| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Sunday, June 15, 2014
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
***The Queen Of The 1960s Folk Minute- Joan Baez: How Sweet The Sound
DVD Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound, American Master series, PBS, 2009
Several years ago when I was in a nostalgic mood about the 1960s folk minute, a minute that influenced my musical tastes when I was a youth, I did a series on female folk singers titled Not Joan Baez (and also a male folk singer series with the same idea except that was titled Not Bob Dylan)to try to show that there were female folk singers around like Judy Collins, Hedy West, Carolyn Hester, Joan’s sister Mimi (who also sang with her husband Richard Farina) who had talent but kind of went by the wayside when Joan Baez sucked all the media air out of that original folk minute (as Dylan did on the male side). Joan from early on became the folk queen and a look at the old film footage provided in this American Masters production, Joan Baez: How Sweet The Sound, rather fittingly details why that was true.
In the early 1960s many of us were looking for some new musical sensibility, some new sound once the beautiful days of rock and roll hit a dry spot. Some of us were also looking for roots, roots music in this case, in those amorphous live-for-the-moment-red scare cold war times. And starting out Joan Baez spoke to those sentiments providing all the pathos necessary from the traditional ballads and songs (many Child ballads so especially filled with pathos) as she made her claim to fame on the coffeehouse circuit starting in Cambridge at the old Cub 47 back in the day. And that sound, that almost operatic soprano sound, combined with those ballads were many time rendered by her with intense haunting beauty as the old footage here demonstrates. But the folk minute also encompassed song-writing, new songs, and not just any song-writing but songs written with meaning for a section of a generation looking for some political direction and that is where the fortuitous if short collaboration between Baez and Dylan drowned all the other contenders for the media-driven role of king and queen of folk music. And culminating in places like the Newport Folk Festival the pair rode the wave.
However like all cultural waves tastes change, people move on, or in Baez’s case she was driven as much if not more by the political struggles of the times, black civil rights in the south and the fight against the military draft and the expanding war in Vietnam, the defining events of our generation for many of us. Dylan however could not go, did not want to go in on that road, or for matter playing second fiddle to anyone and so they split (the details on this are very sketchy as are the remarks by Baez and Dylan on the subject). Baez does spend a fair amount of time trying to express the balance between her music and her social activism. For most musicians this is not a quandary as music dominates but in her case as the tensions in society exacerbated she was drawn to the political side especially draft resistance where she met her future husband, David Harris, and father of her child, Gabriel. Those tensions followed her throughout her careers.
This documentary like all American Masters productions is filled with footage and with “talking heads” to round out the portrayal. Especially good is the home movie footage from Baez’s childhood (with scenes with sister Mimi an added attraction),the classic folk scenes at Club 47 and Newport, her early duos with Dylan, her work with Doctor King for civil rights down South, her increasing involvement in draft resistance and her dramatic trip to Vietnam in 1972 when the American government tried (once again) to bomb that country back to the Stone Age, and her dramatic trip to Sarajevo in the 1990s while the bombs were raining down on the civilian population there by the Serbs. As for “talking heads” the civilized conversation about their marriage with David Harris, the input of son Gabriel, the comments of Roger McGuinn David Crosby deserve notice. What was not memorable were the spoken words of Mister Bob Dylan. What else is new from the king of the folk minute. If you want to get a small slice of flavor of the 1960s from the viewpoint of one of the better partisans of that moment then this is a worthwhile couple of hours.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Elvis' Jailhouse Rock
A while back when I was doing a series of scenes, scenes from the hitchhike road in search of the great American West night in the late 1960s, later than the time of Frankie’s early 1960s old working-class neighborhood kingly time that I want to tell you about now, I noted that there had been about a thousand truck-stop diner stories left over from those old hitchhike road days. On reflection though, I realized that there really had been about three diner stories with many variations. Not so with Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, stories. I have got a thousand of them, or so it seems, all different. Hey, you already, if you have been attentive to this space, know a few Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, stories (okay, I will stop, or try to, stop using that full designation and just call him plain, old, ordinary, vanilla Frankie just like everybody else).
