Sergeant Shults

My wife's father died recently. He was a good guy. He was also a lawyer for 40-some years. (Go figure.) Here's a part of his story:

Richard Hinch Shults was a lawyer and a gentleman, and one of America's "Greatest Generation." Born November 1, 1921, in Batavia, NY, Dick was the son of dentist Nicholas Justin Shults and Mary Francis Hinch (a master bridge instructor). He had two younger sisters, Gracia Maxwell and Peggy Stalnecker, and both eventually played unforeseen roles in his adult life. Gracia introduced him to Mary Frances ("Ro") Best, who became his wife in 1948 and then mother of their six children. And years later, when Ro died suddenly in 1971, sister Peggy provided a crucial assist...

Decades before that, Dick had graduated from Batavia H.S. (in 1939), then attended Holy Cross University--where in addition to academics he showed a mastery of bridge strategy, ping pong, tennis, and pool. Following college graduation in 1943, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, hoping to become a pilot in the Army Air Corps. Having "too many teeth" (as he put it) kept Dick from the skies; and years later he told his children that it must have been God's plan, because many of his schoolfriends who made pilot were soon killed in combat.

Dick instead joined the 970th Counter Intelligence Corps assigned to the European Theater and tasked with hunting Nazi Party members who had disappeared back into Germany's general populace. As he later wrote in a letter to one grandson, "One of the places I was stationed with the CIC was Heilbron, Germany, and my job was to search for the leaders of the German underground movement and make sure they were locked up in prison so they could not rekindle the Nazi organizations..."

As an investigator Dick definitely earned his Sergeant's stripes. Among his many spy-novelish adventures: for a time he ate lunch daily with an informant who kept the CIC apprised of which prisoner soldiers were Nazis and which regular German Army. Dick also helped uncover and quash an armed insurrection planned by Hitler Youth, and he interrogated Party members whose information was used to support the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials.

Inspired by these experiences, after his discharge in 1946 Dick attended Columbia Law School on the G.I. Bill, becoming a lawyer in 1950. He was licensed in New York State and Washington, D.C., too--where he was asked to join Clark Clifford's firm. His many assignments there included an odd one: delivering by hand a Christmas gift of personalized golf balls to President Eisenhower at the White House!

But a couple of years of politically oriented law proved to be enough. Dick moved his growing family back to Batavia in 1954, and became a partner in the small firm Kelly and Shults, with a practice focused on real estate law. Over the next many years Dick also served as a public defender (often bringing his young clients home for dinner), and later as an elected city judge. From the time in Batavia, the children recall his many meals at the "animal clubs" (Elks and Moose, that is, and he was a big tipper all his life), his fondness for coffee ice cream, and his daily routine of Air Force exercises performed in his pajamas.

After the death of Ro, father-of-six Dick reconnected, through sister Peggy, with past friend Peggy Ludwiczak, who was herself a widow with four children then living in Cherry Hill, NJ. The two families joined forces in 1972, and quickly blended well, as would be attested today by the combined ten and their own descendants: Sandra, Deborah, Richard, Margaret, Robert, Joseph, Thad, Christine, Rita, and Amy--and their 21 children and five grandchildren. (When Dick proposed, he promised that "Our life will never be dull." After several months of marriage Peg remarked, "Couldn't we have a little dullness?")

The economic recession of the Eighties prompted moves first to Pennsylvania, then to Oklahoma, and finally to Florida, where Dick passed the State Bar Exam at age 63 to support those few Ludwiczak-Shults family members still attending college.

First in Boca Raton, and then Delray Beach, sunny Florida allowed Peggy and Dick to enjoy many good years--new friends, lots of bridge, and cocktails on the patio each evening. (Dick's secret to successful martini making and consuming: add a little water to the gin.)

They were able to travel to the Caribbean several times and to Europe for their delayed honeymoon (Italy, France, and England), and later to Ireland where they visited the grave of Dick's grandparents, the Mahers. (Earlier trips with the kids--grown children later--included many summers spent on Long Island, rambles to Yosemite and Banff, the Grand Canyon and the Colorado Rockies, and grand family reunions in several East Coast cities.)

Dick took down his law shingle for good in 1997 and, finally, this year, his life shingle. He will be greatly missed by that big double family, and all his friends, and the strangers he helped along the way.

Jack: The Crack Up

A few days ago I posted my account of a recent quick trip to San Francisco, and I chose Jack Kerouac's Big Sur novel as a related visual. Taking my paperback copy down from the shelf and skimming the first few pages persuaded me that I should also reread it.

The very next day, by cosmic/karmic/Kerou(m)ac coincidence, at the CD store I came upon a new two-disc set titled One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur, which offers a CD of the soundtrack music--composed and played by Jay Farrar (of the band Wilco) and Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie)--plus a DVD of that documentary, about Jack circa 1960 and his harrowing stay in a tiny cabin close to the booming Pacific south of Monterey, which in turn led to his writing the Sur book. Wheels within wheels... (A suitable image given "Ti Jean" Jack's paean to crosscountry hitching and driving, On the Road.)

