Frank Beacham's Journal

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Bob Dylan's Freewheelin' Alburm

Fifty years ago, Bob Dylan began his rapid emergence as a songwriter. His ascent was so fast and his songs so good that many believe Dylan ranks among the best songwriters who has ever lived.

It was May, 1963, when Dylan’s second album—"The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"—was released by Columbia Records. Unlike his first album, named "Bob Dylan," the emerging artist wrote eleven of the songs, rather than just two.

Freewheelin’ opens with "Blowin' in the Wind," which would become one of the anthems of the 1960s, and an international hit for the folk trio, Peter, Paul & Mary. Then the album added other classics, including "Girl from the North Country," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right."

This is the period, as told in Chronicles, that Dylan read 100-year-old newspapers at the New York Public Library. He did this to get a sense of timelessness in his writing as he told stories from newspaper headlines. Dylan's lyrics about civil rights and anxieties about the fear of nuclear warfare have stood the test of time, towering above other material written in that era.

Balancing the topical subjects were love songs, often bitter and accusatory, and songs that contain surreal humor. This was the time when Dylan’s talent broke into the open and flowered for all to see.

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan eventually went platinum. In 2003, the album was ranked number 97 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2002, Freewheelin' was one of the first 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.

The recording of Freewheelin' took place over the course of a year, from April 1962 to April 1963, and the album was assembled from eight recording sessions in the Columbia Records Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue in New York City.

Clinton Heylin, a Dylan biographer, has connected the blossoming of Dylan’s lyrics along topical and political lines to the fact that he had moved into an apartment on West 4th Street with his girlfriend, the late Suze Rotolo, in January 1962.

Suze Rotolo, 2009 - Photo by Frank Beacham

---

Rotolo's family had strong left-wing political commitments; both of her parents were members of the American Communist Party. Dylan acknowledged her influence when he told an interviewer: "Suze was into this equality-freedom thing long before I was. I checked out the songs with her."

Dylan's relationship with Rotolo also provided an important emotional dynamic in the composition of the Freewheelin' album. After six months of living with Dylan, Rotolo agreed to her mother's proposal that she travel to Italy to study art. Dylan missed her and wrote long letters to her conveying his hope that she would return soon to New York.

She postponed her return several times, finally coming back in January 1963. Critics have connected the intense love songs expressing longing and loss on Freewheelin' to Dylan’s fraught relationship with Rotolo. In her autobiography, Rotolo explains that musicians' girlfriends were routinely described as "chicks," and she resented being regarded as "a possession of Bob, who was the center of attention.”

The tremendous speed and facility with which Dylan wrote topical songs attracted the attention of other musicians in the New York folk scene. In a radio interview on WBAI in June 1962, Pete Seeger described Dylan as "the most prolific songwriter on the scene" and then asked Dylan how many songs he had written recently.

Dylan replied, "I might go for two weeks without writing these songs. I write a lot of stuff. In fact, I wrote five songs last night but I gave all the papers away in some place called the Bitter End."

Dylan also expressed the impersonal idea that the songs were not his own creation. In an interview with Sing Out! magazine, Dylan said, "The songs are there. They exist all by themselves just waiting for someone to write them down. I just put them down on paper. If I didn't do it, somebody else would."

Last night, Bob Porco, grandson of Gerde’s Folk City owner Mike Porco, presented a 50th anniversary tribute to Dylan and his work on Freewheelin’. It was in the last building to house a Gerde’s Folk City, now called the Village Underground.

Terre Roche

Terre Roche opened the show with a powerful "Blowin' in the Wind," followed by Randy Burns with “Girl from the North Country.” Willie Nininger did a crowd pleasing version of “Hard Rain,” while Judy Gorman performed Dylan’s “Masters of War.”

Randy Burns

Other highlights were Samoa Wilson and Ernie Vega’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” Rick Illowite’s “Corrina, Corrina” and an updated and often funny “Talkin’ World War III Blues” by Poez.

Samoa Wilson and Ernie Vega

To hear this package of excellent songs and to learn the entire album was recorded over the course of a single year is a bit hard to grasp. Even Dylan himself has said in recent interviews that he doesn’t know how he did it and most certainly couldn’t do it again. It has to be chalked up to a creative miracle.

When Freewheelin' was chosen one of 50 recordings to be added to the National Recording Registry in 2002, the citation read: "This album is considered by some to be the most important collection of original songs issued in the 1960s.” That statement is as true as ever on this 50th anniversary.

This outstanding group of folk singers did Dylan’s work justice in what was an fine tribute to the master’s work.

Telling the Truth Is No Longer the Top Priority in Journalism

I graduated debt-free from journalism school in 1968 at a time when there were plenty of jobs and some great opportunities in the news business. I was lucky enough to work at some prestigious news organizations, including United Press International, Post-Newsweek, Gannett and the Miami Herald.

In every one of those news jobs, accuracy in reporting was priority number one. At UPI, it was very simple. Make a major error in a story that’s released nationally and you were fired. There were no ifs, ands or buts. Rules like that kept you on your toes.

Yes, you also had to be quick. But not so fast that you made mistakes. You were judged on a combination of both speed and accuracy. But accuracy was always the most important part of the job.

It’s clear that’s no longer true. Just in the past week, the New York Post got the Boston Marathon bombing story so wrong on so many counts it was hard to believe. They reported that 12 people had died, when only three had. They reported that a Saudi man was a suspect being held “in custody” when that wasn’t true.

And, perhaps worst of all, they put pictures of two young men on the front page that turned out not to be the bombers. The newspaper admitted not knowing whether the men were even suspects. One of those young people was 17 years old and told other reporters that he was afraid to leave his home after the Post printed his picture.

Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns the paper, should have been outraged—but he was not. He argued that the picture was “instantly” withdrawn when the mistake was known. He did not explain how one instantly withdraws a printed front page from the streets.

Television news networks are equally notorious for errors. When astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, died, NBC incorrectly called him Neil Young, the musician. That’s what happens when networks rely on 20-something staffers who don’t know their history.

