angry indecipherable shouting, then silence, then more. Somebody said it was all about Ben swearing that he was going to have Miss Clara no matter what, pursue her to the end times and her blowing his talk off as hot air. Alan, ever the gallant as good manners amount the decayed gentry dictated, went to fetch Miss Clara back from the clutches of this low-life.  A short time later Miss Clara appeared. Alone. Ever after that nobody any longer saw Miss Clara together.  A couple of months later though I noticed that Miss Clara was coming around the store more often to talk to, but mainly to stare, at Ben Quick. I heard that one night after I had gone home for the evening and Ben had shut up the store that Ben and Miss Clara had gone in that back room for a quick round of love-making.          

“Whether that was true or not, about six months later Ben and Miss Clara were married right in the main hall of the Varner mansion with half the town in attendance. What a time, what a time. About a year later the first of the five Quick boys arrived. Shortly after the arrival of that last boy Will’s cancer did him in and ended one chapter of the Varner story. I still can’t believe that a damn barn-burner grabbed whatever there was to grab around these parts and now nobody does anything but pay hat homage to Benjamin Quick, owner of half of Frenchman’s Bend. Damn.”      

*From The Archives- Rosalie Sorrels Passes At 83-A Rosalie Sorrels Potpourri-Idaho, Cafe Lena, Childhood Dreams and Such

*From The Archives- Rosalie Sorrels Passes At 83-A Rosalie Sorrels Potpourri-Idaho, Cafe Lena, Childhood Dreams and Such

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83

By Music Critic  Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in (and the former two never got over since they will still tell a tale or two about the times if you go anywhere within ten miles of the subject-I will take my chances here because this notice is important) all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. That is where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, and a whole crew of younger folksingers who sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.  

But there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some other colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s where some of those names played but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. She was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember her cover of Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

A Folk Holiday Tradition

An Imaginary Christmas In Idaho, Rosalie Sorrels & Friends, Limberlost Books&Records, 1999

The first paragraph here has been used in reviewing other Rosalie Sorrels CDs in this space.

“My first association of the name Rosalie Sorrels with folk music came, many years ago now, from hearing the recently departed folk singer/storyteller/ songwriter and unrepentant Wobblie (IWW) Utah Phillips mention his long time friendship with her going back before he became known as a folksinger. I also recall that combination of Sorrels and Phillips as he performed his classic “Starlight On The Rails” and Rosalie his also classic “If I Could Be The Rain” on a PBS documentary honoring the Café Lena in Saratoga, New York, a place that I am also very familiar with for many personal and musical reasons. Of note here: it should be remembered that Rosalie saved, literally, many of the compositions that Utah left helter-skelter around the country in his “bumming” days.”

I do not usually do Christmas holiday-oriented CD reviews but I am on something of a Rosalie Sorrels streak after getting, as a Christmas gift, a copy of her “Strangers In Another Country”, her heart-felt tribute to her recently deceased long time friend Utah Phillips. Thus, in the interest of completeness I will make some a couple of comments. I will skip the obvious Christmas-oriented material here, although the spirit of anti-Christmas at least as the CD unfold is ‘in the air’ on this CD, including a little send-up of the old yuletide season by the above-mentioned Brother Phillips (“Jingle Bells’- Phillips style). The core of this presentation is the alternative take on the various traditions of Christmas out in Idaho (“The Fruitcake” and “Christmas Eve” , out in Minnesota (“Just A Little Lefse”)and among those who live a little closer to the edge of society (“Winter Song” and Grandma”), like Rosalie and her friends.

I need not mention Rosalie’s singing and storytelling abilities. Those are, as always, a given. I have noted elsewhere that Rosalie and the old curmudgeon Phillips did more than their fate share of work in order to keep these traditions alive. Old Utah handled the more overtly political phase and Rosalie, for lack of a better expression, the political side as it intersected the personal phase. That is evident here, especially in her recitation of a note and poem written by a Native American woman in response to the lingering death of her grandmother. Powerful stuff, at Christmas or anytime, and a rather nice way to come to terms with the tragedy of death that we all sooner or later face. Listen to this fine piece.

A special note to kind of bring us full circle. My first review of Rosalie’s and Utah’s combined works together mentioned a spark of renewed recognition kindled by long ago PBS documentary about the famous folk coffee house “The Café Lena” in Saratoga Springs, New York whose owner, Lena Spenser, sheltered them at various times from life’s storms. Lena, from all reports, was something of a 'fairy godmother' to many later famous folk singers and artists when they were either down on there luck or just starting out (or both). I have my own strong ties to Saratoga, its environs and Café Lena but Rosalie’s tribute to her late friend here, “Bufana and Lena”, about the Italian version of the Santa Claus myth can stand as the signpost for what this CD has attempted to do, and what that long ago folk revival that Lena represented was trying to do as well.