Farrar's inspired idea was to take chunks of the book and set them to guitar-based music, shaping a dozen songs which provide another window into the names-changed memoir-novel, even though only a few of them wound up in the finished film. But for any fan of Farrar (or Gibbard), the disc is as compelling as that surprising cooperative venture some years back, titled Mermaid Avenue, when Billy Bragg and Wilco teamed up to create new songs from unused lyrics by Woody Guthrie. The Kerouac songs have titles like "California Zephyr," "Breathe Our Iodine," "These Roads Don't Move," "Final Horrors," "Sea Engines," "The Void," and so on; and the titles alone suggest the sometimes lyric, more often paranoid, passages in the book--which chronicles Jack's alcoholic retreat from too much fame and success and his temporary hallucinatory collapse.

The documentary--by Kerouac Films, with Jim Sampas (a familiar surname in the saga of Jack) as Executive Producer and Curt Worden as Director--is simply brilliant. Gorgeous high-definition photography of San Francisco and the Monterey Peninsula, a voiceover reader who sounds very much like Jack (maybe it is him, though one John Ventimiglia is listed as "Narrator"), on-camera interviews with writers and critics, actors and rock musicians and SF street-scene people, all of whom knew Kerouac or were influenced by his work. The result is a craftily constructed, cautionary tale of what happened to Jack and his chums during those few infamous weeks and how that story metamorphed into the novel he called Big Sur--considered his best work by some, however unlikely given the huge cultural impact of On the Road, but certainly Jack's last great book (even though followed by a good dozen posthumous, pulled-together tomes, popping up like tombstones for Ti Jean).

Among the distinguished commentators, who by the way do not sound stiff or academic at all, but boisterous and admiring and speculative and insightful instead, are poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti (owner of that primitive cabin) and Michael McClure, eccentric rockers Tom Waits and Patti Smith, actors Sam Shepard and Donal Logue, folkies Dar Williams and Jay Farrar himself, authors Aram Saroyan and S.E. Hinton, even Kerouac-haunted women Joyce Johnson and Carolyn Cassady. The film drifts and surges like the Pacific, pauses then dances on; and it all goes by in the wink of a splendid summer's eye.

Maybe best of all, I'd say that One Fast Move is eminently suitable for repeat viewing. And anyone who screens it should also play the chunks of interviews offered as extras, unused because not specifically about Big Sur, but rollicking and entertaining additions to the Kerouac story nonetheless.

Left in San Francisco

When the crammed, cramped United Airlines flight landed Thursday evening at San Francisco International, the sky was dumping buckets, and our aquaplaning cab ride was essentially a surfer's dream. "Oh no," we groaned, during that 10-mile water-slide, "another getaway cursed by the whims of the weather gods..."

But the next morning was merely misty, and each day thereafter breezier and clearer--until by Sunday we were able to join the sun-cheered thousands spending the day at Golden Gate Park.

Friday had been our day to view the amazing Cartier exhibit at the Legion of Honor Museum, displaying over a hundred years of bejeweled, over-the-top tiaras and diadems; baubles, gold bangles, and sapphire beads. The exhibit was, sensibly, mostly aimed at a female audience. Sandra was happy to stroll and marvel, but I had hoped to see more samples of the firm's Deco era work--especially since my own unusual wedding ring is based on a unique commissioned man's ring Cartier made in the late Thirties, the massive original of which I saw in Venice 25 years ago. (The photo shows my smaller, less pricy, adapted version of Cartier's 24-carat gold, platinum-spike Machine Age marvel--which I've not found in any books about the jeweler.)

We dined that night at John's Grill, a San Francisco landmark offering old furniture, aged steaks, and new Jazz (a strong solo guitarist whose name I failed to register), plus a big photographic emphasis on Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, which mentions the restaurant favorably.

Day Two's weather looked promising, so I postponed hitting the Book Fair, and instead we headed out to wander the edge of bustling, celebratory Chinatown and then the "Little Italy" of North Beach, as well as the far end of the cable car lines--chomping a terrific pizza for lunch, and browsing for a couple of hours at City Lights Bookstore. No sign of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, sadly, but I was able to pick up several books and brag to the disinterested clerk that I'd visited City Lights for the first time way back in the summer of 1959, when I was a teenager pretending to be Beat.

San Francisco's many hills (I overheard one guy say there are 22 of them!) looked splendid in the wind-blown, in-and-out sunshine, and riding the cable cars was great fun. We dined at Ducca, a fine Continental bistro located right in our Market Westin Hotel.

Sunday morning dawned clear blue, and I agonized for, oh, about 30 seconds before deciding I'd rather spend the day with Sandra, exploring more of the city, than hole up indoors for the final day of the Fair. (Oh well, our home already houses hundreds of collectable books, and I'm intermittently selling them off.)

So we boarded a round-the-city, two-decker tour bus that visited the painted Victorian houses prior to depositing us at the new museums and resurrected De Young buildings at Golden Gate. Rain forest displays, the new aquarium with amazing coral reef, the classic Japanese tea garden, hundreds of bicyclers and 5K runners and a limousine-styled shuttle that carried us all around the Park and all the way out to the far-West, edge-of-the-ocean beach, were the highlights that made our last day most excellently special.

