An Encore Salute To The Untold Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- For The Fallen-In Honor Of The Anti-War Soldier Timothy Kerrigan (1940-2015), Vietnam 1964-1966-RIP

An Encore Salute To The Untold Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- For The Fallen-In Honor Of The Anti-War Soldier Timothy Kerrigan (1940-2015), Vietnam 1964-1966-RIP

Allan Jackson, editor The Sam And Ralph Stories -New General Introduction

[As my replacement Greg Green, whom I brought in from American Film Gazette originally to handle the day to day site operations while I concentrated on editing but who led a successful revolt against my regime based on the wishes of the younger writers to as they said at the time not be slaves to the 1960s upheavals a time which they only knew second or third hand, mentioned in his general introduction above some of the series I initiated were/are worth an encore presentation. The Sam and Ralph Stories are one such series and as we go along I will try to describe why this series was an important testament to an unheralded segment of the mass movements of the 1960s-the radicalized white working- class kids who certainly made up a significant component of the Vietnam War soldiery, some of who were like Sam and Ralph forever after suspicious of every governmental war cry. Who also somewhat belatedly got caught up in the second wave rock and roll revival which emerged under the general slogan of “drug, sex and rock and roll” which represented a vast sea change for attitudes about a lot of things that under ordinary circumstances would have had them merely replicating their parents’ ethos and fate.        

As I said I will describe that transformation in future segment introductions but today since it is my “dime” I want to once again clear up some misapprehensions about what has gone on over the past year or so in the interest of informing the readership, as Greg Green has staked his standing at this publication on doing to insure his own survival, about what goes on behind the scenes in the publishing business. This would not have been necessary after the big flap when Greg tried an “end around” something that I and every other editor worth her or his salt have tried as well and have somebody else, here commentator and my old high school friend Frank Jackman, act as general introducer of The Roots Is The Toots  rock and roll coming of age series that I believe is one of the best productions I have ever worked on. That got writers, young and old, with me or against me, led by Sam Lowell, another of my old high school friends, who had been the decisive vote against me in the “vote of no confidence” which ended my regime up in arms. I have forgiven Sam, and others, as I knew full well from the time I entered into the business that at best it was a cutthroat survival of the fittest racket. (Not only have I forgiven Sam but I am in his corner in his recent struggles with young up and coming by-line writer Sarah Lemoyne who is being guided through the shoals by another old high school friend Seth Garth as she attempts to make her way up the film critic food chain, probably the most vicious segment of the business where a thousand knives wait the unwary from so-called fellow reviewers.) The upshot of that controversy was that Greg had to back off and let me finish the introducing the series for which after all I had been present at the creation.               

That would have been the end of it but once we successfully, and thankfully by Greg who gave me not only kudos around the water cooler but a nice honorarium, concluded that series encore in the early summer of 2018 he found another way to cut me. Going through the archives of this publication to try to stabilize the readership after doing some “holy goof” stuff like having serious writers, young and old, reviewing films based on comic book characters, the latest in video games and graphic novels with no success forgetting the cardinal rule of the post-Internet world that the younger set get their information from other sources than old line academic- driven websites and don’t read beyond their techie tools Greg found another series, the one highlighted here, that intrigued him for an encore presentation. This is where Greg proved only too human since he once again attempted an “end around,” by having Josh Breslin, another old friend whom I meet in the Summer of Love, 1967 out in San Francisco, introduce the series citing my unavailability as the reason although paying attention to the fact that I had sweated bullets over that one as well.      

This time though the Editorial Board, now headed by Sam Lowell, intervened even before Greg could approach Josh for the assignment. This Ed Board was instituted after my departure to insure the operation would not descend, Sam’s word actually, into the so-called autocratic one-person rule that had been the norm under my regime. They told Greg to call me back in on the encore project or to forget it. I would not have put up with such a suggestion from an overriding Ed Board and would have willingly bowed out if anybody had tried to undermine me that way. I can understand fully Greg’s desire to cast me to the deeps, have done with me as in my time I did as well knowing others in the food chain would see this as their opportunity to move up.  

That part I had no problem with, told Greg exactly that. What bothered me was the continuing “urban legend” about what I had done, where I had gone after that decisive vote of no confidence. Greg continued, may continue today, to fuel the rumors that not only after my initial demise but after finishing up the Roots Is The Toots series I had gone back out West to Utah of all places to work for the Mormons, or to Frisco to hook up with my old flame Madame La Rue running that high-end whorehouse I had staked her to in the old days, or was running around with another old high school pal, Miss Judy Garland, aka Timmy Riley the high priestess of the drag queen set out in that same town whom I also helped stake to  his high-end tourist attraction cabaret. All nonsense, I was working on my memoir up in Maine, up in Olde Saco where Josh grew up and which I fell in love with when he first showed me his hometown and its ocean views.          

If the reader can bear the weight of this final reckoning let me clear the air on all three subjects on the so-called Western trail. Before that though I admit, admit freely that despite all the money I have made, editing, doing a million pieces under various aliases and monikers, ballooning up 3000 word articles to 10,000 and having the publishers fully pay despite the need for editing for the latter in the days before the Guild when you worked by the word, accepting articles which I clearly knew were just ripped of the AP feed and sending them along as gold I had no dough, none when I was dethroned. Reason, perfectly sane reason, although maybe not, three ex-wives with alimony blues and a parcel of kids, a brood if you like who were in thrall to the college tuition vultures.

