This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
When Lady Day Chased The Blues Away-“The Quintessential Billie Holiday (Volume 3-1936-37)
CD Review
By Music Critic Seth Garth
The Quintessential Billie Holiday, Volume 3, 1936-37
Everybody, at least the everybodies who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, had at least heard the sad life story and junkie death of the legendary blue singer Billie Holiday. Knew that information either from having read her biography, the liner notes on her records (vinyl for those who have not become hip to the beauties of that old-fashion way to produce recordings), newspaper obituaries, or from the 1970s film starring Diana Ross (lead singer of Motown’s Supremes). So everybody knew that Lady Day (I believe that the Prez, the great saxophonist Lester Young, who backed her on many recordings and in many a venue gave her that name and it fit her as did that eternal flower in her hair) had come up the hard way, had had a hard time with men in her life and had plenty of trouble with junk, with heroin.
Yeah, that is the sad part, the life and times part. But if you listen to this CD under review, the third volume in the series you will also know why in the first part of the 21st century guys like me are still reviewing her work, still haunted by that voice, by that meaningful pause between notes that carried you to a different place, kept your own blues at bay. That last statement is really what I want to hone in on here since Billie Holiday is an acquired taste, and a taste which grows on you as you settle in to listen to whole albums rather than a single selection. Here is my god’s honest truth though. Many a blue night when I was young, hell, now too, I would play Billie for hours and my own silly blues would kind of evaporate. Nice right. Here is the not nice part. Once a few years ago I was talking to some young people about Billie and they, maybe under the influence of the film or from their disapproving parents, kind of wrote her off as just another junkie gone to seed. I shocked them, I think, when I said if I had had the opportunity I would have given Billie all the dope she wanted just for taking my own blues away. That is why we still listen to that sultry, slinky, sexy voice today.
Is everything in this CD or in her overall work the cat’s meow. No, toward the end in the 1950s you can tell her voice was hanging by a thread under the strain of all her troubles, legal and medical. But in the 1930s, the time of her time, covering Tin Pan Alley songs which seem to have almost been written just for her she had that certain “it” which cannot be defined but only accepted, accepted gratefully. Check out Pennies From Heaven and I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm and you will get an idea of what I am talking about.
In Honor Of The Late Folksinger-Songwriter Rosalie Sorrels Tell Me Utah Phillips- Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails?
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, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.
(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/RockportSunday, and aboutaffairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)
Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned 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 the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). 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, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is 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 tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfullyand maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage.Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.
Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)
Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion 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 banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic 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 and thoughst of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels
When Rock And Roll Rocked The Known World-John Lennon’s Rock And
Roll-A CD Review
CD Review
By Josh Breslin
Rock And Roll, John Lennon, 1974-5
I really wish my long departed old friend, Peter Paul Markin, met in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967 could have reviewed this CD. He was just enough older than me at the time to have been able to appreciate the influence that the classic age of rock and roll, what he calculated as between 1955 and 1965, had on a poor street tough (just look at the cover and you will see what I mean) from the depths of Liverpool had on John Lennon. Made me appreciate this stuff that growing up in Podunk Maine I was not really that familiar with at the time. See Markin (everybody called him the Scribe when he was growing up poor on the tough streets of America but I knew him first under the moniker the Be-Bop Kid on that first long ago meeting) came to his blessed rock and roll music the same way. Let the beat seep into his brain just like Lennon.
While Markin had no particular musical skills he had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of what rocked his kindred on those mean streets (and not just the denizens of the mean streets either). What Markin also knew was that along with the quintessential American black-centered blues that rock and roll was being revered and played in the back alleys of England long after those genre were being by-passed by what Markin called the musical counter-revolution that got sprung on the teenage world in the late 1960s and would not be broken through until guys like John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards crossed the Atlantic in the British invasion of the mid-1960s.
So what you have with this production is John Lennon, post-Beatle John Lennon, going back to the roots. Going back to what kick started his young street tough brain. Are the individual songs performed here the best covers ever done on the classics from the 1950s. No. Does this production even in remastered form give uniformly quality values. No. Does this thing make you want to get up and dance even in your shadowed AARP-worthy life. You bet. Yeah, Markin would have given you why and what for on individual covers like Be-Bop-A-Lula, Stand Be Me, and Sweet Little Sixteen and told you to grab this thing with all your hands as a prime example of what it was like when people played rock and roll for keeps. I agree.