We flew back to Seattle that evening well-citied and -sated. I blew off the Book Fair, you say? Well, yes; I plead tourist madness, resurgent Beatness... and marital bliss.

'Frisco? Not in Kansas.

We're... off to see the Wizard...

Well, no, not really. As the Plains ranchers and sodbusters used to say, "We're going to see the elephant." Sort of.

Once that would have meant a trip to St. Louis or Chicago, to the wonders of some far-off big city, but today it's Sandra and me heading for a weekend getaway in San Francisco, celebrating a birthday, an anniversary, and a-whole-nother year of marital bliss-und-blitzkrieg. (Just kidding.)

As Dorothy observed, wandering the streets of 'Frisco, "Gee, Toto, there's no place like home... here. We must be back in Oz!"

Actually, we're heading to the annual San Francisco Book Fair--as wondrous as Oz--plus what promises to be a major exhibit of Cartier treasures, and several memorable meals (one hopes), and the fogbound city to stroll and cable-car in... But I'll have to pass on the frantic clubbing, unless we find some good Jazz.

Anyway, no blogging this week. Silence is golden. (Or maybe yellow brick road-ish.)

Three to Get. Ready?

From the ridiculous (see previous post) to the sublime...

Almost every fan of pop music (or jazz, or blues, or whatever genre) has his or her special favorites--not the big worldwide hits that every listener knows, and not the lesser albums by major artists, but those unknown works that seem like secret messages no one but the single lucky listener has discovered, brilliant works created by little-known performers laboring in obscurity.

No doubt someone will nominate a particular disc by Mink Deville, for example, or soulman McKinley Mitchell, or pop band Blue Ash maybe (I might on a different day), but I'm thinking at this moment of three other LPs, all dating from the late-Sixties/early Seventies. Two of them are actually underground classics in some circles, praised by "those in the know," while my third choice may cause some raised eyebrows--but, hey, I know a classic album when I hear it!

First up is that deft last one, dating from 1973: Loving & Free by Brit vocalist Kiki Dee, produced by Elton John as part of his private label (Rocket Records) deal with MCA, but better than many of Elton's own releases from that period, thanks to the canny selection of tunes (two by hit masters John/Taupin and four gems written by the singer herself), the use of several top English sessionmen (Paul Keogh and Davey Johnstone on guitars, Dave Mattacks, Gerry Conway and Nigel Olsson on rock-solid drums, Elton himself on keyboards, etc.)--and the wonderful white-soul vocals of Ms. Dee. John continued backing Dee on subsequent efforts too, shaping her hit single "I've Got the Music in Me" and then duetting beautifully with her for the massive hit "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," but it was her debut album that received the most loving attention, and subtler production too.

Elton found a variety of ways to support Kiki's warm and caressing voice--a smidgin of Mellotron and sax, a couple dashes of organ or pedal steel, some elegant strings (on two tracks only), and Elton John-styled piano almost everywhere else. But Dee and her sweet & soulful backup singers (including Lesley Duncan) had no trouble floating along or rising above each--hear "If It Rains," "You Put Something Better Inside Me," and "Sugar on the Floor" for the proof; and the latter two are just as warmly sexy as their titles suggest. Elton's piano kicks "Lonnie and Josie" like a sequel to his sorta-Western album Tumbleweed Connection, and Jackson Browne's "Song for Adam" gets a gorgeous, rhythm-spiked makeover. And there's room for some tougher rockers too--a blues-hot redo of Free's "Travellin' in Style" plus the fun, Elton-fueled, faintly generic "Supercool." But the lady will melt your cold, cold heart with her harmonized vocals on the post-coitus "Amoureuse" ("Strands of light upon a bedroom floor") and her title-tune original:

"Bound, I am bound like the knots in a string,
Eager to be where my life can begin.
Out of the shadow and into the sun,
So many things I should have done...
I will untangle myself,
So that I can see;
I will untangle myself,
Everything will be
Loving and free..."

Second of the three is the best Bob Dylan album that Bob didn't participate in, meaning Lo & Behold, the great homage-to-Dylan disc by Coulson, Dean, McGuinness, Flint--English sidemen and session dudes ex- of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and the Manfred Mann group (he helped produce) and other fine bands--offering a dozen Dylan songs that hadn't yet been taken up by Bob or others, gleaned from demos and the readily bootlegged Basement Tapes. (There were only ten tracks on the 1972 Lo & Behold LP, but the current CD has added two B-sides from singles, plus an alternate mix, so the version shown has 13 cuts total.)

Ironically the CDMF versions often are better than those sloppy-casual ones Bob and the Band laid down in the basement. Dennis Coulson has a good strong voice, and the guys together (with some extra session help) play 17 or 18 different instruments, enriching the arrangements nicely. Some tracks are still jokey ("Open the Door Homer," "Odds and Ends"), while others remind us of Dylan's plainspoken protest days ("The Death of Emmett Till") and soon-to-come religious time ("Sign on the Cross," which starts out strong and then builds inexorably to a seven-minute gospel shout).