Tapped out in the East for a lot of reasons I did head west the first time looking for work. Landed in Utah when I ran out of dough, and did, DID, try to get a job on the Salt Lake Star and would have had it too except two things somebody there, some friend of Mitt Romney, heard I was looking for work and nixed the whole thing once they read the articles I had written mocking Mitt and his white underwear world as Massachusetts governor and 2012 presidential candidate. So it was with bitter irony when I heard that Greg had retailed the preposterous idea that I would now seek a job shilling for dear white undie Mitt as press agent in his run for the open Utah United States Senate seat. Here is where everybody should gasp though at the whole Utah fantasy-these Mormons stick close together, probably ingrained in them from Joseph Smith days, and don’t hire goddam atheists and radicals, don’t hire outside the religion if they can help it. You probably had to have slept with one of Joseph Smith’s or Brigham Young’s wives to even get one foot in the door. Done.              

The helping Madame La Rue, real name of no interest or need to mention,  running her high-end exclusive whorehouse out in Half Moon Bay at least had some credence since I had staked her to some dough to get started after the downfall of the 1960s sent her back to her real world, the world of a high class hooker who was slumming with “hippies” for a while when it looked like our dreams were going to be deterred in in the ebbtide. We had been hot and heavy lovers, although never married except on some hazed drug-fogged concert night when I think Josh Breslin “married” us and sent us on a “honeymoon” with a fistful of cocaine. Down on dough I hit her up for some which she gave gladly, said it was interest on the “loan: she never repaid and let me stay at her place for a while until I had to move on. Done

The whole drag queen idea tells me that whoever started this damn lie knew nothing about my growing up days and had either seen me in The Totem, Timmy Riley’s aka Miss Judy Garland’s drinking with a few drag queen who worked and drew the wrong conclusions or was out to slander and libel me for some other nefarious reason. See Miss Judy Garland is the very successful drag queen and gay man Timmy Riley from the old neighborhood who fled to Frisco when he could no longer hide his sexual identity and preferences. To our great shock since Timmy had been the out-front gay-basher of our crowd, our working-class corner boy gay-bashing crowd. I had lent, after getting religion rather late on the LGBTQ question, Timmy the money to buy his first drag queen cabaret on Bay Street and Timmy was kind enough to stake me to some money and a roof before I decided I had to head back East. Done.

But enough about me.  This is about two other working- class guys, Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris, met along life’s road one from Carver about fifty miles away from where Seth, Sam, Timmy and a bunch of other guys grew up and learned the “normal” working-class ethos-and broke, tentatively at times, from that same straitjacket and from Troy, New York. Funny Troy, Carver, North Adamsville, and Josh’s old mill town Olde Saco all down-in-the-mouth working class towns still produced in exceptional times a clot of guys who got caught up in the turmoil of their times-and lived to tell the tale. I am proud to introduce this encore presentation and will have plenty more to say about Sam and Ralph in future segments.]

***********

Allan Jackson Encore Introduction

All of us who were wounded in Vietnam, in the war, mentally, spiritually, physically, which I include myself in the mix had various ways to live our service down. As I have mentioned before I would estimate that the vast majority of the couple of million Americans who served in that conflict starting from serious America escalation in 1964 to the bitter end with the famous helicopter scene of people being airlifted off the U.S. Embassy rooftop in April, 1975 did so without rancor or without the damn war putting them in a very bad place like happened with Peter Paul Markin’s “brothers under the bridges” in Southern California and continues to happen with suicides, drug dependency and all the other pathologies of the post-traumatic stress of their service. Some like Markin fell down to drugs, hubris, exhaustion with life in the “real” world. Others, and I am in this cohort as well “got religion” about the issues of war and peace which they, we would never had experienced outside having to fight the monsters, the monstrous American war machine. That is what Ralph and Sam, who wrote this piece, admired about their, our friend Timmy Kerrigan when he passed away a few years ago of cancer.

In a way Timmy’s death which I did not hear about until a few weeks after he passed so I was not at his memorial service revived something in me, something about “revisiting” the why of how the Vietnam War twisted me in a direction that, given my up-bringing, never would have happened, would never have prompted me to spent the rest of my life trying to get “on the good side of the angels.” That at least in part is the genesis on the “why” of this series when the idea was first broached. The other bigger part to the why, the why beyond Timmy, which was recently re-enforced by Lynn Novack and Ken Burns’s PBS Vietnam War series was the need to “shout out over the rooftops” to the younger generations the need to oppose the war policies of the American government, to use our “street cred” as veterans to say no to war.

