Transformational Music

 I received an email from an old friend last week.  We'd been sharing memories of a mutual friend who recently died.  While I haven't seen her in over 40 years, I do recall a brief visit when she was passing through the Bay Area in the late 1970s.  

I used to date her sister and she dated my best friend.  These were teen-age dates, mostly, but their importance and dare I say significance has surfaced since we've been talking about our lost friend.  

It's about the music.  Those dates from the mid 1960s until the early 1970s revolved around the music scene in Los Angeles.  While those years are most notable for the Rock and Folk-Rock groups that emerged, it was the small club scene that we frequented.  The Ash Grove was a small folk music venue on Melrose Blvd. in Hollywood that emerged as the place to go.  Here we saw many of the blues greats in their prime.  The irony, of course, is that many of these performers were well into their 60s and 70s and would not be around all that much longer.  

When I tell younger people today that I saw Son House, Howlin" Wolf, and Big Mama Thornton in a small club, they are in awe.  But that was reality back then.  My friend's recent email asked me to send her a list of all the artists we saw back then.  She was hoping it might jog her mind and help her memory.  So recently, I sat down and deliberately made such a list.  

On my list are the above mentioned names as well as a who's who of folk and blues that includes the likes of Lightnin' Hopkins, Doc Watson, Sleepy John Estes, Taj Mahal, and Elizabeth Cotton.  As the late 60s turned into the early 70s, there were other special shows too.  Two come to mind.  One was a special promotion called the "Angry Arts." It featured a program of writers, musicians, and graphic artists all opposed to the Vietnam war who had produced anti-war works of some kind.  

I went to one such performance and recall a reading given by Dalton Trumbo, the author of the anti-war novel Johnnie Got His Gun.  Trumbo had been blacklisted in the 1950s for his politics, but continued to screen write for various movie producers under other names.  He chose a selection from his novel to read that night. It ended with the following lines:

    What's noble about being dead? Because when you're dead mister, it's all over. It's the end. You're less than a dog, less than a rat, less than a bee or an ant, less than a whiter maggot crawling around on a dungheap. You're dead mister and you died for nothing

You're dead mister.  Dead.

Trumbo's voice rose and fell.  The last few words were delivered almost in a whisper.  Then, with the audience entranced, he delivered the last word in a loud rage.  And the lights went out.  Total blackness.  It was chilling.  

Another special show featured a bluesman I'd never heard of  until that night.  Arthur "BigBoy" Crudup was a Chicago bluesman who had made some recordings in the 30s and 40s.  He was virtually obscure until being rediscovered in the late 60s. That night, in the Ash Grove the house was packed.  In the audience were all manner of young local musicians. many of them currently playing at the many LA venues.  Who was this guy Crudup that they all turned out?  

Arthur Crudup had written and recorded a song in 1946 called "That's All Right." In 1955 an unknown Elvis Presley had taken the song and recorded it in a classic rockabilly style.  The rest is history.  Crudup had never received proper royalties but the young musicians began referring him to the "Father of Rock and Roll." They knew, and they wanted to see this seminal figure.  He died a few years later, but that night, at the Ash Grove, in a small way, he got his due.  Too bad he didn't get the money he was denied.

Time Remembered

 If someone said to me, "You look like you just lost your friend," I'd say you're right.  I wear it on my face.  While I don't like to rate things, especially friends, by comparison, (good, better, best) I did have a very long friendship with my late friend KO who died last Saturday.  60+ years is an accomplishment for loyal friendship.  So, when it ends, there is a hole that goes unfilled.  

Like all human relationships, there were ups and downs.  Not living in the same place since 1970 also threw in a few challenges.  Yet we prevailed.  It helps when a friendship this long features both participants having the same birthday.  We exchanged many fine gifts over the years.  I have books and records and a few other things that will keep KO in my life for the duration.  A note on sharing the same birthday with a friend: it's important not to get so caught up in your own birthday that you forget about the one you share it with.  That's a pitfall that one must be aware of at all times.

We met at 9 years of age during Little League tryouts.  I remember comparing our baseball gloves.  Which brand, what signature, the size and condition.  In full disclosure, I never missed an opportunity to show off my Willie Mays glove.  