When Marvel Comics Said Something About The Condition Of The World Today-About The Desperate Search For Some Rough Justice In This Wicked Old World-Marvel Studio’s “Black Panther” (2018)-A Film Review
Link to a NPR Christopher Lydon Open Source show on the on the social significance of the massive blockbuster Marvel Comics Studio creation Black Panther:
http://radioopensource.org/the-world-of-wakanda/
DVD Review
By Leslie Dumont
Black Panther, starring Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan and a host of black actors who have made their respective marks in Hollywood, directed by Ryan Coogler, 2018
Hey, I wasn’t trying to rain on anybody’s parade when I mentioned at a staff meeting that I did not think that the latest creation out of Marvel Comics Studio the financial blockbuster Black Panther was that interesting a story line given the hype created around the production and the astronomical box office numbers. I wasn’t even attempting to deal with the significance the film might have as the work of an almost totally black cast, black director and set in the virginal non-colonial land of Wakanda which had the added bonus of producing AND keeping its own vital raw resources, or resource is probably a better way to put it. All I knew was that for an over two hour film, seemingly all these Marvel productions need to be over two hours or are not worth the effort despite the hard fact, which is true here as well, that except for the advanced cinematic action technology on display they all could have used a bit more cutting in the editorial offices.
Maybe it is because I was never, ever a devotee of comic books or of films based on them, not even Superman if you can believe that, that I was somewhat cavalier with my comments. Nevertheless, for my blasphemy I was made to walk the plank. Bart Webber who revels in all things comic book and who has over the years done a stellar job of reviewing these Marvel cinematic productions was originally assigned by site manager Greg Green to do this review. But between my frankly merely off-hand comments and Greg’s having listened to a Christopher Lydon NPR Open Source hour on The World Of Wakanda where the old man had every academic he could squeeze in give their views of the world-historic significance of the first serious black comic superhero my number came up.
Since I have already alluded to the story-line weakness, which I do not think overcomes whatever black self-identity and self-worth it may impart on the audiences that watched the film, I will just run with that and let you check out the over-arching social and academic views by checking out the Open Source link above. Meaning I will take my own counsel on letting those factors get decided by time and history about who was right or wrong on the world-historic nature of a certain comic book character. You already know this is about a mystical African land named Wakanda which European imperialism was not able to exploit over the centuries it was in the killing fields of Africa trying to satiate its overweening greed. No mean task to have done, no question, but which by keeping quiet and keeping it valuable resource hidden from global view was able to prosper.
The minute you say that though you know the dramatic tension is going to be between those who want to get at the “gold” and those who want to keep the damn thing for their own internal use. That drama gets played out big time after the current Wakanda head of state got blown away and caused what amounted to a succession crisis between the legitimate son who wanted to keep to the old ways and the adopted son who wanted to use the Wakanda resources to bring down the neo-imperialism which was retarding post-colonial societal development. And by the way enrich and empower his own ambitions.
Naturally, real or fiction such tensions get a serious workout with first the legitimate son T’Challa (aka Black Panther) gaining the throne through the traditional rites of passage and then the pretender, the “bad guy” N’Jakada, (aka Killmonger) stepping up and asserting his rights also through combat and a preliminary victory. Sounds familiar even if two black guys are running the game this time. Just as naturally after a little time under N’ Jakada and his Pan-African dreams the Wakandans back T’Challa after the requisite number of mock battles and mortal combat between the pair. If I seem to have condensed the storyline too much well I have just done so to show that this is really something that guys could go crazy about, black or white. World-historic it is not and Greg Green and Christopher Lydon’s gushings are not going to change my mind on this one. The only virtue here is if Greg publishes this review he will think twice about not letting Bart Webber go through his paces and drag the story line out like he was being paid by the word.
For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-Our Mother, The Mountain- The Traditional Mountain Music Of Jean Ritchie
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, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.
(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/RockportSunday, and aboutaffairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)
Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned 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 the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). 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, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is 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 tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfullyand maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage.Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.
Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)
Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion 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 banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic 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 and thoughst of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels
CD REVIEW Mountain Hearth And Home, Jean Ritchie, Rhino Handmade, 2004 The last time that the name of traditional mountain folk singer Jean Ritchie was mentioned in this space was as part of the lineup in Rosalie Sorrel’s last concert at Harvard University that spawned a CD, “The Last Go-Round”. At that concert she, as usual, she performed, accompanied by her sweet dulcimer, the mountain music particularly the music that she learned in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky and that she has been associated with going back at least to the early 1960’s. Here, in the CD under review, “Mountain Hearth and Home”, we get a wide range of those traditional mountain songs from those parts that provide something for every palate. The songs, simple songs of the mountains that befit a simple folk with simple lyrics, chords and instrumentation representing what was at hand, many of which have their genesis back in the hills of Scotland and Ireland, never fail to evoke a primordial response in this listener. The songs speak of the longings created by those isolated spaces; and, occasionally of those almost eternal thoughts of love, love thwarted, love gone wrong or love disappearing without a trace. Or songs of the hard life of the mountains whether it is the hard scrabble to make a life from the rocky farmland that will not give forth without great struggle or of the mines, the coal mines that in an earlier time (and that are making a comeback now) represented a key energy source for a growing industrial society. Many a tale here centers on the trails and tribulations of the weary, worked out mines and miners. Add in some country lullabies, some religiously- oriented songs representing the fundamental Protestant ethic that drove these people and some Saturday dancing and drinking songs and you have a pretty good feel for the range of experience out there in the hills, hollows and ravines of Eastern Kentucky. Several time over the past year or so I have mentioned, as part of my remembrances of my youth and of my political and familial background, that my father was a coal miner and the son of a coal miner in the hills of Hazard, Kentucky (a town mentioned in a couple of the songs here) in the heart of Appalachia. I have also mentioned that he was a child of the Great Depression and of World War II. He often joked that in a choice between digging the coal and taking his chances in war he much preferred the latter. Thus, it was no accident that when war came he volunteered for the Marines and, as fate would have it despite a hard, hard life after the war, he never looked back to the mines or the hills. Still this music flowed in his veins, and, I guess, flows in mine. My Boy Willie
Traditional
Notes: This song has the exact same tunes as the song "The Butcher Boy" and is of a similar theme. It was early, early in the spring my boy Willie went to serve the king And all that vexed him and grieved his mind was the leaving of his dear girl behind. Oh father dear build me a boat that on the ocean I might float And hail the ships as they pass by for to inquire of my sailor boy. She had not sailed long in the deep when a fine ship's crew she chanced to meet And of the captain she inquired to "Does my boy Willie sail on board with you?" "What sort of a lad is your Willie fair? What sort of clothes does your Willie wear?" "He wears a coat of royal blue, and you'll surely know him for his heart is true". "If that's your Willie he is not here. Your Willie's drowned as you did fear. 'Twas at yonder green island as we passed by, it was there we lost a fine sailor boy". Go dig my grave long wide and deep, put a marble stone at my head and feet. And in the middle, a turtle dove. So the whole world knows that I died of love. "The L & N Don't Stop Here Anymore" When I was a curly headed baby My daddy sat me down on his knee He said, "son, go to school and get your letters, Don't you be a dusty coal miner, boy, like me." [Chorus:] I was born and raised at the mouth of hazard hollow The coal cars rolled and rumbled past my door But now they stand in a rusty row all empty Because the l & n don't stop here anymore I used to think my daddy was a black man With script enough to buy the company store But now he goes to town with empty pockets And his face is white as a February snow [Chorus] I never thought I'd learn to love the coal dust I never thought I'd pray to hear that whistle roar Oh, god, I wish the grass would turn to money And those green backs would fill my pockets once more [Chorus] Last night I dreamed I went down to the office To get my pay like a had done before But them ol' kudzu vines were coverin' the door And there were leaves and grass growin' right up through the floor [Chorus] Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies Come all ye fair and tender ladies Take warning how you court your men They're like a star on a summer morning They first appear and then they're gone They'll tell to you some loving story And they'll make you think that they love you well And away they'll go and court some other And leave you there in grief to dwell I wish I was on some tall mountain Where the ivy rocks were black as ink I'd write a letter to my false true lover Whose cheeks are like the morning pink I wish I was a little sparrow And I had wings to fly so high I'd fly to the arms of my false true lover And when he'd ask, I would deny Oh love is handsome, love is charming And love is pretty while it's new But love grows cold