Unlike say the World War II veterans, Sam, Ralph, Timmy, my father’s war while they were as silent as we were about what went on in combat had a certain pride that came with victory over fascism which is what drove many of them into the ranks, that and patriotism after December 7, 1941, after Japan blew the hell out of the fleet at Pearl Harbor we had nothing to feel good about. Nothing. I remember while I was deciding on whether to go ahead with the project running into Fritz Taylor, a Vietnam veteran from down in Fulton County, Georgia who has occasionally written for this publication, told me that except for about a week at home he had never returned to his hometown he was so ashamed of what he had done, and could not tolerate the fake patriotism that still drove his parents, his fellow townsman at the time. Had stopped mentioning at all for many years that he was a Vietnam veteran and kept whatever was inside him inside. This from a guy who won a fistful of medals for his service (medals which wound up heaved over the fence at the Supreme Court building in down in Washington, D.C in 1971). Another driving wedge at the time was my meeting a veteran of two tours, two tough Mekong Delta tours, which meant really tough tours, up in Maine when I was visiting Josh Breslin’s hometown of Olde Saco who had been married twice (and divorced twice) and had never mentioned that he had been in Vietnam to either one of his wives. That sentiment was only re-enforced by the PBS series where the wives of two ex-Marines had known each other for a dozen years, the men were friends, and yet neither knew the other had served in Vietnam. Amazing. That only contributed to my sense of urgency in doing an encore presentation. As for beautiful Timmy Kerrigan Sam and Ralph can speak on that matter far better than I could.                         

 **************

For The Fallen-In Honor Of The Anti-War Soldier Timothy Kerrigan (1940-2015), Vietnam 1964-1966-RIP

From The Pen Of Sam Eaton

Ralph Morris is a man of few words. Don’t get the idea though that he is not capable or if in the mood or if provoked of coming up with some pithy word or phrase but he is a not a writer in the senses that I am, that I like to write. But he is a man of few words nevertheless. Strangely he has made his living off of words, not writing them but printing them up being a printer by trade. That is a trade that he has pursued ever since in about third grade he read that one of his heroes, Benjamin Franklin of American Revolution fame, had been a printer. So he took that course up in high school, apprenticed with Joe Pringle who at the time had the only print shop in Carver, in Massachusetts the town that he grew up in, and eventually set up a shop there. A successful shop until the past few years when he realized that print technology had changed so much and that he was behind the times in the copying business (after having back in the late 1960s early 1970s been in the vanguard of the silk-screening end of the business when everybody wanted that kind of work done on posters and tee-shirts) and turned the business last year over to his oldest son, Jeff, who is more savvy in the new hi-tech world.

But enough of Ralph’s history for today Ralph has other troubles on his mind, troubles about having to say a few words, really more than a few words about the late Timothy Kerrigan at his memorial service, a few words about what Timmy meant to the organization they both (me too) belonged to, Veterans for Peace, and to Ralph personally. See Timmy was something like Ralph’s mentor way back when Ralph came back to the “real” world after eighteen month of service in Vietnam in late 1969 and was something of a basket case (Ralph’s term). Timmy had eased him along, eased him along about drawing some conclusions on the hellish war that Ralph had come to hate, hate for the savage things he had done to people with whom he had no quarrel, hate for the savage things his Army buddies had done to people they had no quarrel with, and most of all the unfeeling American government which had without the slightest hesitation turned him, them into vicious animals, nothing more. Yeah, Ralph had had plenty of troubles in his doped-up head when he got back, and was not sure what to do about it when his old friends, neighbors and working-class community were still gung-ho about stuff in a war they were clueless about, knowingly clueless.

Timmy, a half dozen years older than Ralph, had served in that same war earlier, very early on from 1964 to 1966 when ninety-five percent of the country could not show you on a map where Vietnam was if you gave them ten chances and had gone through his own adjusting to the “real” world problems. He got Ralph through the tough parts back in 1970 after he had been discharged. Moreover Timmy lived in Albany, the next town over and another working-class town which did not understand the murderous assault on the sensibilities of American soldiers who served in that theater of combat.

So Timmy and Ralph in a sea of benighted patriotism helped each other out when things got dicey. See Timmy, he and it seemed then every such soldier got “religion” on the issues of war and peace and turned against the war that they had fought honorably if erroneously in decided to do something more than hang out in ill-lighted barroom sulking or “shooting up” in some backroom dope den and joined an anti-war organization. Join in his case with a bunch of other guys, a “band of brothers,” some officers, some enlisted men, some who had seen combat and some on the edges of the military machine, some grievously physically wounded, some wounded in the head, who had formed Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), the famous organization which did a lot to turn public sentiment against the war. After all if the guys who fought the war called it by its right name, murder, had thrown their medals away, had walked in silent bedraggled cadence in the streets of major cities crying out to the heavens to stop the slaughter then most everybody had to at least give them a respectful hearing.

As everybody, or at least everybody from that generation knows, the generation of ‘68 Timmy called it from the year that the Viet Cong decided to try and take back the day, take back his and her country and not just the night which every savvy American private soldier if not every general knew belonged to him and her during the Tet offensive the American forces were ultimately forced to “skedaddle” in a hurry in 1975 and effectively ended the decade plus long American involvement in Vietnam. And that effectively ended plenty of political opposition to American war policy as the great majority of people, protestors and patriots alike, went back to “normalcy.” Ended too the big public face of VVAW.  