We are all aware that few journalism jobs are left and most pay very little. In fact, I was paid far more in the early 1970s than most journalists make today. Make no mistake, it’s that downsizing of jobs and salaries and journalistic standards that leads to the mistakes and errors we see so often today.

At least most news organizations try to be accurate. Others have a different agenda, which complicates the picture further. Networks like Murdoch’s Fox News present a clearly right-wing agenda—not one based on genuine attempts at truth and accuracy. Too many people believe this is actual news.

Yet, the politicization of journalism seems to be getting worse. Charles and David Koch, the notorious supporters of far right-wing causes, are said to be exploring the purchase of the Tribune Company, which owns 23 television stations and eight newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant.

These men, who finance favored political candidates, are not journalists or even interested in objective reporting. The New York Times reported a source saying the Koch brothers often say “they see the conservative voice as not being well represented” in the news media. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see what these financiers are up to.

“It’s a frightening scenario when a free press is actually a bought and paid-for press and it can happen on both sides,” Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group, told the New York Times.

Journalism is not just in a poor financial state these days. It is in a moral crisis as well. The old standards of truth and accuracy in news reporting have been thrown out the window. The Internet, which has empowered everyone as a citizen “journalist,” has not helped. The day is quickly coming when truly independent journalists will have to work on their own.

Just as members of Congress are under the control of money, now the same has happened to journalism. It’s a sad day indeed for accurate, truthful reporting.

Bob Dylan's Professional Debut Was 52 Years Ago Today

Who knows how many other young men arrived in New York City in the winter of 1961 looking like James Dean and talking like Jack Kerouac? 

It would have been difficult to pick Bob Dylan out of the crowd at first, considering how much he had in common with the other Bohemian kids kicking around Greenwich Village. Artistic ambition? Check. Antipathy toward mainstream culture? Yes. A desire to put his middle-class identity behind him? Definitely.

But the singular creative vision that would separate Dylan from the rest of his peers and change the face of popular music wasn't really in evidence yet. What Bob Dylan did have, though, in addition to his guitar and harmonica, was a unique stage presence and a vast library of American folk songs in his repertoire.

On April 11, 1961—52 years ago today—he got his first real chance to put those on display with his first major gig in New York City, opening for bluesman John Lee Hooker at Gerde's Folk City.

Bob Dylan had just arrived in town a few months earlier, but as the prominent producer/talent scout John Hammond would write in the liner notes of his debut album one year later, "The young man from the provinces began to make friends very quickly in New York, all the while continuing, as he has since he was ten, to assimilate musical ideas from everyone he met, every record he heard."

Dylan befriended not only his idol Woody Guthrie—whose hospitalization in New Jersey had been the initial impetus for Dylan to come east from Minnesota—but also some of the significant figures on the burgeoning Downtown folk scene, like Jack Elliot and Dave Van Ronk.

Dylan would write about this period in "Talkin' New York" (1962), which included a verse about his breakthrough gig at Gerde's:

After weeks and weeks of hanging around
I finally got a job in New York town
In a bigger place, bigger money too
Even joined the Union and paid my dues.

Gerde's was probably the most important folk-music venue in New York City at the time—the club that every folk act with a national profile played when they were in town.

Dylan had previously joined other unknowns like himself onstage at Gerde's during the club's Monday "Hootenanny Night," but the invitation to appear on a regular bill presented a bit of an administrative problem.

At just 19 years old, Bob Dylan was too young to obtain the necessary union card and cabaret license. The club’s owners, Mike Porco, was interested enough in getting the young man on the bill, though, that he signed on as Dylan's guardian—"the Sicilian father I never knew I had," as Dylan put it.

A number of major developments in the year that followed would set Bob Dylan on his road toward stardom, but the very first of those was his appearance at Gerde's Folk City on this day in 1961.

Thanks History.com

Ted Joans and David Amram Perform "Scat" at 1994 Beat Conference

David Amram (at piano) and Ted Joans. Photo by Frank Beacham

Ted Joans, who died in 2003, was a jazz poet, surrealist, trumpeter and painter. His work stands at the intersection of several avant-garde streams and some have seen in it a precursor to the orality of the spoken-word movement. Joans is known for his motto: "Jazz is my religion, and Surrealism is my point of view."

In New York, Joans painted in a style he dubbed Jazz Action and read his poetry, developing a personal style of oral delivery called Jazz Poetry. He was a participant in the Beat Generation in Greenwich Village. He was a contemporary and friend of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, Leroi Jones (now known as Amiri Baraka), Gregory Corso, Diane Di Prima, Bob Kaufman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and others.

Joans shared a room for a time with the great jazz musician, Charlie Parker. His bohemian costume balls and rent parties were photographed by Fred McDarrah and Weegee.

Joans' painting Bird Lives hangs in the De Young Museum in San Francisco. He was also the originator of the "Bird Lives" legend and graffiti in New York City after the death of Charlie Parker in March 1955.

Here, at a Beat Poetry conference at New York University in 1994, Joans joins the Beat composer, David Amram, for an improved scat performance.

              

Rodriguez Brings His Mystique to the New York's Beacon Theatre

Sixto Rodriguez—in addition to sounding like Bob Dylan even on songs Dylan didn’t write—pulled off another Dylanesque move Sunday night at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. 

He managed to disappear on stage even while performing under the spotlight. Outside of Dylan, himself, and Sly Stone, I’ve never seen another performer so successful at hiding in plain view.

In a kind of striptease act, Rodriguez came on stage in a jacket and hat, completely hiding his face for the first half of his show. Then, he removed the jacket, revealing his arms. Occasionally, when he turned to the side, you could get glimpse of his face.

Finally at the end, Rodriguez removed the hat, and a for just a few minutes, revealed himself to the sold out audience. They gave him a standing ovation.

His mystique, the Academy Award winning movie—Searching for Sugar Man, and a compelling set list, were a crowd pleaser in a house filled with all ages.

Izzy Young Revisits Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village

Izzy Young, 85, is a legend in folk music circles—both in America and Sweden. He is the former owner of the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village, New York, and since 1973, he has owned and operated the Folklore Centrum store in Stockholm.

In 1957, on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, he opened the Folklore Center, a store for books and records and everything related to folk music. It became a major hangout for folk musicians, including a very young Bob Dylan.