Through Jr. High and High School we matured, dated two sisters at one point and survived our adolescence, the Jr. Prom, the Kennedy Assassination and the untimely death of his daughter at age 1.  Ken was an artist and read widely so he was a fountain of knowledge and introduced me to all manner of artists in fine art, music, sculpture, and theater.  He frequented museums.  When I lived in the Bay Area, his trips to visit me always included time spent at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  

KO introduced me to art and culture and that transformed my life.  I will always recall driving through Laurel Canyon in a VW bug on our way to see some blues or jazz great in the LA clubs of the 60s.  We saw them all.  Lightnin" Hopkins, Howlin" Wolf, Son House, Taj Mahal,  et.al. KO was quiet, introverted, sort of a contrarian, and could be difficult to get along with.  I recall one fishing trip where he couldn't remember his Social Security Number so couldn't get an out of state license in Oregon.  Another time, when fully licensed, he announced that he wasn't going to do any fishing but rather sit outside and watch me fish.  Not my idea of a fishing trip, but then it was nice to have a traveling companion. Another notable example of his contrary nature was his choice of dress for our Jr. Prom.  Our class colors were powder blue and black, thus all the guys wore powder blue tuxedo jackets.  Not Kenny.  He showed up wearing an orange (coral colored) jacket.  He claimed the rental shop was out of powder blue by the time he decided to rent one, but I knew better.

In recent years we stopped exchanging holiday gifts in favor of charitable contributions to organizations that were important to us.  I've lost a few friends and former colleagues these last few years.  It certainly makes for introspection.  I love the metaphor of fingering the jagged grain of wood (Thanks Ralph Ellison) and I find myself doing just that lately.  New insights emerge, names and places fade a bit more each year, but some of the memories remain vivid.  

Accountable

 Some say we've raised a generation of "snowflakes." That is, kids who have been overprotected and are not ready for some of the harsh realities they are sure to face as adults.  To be sure, corporal punishment is not the answer, but to  toughen up many young people, some changes will need to happen.

My parents were loving people.  Perhaps why I received the "empathy gene."  Of course my personality is only part heredity, but the environment I experienced taught me to consider the feelings of others consistently.  Yet, as a child I received, on rare occasions the sting of a hand or a belt.  My sister and I called it "the strap." It was an old leather belt of my father's and it hung inside on the door of a broom closet.  Of course we weren't hit with the buckle of the belt, but that leather strap stung just enough.  Today, thinking back on those times the strap found my arms or legs, I'm mildly shocked.  It seems incongruous that kind people like my parents would do this.  Today, it would be considered child abuse by many.  

I can't recall what I may have done to get hit with the strap because I was an other well-behaved kid.  I have a non-confrontive personality, so perhaps I violated some house rule, or whined uncontrollably about something. In any case, I remember the strap because one time my sister and I decided to hang a belt of mine in the broom closet and label it as suitable for our parents.  It didn't remain there long.  

For one year in the early 1980s I taught at a predominantly African American Middle School.  It was after major cutbacks and my seniority at the high school where I was originally hired wasn't enough to keep me there for the following school year. Though I was only there for one year, I recall an experience where corporal punishment was the way to go.  

When I had to refer a 7th grade student of mine to his counselor, I was invited  to the conference.  The student was disrupting the learning environment with his behavior and testing my limits so the referral was necessary.  What I subsequently found out was that he lived with an elderly grandmother.  His parents were not in his life and his counselor, an older African American woman, knew the only discipline he'd get would be there, that day.  

After discussing the situation with hm, the counselor was assured that his behavior would improve.  Then she said to him, "you know what happens now. " He nodded and she opened her desk drawer.  Almost  automatically the student extended his hands, and she struck  him across the knuckles with a ruler.  I was silently incredulous.  But I got that this was acceptable to them.  It was, no doubt cultural as well.  

I had a friend with four kids who had his own form of reminder when one of his own needed some stern discipline.  He'd stop whatever they were doing, and get a look on his face. The kid would lower his head and he'd grab a lock of hair and give it a firm tug.  It wasn't a painful hair pull, but rather a short, firm tug. They got the message.  

I don't necessarily advocate these measures, but I do feel that those kids on the other end of firm reminders   are better off for the consequences of their behavior being accountable.