But see Timmy and Ralph (and I will add myself but under different circumstances explained later) were hard-headed if big-hearted guys. They took that “religious conversion” to fight against the seemingly endless wars the American (and other, believe me, other governments as well) government was determined to pursue as the greatest military power by far the world has ever known seriously and determined at some point that they would fight the “monster” until the end. So you could see them, mostly in Boston, occasionally in New York and whenever some national call came out in Washington, D.C. all through the years, some lean years when they were voices in the wilderness, some years like in the late fall of 2002 and early winter of 2003 when they were swallowed up in mass movements opposed to the impending war in Iraq. Timmy would be the rock, would steady Ralph when he got seriously depressed that their efforts were for not. Would remind Ralph that they, both Catholics so Ralph would see the point more readily, had plenty of penance to do for torching up half of Vietnam, gunning down half the poor benighted peasants who got caught in the cross-fire for no purpose. The both would be early members of a new organization of anti-war veterans that was formed in the mid-1980s to do that oppositional work in a more systematic and forceful way, Veteran For Peace (VFP) once the crowds thinned out. Yeah, Timmy was like that, was the rock as I too found out.   

I might as well explain how I met Ralph and through him Timmy and then I’ll finish up about the why of the few words Ralph was having trouble gathering his thoughts about his, our, fallen comrade. (I should point out my organizational connection. I am an associate member of VFP not having had to serve in the military due to the fact that I was the sole surviving son after my father died suddenly of a massive heart attack in 1965 leaving me as the sole support for my mother and four much younger sisters. That VFP associate status except for a few organization items which are restricted to veterans is the same as veteran membership.) It all goes back to the spring of 1971 when I, along with a bunch of radicals and “reds” that I hung with in Saratoga Springs, New York from Skidmore College and other campuses around Albany and Troy, the town Ralph grew up in, were totally frustrated with the endless Vietnam War. Maybe not as frustrated as the Vietnamese who had plenty of reason to be in that condition, and more so than us but we were still desperately committed to ending the war. Ending the war by building a “second front” as some “movement” theoretician called it at the time and most of us bought into that designation as an act of solidarity with the Vietnamese (expressed in slogans like “Victory to the NLF (National Liberation Front)”and waving the tri-color NLF flag on the American streets.

The idea was simple, or so we thought, and the working slogan we used to organize the efforts kind of puts it in clear enough language-“If the government will not shut down the war, we will shut down the government.” Simple, right. Waltz into Washington on May Day (the international workers holiday although we linked it more to the socialist-tinged point of the day) like some Calvinist avenging angels and be done with it. Well, to cut to the chase, all we got was tear gas, police billy-clubs and the bastinado for our efforts as you could probably have figured out.   

Thousands of us were herded (which is exactly the right word) into the Robert F. Kennedy football stadium which was the main holding area (until that got too crowded and other locations were used) as the police and every other military and law enforcement unit in the D.C. area swooped down on us. Ralph and I met while in detention in RFK when Ralph noticed my VVAW button and asked if I belonged.  I said no that I had not served in the military but that my closest friend, my corner boy from high school in front of Mia’s Pizza Parlor in the Ocean  Street section of Carver, Jeff Mullins, had been senselessly killed in action in the Central Highlands and had written me letters a few months before he was blown away telling me how brutal things were there, how bad the things he and his buddies had to do there were and that if he did not make it back to make sure that I spread the word. So I did (and do) and so I wore the button in honor of him. Since Ralph and I were in detention for a few days (we eventually walked out of the place when we found out that there were exits in the place which the over-stretched law enforcement forces had left unguarded) something about my story, something about my life story and his kept us talking like two jaybirds (a little passed stashed dope and a ton of donated coffee helped with what I would find out later was actually “few words” Ralph).

Ralph explained that he had gone to D.C. on Timmy’s urging as part of the VVAW contingent that also was committed to the same action I was involved in but they wanted to have their own veterans’ brigade. See Timmy was a known activist/agitator for civil disobedience from early on in VVAW (as opposed to those like John Kerry who wanted to go the legislative or electoral route) and had been one of the steering committee organizers for the overall action such as it was. Timmy in later years, in VFP years as well would be a vocal and sometimes overbearing advocate for civil disobedience when the occasion called for it (and a couple of times when it seemed foolhardy but we went along carried by the force of his argument). That was strong Timmy (who was personally one of the gentlest people on the planet).

But here was the beauty of Timmy. He walked the walk. That May Day of 1971 VVAW wanted to surround the Pentagon and “shut it down,” symbolically somewhat like the anti-war forces had done in 1967 trying to “levitate” the building as described in Norman Mailer’s award-winning novel Armies of the Night. For his part in the attempt (they never got close just as we never got close when we tried to “capture” the White House). If all of this seems a little foolhardy now remember we were desperate to end the war and our governmental opponents and their hangers-on would have been just as happy to see our bodies floating on in the Potomac River as have their authority challenged. However Timmy, as a “ring-leader” had a special single cell provided for his efforts which he occupied for a week, including a few days on a hunger strike. Yes, Timmy always walked the walk. You could depend on that.                

I would meet Timmy some weeks later when I wound up going to Ralph’s house in Troy after I had decided to move for the year to Cambridge to join the radicals and “reds” there. We three talked for many hours then (and later) and I learned a lot from him, learned how to stay the course when times were not too good for the messages we were trying to get across. Learned too that one well-planned public campaign at the right time and with the right media exposure could push the movement along much further than the endless vigils of Quakers and pacifists, bless their souls.(My sisters by the way by then were all grown and were providing the main support for my mother since they were working and living at home-they also were as apolitical and/or as hostile as any anonymous pro-war sympathizers, especially my mother who I had many difficulties with then but that is for another day.)    