From 1959 to 1969, Young wrote a column entitled "Fret and Frails" for the folk music journal Sing Out. He served on the "editorial advisory board" for the magazine until his departure for Sweden a few years later.

Young arranged concerts with folk musicians and songwriters, who often made contacts with other musicians at the Folklore Center. Bob Dylan relates in his memoirs, Chronicles, how he spent time at the Center, where Young allowed him to sit in the backroom of the store, listening to folk music records and reading books.

Dylan met Dave Van Ronk in the store, and Young produced Dylan's first concert at Carnegie Chapter Hall in 1961. Dylan wrote a song about the store and Young, "Talking Folklore Center."

After developing an interest in Swedish folk music at a festival, Young closed his New York store, and in 1973, he moved to Stockholm where he opened the Folklore Centrum.

Young is visiting New York City, where he is doing a documentary with Bob Porco, grandson of Gerde’s Folk City owner Mike Porco. Young was instrumental in the founding of Gerdes.

I talked with Young during a break in filming for the documentary. I wanted to know how to differentiate folk music from other forms of music. It was a hot button question for Young. At first he didn’t want to answer it, but then got going. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what he said.

(It was very windy in the park when we interviewed Izzy. The audio has some wind noise. We're sorry about that.)

George Dean: Pioneering the S.C. National Guard

During my long quest to learn the truth about the Orangeburg Massacre, I was given many tips. Most led to dead-ends. One of vital importance to the story would take more than five years to pay off.

George Dean, a lifelong resident of Orangeburg, owned and operated a men’s clothing store at 1185 Russell Street. In 1968, he was the only black member of the South Carolina National Guard. I phoned him at his store on Sept. 8, 2000 after being told he had been called to duty during the days prior to the shooting.

I asked his help in putting together the still missing pieces of the massacre story. Though extremely polite, Dean was cautious and hesitant. Yes, he was the only black Guardsman on duty in Orangeburg. He had driven a jeep that shuttled key personnel to the central communications facility and had protected the Guard’s main ammunition storage depot.

However, he was conflicted and told me he couldn’t reveal what he knew. The reasons: he had kids in college and a mortgage on his business. There might be a price to pay for his going public with details on the shooting, and he couldn’t jeopardize his family’s welfare in the event there was a boycott of his business.

At this stage, I asked him if we could go “off the record.” I read him a summary of the path I was taking in this project. I asked him if he would simply warn me if anything were not true. Through carefully calculated silence, Dean signaled I was on the right path.

I kept in touch with George Dean in the subsequent years. I followed the progress of his children through college. I made sure he remembered my interest and never pressured him for his story. Until early 2006, that is.

I was planning a trip to South Carolina in February to introduce Frank Military, a screenwriter researching Orangeburg, to various figures in the massacre story. A week before the visit, I called George Dean again.

“George, all your kids graduated from college?” I asked. “Yes,” he said with a chuckle, sensing what was coming. “And you finally paid off that mortgage, right?” “Sure did.” Well, my friend, the time is now. It’s time to tell your story.”

With George Dean, as I had learned over the years, there are no guarantees. When Frank and I finished our work in Orangeburg on the afternoon of February 13, 2006, I was told to call George on his mobile phone. He’d let us know then if he could do the interview.

Our schedule that day was tight. We had interviews in Columbia in the morning and then drove to the Chestnut Grill on the outskirts of Orangeburg, where we had lunch with Bill Hine, an expert on the massacre and professor at S.C. State University.

A comfortable, family-style lunch hangout, the Chestnut was clearly a community gathering place. As Hine briefed Frank Military and I on the town, we spotted Andrew Hugine, the ninth president of S.C. State University. A former S.C. State student himself, Hugine was clearly sympathetic to our mission and offered the services of his office for anything we needed. It was a warm, gracious welcome to Orangeburg.

Less than a month later, Hugine would apologize to nine former students for the actions of Dr. Benner C. Turner, S.C. State’s fourth president. The students, who were expelled or suspended from the school in the wake of peaceful protests in 1956, had returned to the campus for the first time in 50 years.

“You fought for justice, equality and dignity,” Hugine told them. “You were exercising your constitutional rights to challenge segregation. We can never ever repay you. We cannot undo the past as much as we would like to.”

We’d learn that day—more than I had previously realized—that Orangeburg had a very deep history in the American civil rights movement. These 1956 demonstrations at S.C. State came before Rosa Parks got on a bus in Montgomery; before the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro; and before Emmett Till had been lynched.

Later in the day, after Hine had guided us on a tour of the town and walked us through the area of the shooting, I retreated to our rental car to call George Dean. I dialed his mobile number. No answer. I got voice mail. Dejected, I tried again. Bingo! This time he answered.

“Meet me in the parking lot behind the Trinity Methodist Church in exactly one hour,” he said abruptly.

No address or directions were given, and—it became immediately clear—that none were needed. A towering presence across a street from the S.C. State campus, the Trinity church, founded in 1866, is an icon of civil rights history. It was a fitting place for our meeting with Dean.

Precisely on time, George Dean drove into the nearly empty parking lot and greeted us. He led us to a small office complex next to the church, where he was well known by the staff, and waved us into a conference room.

There was little small talk. I received permission to record audio of the interview and we got started. Within minutes, it was clear that Dean, a precise and cautious man, had carefully considered what he wanted to say (and not say) about the Orangeburg Massacre. For the next hour, we’d hear an intense, spellbinding monologue. There was little opportunity for questions.

In 1965, George Dean, facing imminent draft and almost certain of duty in Vietnam, became the first black member of his state’s National Guard. He volunteered in order not to fight in what he considered an unjust war. “I perceived it then and that’s the way I perceive it now,” he said firmly.

The oldest male in a family of seven children, Dean was raised by parents who were professional educators. He was literally brought up on the campus of S.C. State. “They didn’t have enough money to send me to Canada,” Dean recalled. “I didn’t see myself going into the military. I knew the percentage of black Americans in Vietnam. I didn’t see my chances being good for survival.”