There are two stunningly beautiful numbers that manage to turn musician-as-troubador images into something unique, going beyond ordinary love songs--"Eternal Circle" ("But my song it was long, And there was more to be sung") and "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" (acapella lead and chorus, then harmony with on-rushing piano and electric guitar: "And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings No voice can hope to hum"). Blending English brass band, music hall jollity and a round-singing quartet of voices, "Don't You Tell Henry" is a wonderful one-off... but given a run for its money by the rollicking, off-beat arrangement (spiked by "Susie Q"-styled cowbell) of title track "Lo and Behold."

Yet most exotically impressive of all (to my ears) is "Let Me Die in My Footsteps," another of Dylan's then astonishingly neglected songs; but the CDMF version not only rescues an overlooked masterpiece but presents it as some sort of East Indian rocker with distant vocal, semi-sitar (electric guitar strung loose, it sounds like) and pseudo tabla drumming, those played respectively by lead men McGuinness and Flint, who deserve a big tip of the hat. It's a damn shame there was no sequel to this brilliant album.

Finally, going back 50-some years, first there was Vince Martin with the Tarriers, briefly, then there was the duo of Martin & Neil, princes of Greenwich Village, then it was Fred Neil in the ascendent and Martin in eclipse, escaping to Florida. And then--hosanna!--for one glorious, unique moment in 1969 there was Martin's out-of-left-field (actually Coconut Grove via Nashville) LP, If the Jasmine Don't Get You... the Bay Breeze Will, the best folk-rock-country-jazz-raga album ever issued--still almost totally unknown today, a small-print sui generis footnote in music history.

Seems a group of Nashville cats (Kenny Buttrey, Charlie McCoy, Lloyd Green, Norbert Putnam, Henry Strzelecki, and two or three others) had just spent several days showing Dylan again how the professionals worked (shaping the stunted Nashville Skyline just as some of them had earlier built both Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding); and right then into town came producer Nick Venet and reclusive Vince to work on something that might reintroduce Neil's ex-cohort to the world. (Martin & Neil together had sounded fine partly because their duets came up from below, Fred's bass-to-baritone voice meeting Vince's tenor-to-baritone. Fred supposedly attended the new sessions but chose not to sing.)

The players were hot and Martin gruff-edged and cool, and the results were purely amazing--great instrumental jams on both familiar tunes and quickly invented originals, with Vince singing, scatting, soaring, and sailing free, smoother and less spacey than, say, Tim Buckley. Inexorably rolling tracks like "Snow Shadows" or the gentler, guitar-sweetened "Summerwind," both powerfully sung Martin originals; a train-time reinvention of "Danville Girl," associated with Jimmie Rodgers long ago; free-flowing longer numbers, "Yonder Comes the Sun" (instantly swept up into the currents of music) and the 13-minute title cut, with the musicians refusing to give over and Vince caught up and bound to keep roaming too, on into a kind of folk/jazz/raga--the bubbling bass and streaking guitar solos simply brilliant... Indeed every cut acoustically balanced, richly nuanced, distinctly unique, well-nigh perfect.

I've bought a half dozen copies of Vince's masterpiece over the many years, and given each away to friends; and the response every time was a stunned "Wow!" Do yourself a favor... find the current CD of Jasmine, and then hoist sails with Martin ("like a wild bird flyin' blind") and those Nashville cats ("play smooth as country water"); let the salt air ("Talk about the bay breeze!") and the scent of jasmine and the acoustic country jazz take you away.

Judicial Activism of "Our" Supreme Court

I want to address in my own small way the goddamned stupid Court decision codifying corporations as equal to persons, and thus interfering with the rights of ordinary people to be particular, unique human beings. Now corporations have the same inalienable rights as people, according to the asshole majority-five Supremes, eradicating precedent and common sense and established law and even all previous understanding of the Constitution!

Fascism has become the new fifth "freedom."

What a crock of shit. Those treasonous bastards have no cogent justification and no right--no matter how narrowly "legal" nor broadly defined--to destroy our established freedoms, eradicate the middle class, fill the airwaves and the media with Right Wing propaganda, speed up the collapse of our Democracy, already underway thanks to Republicans and NAFTA and Wall Street "banksters" and Halliburton-Blackwater-whatever and... well, fill in the blanks. I was already bothered and sometimes ashamed to claim my rightful United States citizenship. Now I am ready to join the new, necessary Revolution that is suddenly brewing...

So listen up, government punks. I am out loud and in print advocating every imaginable action: Recall, Impeachment, Constitutional Amendments, a Consitutional Convention... and when those fail, national and international boycotts, a March on Washington, resistance in the streets, "black-catting" and eco-terrorism aimed at any buy-or-bribe corporation--yes, revenge where it should be directed, straight at those odd incorporal beings and their minions whether they be banks, Congress, or the Courts--and as the last resort, even violent Revolution. I have never advocated violence against any living thing before except spiders and snakes, but I am now willing to expand the definition of pests needing to be eradicated.