And that brings us to Ralph’s dilemma. Timothy Francis Kerrigan passed away after a long bout with cancer on July 10, 2015. Timmy, not a religious man, although he continued to unlike Ralph profess his Catholic faith, wanted not such ceremony but rather a simple service in which his VFP buddies, particularly Ralph, would say a few words (he had in the hospice before he passed away expressed a desire that they be kind words if possible but words of some sort nevertheless). See here was Ralph’s real dilemma though he wanted no “help” from me who usually would put his many times insightful thoughts into words. Well on July 15, 2015 the service in memory of Timmy took place. Here is what Ralph had to say:

“Some people are leaders by holding the mere mantle of official authority. Some people are leaders by the force of their arguments. Some people are leaders by example. Timothy Francis Kerrigan, my brother anti-war veteran, led by the latter two. Timmy was the conscience of VFP, Timmy walked the walk which needs no further explanation to this audience. He will be missed. Timothy Francis Kerrigan, Presente. Ralph Morris says good voyage-RIP, brother, RIP.’’   

Enough said.

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *In Defense Of The Abraham Lincoln Battalion Memorial

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Pete Seeger Performing, Appropriately in Barcelona, "Viva La Quince Brigada".

Commentary

I recently came across a commentary at the Boston Indy Media site posted from a member of The Workers Memory Project. The gist of this pro-anarchist comment was to highlight some ‘guerrilla’ action in defacing a memorial in the Embarcadero section of San Francisco honoring the heroic fighters of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th International Brigade for their actions in the fight against General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. The idea behind this 'heroic' action, I assume, was that we must be rather selective about our 'memories' and that political opponents within the international working class movement, or at least some of them, are beyond the pale.

This is wrong, all wrong. This writer has spent a great portion of his political life fighting from an orthodox Marxist, anti-Stalinist perspective. His political forbears, including the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky have shed their lives in the fight against Stalinism. We have no illusions in that tendency nor do we make any apologies for it. This writer has, however, also often expressed his admiration for the fighters of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion from a very early age, well before he was aware of the differences in the various tendencies within the international working class movement. Nothing that he has learned since those early days has taken away from their heroic fight. Except maybe that they could have fought under a revolutionary leadership. All this to say that the comment and actions by The Workers Memory Project members are indicative of anarchist moral befuddlement.

Yes, the members of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion were, for the most part, recruited from the hard Stalinist milieu of the American Communist Party. Yes, the Soviet role in Spain was to act as a counter-revolutionary force against all those who wanted to fight, including at least some of the anarchists, for a social revolution in Spain. No, the Stalinists in the International Brigades, when acting as military defenders of the Republican side against Franco were not acting as counterrevolutionaries. Those were our military comrades, my friends. That is what any memorial to the fighters of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion represents. You know, their valor in little hot spots like the Jarama and the Ebro when it counted. Failure to understand those simple acts of heroism, courage and fortitude by these ‘premature’ anti-fascists is part of the muddle of international working class politics today.

Viva La Quince Brigada
(Christy Moore)

Ten years before I saw lhe light of morning
A comradeship of heroes was laid.
From every corner of the world came sailing
The Fifteenth Inlernational Brigade.

They came to stand beside the Spanish people.
To try and stem the rising Fascist tide
Franco's allies were the powerful and wealthy,
Frank Ryan's men came from the other side.

Even the olives were bleeding
As the battle for Madrid it thundered on.
Truth and love against the force af evil,
Brotherhood against the Fascist clan.

Vive La Quince Brigada!
"No Paseran" the pledge that made them fight.
"Adelante" was the cry around the hillside.
Let us all remember them tonight.

Bob Hillard was a Church of Ireland pastor;
From Killarney across the Pyrenees ho came.
From Derry came a brave young Christian Brother.
Side by side they fought and died in Spain.

Tommy Woods, aged seventeen, died in Cordoba.
With Na Fianna he learned to hold his gun.
From Dublin to the Villa del Rio
Where he fought and died beneath the Spanish sun.

Many Irishmen heard the call of Franco.
Joined Hitler and Mussolini too.
Propaganda from the pulpit and newspapers
Helped O'Duffy to enlist his crew.

The word came from Maynooth: 'Support the Fascists.'
The men of cloth failed yet again
When the bishops blessed the blueshirts in Dun Laoghaire
As they sailed beneath the swastika to Spain.

This song is a tribute to Frank Ryan.
Kit Conway and Dinny Coady too.
Peter Daly, Charlie Regan and Hugh Bonar.
Though many died I can but name a few.

Danny Doyle, Blaser-Brown and Charlie Donnelly.
Liam Tumilson and Jim Straney from the Falls.
Jack Nally, Tommy Patton and Frank Conroy,
Jim Foley, Tony Fox and Dick O'Neill.