Yeah you already know the Frankie story (see I told you I could do it) about how he lazily spent a hot late August 1960 summer before entering high school day working his way up the streets of the old neighborhood to get some potato salad (and other stuff too) for his family’s Labor Day picnic. And he got a cameo appearance in the tear-jerk, heart-rendering saga of my first day of high school in that same year where I, vicariously, attempted to overthrow his lordship with the nubiles (girls, for those not from the old neighborhood, although there were plenty of other terms of art to designate the fair sex then, most of them getting their start in local teenage social usage from Frankie’s mouth). That effort, that attempt at coping his “style”, like many things associated with one-of-a-kind Frankie, as it turned out, proved unsuccessful.
More recently I took you in a roundabout way to a Frankie story in a review of a 1985 Roy Orbison concert documentary, Black and White Nights. That story centered around my grinding my teeth whenever I heard Roy’s Running Scared because one of Frankie’s twists (see nubiles above) played the song endlessly to taint the love smitten but extremely jealous Frankie on the old jukebox at the pizza parlor, old Salducci's Pizza Shop, that we used to hang around in during our high school days. It’s that story, that drugstore soda fountain story, that brought forth a bunch of memories about those pizza parlor days and how Frankie, for most of his high school career, was king of the hill at that locale. And king, king arbiter, of the social doings of those around him as well.
And who was Frankie? Frankie of a thousand stories, Frankie of a thousand treacheries, Frankie of a thousand kindnesses, and, oh yeah, Frankie, my bosom friend in high school. Well let me just steal some sentences from that old August summer walk story and that first day of school saga because really Frankie and I went back to perilous middle school days (a.k.a. junior high days for old-timers) when he saved my bacon more than one time, especially from making a fatal mistake with the frails (see nubiles and twists above). He was, maybe, just a prince then working his way up to kingship. But even he, as he endlessly told me that summer before high school, August humidity doldrums or not, was along with the sweat on his brow from the heat a little bit anxious about being “little fish in a big pond” freshmen come that 1960 September.
Especially, a pseudo-beatnik “little fish”. See, he had cultivated a certain, well, let’s call it "style" over there at the middle school. That “style” involved a total disdain for everything, everything except trying to impress girls with his long-panted, flannel-shirted, work boot-shod, thick book-carrying knowledge of every arcane fact known to humankind. Like that really was the way to impress teenage girls, then or now. Well, as it turned out, yes it was. Frankie right. In any case he was worried, worried sick at times, that in such a big school his “style” needed upgrading. Let’s not even get into that story, the Frankie part of it now, or maybe, ever. We survived high school, okay.
But see, that is why, the Frankie why, the why of my push for the throne, the kingship throne, when I entered high school and that old Frankie was grooming himself for like it was his by divine right. When the deal went down and I knew I was going to the “bigs” (high school) I spent that summer, reading, big time booked-devoured reading. Hey, I'll say I did, The Communist Manifesto, that one just because old Willie Westhaven over at the middle school (junior high, okay) called me a Bolshevik when I answered one of his foolish math questions in a surly manner. I told you before that was my pose, my Frankie-engineered pose. I just wanted to see what he, old Willie, was talking about when he used that word. How about Democracy in America (by a French guy), The Age of Jackson (by a Harvard professor who knew idol Jack Kennedy, personally, and was crazy for old-time guys like Jackson), and Catcher In The Rye (Holden was me, me to a tee). Okay, okay I won’t keep going on but that was just the reading on the hot days when I didn’t want to go out. There was more.
Here's what was behind the why. I intended, and I swear I intended to even on the first nothing doing day of that new school year in that new school in that new decade (1960) to beat old Frankie, old book-toting, mad monk, girl-chasing Frankie, who knew every arcane fact that mankind had produced and had told it to every girl who would listen for two minutes (maybe less) in that eternal struggle, the boy meets girl struggle, at his own game. Yes, Frankie, my buddy of buddies, prince among men (well, boys, anyhow) who kindly navigated me through the tough, murderous parts of junior high, mercifully concluded, finished and done with, praise be, and didn’t think twice about it. He, you see, despite, everything I said a minute ago he was “in.”; that arcane knowledge stuff worked with the “ins” who counted, worked, at least a little, and I got dragged in his wake. I always got dragged in his wake, including as lord chamberlain in his pizza parlor kingdom. What I didn’t know then, wet behind the ears about what was what in life's power struggles, was if you were going to overthrow the king you’d better do it all the way. But, see if I had done that, if I had overthrown him, I wouldn’t have had any Frankie stories to tell you, or have gotten any help with the frills in the treacherous world of high school social life (see nubiles, frails and twists above. Why don’t we just leave it like this. If you see the name Frankie and a slangy word when you think I am talking about girls that's girls. Okay?)