as love grows older And fades away like morning dew "BLACK IS THE COLOUR" Black is the colour of my true love's hair Her lips are like some roses fair She's the sweetest face and the gentlest hands I love the ground wheron she stands I love my love and well she knows I love the ground whereon she goes But some times I whish the day will come That she and I will be as one Black is the colour of my true love's hair Her lips are like some roses fair She's the sweetest face and the gentlest hands I love the ground wheron she stands I walk to the Clyde for to mourn and weep But satisfied I never can sleep I'll write her a letter, just a few short lines And suffer death ten thousand times Black is the colour of my true love's hair Her lips are like some roses fair She's the sweetest face and the gentlest hands I love the ground wheron she stands Blue Diamond Mines I remember the ways in the bygone days when we was all in our prime When us and John L. we give the old man hell down in the Blue Diamond Mine Well the whistle would blow 'for the rooster crow full two hours before daylight When a man done his best and earned his good rest at seven dollars a night In the mines in the mines in the Blue Diamond Mines I worked my life away In the mines in the mines In the Blue Diamond Mines I fall on my knees and pray. You old black gold you've taken my lung your dust has darkened my home And now I am old and you've turned your back where else can an old miner go Well it's Algomer Block and Big Leather Woods now its Blue Diamond too The bits are all closed get another job what else can an old miner do? Now the union is dead and they shake their heads well mining has had it's day But they're stripping off my mountain top and they pay me eight dollars a day Now you might get a little poke of welfare meal get a little poke of welfare flour But I tell you right now your won't qualify 'till you work for a quarter an hour.
Updated Introduction to Frank Jackman’s Fate -In Honor Of The Native American Artist and Poet T.E. Cannon and All The Members Of The Vietnam War Class Of 1969 Whatever Their Fate
Jesus, Even I can’t believe this- An Introduction to the Introduction by Allan Jackson
Originally the “Introduction” to an encore version of Frank Jackman’s Fate below was to be placed as my introduction to a sketch in the encore edition of the The Roots Is The Toots rock and roll series. I had been behind the recreation of series after I had been dismissed from running this publication having been given what by all accounts was a vote of confidence by friend and foe alike to do the Introductions to the series having been the evil genie who sweated blood and tears and that of the writers to bring the original forth. That series highlighted, mostly highlighted how a group of guys, guys we called corner boys among ourselves in line with what all the then up-to-date sociologists, academics and criminologist described our existence who grew up poor, came of age in the 1950s rock and roll night and took graduate degree courses in the blues, folk, acid rock of the subsequent 1960s where we called ourselves, proudly called ourselves the Generation of ’68.
Some of us kicking and screaming and some of us following gladly the lead of Peter Paul Markin (whose name I have used for years as my on-line moniker) who saw and heard the fresh breeze coming first among us. Like a lot of things thought that idea got waylaid when Frank Jackman did an essay/sketch centered on his Army experiences during the Vietnam War and his curious notion that he was part of the Vietnam War Class of 1969 after he was overwhelmed with the fact that many of his friends and associates had passed through Vietnam in that year. The straw that broke the camel’s back, the thing that got him to what I called “come out of the closet” about his Army service which had started in 1969 was his assignment to review the art exhibit of the work of the late Native American artist and poet T.E. Cannon at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Cannon had spent the latter part of his Vietnam tour of duty with the 101st Airborne Division in 1969. Frank took that as the decisive portent. He would come out of the closet as described below in a very public way looking for recognition from his fellow veterans who had their own 1969 experiences. That change is what took Frank’s experiences out of that rock and roll series and removed it to an Introduction to a separate piece about an encore of Frank Jackman’s Fate But even that now seems misplaced and so we will produce this as a separate sketch independent of either of the previous placements
********
Originally Intended Introduction by Allan Jackson
[That Frank Jackman is a piece of work, a real piece of work. Many people know that he has worked as a political commentator for both the hard copy and now on-line version of American Left History (and before that both the East Bay Other and The Eye and before that an eye-popping number of publications as a free-lancer). And many know that he was one of the corner boys I grew up with along with a few other writers here like Sam Lowell. What many people do not know is that Frank back in the 1960s when every young guy patriotic, indifferent or protesting had some choices to make even if by ignorance, took a very different direction from the rest of us, from the corner boys, hell, from most of the guys facing the draft and facing orders to Vietnam. Took a different turn on military service during our generation’s, the so-called Generation of ’68’s, war, the Vietnam War. Sure Frank, kicking and screaming since he had lost a chance to go to law school when they stopped the draft deferments for law school students, allowed himself to be indentured (his term) when his draft call came in 1969, actually 1968 for his physical and 1969 for induction.