Written in 1983
Copyright Christy Moore
apr97


LA QUINCE BRIGADA

Viva la Quince Brigada,
Rhumbala, rhumbala, rhumbala.
(Repeat)

Que se ha cubierta de gloria,
Ay Manuela, Ay Manuela
(Repeat)

Luchamos contra los Morros,
Rhumbala, rhumbala, rhumbala.
(Repeat)

Mercenarios y fascistas
Ay Manuela, Ay Manuela
(Repeat)

Solo es nuestro deseo
Rhumbala, rhumbala, rhumbala
(Repeat)

Acabar con el fascismo
Ay Manuela, ay Manuela!
(Repeat)

En el frentes de Jarama,
Rhumbala, rhumbala rhumbala
(Repeat)

No tenemos ni aviones,
Ni tankes, ni canones, ay Manuela!
(Repeat)

Ya salimos de Espana
Rhumbala, rhumbala, rhumbala
(Repeat)

Por luchar en otras frentes
Ay Manuela, ay Manuela!
(Repeat)

Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac-*In The Time Of The “Beat” -English Style- “Beat Girl”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Beat Girl.

DVD Review

Beat Girl, Gilliam Hills, Oliver Reed, Christopher Lee, 1960

Forget “king of the literary ‘beats’”, Jack Kerouac. Forget beat down, beat up, up-beat, listen to the beat, be-bop beat, holy of holies beatitude, intoxicatingly sweet-incensed high-massed (catholic high-massed) beat. Forget the one hundred and one other words that old Jack used to describe, or try to describe, that great unquenched hunger, that beast-like hunger of the young, or at least the non-G.I. Bill, Levittown, sell-out for a mess of pottage, close your eyes and let Harry or Ike or Jack do it, post World War II, reds under all the beds, your mommy is a commie turn her in, great American night highway young. And forget “high priest of the literary ‘beats’”, howling trumpet angel, Allen Ginsberg. Forget “high Buddha”, "high om", high-candle lighting, high-flying, high song and dance man, high ganja high, high pre-hip-hop, hip-hop social poet prophet of that great American “beat” night in the cafes and garages of high art. Hell, forget even ironic, sardonic, moronic, “mass media king of the boob tube “beats,” television'd Dobey Gillis-"beat", Maynard G. Krebs. Forget bomb shelter, better dead than red, every mother’s favorite bedraggled, goateed, slightly rank, quirky, jerky, smirky black and white television “beat”, if she had a favorite beat and if she knew enough, which she probably didn’t for she was “square” and squares never knew enough. and she was anyway heavily-invested in that great “luxury” Leavitt town American night to know that it was all put on to stanch the terror of the mid-century, mid- 20th century night at the invasion of the “hip”. (Read: international, jewish, communist menace, or pick some variation of that theme.)

Yes, I say, forget all of that. They all had it wrong, even those who invented blessed “beat”. For until one see the film, the strictly low budget, English, black and white B-film, under review, Beat Girl, that all that was said above was merely eyewash. You see it had nothing to do with the great American highway night, or of hunger, beast-like or otherwise, even if only hunger for meaning but it was merely another in the endless, endless I say, ways that youth tries to assert itself in a world that it had not choice making and had not been asked about. A mere condition on the way to well-adjusted middle class respectability. A lark. No, that “cautionary tale” moral seems a little too pat for me.

A short summary is thus in order. Said titled “beat girl” (named in film but I will not name her, oh, okay, Jennifer), schoolgirl, blonde, of course, heavy mascara'd eye-shadowed , beautiful, curvaceous, upper-middle class, rebellious, slumming, double-life dregs of society-seeking, alienated, forlorn, fed-up, freaked out, sexually frustrated, sexually disoriented, incest-driven (maybe, in the post-Freudian age, who knows, I will throw it in anyway)is on a tear. Did I mention also vacuous, silly, vain and somewhat monosyllabic?

She has been, in any case, left alone, apparently pouting, in splendid early 1960s London isolation (except for the servants) by good old boy (English-style, not American) divorced father. A divorced father, moreover, out to conquer his worlds on his own terms, a thoroughly modern man, a man trying to do good whether asked to or not. Ms. Beat Girl (aka, Jennifer) amps up her aforementioned virtues and vices when “Pa” brings home a new “trophy” wife. A French trophy wife no less, and young to boot like all trophy wives, or most anyway, and blonde, although they are not always blonde. Now said trophy wife tries to make nice but “beat girl” being alienated, forlorn, fed-up, freaked-out and, who knows, maybe, incest driven (poor "Pa") is having in her hard teen age-honed years none of it. Not only that she is out to expose, come hell or high water, said “Ma” (trophy Ma) if for no other reason that to prove that she is “cool” and not “square” (or cubed, octagonal, or any kind of n-gonal existence) to her also alienated, freaked out, fed-up “beat” band of brothers and sisters, middle class, to the teeth (and teeth, good teeth, had a social meaning in that early 1960s England). Moreover, “Ma” has a shady, a very shady past as a night club stripper and as …., (you know what else just in case any one under the age of about eight is around) that cries out for exposure and ruin.

So you can see where this thing is heading, although I can barely keep my hands to the keyboard at this point. The problem is, more apparent in real life, “beat” real life or “real” real life, than in the film that “slumming” among the lower depths of society (here the stripper life) is risky business, very risky business whether for “kicks” or for compulsion. Thus, as our “beat girl” meets with the strip club owner who tries to seduce her (played by Christopher Lee, who as far as I can remember, has never, never, played anything but sinister, if not down right perverted roles, right?) she finally confronts, after his timely murder (not by her, of course) the fact that life with father (and “Ma”) is better, far better, than being alienated and perhaps “fresh meat” for those hoary-eyed, mean mamas who populate the women’s gaol (our jail, okay).