Having taken ROTC in college, Dean aced the test for admission to the Guard. He did so well, in fact, that the surprised and skeptical white test administrators put him through more hoops, asking him for credit and character references. Each time he complied and exceeded expectations. There was no denying he was an ideal candidate. Finally, in late 1965, George Dean integrated the National Guard. He’d serve as a weekend soldier for six years.

“It wasn’t long before I realized that I had jumped from the frying pan into the fire,” he recalled. It took three years for other Guard members even to recognize him as a fellow soldier. “When I joined the Guard in ’65, it was just after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The South was still in an uproar. Every time there was a civil unrest, they called the Guard. Here I was, the lone black soldier in the militia.”

While Dean experienced racism within the ranks of the Guard, he was simultaneously castigated by members of his own black community. “I was really between a rock and a hard place.” He still winced at the pain of being called to Charleston in the mid ’60s, where his job was to protect electrical utilities during a civil rights disturbance.

While walking along King Street with a uniformed white colleague, an elderly black lady leaving a hotel approached them. “She looked at me and she said ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’ It’s hard to explain the feelings. I didn’t blame her. She just didn’t understand. But it hurt no less. That’s the price we pay when we carry the coat in America.”

Another difficult moment came in 1966 when the Guard was called to stop a civil rights disturbance at Voorhees College in Denmark, the home town of Cleveland Sellers, a local activist that Dean knew and admired. “We went to Voorhees and I just didn’t feel right,” Dean said, recalling that he was threatened with a court martial over his reluctance.

“We entered the campus there at about five in the morning to find no unrest or students. I was a member of a unit that was supposed to quell an unrest and all they did was go into an institution of learning to destroy physical property. The Guardsmen knocked down the doors of professors’ offices and classrooms to find whatever they perceived was there.”

Over time, Dean’s skill and professionalism was recognized within the Guard’s ranks. He got along well with John Shuler, his commanding officer, a white man he worked with over the years as both a civilian and a soldier.

Then came 1968. “Orangeburg simmered for a long time before Cleve even got here,” Dean noted. “Cleve was victimized like so many others. Racism in Orangeburg was no different from any other Southern town. It had all the makings of any other Southern community—from its segregated (movie) theaters to its water fountains to everything else.”

When the Guard was activated by Gov. McNair for duty in Orangeburg in early 1968, Shuler chose to keep Dean close to him. Dean’s assignment was to drive Shuler’s jeep and, when other soldiers were away, to protect the main door of the National Guard Armory on Broughton Street, about two miles from the S.C. State campus.

“Being the jeep driver...you know drivers, chauffeurs, waiters hear and see a lot of things.” On the nights leading up to violence in Orangeburg, Dean said he heard plenty, much of it perceived by white ears in ways far out of proportion from reality.

“It’s like the three of us in this room could see something and perceive it in a totally different manner. That’s what happened.”

At the wheel of a jeep, Dean repeatedly drove his white Guard superiors to the communications center at the telephone company, where they had direct communication with Gov. McNair. Time after time, he interpreted their comments to the governor as “amplified” and over the top.

“In another setting, at another time, you would say it was blown way out of proportion. I’ve thought...these were civilian soldiers just like myself that carried a different rank. They were still Southerners. White Southerners. So many stories in the South are so parallel. In that whether it’s the police chief, the mayor, or even the solicitor—they are all in the same room with the same damn hood. Just when night came up, they wore a different hat. There’s nothing unique about the South. So I can see why they might have seen things in a different light.”

From the conversations that he overheard, Dean is convinced that if Robert McNair was not fed misinformation, he was certainly given wrongly perceived information by his men in the field.

By February 8, Dean had been on active duty about a week, mostly securing the armory door when not driving the jeep. Shuler, his commanding officer, obviously aware of his sensitive position, didn’t deploy him for other duties in Orangeburg. “He didn’t put me in harm’s way. I won’t fantasize what might have happened if he had. I just thank God that he didn’t.”

On the morning of February 8, Shuler approached Dean at the armory and gave him a welcome break to go home, get a shower, and take a short rest.

“I lived about two miles from the armory and one block below the campus on Buckley Street. The first thing I did is go home, get out of my uniform and put on my civvies. Mobility in town was really on lock down. Tanks were at every crossing....every major entry into the city and even at every exit or entrance to the campus. I got on my bicycle and I rode to the campus.”

Dean went directly to the office of Dr. Maceo Nance, S.C. State’s acting president. He asked the secretary if he could speak with Nance and was immediately shown in. Nance was meeting with two student leaders in his office at the time.

“Dr. Nance, if there’s any way humanly possible that you can keep the students off the street tonight, do so.” Dean warned him of the skewed perceptions of the white men outside and how dangerous the climate had become.

Dean and Nance each maintained an air of formality in this critical exchange. Though the young man wore civilian clothes during their brief meeting, Nance knew very well that Dean was the only black member of the National Guard. They had a long personal history in a small town. As a kid, George Dean was Maceo Nance’s paper boy!

Dean had a gut feeling that compelled him to warn Nance. “I knew from standing at the door five days and from seeing and hearing SLED to Highway Patrol to Guardsmen. I knew the climate. I knew what I heard and I knew what I was seeing.”

When he returned to duty, Dean’s first sergeant ordered him to start clipping ammo. “Ammo comes loose. It doesn’t come clipped. It comes in a wooden box. And I was ordered to start clipping ammo.”

A clip is a small metal case that is used to store multiple rounds of 5.56 millimeter ammunition together as a unit, ready for insertion into the magazine of the M16 semiautomatic rifles—commonly called carbines—used by the National Guard and other law enforcement agencies.

In the evening, a short time before the shootings on the campus, Dean brought some clipped ammo from the armory for Pete Strom, the chief of SLED. As Strom put a load of M16 ammo on his shoulder and walked away, he uttered words that George Dean will never forget:

“We’re tired of playing with them niggers.”

Pete Strom in the streets of Orangeburg Just Before the Shooting

---

In less than an hour, Dean got the word from Shuler that some students had been shot. “I didn’t know the magnitude then and I didn’t know until the next morning.”