Yes, I am madder than Hell and over the edge and ready to go to jail if necessary. This Judicial Activism will not go unavenged.

By an ugly, unwelcome coincidence, my wife and I have been viewing DVDs of the television series called Jericho, now defunct. A stealth attack on the United States, nuclear bombs destroying many cities, the terrorists probably homegrown and intending to destroy the nation, a small town in Kansas trying to cope with radiation, refugees, frightened greedy citizens, a lack of medicine, food shortages, other supplies dwindling to nothing, neighboring towns suddenly become suspicious enemies, and much much more. Brilliant, mesmerizing, thought-provoking, ultimately terrifying.

Well, our five quislings, our five Right Wing stooges, our five new Timothy McVeighs, are revealed and clearly in sight now.

Yes, the post-decision, reimagined Book of Eli is suddenly doing box-office business.

Only believe... Retribution will come.

King's Gon' to Trouble the Water

I've been thinking lately about Martin Luther King, Jr., great leader and imperfect man--gone for decades but still a central inspiration to anyone seeking civil rights, or spiritual reawakening, or an end to war.

My family was living in Montgomery, Alabama, when the Bus Boycott of 1955-56 introduced King (and quiet Rosa Parks) to the world; and his ability to speak and inspire became quickly apparent even to me, shallow 12-year-old white boy. African-Americans, still willingly identified as "Negroes" in King's time (though his actions and assassination helped usher in the starker adjective/noun "Black"), immediately embraced his metaphor-rich sentences and Southern bible-preacher style; and in the half century since, millions of writers and orators and world leaders have quoted his words.

Black poets too draw some from King, and I want to celebrate his holiday by presenting a few short poems written in the post-Boycott era. It may well be that any poem by a Black writer takes race as a central tenet, whether submerged or overt, but I hope these pieces demonstrate sufficient variety as well as any debt to the Reverend M.L.K....

From Stanley D. Plumpp, who usually writes lengthy, short-line poems packed with music references, I've pulled this compact one given the numeric title "190," taken from his book Blues: The Story Always Untold (published 1989):

Here as in any place I can
breathe. Talk and I see
with my ears. Follow the
Drinking Gourd of Ancestors:
Elmore, Sonny Boy, Muddy Waters.
Pain and memory/is all I couldn't
lose. I mix'em up to give you
the blues. The small window in
my soul/you can see eternity
through. Here as in any place
I can dream. Talk and I see
with my skin. Neckbones cracking
under weights, flesh melting in
grips of fire, screams injecting
poison in my veins. And I follow
callings in my blue-striped winds
of pain and memory.

Carolyn Rodgers' sparely punctuated "how i got ovah" is the title poem of her ...New and Selected Poems (from 1975) and possibly faintly echoes King's words as well as old spirituals and Langston Hughes' famous "The Negro Speaks of Rivers":

i can tell you
about them
i have shaken rivers
out of my eyes
i have waded eyelash deep
have crossed rivers
have shaken the water weed out
of my lungs
have swam for strength
pulled by strength
through waterfalls with electric beats
i have bore the shocks
of water deep deep
waterlogs are my bones
i have shaken the water free of my hair
have kneeled on the banks
and kissed my ancestors of the dirt
whose rich dark root fingers rose up reached out
grabbed and pulled me rocked me cupped me
gentle strong and firm
carried me
made me swim for strength
cross rivers
though i shivered
was wet was cold
and wanted to sink down
and float as water, yea--
i can tell you.
i have shaken rivers
out of my eyes.

I believe Rita Dove won some major honors for her lovely collection titled On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), and from that particular sequence of poems, here is the brief lyric specifically titled "Rosa":

How she sat there,
the time right inside a place
so wrong it was ready.

That trim name with
its dream of a bench
to rest on. Her sensible coat.

Doing nothing was the doing:
the clean flame of her gaze
carved by a camera flash.

How she stood up
when they bent down to retrieve
her purse. That courtesy.

Finally, I recently read about, and tracked down, the debut book by young poet Sean Hill, titled Blood Ties & Brown Liquor (2008); through this seemingly random-chronology series of poems about fictitious man Silas Wright, Hill tells the story of his own family and the Black community of Milledgeville, Georgia. The individual pieces range from a few lines to several pages, but I like the idea of ending this quick survey with the dramatic monologue "Boy" (wise elder Silas addressing maybe a nephew):

Boy, let me have a taste of that Mister Misty.
No, they brought it out around the time you
were born in sixty. I like the way it swish
in the cup. Sound like Sammy Davis Jr.
doing the soft show shuffle. They call
that the sand dance. Sound like shifting grains
or a fast train. Them little bits of ice
tap your teeth, and you can chew on that sweet
mouthful of cold melting to nothing before
you swallow it down. First time I had one
of these, I drank it too fast, crystals in syrup
dancing around and down my throat chilled
like Christmas and New Year's cold breath moving
down to my chest. And if that wasn't enough,
then I felt like my head was about to split
right open. Thought my forehead was gon look
like a gash. You know, they ice cream got nothing
on your mama's pineapple ice cream. Theirs
ain't nothing but soft light ice milk. They build
it high like a steeple, but ain't nothing
to that either. You see your mama puts
a dozen eggs in her custard to make
it rich. The sound of the ice and salt shifting
in that bucket as it melts with that electric
churn's whining motor groaning as that ice
cream stiffens up sure is pleasing cause I know
that ice cream about ready. You know, there are
folks getting they heads split so we don't have
to go around to that side window no more.