Now, after this admitted fluffy, sketchy, little summary one can ask, as I did, what in the name of sweet jesus does all of this plot line, except the alienated, freaked-out, trying to make sense of a world not of one’s own making, post World War II, declining British Empire, clueless youth have to do with “beat”, with Jack Kerouac thumbed-road, shoe-leather worn, endless diner/gas station-seeking, gong bong dope-smoking, Allen Ginsberg poem- wailing, hipster, dipster, tipster , Charlie Parker be-bop, smoke-filled cellar café night. Well, for that you have to go back to one Maynard G. Krebs. Or rather the idea that the mainstream media, including the makers of this film, had about what “beat” was all about. This film is just the other side of the old Maynard caricature. That “beat” leads straight to immorality, communism, warts, or worst sex, and other forbidden fruits and thus in need of this little parable to cry, cry in the wilderness, and it turns out for social order and those “little boxes” that Malvina Reynolds wrote about in a song by the same name.

So pretty good of me, right? To be able to take a second-rate, maybe, even third-rate B-film when you take into consideration the threadbare dialogue that I refused to mention and the, at times, bizarre facial expressions of the main characters as they “emote” their alienation, and turn it into a polemical beating over the head of those who would denigrate our sacred youthful “beatness.” Oh, well, all in a day’s work, however, there is more though. I am an “avenging angel” today.

Look, I do not have a feel for the pre-World War I Greenwich Village bohemianism that attracted the likes of John Reed, Louise Bryant, Mabel Dodge and Max Eastman. I do not have a real feel for the Paris-exiled, lost-generationness of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and their crowds. I do not have a feel for the jitterbugging, sweet “swing is king" clarinet man Benny Goodman, big band with brass and reeds, Great Depression grope-through to keep body and soul together, of my parents’ generation, and, maybe, of yours. I do, however, have a feel for the 1950s red scare, Cold War, atom bomb (or worst, H-bomb) is going to get us, live for today so live well, or at least live it up, this old world is too big for me to understand and I did not make it anyway, look over the hill for the next mountain to climb break-out, or just a small get out of the “square” house break-out, alienations of the “beats”. And I tried, tried like hell, to live it out a little, young and silly as I was. In short, being “beat” while being political.

And that feel is where I have issues with the “beats” presented here. Of course, like lots of things, social things, the middle class, or rather a small, disenchanted (or don’t fit in), sometimes dismissed, or declassed element of it drive such new movements. Fair enough. And it is almost ABCs that in the early stages, at least, that exclusiveness by dress, language, mores, style, what have you, drive the thing. That is what happened in this film. The alienated youth, including their jazz-background'd (but also budding rock and roll, classic Elvis, Bo Diddley, blue-influenced rock-driven), smoky cellar café, all night-partying caught the last flashes of “beatness.” Faux “beatness.”

As I pointed out earlier the moral of this thing was that “beat” was just another aspect of teen alienation. Hardly unusual, at least since about the 18th century, when teenagehood became more of a human condition (if for no other reason than people lived longer and needed a niche between babyhood and the work-a-day world). But what about those, like me, who took “beat” for good coin, at least as far as I understood it.

Beat was not just bongos, banjos, guitars, sitars, drums, rums, oms, roams, highways and byways but a way of looking at middle class life (admittedly, on my part from the edges of the working poor) and flipping the finger at it , for good. Whether that was done wearing three piece suits (hard, very hard to do, granted) or thonged-sandals, hot rod roadster-driven or on sore, worn-down, shoe-leathered feet, as bohemian or Bolshevik, flipping that finger for good, was the real deal when the deal went down. I have taken old brother wind Kerouac to task for many things, mainly political, but not for that. That flip of the finger. That is what is missing here. Hey, on second thought, don’t forget Jack Kerouac. Or Allen Ginsberg either.

Love, Oh Careless, Love-With Diane Keaton and Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” In Mind

Love, Oh Careless, Love-With Diane Keaton and Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” In Mind  

DVD Review

By Associate Editor Alden Riley 

Annie Hall, starring Diane Keaton, Woody Allen,

It is funny how some film assignments I get from my boss,

Sandy Salmon, come into being. I mentioned in a recent review of the classic female vs. male clash of wills and style George Cukor’s Adam’s Rib starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy that he wished me to watch such strong independent lead women’s roles from the 1930s and 1940s to prove out his thesis that female actors such as Hepburn were able to turn in great performances with style and panache without appearing to be man-eaters. Or not too much anyway in contrast to many female-driven leads today where to avoid such designations the     

story-line has to bend over backwards cutting the heart out of such efforts. I had mentioned that in my review of the current Wonder Woman as an example and that one phrase started Sandy’s wheels rolling. 