Dean makes it clear he didn’t witness the shooting and cannot say definitely who pulled the triggers. “But I do know the record shows that the students were shot in the back while retreating from a peaceful demonstration for their civil and equal rights. They were denied (those rights) and their lives were taken. They were wounded. And justice to this day has never been served.”

At this point, Dean—increasingly emotional from telling his story—began to weep.

“I think it would be easier to talk about this if I could sit here at this time and say that I think justice was served. But in my heart of hearts, I don’t think that has happened yet. Smith, Hammond and Middleton will never come back. And triggers don’t squeeze themselves.”

Dean stood and took off his microphone. He asked us to take a short walk with him. We left the building and crossed a lawn over to the massive Trinity United Methodist Church. We entered a side door and descended some steps to a large room in the basement.

It was sunset and the dimming light through the church’s stained glass windows cast an eerie, warm glow over the vast space. This very room, Dean told us, served as headquarters for the ’60s civil rights movement in Orangeburg. It pulsed with rich history—the site of key organizational meetings, as well as rallies attended by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins.

As we walked into the chilly evening air outside the vast sanctuary, completed in 1944, it was hard to escape the view. Just across the street, only a few yards away, was the grassy hill, where on another chilly Februrary night 38 years earlier, guns opened fire on the students at S.C. State.

“Jim Crow is not something you want to talk about every day,” Dean told us. “Jim Crow was not pretty. Any place in the South. My story is many stories of blacks in the South. Many had it worse than me. I was never lynched or hung from a tree. I was not humiliated.”

However, Dean said sadly, “I sit in my own hometown, where I was reared, educated, and raised my family. I would like to think I’ve been a pretty respectable and decent citizen. (Yet) I still see the antebellum South.” He pauses to consider his words. “Do I feel good saying that? Hell, no.”

Dean was never asked by any investigator or law enforcement agency to tell his story. “I don’t think the Southern white man is ready to correct any wrongs yet. The Southern white man still deals more with what his peers think of him than what’s right. It’s like the kid on the school grounds that wants to remain popular instead of doing what’s right. I don’t think the hearts of South Carolinians have changed to do what’s right (in order) to remain popular with their friends.”

I asked Dean: Have things improved in Orangeburg since 1968?

“Absolutely, unequivocally, yes. Has substantive change taken place in Orangeburg? No. There’s a different code of racism now. I would say that most change in the South, and most change in my town, which I love so dearly, is cosmetic. The new South ain’t so new.”

I had a final question for Dean: Will the issue of the Orangeburg shootings be resolved in our lifetime?

“I was optimistic of that. I don’t know whether I am anymore. I will never say never because, as a Christian, I believe if you ever lose hope, you’ve lost everything.”

George Dean’s historic and exclusive interview is part of “Wild History,” my Kickstarter project.

I’m pleased to say that our Kickstarter goal of $15,000 has been reached and exceeded. I wish to thank the generous contributors who made it possible.

There are three days left in the campaign and there’s still time to contribute. A donation of only one dollar would be appreciated and would put your name on a list of supporters of a new kind of journalistic storytelling.

To all that have supported this work so far, a big THANK YOU!

Wild History

George Lineberry: Inventor of Shag's "Belly Roll," Introduced Black Music on the Carolina Beaches

“Big George” Lineberry (left) and Harry Driver in 1994 at Fat Harold's Beach Club in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Lineberry invented the “belly roll” and Driver the “smooth pivot” in the shag, the state dance of the Carolinas. Photo by Frank Beacham

                                                                      ---
Due to the unique ploy of a talented young white dancer, George Lineberry, black music found its way onto the jukeboxes in the white dance halls and pavilions along the Carolina beaches after World War II.

“Big George,” as he was nicknamed, was hired to install records on the coin-operated jukeboxes, then called “piccolos,” for a local amusements company in Myrtle Beach.

Lineberry was told which records to place on specific jukeboxes. Playlists were strict in this time of segregation. Black music in the day was forbidden from the jukeboxes in white establishments and was designated for black clubs only.

Lineberry ignored his bosses and took it upon himself to switch records, placing the most popular black records from the jukeboxes in the black clubs, including Charlie’s Place, to the jukeboxes in the white dance halls. It was this switcharoo by a single young worker that changed music along the coast for generations to come.

Big George, who died in 1999 at age 76, was an immensely popular fixture at the beach at the time and was often slipped a few bucks by concerned parents to dance with a daughter who needed a boost in self-esteem.

With great ceremony, he made it a point to “test” each new record installation with a personal spin on the dance floor. He often single handedly introduced new black records.

Soon after Lineberry serviced the jukeboxes along the Carolina coast, the “forbidden” R&B that could be heard only at the beach joints became known as “beach music.”

As a dancer, Lineberry was also a major contributor to what today is known as the “shag,” the state dance of the Carolinas.

“I first heard the term shag at Charlie’s Place,” Lineberry, who left the beach in 1948, told me in an interview. “They called it the shag on the Hill (Charlie’s Place). I think the shag and dirty shag came out of Charlie’s nightclub.”

Lineberry, who was a first generation member of the Shaggers Hall of Fame, had warm memories of his nights at Charlie’s Place—many ending at daylight.

“Charlie once told me, ‘George, you got a little black in you.’ I knew the black music had a better beat. It would turn me on a little more. I was the best at the belly roll and the dirty shag. I could lay it on them.”

In fact, Lineberry is credited with inventing the belly roll as used in today’s shag.

For young Dino Thompson, the belly roll—or “vertical sex” as it was also called—was the ultimate shag step, a move that was perfected by Lineberry at Charlie’s Place.

In his personal memoir, Greek Boy, Thompson offers a description of the belly roll: “Boy pulls girl close enough to touch belly buttons. Then, in rhythm, they throw one leg out together, then the other. Slick and sexy.”

The belly roll and a 10-cent song on the jukebox, recalled Thompson, was “your license for romance. Pick out the girl of your dreams, lead her out to the dance floor, ease her out of a fast sweaty pivot into a tight belly roll and bruise your excited private parts all up against hers. Then, right as the lyrics get down and dirty, burn her down with your Tyrone Power eyes.”