Listen to Hill and the others. Each in his/her own way carries on Dr. King's fight for dignity and equality. As poet Gwendolyn Brooks wrote, he was himself "a prose poem" and "a warm music," and he spoke the one word... "Justice."

What's in That Satchel?

You has Jazz. That's the difference.

Not the VistaVision color footage and Cole Porter sophistication of High Society versus the black-and-white semi-screwball comedy splendor of The Philadelphia Story. Not the sly, debonair savoir faire of Cary Grant versus the casual, age-weathered bonhomie of Bing Crosby. Not the full-color, extraordinary beauty of "slim" Grace Kelly (born and bred in Philly) versus the jagged, airy, "Mainline-ish" mischief of Katharine Hepburn (who starred in the original play on Broadway, a role written for her). And not the All-American, genial-jughead earnestness of Jimmy Stewart versus the sneery, cock-o'-the-walk brass of Frank Sinatra.

No, what separates High Society from that earlier and wonderful classic--and just maybe lifts High above it--is the addition of near- and actual Jazz, thanks some to the hipper side of pop masters Crosby and Sinatra, but most especially to the remarkable presence of Louis Armstrong and his band of All-Stars (featuring skinny trombonist Trummy Young). Director Charles Walters** had actually wanted to expand Louis' role to make him the Cupid behind the scenes, but the MGM front office refused; it was 1956 after all, and segregation still ruled. (Barrett Deems, the white drummer surrounded by black players, must have given their ulcers a twinge.) But Armstrong still functioned as a sort of Afro-Greek chorus, opening and closing the film, dropping wry comments occasionally: "There's a dark horse in this here race, and my boy's running a slow third."

Louis' remark pins the plot nicely. Gorgeous Grace Kelly, as aristocratic "Ice Princess" Tracy Samantha Lord, is about to marry a priggish, self-made citizen, but ex-husband Bing (bearing up under the high-falutin' monicker of C.K. Dexter Haven) and unwelcome wedding guest Sinatra are pursuing her too. Both movies as well as the original Philip Barry play concern the frantic last-day-and-some leading up to the wedding, and the efforts to "thaw out" the frozen maiden, awakening in her a sense of humility and forgiveness of human frailty (with any pent-up sexuality a side issue... which is somewhat ironic given all the whispered gossip about gamboling Grace). Various complications and subplots, like the wounded-by-love photographer played wittily by Celeste Holm (Ruth Hussey in the earlier film), add to the merriment and confusion.

Rather than try to better the original Story, the remake's plot wisely changed the location to the elegant mansions of Newport, R.I., tugging at the coattails of the first Newport Jazz Festival. The producers hired Cole Porter to provide clever songs and a sophisticated patina--then brought in Armstrong as add-on character "Satchelmouth" to lend musical credence and to pal around with Bing. Louis only got to sing two numbers, but they are the cream the cats were meowing for: the scene-setting "High Society Calypso" and a brilliant duet with Crosby, "Now You Has Jazz" (an uptempo update of the "Basin Street Blues"/"Birth of the Blues"-styled song).

Now think 1957... Racism rampant across the South. Trouble in Little Rock. "Jazz Ambassador" Satch unexpectedly calling Ike out on his failure to take Presidential action. The trumpeter's High Society role had been filmed some months earlier, and the movie had opened in later 1956 to mostly indifferent reviews. (A cynical observer could reduce the typical Society-vs-Story critical response to a couple of six-word sentences: "Should have remade a bed instead." And: "Like cows, some comedies are sacred.")

But Armstrong was a force of nature by then, the beloved entertainer supported by white folks even when he spoke out. Modern Jazz guys like Dizzy and Miles were taken by surprise since they'd been accusing Satch of "Tomming," condemning him for blithely entertaining his audiences and avoiding controversy. And just about then, too, came Louis' great first album of duets with Ella Fitzgerald (a Verve release), and the four-record Autobiography project on Decca reviving most of his old New Orleans numbers. Moreover, the movie-going audience ignored the naysayers and made High Society a financial success, discovering qualities the critics had missed.

Crosby/Dex, for example, sings beautifully, and separately, to his stubborn ex, "Sam" ("True Love" became a hit single) and her pesky young sister ("My Little One"), and essays a pleasantly sarcastic duet with carefully-inebriated Frank ("Well, Did You Evah?"), who otherwise romances Grace with songs and Jersey charm. Yet when compared to The Philadelphia Story the overall impression left by the newer film is of something lacking, some level of aristocratic torpor when measured against Cary Grant's wit and Stewart's eagerness and Hepburn's slow-burning anger and slowly awakening grace (so to speak). The laughs in Philadelphia pile up, and the variations on love become wholly believable. Stewart won his sole Academy Award for the film, while indomitable Katharine gained other accolades that revived her flagging career.