Frank told me once that after about three days in basic training down at Fort Jackson in South Carolina (I did mine at Fort Dix in New Jersey where most guys from the North went so I don’t, and neither does he, why he wound up there except that being far from home and resources freaked him out knowing that he had better not go crazy down there for he might find himself in some black box or worse) that he knew that he had made a huge mistake, had to let his basic genie, anti-war genie out of the bag, hell bottle, hell some container. Most importantly unlike the rest of us (including me who held my doubts in and did my tour like every other fucking stupid asshole who knew better, knew that our fellow corner boys Rickie Rizzo and Frank White had laid their heads down in 1966 for no good reason except getting etched in black granite but went anyway but this isn’t about me and that story can wait another day, maybe a decade since I still don’t fully understand it) Frank as was his wont when he felt deeply about something followed through, went down in the mud with mano a mano with the whole fucking Army establishment, Made as he said laughingly once it was over and we could talk about it since most of us corner boys who went like sheep to the slaughter were very ambivalent about what Frank did for a while, including the Scribe, Peter Paul Markin if you can believe that rue the day they drafted him. One bastard colonel almost lost his rank for his efforts in trying to shut Frank up so that black hole idea was no joke. He won, won his freedom but it was a very close thing, close indeed. Funny, and not in a laughing way Frank suffered a lot of the same feelings that he no longer knew the old world we grew up in that the rest of us who went did coming back to the ‘real’ world after the Army.
All the rest of us corner boys who were draft-worthy had either enlisted or had accepted the draft without murmur, including Rickie Rizzo and Frank White who laid down their heads on the plateaus of Central Vietnam and whose names now are etched in the town memorial and in black granite in Washington for eternity. We would have spat on anybody, Frank included, who actually would have even though about refusing induction whatever we thought of the war and most of us saw it as a big bother to whatever other plans we had had. We would all change our minds later and I and others have written about that sea change elsewhere. So the collective North Adamsville corner boys were not any different from the whole cohort of our generation who had decisions to make one way or another about what to do when the war dragged on seemingly forever.
Then there was outlier Frank, or what we thought then was outlier Frank, who would accept that crazed induction and then refuse to go to Vietnam as an infantryman, as a grunt as we called ourselves and as “cannon fodder” as we learned to call ourselves when we got smarter after our military service and after, as always, the late Peter Paul Markin, forever etched in North Adamsville lore of a certain old time corner boy generation as Scribe, gave us the skinny on what the fuck we had been through, why and for who. Frank would flat out refuse to go when after Basic Training and AIT (Advanced Infantry Training which I also went through and which in 1969, and a few years before and a few years after meant only one desperate destination-Vietnam-as it did for me). Frank’s story which not all of us knew, including me, knew at the time since we were in Vietnam as part of what we, he would call the Vietnam War Class of 1969, either because we didn’t want to believe it or didn’t want to hear about it from our own guilt about going to war once we got in-country and knew we were fucked, had been fucked over royally.
This is the way Frank told it one night in the early 1970s when we were all back and after we were able to listen to him since like I said not all of us we happy with him while he going down in the mud like some berserk lunatic, was fucking around with the Army, what (and we were being fucked). He had received orders for Vietnam down in Fort Benning in Georgia, had come home and immediately, or if not immediately since I think he said he shacked up with some young woman for some time before he did so since he had like the rest of us had a thirty day leave before having to show up at Fort Lewis in Washington, went to get some G.I. counselling from the Quakers over in Cambridge. Even the idea of checking in with the Quakers seemed strange when I first heard about it in Vietnam, about the service they were offering guys in the military in their peaceful bid to end the endless war. Whatever else we knew we knew that our church, the Roman Catholic Church, at the official level accepted the government’s version of the necessary defense of Vietnam as the key domino part of a just war in order to put its own stamp on it as such, supported it long after other religious groups turned away from support, except a few crazy renegades like the Berrigan brothers who Father Lally railed against in Sunday sermons from the blood-stained pulpit at Sacred Heart.