As I told you in that Roy Orbison review, when Roy was big, big in our beat down around the edges, some days it seemed beat six ways to Sunday working-class neighborhood in the early 1960s, we all used to hang around the town pizza parlor, or one of them anyway, that was also conveniently near our high school as well. Maybe this place was not the best one to sit down and have a family-sized pizza with salad and all the fixings in, complete with family, or if you were fussy about décor but the best tasting pizza, especially if you let it cool for a while and not eat it when it was piping hot right out of the oven.
Moreover, this was the one place where the teen-friendly owner, a big old balding Italian guy, Tonio Salducci, at least he said he was Italian and there were plenty of Italians in our town in those days so I believed him but he really looked Greek or Armenian to me, let us stay in the booths if it wasn’t busy, and we behaved like, well, like respectable teenagers. And this guy, this old Italian guy, blessed Leonardo-like master Tonio, could make us all laugh, even me, when he started to prepare a new pizza and he flour-powdered and rolled the dough out and flipped that sucker in the air about twelve times and about fifteen different ways to stretch it out. Sometimes people would just stand outside in front of the doubled-framed big picture window and watch his handiwork in utter fascination.
Jesus, Tonio could flip that thing. One time, and you know this is true because you probably have your own pizza dough on the ceiling stories, he flipped the sucker so high it stuck to the ceiling, right near the fan on the ceiling, and it might still be there for all I know (the place still is, although not him). But this is how he was cool; he just started up another without making a fuss. Let me tell you about him, Tonio, sometime but right now our business to get on with Frankie, alright.
So there was nothing unusual, and I don’t pretend there is, in just hanging out having a slice of pizza (no onions, please, in case I get might lucky tonight and that certain she comes in, the one that I have been eyeing in school all week until my eyes have become sore, that thin, long blondish-haired girl wearing those cashmere sweaters showing just the right shape, please, please, James Brown, please come in that door), some soft drink (which we called tonic in New England in those days but which you call, uh, soda), usually a locally bottled root beer, and, incessantly dropping nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukebox.
(And that "incessantly" allowed us to stay since we were paying customers with all the rights and dignities that status entailed, unless, of course, Tonio needed our seats). But here is where it all comes together, Frankie and Tonio the pizza guy, from day one, got along like crazy. Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, map of Ireland, red-headed, fair-skinned, blue-eyed Frankie got along like crazy with Italian guy Tonio. That was remarkable in itself because, truth be told, there was more than one Irish/ Italian ethnic, let me be nice, “dispute” in those days. Usually over “turf”, like kids now, or some other foolish one minute thing or another.
Moreover, and Frankie didn’t tell me this for a while, Frankie, my bosom buddy Frankie, like he was sworn to some Omerta oath, didn’t tell me that Tonio was “connected.” For those who have been in outer space, or led quiet lives, or don’t hang with the hoi polloi that means with the syndicate, the hard guys, the Mafia. If you don’t get it now go down and get the Godfather trilogy and learn a couple of things, anyway. This "connected" stemmed, innocently enough, from the jukebox concession which the hard guys controlled and was a lifeblood of Tonio's teenage-draped business, and not so innocently, from his role as master numbers man (pre-state lottery days, okay) and "bookie" (nobody should have to be told what that is, but just in case, he took bets on horses, dogs, whatever, from the guys around town, including, big time, Frankie's father, who went over the edge betting like some guys fathers' took to drink).
And what this “connected” also meant, this Frankie Tonio-connected meant, was that no Italian guys, no young black engineer-booted, no white rolled-up tee-shirted, no blue denim- dungareed, no wide black-belted, no switchblade-wielding, no-hot-breathed, garlicky young Italian studs were going to mess with one Francis Xavier Riley, his babes (you know what that means, right?), or his associates (that’s mainly me). Or else.