Still, in the end High Society has the piece that's missing from the earlier film: music, almost constantly present--Jazz music--and Louis Armstrong to put it across with a twinkle and a sparkling trumpet, some patented-by-Pops mugging and satchel-loads of gruff-voiced joy. From the opening, calypso-happy bus ride to Bing's mansion ("Man, dig that crazy rehearsal hall!"--answered by "Hey, Pops, how's the chops?"); to Louis and the guys jamming obbligato back-up music here and there (complete with his familiar, sweat-sopping handkerchief); to Crosby and Armstrong trading licks in that high-energy romp "defining" Jazz (Bing all finger-poppin' verbal, Satch blowing trumpet and scat-singing too):

"Well, you take some skins,
Jazz begins,
Then you add a bass--
Man, now we're gettin' someplace...

((the All-Stars get a turn to wail, each player named and soloing briefly; Louis goes last and then joins Bing to state that:))
"Believe it or not
(I do believe, I do indeed)
Frenchmen all
Prefer what they call
"Le Jazz Hot"...

((Bing swings the final verse:))
"From the East to the West,
From the coast to the coast,
Jazz is king
'Cause Jazz is the thing
The folks
Dig
Most!
((big instrumental finish))
Now, that's Jazz!"

And the fun continues right to the final scene, with the combo's last burst of New Orleans pizzazz suddenly jazzing up The Wedding March. Grace reacts, Bing shrugs sheepishly, and Satchelmouth quickly says, "End of sto-ray."

As should be apparent, pals Louis and Bing make for splendid foils throughout the film, with wiseguy outsider Frank languishing somewhat on the sidelines. Yet consider this: MGM managed to bring together in one film the three most important male vocalists of the early-to-mid Twentieth Century--and the three left Newport society, not to mention their regular fans, as high on the hijinx as Satch was on his muggles.

**This tale is repeated in Pops, Terry Teachout's recent big-success Armstrong bio, where Walters' name is mistakenly cited as "Walter." Meanwhile, Donald Spoto's craftily titled book, High Society: The Grace Kelly Story, also new, seems prudishly censored. The real story "still ain't half been told."

Robbie and Ella, Guy and... Diz?

Odd to think that one of the most popular New Year's Eve song renditions should be the version of "Auld Lang Syne" by band leader Guy Lombardo.

We can still enjoy Bing Crosby's take on that song; embrace Ella Fitzgerald singing "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve"; entertain the idea of bluesy New Year's lamentations by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lightnin' Hopkins; even endure the Olde Sod politics of U2's "New Year's Day." But, like it or not, we owe the popularity of "Auld Lang Syne" to Guy and His Royal Canadians.

The bandleader heard Scottish immigrants sing it up north in Canada, played it at midnight 1929 in New York's Roosevelt Hotel and then at the Waldorf Astoria every year from the early '30s to 1976. By then, America and other parts of the English-speaking world not previously given to Scots dialect had been won over.

Tradition says that poet Robert Burns heard an old man sing some small portion of it, took down the words and polished the lines (a lot), and then died a few months before the new song was finally published in The Scots Musical Museum in 1796. What happened to it for the next century-and-some (other than its being taken up and sung in the British Isles) I guess no one knows. But when Lombardo inadvertently relaunched this changing-of-the-year anthem, whole regions of the world soon learned that "auld acquaintance" should never "be forgot," for "old times sake." (That last is my loose translation of the title phrase; "times gone by" is another approximation.)

Yet the part of the song most commonly sung at midnight on New Year's Eve misleads a bit because it neglects other verses so heavy on the Scots dialect that translation subtitles are likely required. Here are some of those lines, plus my casual readings:

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp
And surely I'll be mine...
"And surely you'll buy your pint tankard,
And ((of course)) I'll buy mine..."

(Aye, laddie, and doesn't that sound like frugal Scots negotiating?)

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu'd the gowans fine...
"We two have run ((over)) the hills
And ((picked)) the daisies fine..."

(Ah, yes, those carefree days of youth!)

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie's a hand o' thine,
And we'll tak a right guid willie-waught
For auld lang syne...
"And there's ((my)) hand, ((old)) trusted friend,
And give us your hand ((too)),
And we'll take a good-will draught ((of ale))
For old times..."

I guess Lombardo instinctively knew better than to dip too far into Scottish dialect, but nothing held me back when I wrote a TV commercial for Heidelberg Beer nearly 30 years ago that pitted an Archie Bunker lookalike against a Scotsman in tartan and tam, who confounded Archie completely by saying things like: "'Tis a braw bricht moonlicht nicht thanicht" and "Gie's a right guid willie-waught!"

As for the rest of us, I recommend we take a cup of kindness on this New Year's Eve and pass it around freely, for all to savor in the 12 months to come. And so, as Prince Charlie might have said... Bonne annee, mes amis. Hae a bonny year!