These Quakers were historically with some others like Mennonites known as anti-war people, as conscientious objectors to war (except I wondered at the time about Grace Kelly in her Quaker maiden role in High Noon since she did a rooty-toot toots on the bad guys when her man was in danger but that could have been self-defense and some such and not war). Quirky people who I never really had had truck with except knowing they were some kind of Protestant sect. What they had going for them was they had been deeply involved in draft counselling, in draft resistance which had its heyday in the Vietnam War for those who don’t know what I am talking about. Strangely while I was in college, working my way through since my family had no, nada money for such a cause, I serviced coffee machines and part of my route passed right by the Arlington Street Universalist or Unitarian Church this before they united later in the decade so I am not sure which in downtown Boston where the draft resistance was located, was a draft sanctuary and I would beep my horn. Such were the contradictions of Allan Jackson-hell Frank and every other corner boy as well. Hell Scribe lived for the contradictions that would finally lead him to an early grave.
What they, the Quakers started doing and I am not sure when, and I am not sure if I asked Frank if he would know either, was they started offering G.I. counselling at some point when it became clear that a small munity was beginning to form in the military by drafted citizen-soldiers and others, guys back from Vietnam too, who were looking for personal and political ways to oppose the war. How Frank found out about the service I don’t remember but somehow he got over there to leafy Cambridge and that changed everything.
Hey, you should know this about Frank. He was/is a quiet guy, a bookish guy like Scribe except in the corner boy days Scribe had so many angsts and alienations that he was forever running his mouth. So Frank was no leader, not exactly a follower either but one of the guys, one of the guys who went along with every caper Scribe or Frankie Riley our acknowledged leader put to paper. If anybody figured to be a crazy anti-war guy it was Scribe not Frank. Scribe when he got what he called “religion” would become a fire and brimstone guy about war later but it was nobody but Frank who did what he did and had kept pretty quiet about it before he opened up to us that night.
What Frank learned from the Quakers was that he could put in an application to the Army for conscientious objector status. Yeah, I know what you are thinking because I thought the same thing too and as I am writing this down it still sounds implausible even though federal courts up and down have declared it a valid way to get out of the military. If you signed up for the Army or got drafted how the hell a person could be a conscientious objector-be what I thought and still think a little something like a Quaker. Here was Frank’s first hurdle though. Putting an application in at Fort Lewis where he was supposed to go was filled with some danger since they were dragooning such applicants in the dead of night and shipping them to Vietnam under guard after formally and quickly turning the application down.
That tactic would make it hard to get to a federal court in time to get a writ of habeas corpus on jurisdictional grounds (thanks Frankie Riley for that information). Another option and the Quakers were wise to give options and not orders even if with a Quakerly wink was to go AWOL (absent without leave) which means in military terms unlawful for over thirty days or so at which time he would be what was called “dropped from the roles,” essentially a free agent and turn himself in at the nearest army base which happened to be Fort Devens about forty miles west of Boston. While waiting to have the AWOL litigated he could put his C.O application in without the Fort Lewis danger. (Frank also gave a bunch of other reasons why this strategy was good, but I forget them except it would be easier for his Quaker-provided lawyer to get to him which makes sense.)
Frank followed the second option (there had been a couple of others presented but this was the best of the bunch as far as I remember), went AWOL, turned himself in at Fort Devens, and while his AWOL case was being disposed of put in his C.O. application, got some minor punishment and a fine I think and, no capital AND, his application turned down within a few weeks. Done. Cooked next stop Vietnam. Well not quite. There were some changes happening in C.O. law since many applications, mostly civilian, were being turned down and being litigated in the lower federal courts and eventually a few in the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS in tweeter speak) some of which would be decided before Frank’s time was up and helpful to his case. His lawyer took that application to the federal court in Boston and on the basis of the merits of his case was able to get a judge to order a temporary restraining order (TRO) which kept Frank in the court’s jurisdiction pending disposition. (That legal maneuver turned out to be very useful later but also at the time since on the very day the TRO was ordered the Army was in the process of giving him another set of orders to Fort Lewis and then Vietnam-under guard, under the guard of two lifer sergeants-whee! Even I was impressed by the maneuvering on that one as Frank hid on base all day while the petition was before the court in Boston.)