Now, naturally, connected to "the connected" or not, not every young tough in any working class town, not having studied, and studied hard, the sociology of the town, is going to know that some young Irish punk, one kind of "beatnik' Irish punk with all that arcane knowledge in order to chase those skirts and a true vocation for the blarney is going to know that said pizza parlor owner and its “king”, king hell king, are tight. Especially at night, a weekend night, when the booze has flowed freely and that hard-bitten childhood abuse that turned those Italian guys (and Irish guys too) into toughs hits the fore. But they learn, and learn fast.
Okay, you don’t believe me. One night, one Saturday night, one Tonio-working Saturday night (he didn’t always work at night, not Saturday night anyway, because he had a honey, a very good-looking honey too, dark hair, dark laughing eyes, dark secrets she wouldn’t mind sharing as well it looked like to me but I might have been wrong on that) two young toughs came in, Italian toughs from the look of them. This town then, by the way, if you haven’t been made aware of it before is strictly white, mainly Irish and Italian, so any dark guys, are Italian period, not black, Hispanic, Indian, Asian or anything else. Hell, I don’t think those groups even passed through; at least I don’t remember seeing any, except an Arab, once.
So Frankie, your humble observer (although I prefer the more intimate umbrella term "associate" under these circumstances) and one of his squeezes (not his main squeeze, Joanne) were sitting at the king’s table (blue vinyl-seated, white formica table-topped, paper place-setting, condiment-ladened center booth of five, front of double glass window, best jukebox and sound position, no question) splitting a Saturday night whole pizza with all the fixings (it’s getting late, about ten o’clock, and I have given up on that certain long blondish-haired she who said she might meet me so onions anchovies, garlic for all I know don’t matter right now) when these two ruffians come forth and petition (ya[CL1] , right) for our table. Our filled with pizza, drinks, condiments, odds and ends papery, and the king, his consort (of the evening, I swear I forget which one) and his lord chamberlain.
Since there were at least two other prime front window seats available Frankie denied the petition out of hand. Now in a righteous world this should have been the end of it. But what these hard guys, these guys who looked like they might have had shivs (ya, knives, shape knives, for the squeamish out there) and only see two geeky "beatnik" guys and some unremarkable signora do was to start to get loud and menacing (nice word, huh?) toward the king and his court. Menacing enough that Tonio, old pizza dough-to-the-ceiling throwing Tonio, took umbrage (another nice word, right?) and came over to the table very calmly. He called the two gentlemen aside, and talking low and almost into their ears, said some things that we could not hear. All we knew was that about a minute later these two behemoths, these two future candidates for jailbird-dom, were walking, I want to say walking gingerly, but anyway quickly, out the door into the hard face of Saturday night.
We thereafter proceeded to finish our kingly meal, safe in the knowledge that Frankie was indeed king of the pizza parlor night. And also that we knew, now knew in our hearts because Frankie and I talked about it later, that behind every king there was an unseen power. Christ, and I wanted to overthrow Frankie. I must have been crazy like a loon.
***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..The Reunion
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent to me by fellow classmates via the class website. Also classmates have placed messages on the Message Forum page when they have something they want to share generally like health issues, new family arrivals or trips down memory lane on any number of subjects from old time athletic prowess to reflections on growing up in the old home town. Thus I have been forced to take on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. These responses are no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as computer savvy as the average eight-year old today).
Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some other stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest.
Other stuff defies simple classification, mundane administrative stuff that has rightly taken up the time of the reunion committee one of whose members, and an old friend, periodically likes to keep me posted describing her trials and tribulations and so I know more, probably more than I want to know about the doings of the committee. The most pressing such issue has been how to find “missing” classmates the quest of which has slowed down considerably during the last few weeks as the now tradition sources of current detection, the Internet and mailings have dried up. This in any case is a thorny question since not everybody once they left North Adamsville High, or any high school for that matter, wants to be found for any number of reasons from awful memories of school to being on the run from the law, repo men, ex-wives or husbands combined with that generational issue mentioned before about computer savviness and ability to navigate the “information superhighway” combined with fifty years of missing-ness [sic] makes for some problems. So that gives you an idea of what a social committee is up against. Nothing earth-shattering but nerve-racking if you are planning a one-shot event.