Lineberry later turned his love of music and dance into a career. He owned and operated Southern Amusement Corp. in Virginia Beach, Virginia. An avid shagger until he died, Lineberry later gave his fellow dancers their own jukeboxes loaded with their favorite music as a gift.

Lineberry’s story is in “Wild History,” Frank Beacham’s current Kickstarter project.

The Sad Story of Iona Cannon

I saw Sue Cannon Hill for the first time on television. Her grief-stricken words in the documentary, The Uprising of ’34, upset me. Teary and emotionally fragile, she told in a gripping interview how the management at the local textile mill—led by my grandfather—had nearly destroyed her family. 

But when she spoke his name, she put a knife through me. I’d never heard my family name spoken that way. “Beacham.” Contempt dripped from the word. To her, it was the name of a mass murderer, the man who killed her father, Claude Cannon, and destroyed her mother. It was a name she’d never forget...or forgive.

In late 1994, I was planning to return to South Carolina for the Christmas holidays. I wrote a letter to Sue Hill, telling her who I was. I apologized for what my grandfather had done. I told her I had been surprised to learn what happened to her father and mother, and wanted to know more. I asked what I could do to make things right. Would she allow me to visit? Could we talk about it?

A couple of weeks went by before I heard back from her. I later learned that she, like others I had written at the time, saw the name Beacham in the return address of my envelope and had been unable to open the letter.

Finally, after a few days, their curiosity won out. One of her friends told Sue that my letter to her had been harmless, and it might be okay after all to read what I had sent. A relieved, but hesitant, Sue Hill called and invited me to her home during the Christmas holiday.

As I approached the sprawling modern ranch house where Sue now lived with her husband, I couldn’t help but be surprised at how far she had come from the days of living in poverty with her mother on Chiquola’s mill hill.

Sue had married a prosperous businessman, I was told, and this home—one of the nicest in town—fronted fifty acres of land with two private fish ponds.

I was ushered into a huge, rectangular living room with a panoramic rear view of the extended rural landscape. Sue’s greeting was gracious, but I sensed that she was not comfortable. Neither was I. We were both walking on egg shells.

As we seated ourselves across from each other on comfortable sofas at one end of the room, the Southern tradition of beginning a visit with small talk seemed terribly inappropriate. I knew Sue wanted to know why I was there, and decided it was best to get to the point right away.

I never knew Dan Beacham and was not there to defend him. He was a mystery to me, I told her, and she probably knew more about him than I did. I was horrified by what he had apparently done, and wanted to learn the truth about him. I wanted her to tell me what she knew—warts and all. I wanted to record it on a tape recorder, I told her, so that I didn’t miss a word of her story.

She agreed, I clumsily set up the recorder, and we began what was to be a wrenching afternoon.

After Claude Cannon’s death at the mill, Sue’s mother, Iona Cannon, found herself with no job, six young children to raise and an eviction notice ordering her to vacate her mill-owned home. Because Honea Path was a one employer town, there was no option of finding alternative work there.

Mrs. Cannon, who had no money to relocate, had a simple choice: either lose her home, or go back to work for the very men responsible for killing her husband.

Even more humiliating, she would be allowed to resume her job at the Chiquola Mill only after she pledged to never again utter the word union.

The pain in Sue's face was vivid as she recalled the extraordinary grief her mother had endured and was forced to conceal throughout most of her life. “Can you imagine waking up one day with no husband, no job, and six children staring you in the face? Not knowing where your next meal is coming from. That’s what my mom faced.”

While at least one of the Chiquola widows placed her children in an orphanage, Sue said her mother chose to keep her family together. First, that meant taking a job at the mill—and the oath of silence that came with it. “They talked to her like they wanted to. They told her to either take the job on their terms or leave.”

I asked Sue what it was like at home in those days. Did her mother ever talk about what happened to their father at the mill? No, she responded, Iona Cannon’s grief played out not in words, but in actions—sometimes bizarre actions.

One was a morbid habit. At night, Mrs. Cannon often sat quietly for hours at home clenching the blood-soaked clothes her husband wore at the time of his death. She stopped only after Sue’s brother, Marvin—who could no longer endure the routine—took his father’s tattered garments and buried them in a nearby field.

Even then, Mrs. Cannon refused to let go. She searched the ground near her home, digging in various spots in a fruitless effort to recover the clothes.

Then Sue told me about the infamous “bleeding sidewalk.” 

Sue Hill’s father, Claude Canon, was killed on a Honea Path sidewalk across the street from the Chiquola Mill’s main entrance on Sept. 6, 1934.

After being shot three times in the back and twice in the hand, he bled profusely, leaving an immense blood stain in the concrete.

Over time, Sue told me, the stain faded and was barely visible —except when the sidewalk was wet. “When it rained the blood stain would come back a dark, copper-looking color. A lot of people came to look at the ‘bleeding sidewalk’ when it rained. The neighbors complained, but the mill wouldn’t do anything.”

Then, about eight years after the shooting, the two sections of stained concrete were quietly removed. Honea Path’s legendary “bleeding sidewalk” was suddenly no more.

It didn’t matter to Iona Cannon, who, after her husband’s killing, never set foot on that sidewalk again. “We had no car and walked everywhere. Whenever we went into town, mom refused to use that sidewalk,” Sue said.

“She would take us a back way behind the mill through the weeds and we’d cross the railroad tracks to get into town. Only when I was grown did I understand that she didn’t want to walk where daddy was killed.”

Even with Iona’s mill job, the family faced years of poverty and near starvation. “I saw mom diluting a can of Carnation milk with water to make cornbread to feed six children,” Sue said, unable to hold back the tears. “It must have been hard for her knowing we were going hungry.”

At this point, Sue began to sob. Crying has always unnerved me. I felt guilt for making her tell this story. Should I leave? No, I thought, I’ll just wait.

We sat quietly. Time froze. It seemed like hours went by. When Sue recovered, I asked if she felt like going on. Yes, she said. Her mother would want this story told.

And it was only because I had apologized for the actions of my grandfather, she said, that she decided to see me at all. No one else from the side of the mill’s management had ever expressed remorse. Not in 60 years. She was determined to go on.

Composed for the moment, the story continued.