During this time Frank was reading like crazy, reading radical anti-war stuff and the like and staying in touch with the Quakers whom he liked as people even if he did not always understand where they were coming from. I think, and I have mentioned it to him since that the Army’s whole treatment of him and especially that “under guard” maneuver broke something in him, broke him free maybe and I made him laugh once when I told him before I knew the whole story and before he had decided to resist what were they going to do –put him in the stockade. Once you get clear on that-once you face that dragon and don’t flinch then what the hell do what you have to do-which is what I would eventually come to see was my own attitude toward what Frank did and what the rest of us didn’t do. That was also the time along with the G.I. counselling that the Quakers and others (some much more radical and less committed to non-violence) were moving away from reliance on mass marches in place like Washington, D.C. and pleading with politicians and hitting the military bases with G.I. coffeehouse outreach nearby and smaller marches and rallies in front of the bases.
These ideas sparked Frank’s imagination, got him into second gear in his defining his commitment to the anti-war struggle. Like I said something snapped in Frank, something of the old time stay cool and out of the firing line when the Scribe or Frankie Riley were in high dungeon which is my clearest high school corner boy memory of him, Now Frank was the heroic John Brown avenging angel that the Scribe kept talking what we considered his crazy talk about on lonesome penniless Friday night. In corner boy talk Frank did not give a fuck about what the Army did or did not want to do to him. One day when the Quakers decided to have a rally outside the gates of Fort Devens protesting the war (and trying to drum up interest among the soldiery there) Frank, Private E-1 Francis James Jackman (that E-1 the lowest rank possible for a soldier since he had been reduced in rank due to that AWOL rap) decided to leave the fort in uniform doing duty hours and join them. That night Frank, Private E-1 Francis James Jackman and you know the why of E-1, after returning to his barracks was picked up by the MPs and taken to the Provost Marshal’s office and from there thrown in solitary at the stockade.
That what they called “disobeying lawful orders," not being on the base during duty hours, would eventually lead to the first of two special courts-martial both which like I said technically were labelled as “disobeying lawful orders” and sentenced to six months on each rap. It was at that first court-martial that when Frank was asked if he had any words in his defense he took out a ragged piece of paper and read from the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s Masters of War. With his back to the judges and facing the courtroom crowd which included some supporters gathered from the Quakers and others who periodically showed up outside the fort to call for his freedom. That support was important as Frank found out during his jail terms to keep spirits up knowing that some people were outside rooting him on (not his parents or any relatives but he did not dwell on that when he spoke to us that late night but and we knew what was what about Acre families and the war who like Frank’s father had supported the war in many cases to the bitter end. He would be forever grateful to the Quakers and allies for that. (By the way if anybody is wondering why Frank was not shipped off to Fort Leavenworth the worse military facility out in Kansas and the one the drill sergeants in basic training kept warning every scared recruit was going to be their fate if they fucked up, or gave them any lip that TRO held him under the court’s jurisdiction in Massachusetts but also meant that they could not give him a general court martial with longer sentences that the Judge Advocate-General’s Office wanted to impose.
And so Frank did his time, read a lot, wrote some and talked a blue streak to the few other guys who he roomed with when he was not in solidarity. He never the whole time he was imprisoned there had been let into the general population and perhaps they, the Army, showed a tad bit of sense for their fears since he was on his righteous John Brown avenging angel high horse and Frank said he would have started an anti-war rally in the stockade if he had been out there. As it was he never had more than a couple of roommates at a time, I guess cellmates is a better way to say it, and never saw more than a few people when he was out playing basketball in the compound which was the way used his recreational time. (Truth; Frank was one of the worst pick-up basketball players of all time and was absolutely the last guy picked when we were bucking up for teams, one time we played short not to have to take him.) Also took stock of his personal life when the wife he married, a college sweetheart, refused to come see him in the stockade despite her own anti-war views getting grief from her Marine Corps World War II Pacific War father. That would be the first of three marriages for Frank (and the rest of us, except Jack Callahan and his beloved forever Chrissie, not far behind in the marriage department). Took a look too at what he would do if he got done with his sentence before the judge ruled in his case. A definite possibility given the logjam in the courts as his lawyer made clear. He was also trying to chart out what he would do if the judgement came down against him while he was in the stockade and they tried to rush him out under guard to Fort Lewis and transport to Vietnam.