Merry Christmas, Baby

It's Christmas week. I used to write that word stubbornly as "Christ Mass" just to make sure everyone registered the day of greed and family angst--and sleighloads of love--as a religious event too, something to do with a celebration of the birth of a certain holy man maybe named Jesus. These days, the historically enabled believe that Christ was actually born a couple of decades Anno Domini later, and that his celebration is derived from earlier pagan rites, but what the hey. While I did go to Sunday school and (occasionally) church as a kid and young man, I've never been religious or even modern-day "spiritual." I suppose I qualify as agnostic, but I'd rather be wholly Gnostic, whatever that might mean...

Speaking of "the holiness of the Word" leads us peripherally to the new album by Bob Dylan. Born-again Christian and reform(ed) Jew, plangent poet and songster extraordinaire, and ornery cuss in general, what in the Wonderful World of Christmas is ol' Zimmerman up to? I admit to not having heard his Xmas disc, but much as I love Bob and admire his chutzpah, I really don't want to internalize his take on hymns and secular songs celebrating holly&ivy, baby-in-manger, Santa-in-chimney, and angels harking.

But, back to the main point, I have looked regularly to music as a way to enjoy Christmas without belaboring the religious stuff. Rather than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or Handel's Messiah (hallelujah, y'all), I pull out anthologies of quasi-Xmas Blues, and John Fahey playing hymns on guitar, and certain country singers who make good albums that just happen to be about the season (Vince Gill or Patti Loveless or Emmylou, all of them in partial Bluegrass mode). There are fine records by Ray Charles and Phil Spector's stable of artists, not to mention the Cole and Crosby and Sinatra classics, and we haven't even mentioned Elvis. (Who really nails "Merry Christmas, Baby"? Charles Brown or Santa's Elvish helper?)

But what I really seek out every Christmas are three albums from my college folkie days. They are all wonderful--I'm not just nostalgic for the past--but all have had their ups and downs, forgotten for a decade or two and then revived (resurrected?) for a time again.

Released in 1958, and immediately popular across the U.S., not to mention with my parents and two sisters and me, was Harry Belafonte's To Wish You a Merry Christmas. (I actually preferred his three Caribbean albums, especially Jump Up Calypso from 1961, which even had some titles that vaguely suggested Christmas--"Emanuel Road," "Goin' Down Jordan," "Gloria"--as well as a gentle tune that really was about "The Baby Boy.") Belafonte's Christmas release was beautiful, haunting, a mix of traditional and little-known, anchored by "Mary, Mary" (more familiar maybe as "Glory Be to the Newborn King"), a great version of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," and the very first track, "Mary's Boy Child," claimed by Harry himself, and the one song that perfectly encapsulates Christ Mass for me: "Hark now, hear the angels sing, Listen what they say: That man will live for evermore Because of Christmas Day." Play that one and forget the world of trouble we're all livin' in...

Recorded late in 1960 (so I likely bought it that December or soon after) was the Kingston Trio's splendid collection of little-known seasonal folk songs titled The Last Month of the Year. Originally it was their poorest selling LP over all, but the record's painstakingly polished tracks actually were a highwater mark for the collegial three, offering tricky harmonies and complex arrangements. And a quarter century later, it was the first of their albums to be brought back on CD. (Last Month and Goin' Places are the true fans' definitive Kingston Trio favorites.) The old spiritual "Children, Go Where I Send Thee," the gentle hymn "Bye, Bye, Thou Little Tiny Child," and the little-known gospel gem "Last Month of the Year"--recently revived on a Blind Boys of Alabama Christmas disc--all receive terrific performances, and Dave Guard's banjo and bouzouki get a workout on many tracks. (His death from cancer a few years later robbed the folk world of a neglected great.) Too bad the rock audience wrote off the Trio for so long.

Album three, Joan Baez's simply titled LP Noel, was accused of pretentiousness when Vanguard issued it in 1966, partly because Joan sang in three languages, over Baroque arrangements by Peter Schickele, but mostly because she had begun to voice, and demonstrate, her anti-war activism. While cartoonist Al Capp mocked "Joanie Phoanie," I was hooked on her beauty, her amazing voice, her politics, her relationship with Bob Dylan, and more. So I played Noel enough to get right with it, from "The Coventry Carol" to "Carol of the Birds" (Pablo Casals' peace theme), from "I Wonder as I Wander" to "Mary's Wandering," from "Down in Yon Forest" to "Deck the Halls," and from "Ave Maria" in gute German to the gorgeous French of "Cantique de Noel" ("O Holy Night"). That last number, in fact, was a high-note beauty, with the climax of Joan's vocal actually shattering the vinyl sound on many copies of the disc. Still, in song after song her high, pure, clear soprano voice rained down like manna from heaven, or gifts to the son of Mary.

Belafonte earns a gold record... Baez leaves some Americans frankly incensed... The Trio releases a brilliant album, but buyers demur... Three Xmas stories with happy endings, several decades later on.

Happy Christmas to all who fight the good fight.