On rare occasions, there was unexpected help. Iona would hear a knock on the front door. When she answered, no one would be there. On the porch, however, she’d find several bags of groceries. Though the family never found out who left the food, Iona suspected it was the man witnesses said shot her husband.

“There had to be some sleepless nights for these people,” Sue said. “If there weren’t, then they didn’t have a conscience. I don’t know how these people that did the shooting—for jobs or money or whatever—lived with themselves. They shot people whose kids went to the same school with their kids. They shared the same benches in church with the family members of the ones they killed. They watched as the families of these workers nearly starved, living on beans and fat meat or whatever they could find. I think many of them suffered for it the rest of their lives.”

About four years after the Chiquola violence, Tom Stalcup, one of the deputized workers who shot at strikers from a mill window, visited Mrs. Cannon. Stalcup told the widow he was ashamed of his role in the shooting and asked her for forgiveness. “He told her he couldn’t live right until he made it right with her,” Sue said.

Did Stalcup, I asked, tell Mrs. Cannon who gave the order to fire at the workers? Yes, Sue said, her mother had asked that very question.

“Dan Beacham,” Stalcup had answered. Not only did Dan Beacham give the order for the men to shoot, Stalcup said, but the mill superintendent told the deputized gunmen to kill every striker they could, no matter who it might be.

“Mr. Stalcup seemed to have a lot of trouble with this through the years,” Sue said.

Iona Cannon died at age sixty-four, never discussing the events at the mill outside of her own home. “Some days she’d talk about it. Other days she wouldn’t. She never got over my father. Never,” Sue said. “But I never saw her show any hate…not one word against them.”

Sue Hill’s compelling story is part of my “Wild History” project now on Kickstarter.

                                                      Wild History

Lois McClain Keeps a Deadly 60-Year Secret

While working on “Small Town Secret,” this photo of young Lois McClain, made by an unknown photographer, was identified for me by McClain’s daughter, Jessie Mae Holder. 

The bullet from McClain’s bleeding left hand, after being shot at Chiquola Mill in my hometown of Honea Path, South Carolina on Sept. 6, 1934 was never removed and was still intact when she died at age 91 in 1993.

Eventually, mother of five children, “Granny Lois” McClain, as she was called, worked in the mill in Honea Path through her mid 70s, while also serving as a volunteer midwife, seamstress and cook for local townspeople nearly all of her life.

Some years after the shooting, Tom Stalcup, a Chiquola millworker, revealed that he had shot McClain and asked for her forgiveness, which she granted.

Stalcup, who said my grandfather, Dan Beacham, ordered the mill shooting as superintendent, later became Sunday School teacher for McClain’s daughter at the Church of God in Honea Path. His son, Virgil Stalcup, went on to play shortstop for the Boston Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds.

Never in her life did McClain, or her husband, Cowan, also a millworker, discuss the shooting or the mill violence with any of their children. For that reason, the circumstances of McClain’s shooting or her role in the labor dispute remain unknown even to her own family.

However, words were not needed. Lois McClain’s story is written on her face in this powerful photograph.

The small town secret in Honea Path, S.C. was kept for 60 years. Though my grandfather was complicit in the shooting, my own family never discussed it. Yet, in the mid 90s, before many of the mill workers had died, the lid came off after a documentary film was produced revealing the town’s secret.

I wanted to know the truth and sought it out. The results are part of my Kickstarter project, Wild History.

                                               Wild History Kickstarter Project

Paul Robeson vs. Strom Thurmond: A Battle Over Race!

To understand the great accomplishments of the singer Paul Robeson, it’s important to know the history.

Sen. Strom Thurmond, the segregationist South Carolina politician, viciously attacked Robeson in 1948. Thurmond charged that the popular performer “has been going all over the country demanding that we abolish segregation, and to show his contempt for our way of life in the South, he married his son off to a white girl.”

Robeson, one of the era’s most talented, articulate, and politically active public figures, had risked his life to tour small towns throughout the South in 1948 on behalf of the progressive presidential candidate Henry Wallace. Thurmond, as that year’s presidential candidate of the segregationist Dixiecrat party, represented everything Robeson abhorred.

Robeson, however, was a black man that Thurmond couldn’t intimidate, and the eloquent intellectual knew how to get under the governor’s skin. Cheerfully singing his way through the deep South, Robeson attacked the Thurmond-led Dixiecrats as “powerful reactionaries who hope to stamp out the militant struggle of the Negro for complete freedom, equality and civil rights [and who] hope to keep all the wealth for themselves.”

Framing the “black belt of the South” as the area that would decide whether the Negro people “survive or perish,” Robeson spoke with a level of public candor then unheard of in South Carolina.

“For as long as any boy or girl can be denied opportunity in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi—so long as one can be lynched as he or she goes to vote—so long as the precious land does not belong to the people of that area (and with the land, the wealth that flows there from in agriculture and in industry)—so long as they do not have the full opportunity to develop and enrich their cultural heritage and their lives—so long are the whole Negro people not free.”

To the South’s white establishment, those were fighting words.

However, as one looks back on this dark chapter of history, it is fascinating to note that beginning in 1941, nine years before the senate campaign, Strom Thurmond began providing financial support to a daughter he had fathered with a black woman in 1925. The revelation that Thurmond had a daughter of mixed race came after his death at age 100 in June, 2003.

Thurmond’s daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, was born October 12, 1925 to a 16-year-old unmarried mother, Carrie Butler, who cleaned the Thurmond family home in Edgefield, South Carolina. At the time, Thurmond, 22, was living at the home while he worked as a school teacher and high school coach.

Thurmond first met his daughter around 1941, after he had been a state senator and circuit judge. From then on, the aspiring politician provided financial support for the woman, who remained a well-kept secret throughout his public career.

In retrospect, Thurmond’s family secret made his attack on Robeson and his son staggering in its sheer hypocrisy. But this cynical Southern politician was not about to lower the racial temperature.

This is one of the stories in Frank Beacham’s Kickstarter project, Wild History.

                                          Wild History Kickstarter Project

"Wild History" Kickstarter Project is Launched

My first Kickstarter project—“Wild History”—is now in progress.