In the situation Frank need not have worried since judgement did not come down during the first sentence. Frank set up the next part of what he had to say by saying it was hard to explain but once you have decided to do what you had to do and faced the limit, faced jail then other things kind of fell into place. And so they did when Frank was released from his first sentence and decided his Army time was over, decided to refuse to wear the uniform. Did it with a flourish though worthy of Scribe since one Monday morning at Morning Report, the weekly parade field event to see who showed up and who was AWOL he walked from his barracks to the parade field in civilian clothes (he said he had bell-bottom trousers on which when I recall this now I have to laugh about oh foolish, funny youth except his G.I. boots). Walked with a sign calling “Bring The Troops Home. I need not detail that once again since you know as well as I do now that he wound up in the stockade again in solidarity. And again received that six months special court-martial sentence for his troubles.
For years after Frank would make us laugh when he mentioned that he could have kept doing those sentences until he was old and gray he had been so determined to run out his course. Fortunately toward the end of his second sentence, a few days before as it turns out the federal judge in Boston granted his writ of habeas corpus and a week or so later when the JAG decided not to appeal he was discharged, an honorable discharge just like the rest of us. So Frank was discharged not by the Army really but by that old cranky judge.
Funny after that night and maybe by unwritten agreement among ourselves since I know nobody mentioned for us to do this we kind of put Frank’s experience, put our own Vietnam War experiences in some deep recess of our brains. Just like our World War II fathers had done before us with less reason to be ashamed or humiliated. The only thing Frank’s father ever mentioned was that he had been ashamed of Frank, had had a hard time at work and among the neighbors for a while but after he finally got over those feelings he had a little unspoken pride that a Jackman had done what he thought was the honorable thing to do when he needed to his father’s mind do something. We went about our collective lives, drifted apart or closer usually depending on where we were in the marriage and brood raising merry-go-round.
Frank did mention to me when we were talking one night several years later that he sometimes had doubts about the wisdom of what he had done. Not that he wasn’t personally proud that he stood up when the deal when down but that maybe he should have gone to Vietnam and tried to raise some holy hell there among the growing disillusioned common soldiers there. I never said anything to him about it but in my mind, I thought he was crazy to think that the Army which was willing to put him in a black box and was ready at a minute’s notice to ship his ass to ‘Nam was going to let him run loose among already mutinous troops. But there we left it.
Left it until a few years ago when something began to stir in Frank about why he kept his anti-war fight on the low despite having spent most of the rest of his life actively opposing the wars of the American imperium (sometimes dragging us along as on the Iraq War in 2003, sometimes not as in the initial reaction post-9/11 to the war on Afghanistan). Maybe it was reflecting on age and mortality like many of us our types are finding we are doing more often. Reflecting on a worthwhile life, what we did and didn’t do or should have done differently. I ask him that question one night recently when we were having a few drinks at Jack’s in Cambridge and he surprised me with his answer. Said what triggered him was running into a guy up in Maine who had served in Vietnam in 1969, the time when Frank was refusing to go to Vietnam, who said of his own experience that he had gone through two marriages and neither wife ever knew he had been in Vietnam. Talk about keeping it on the low. He would run into others who more or less shared that some silence about their Vietnam service. The kicker for Frank though was in the fall of 2017 when PBS aired the Lynn Novick-Ken Burns ten-part eighteen hour Vietnam series and in the very first episode a couple of Marines whose wives had known each other for over a decade and both couples had socialized frequently neither knew that the other had been in Vietnam. Weird vibes, very weird.
Those thoughts got Frank off the dime, got him thinking that he needed to let some people know that there had been resistance inside the military. Encouraged everybody to tell their story for the couple of generations that are now pretty clueless about what a hellish time it was to be a young man (mostly men then) facing all kind of decisions based on the mutterings of old men. Frank, as usual for him, got a slow start, let a couple of people know one time when he was going down to Washington for an anti-war demonstration. Talked about it around a round table one night with a bunch of guys who were in Vietnam in 1969. (Frank was developing a feeling that he needed to be accepted as a member of that class despite his own personal twist.) Frank came out of the closet for real though on Memorial Day of 2018 when as part of the Poor People’s Campaign’s War Economy Week he was asked to speak as somebody impacted by war. Impacted his way as surely as others were impacted in theirs. Felt good about it afterward, felt that maybe he really had been on the right side of the angels when the deal went down.
**In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Freddie Hilton, (Kamau Sadiki) 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!