Recently my friend, who I believe told me previously that this was her first reunion committee membership since the tenth year anniversary, mentioned how she got corralled into joining this time. Well not exactly corralled since she was looking to volunteer for a reunion that would probably be the last effective time that the class, now deep into the insurance mortality actuarial tables, sickness and disability, could get together short of a nursing home or an assisted living encampment. Let me run the scenario she presented just to show how the thing works.
Last fall, sometime in October, she tried to get in touch with some of the people who chaired the last reunion, the fortieth. Here is what she wrote:
“Hi Jerry [one of the co-chairs] (If you don’t remember me you used to live next my grandparents- The Kellys -on Young Street in the old days.) I sent the following to Linda Perkins (now Cielo [the other co-chair whom she was able to reach fairly easily because she is still working an administrative assistant at the school and thus a valuable source of information] which may interest you:
Hi- If I recall from a flyer I received then you and Jerry Gates were the central organizers for the 40th reunion of the NAHS Class of 1964 so I wanted to contact you and see if there are any plans afoot for the 50th next year. If so I would be happy to work on the organizing committee. If not are you up for forming a committee to do that organizing? If we can get five or six people from the area to meet that would get us started. Are you still the Principal’s secretary at NAHS? That would be invaluable. Also below is a note I want to send around to various sites (this one, Classmates, Facebook, etc.) once I know what is up in order to get a feel for whether we would have enough attendees to make it worthwhile. Thanks for your time. Later Jessica Sills –jessicasills28@comcast.net
Having received information that no committee had been formed Jessica (and Linda, Gary said he could not so it this time due to pressing grandfatherly concerns) started an event page on Facebook and wrote the following after Linda had set up a class website and became the original webmaster (later taken over by Donna Nolan who had more expertise in this matter).
“Originally posted on Facebook now updated here to reflect information on the North Adamsville 64 website-http://www.northadamsville64.com/class_index.cfm:
“Hi Class of 1964- I would like to help get people together to organize our 50th reunion (Ouch!) –Don’t ask me why but I am feeling some old time breeze in my bones coming from the tepid waters of Adamsville Bay, coming from the dusty old tree-named, Indian-named (oops, Native American-named) streets, and ocean-named streets of our town smacking me in the face. Coming too from some old bleeding Raider red nostalgia that I have not, well, have not felt since the day in June 1964 when we threw our collective caps in the air at Veterans Stadium and went out to face the world, a world that were didn’t create and were not asked about but which we faced as best we could. Coming, hell, from mind’s memory of steamy summers at Adamsville Beach, HoJo’s ice cream, deathly school lunches, those guys including a boyfriend of mine running around tracks and on the streets in shorts subject to the whims of irate drivers and old lady pedestrians, also irate, cheering myself silly at those titanic football battles, especially senior year, when I moved on to another boyfriend who starred on that team, especially senior year, on those granite-grey leafy autumn afternoons. And too reflecting to on that fresh clean breathe of the “newer world” that was in the air just then. (As I write this on November 22, 2013, no need to ask what happened on that date or where we were not with this audience, overwhelmed by that little sadness that our dreams, our outrageous over-sized youthful dreams, might have been shortened up just a bit, that that day some portentous ebb of history would hold us back.)
All this telling me to help put this reunion idea together since this is effectively our last shot at coming together under the sign of a significant anniversary. To see our respective old gangs collectively for probably the last time that the clan would be able to gather on a significant occasion what with death, disability, forgetfulness and just plain fright at the idea of a next time taking their toll. That the next significant milestone, the 75th , assuming that the mania for oddball celebration years like 30th , 45th , and 60th , or worst 38th,48th or 68th has no taken root we would all be at or approaching ninety-three. A very scary thought, the thought of holding a reunion at some assisted living site or nursing home. No thank you. Now or never.
Are you up for it? Would you attend? Are you still in contact with 1964 NAHS in your “social network” (formerly known as friends and acquaintances)? Let them know what's afoot – As well as this site I have set up an event page on Facebook - North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 Reunion- and other sites to reach out. Later Jessica Sills”
Of such pitches committees and reunions are made. More later.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)