The genesis of the film under review, Woody Allen’s masterly romantic comedy Annie Hall is very different. It is based on two factors, the first stemming from a BBC radio news broadcast that Sandy heard on his way to work one day about a survey that had been done naming the 150 greatest comedy films of all times. Annie Hall had been named number three on that list. The second my answer that I had never seen the film, had no particular interest in Woody Allen’s logjam of films after having seen a few from his early 2000s production (except Blue Jasmine but that was carried by the performance of Cate Blanchett more than Woody’s plotline and dialogue), and tended away from reviewing romantic comedies. Naturally that put fury red in Allen devotee Sandy’s eyes (that “devotee” status which in turn he had gotten from his film critic friend Sam Lowell, former film editor here, when they were both at the American Film Gazette).        

So here I am grinding it out on this one. Pleasantly grinding it out on a film that still seems fresh today some thirty plus years after its premier. As my companion who was watching the film with me said “it has aged well.” Agreed. I am not sure where I would put it in the pantheon of cinematic great comedies but it certainly belongs among the low numbers, no question about that.   

Of course as with many Woody Allen vehicles the art is in the dialogue and wit and not so much the plotline. At the time of production Woody was well known for his New York Jewish kid comic routine in many such film efforts. Annie Hall is in line with that persona from the neurotic self-effacing guy who can’t seem to “get it” about romance after two failed marriages to two bright star Jewish women and starts out once again on the roady road to love-to romance. Although this time with a classic WASP woman from Wisconsin Annie Hall of the title played by then paramour Diane Keaton as an aspiring nightclub performer (check out her stand-up performance of It Seems Like Old Times which brought a tear to the eye of my viewing companion). Still Woody can’t seem to get the hang of modern romance and he loses Annie not only to another man but to another coast-the dreaded enemy Left Coast-LA. The film is rounded out with every important New York intellectual referential tidbit from the period. Sandy said he howled when Woody made a cutting comment to his second wife about two New York-based high-end intellectual publications of the day- Commentary and Dissent saying they had merged into a new magazine Dysentery. Sandy said “ouch” but I was, maybe not being from New York or old enough to remember those publication was non-plussed by that one although many of the other references were very funny.

Like I said I can for once agree with Sandy and also can truthfully say I was not be put off by yet another “have to do” Sandy assignment this time. This film deserves its low number on the greatest comedy list.

Happy Birthday Jim Kweskin-The Max Daddy Of Jug- *A “Blues Mama” For Our Times Encore- The Blues Of Maria Muldaur

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Maria Muldaur Performing " Richland Woman Blues".

CD Review

Sweet Lovin’ Ol’ Soul, Maria Muldaur, Stony Plain Records, 2005

I have often noted that when white women cover blues songs done by the old classic black singers like Memphis Minnie, Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton and the like some undefined ingredient is missing. Call it "soul" or the "miseries" or whatever you like but somehow the depths of a song are generally not reached. Not so here, as Maria Muldaur presents the second of an anticipated three albums covering some great classics of old time barrel house blues. (The first album was "Richland Woman's Blues", taking the title from a song by Mississippi John Hurt so you know Maria is reaching for the blues roots, no question).

Bessie Smith's "Empty Bed Blues" sticks out as do her duos with the legendary Taj Mahal. Blind Willie Johnson’s classic religiously-tinged “Take A Stand” and Bessie Smith's (with Clara Smith) “I’m Going Back” get their proper workout. The big highlight though (and a very necessary “re-discovery”) is the tribute to Memphis Minnie, “She Put Me Outdoors”. And a very necessary “discovery” of the very hard times, hard hustle and hard knocks of the female blues singer, “Tricks Ain’t Walkin”. More needs to be said on that question. As Maria points out in her liner notes some of these songs here are ones that she wanted to do earlier in her career but was either talked out or could not do justice to then. But now Maria knows she has paid her dues, I know she has paid her dues, and you will too. Listen.

Blues Lyrics - Mississippi John Hurt
Richland's Woman Blues
All rights to lyrics included on these pages belong to the artists and authors of the works.
All lyrics, photographs, soundclips and other material on this website may only be used for private study, scholarship or research.

Gimme red lipstick and a bright purple rouge
A shingle bob haircut
and a shot of good boo'

Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' your horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone
Come along young man, everything settin' right
My husbands goin' away till next Saturday night

Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' you horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone
Now, I'm raring to go, got red shoes on my feet
My mind is sittin' right for a Tin Lizzie
seat

Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' you horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone
The red rooster said, "Cockle-doodle-do-do"
The Richard's' woman said, "Any dude will do"

Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' you horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone
With rosy red garters, pink hose on my feet
Turkey red bloomer, with a rumble seat

Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' you horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone
Every Sunday mornin', church people watch me go
My wings sprouted out, and the preacher told me so

Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' you horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone
Dress skirt cut high, then they cut low
Don't think I'm a sport, keep on watchin' me go

Hurry down, sweet daddy, come blowin' you horn
If you come too late, sweet mama will be gone

In Honor Of The King Of The Folk-Singing Hard-Living Hobos The Late Utah Phillips -From The Archives- *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 (2017)-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.

The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- American Socialist Workers Party Leader James P.Cannon-Early Years of the American Communist Movement-Origins of the Labor Party Policy

Click on the headline to link to a James P. Cannon Internet Archives online copy of Early Years of the American Communist Movement-Origins of the Labor Party Policy

Markin comment on this series:

Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.

Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.

As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.