For friends and readers of this blog, this interactive multimedia journalism project is the culmination of a complex 20-plus year personal effort. It has been totally self-funded and came after a long career as a professional journalist. The work was triggered by my deep frustration in the decline of most mass market journalistic storytelling.

It is no secret that during recent years the integrity of most news and information programming has fallen dramatically. No longer can we trust mass media—whether television, print or web sites—to bring us truthful, fair or unbiased reporting. Those with money and special interests now control most media outlets.

So I created the “Wild History” project. The term “wild history” comes from Chinese scholars who divided historical works into two distinct genres. Official histories were called “zhengshi.”

Unofficial histories, or literally “wild histories” were called “yeshi.” They were based on eyewitness accounts, personal remembrances and popular lore. These “wild histories” were more truthful and fluid—catching “life on the wing.”

As a storyteller, I categorize myself as a “wild historian.” Through the years, as I researched and developed my true stories, I have collected film and video, photographs and audio elements during the research.

I had looked to a future when I could combine these audio-visual elements into my written text—creating interactive multimedia. Well, finally, that future has arrived. Now, multimedia books—soon to become a new genre entirely—can be done produced for Apple’s iPad.

This Kickstarter project—“Wild History”—is to raise money to bring the first three of those stories into the interactive age. Most of the story elements have been secured and completed. What remains is putting it all together.

If my work interests you, please visit my Kickstarter page. If the project intrigues you, a contribution of any size would be appreciated.

Thanks for your consideration as I begin this exciting experiment.

Frank Beacham

Kickstarter "Wild History" Project

David Amram Imparts a Musical Living History of Greenwich Village

 

Over the past year, Bob Porco, the grandson of Gerde’s Folk City owner Mike Porco, has promoted a series of concerts at the original Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, bringing back acts from the 60s who created the folk music revolution of that era.

There have been some wonderful performances, ranging from Delta blues to jazz, with a heavy dose of great stories about the historic Gaslight and the many famous people who played and listened to music there. But perhaps the best of the year came just before Christmas from David Amram, a composer, musician and master storyteller who worked with virtually every important artist of the past 50 years.

Amram, now 82 but not showing it, is a living history book. He has worked with—believe it or not—Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, Langston Hughes, Charles Mingus, Pepper Adams, Leonard Bernstein, Sir James Galway, Tito Puente, Mary Lou Williams, Joseph Papp, Arthur Miller, Miles Davis, Arturo Sandoval, Stan Getz, Pete Seeger, Elia Kazan, Odetta, Lord Buckley, Dustin Hoffman, Steve Allen, Machito, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Allen Ginsberg, Nina Simone, Gregory Corso, Steve Goodman, Hunter Thompson and Johnny Depp—just to name a few.

That’s quite a list, but it’s what 57 years in Greenwich Village will do when you are in the right place at the right time. Amram was back on stage at 116 MacDougal Street, where in 1958 his buddies Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso used to read poetry before the folk scene, led by Bob Dylan, took over. Better yet, most of this wide range of performers came to hear each other, feeding off totally different kinds of art.

As a classical composer and performer, Amram's integration of jazz into ethnic and folk music has resulted in more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works. But beyond the music are the stories. One of his funniest was the trial of trying to write Indian music for Eugene Ormandy, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Amram’s impressions of Ormandy were dead-on and hilarious.

Scattered in his historical stories about life in Greenwich Village, was some excellent advice for any aspiring artist. After writing the scores for Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate, Amram was offered a seven picture deal by a Hollywood studio.

However, the studio wanted the seven pictures completed in only one year. When he asked how could he possibly do that, the studio suggested he use assistants, which, of course, would mean the work would not actually be by Amram. He walked away from the lucrative deal and what he called “Hollyweird” and came back to the Greenwich Village, a lot poorer, but still with his artistic integrity.

His advice: Turn off the television set, mass media and popular entertainment, and follow your own talent, regardless of the advice you get from others. Watch YouTube, he advised, saying there’s much to be mined from it. He reminded the audience that most of the really big things he was involved in began as a very few people in small groups.

One of those was the jazz and poetry movement with Jack Kerouac and what is now known as the Beat Generation, though most of the living poets hate the term today. Amram scored and acted in Pull My Daisy, a 1959 film narrated by Kerouac and co-directed by the great photographer Robert Frank. Rather than just tell about Kerouac and all his buddies, Amram did it in song—often ad libbing the lyrics as he went.

His style of “scat” singing was one of the highlights of the energetic two-hour performance, each totally unique due to his improvisation of lyrics. With that singing, Amram is also a pioneer player of the jazz French horn as well as a virtuoso on piano, numerous flutes and whistles, percussion and dozens of folkloric instruments he collected from travels to more than 25 countries. His performance on these instruments made it a truly eclectic, international concert.

Perhaps, however, the greatest thing about Amram’s performance was how gave the old Gaslight it’s proper historic context. As the night went on, young kids paraded through the club oblivious to the hallowed ground on which they were standing. But for those who listened and paid attention, this was one of the few men alive who can fill in the blanks and tell the rich stories of the Gaslight’s legacy.

This was the place that hosted the likes of Bill Cosby, Bruce Springsteen, Wavy Gravey, Richie Havens, Jose Feliciano, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Eric Anderson, John Herald, The Greenbrier Boys, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Dave Van Ronk, The Blues Project, Mississippi John Hurt, Jimi Hendrix, John Hammond Jr., Odetta, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Bonnie Raitt, Rev. Gary Davis, Big Mama Thornton, Link Wray, Mimi Farina, Charles Mingus, Happy and Artie Traum, Doug Kershaw, Bob Neuwirth and David Bromberg.

For the stories, I’m grateful for this rare connection to an earlier era in New York City, when so many of our musical tastes were being shaped by the legends Amram knew and worked with. He humanized them in a very special way.

The Sad Loss of George McGovern

It is with great sadness that I write of the death of Senator George McGovern. He was 90 years old and his advanced age simply caught up with him. But George McGovern, as the movie line went, was some kind of man.

He was the first and only candidate I ever truly supported for president. He would have been a great one, but—up against the likes of Richard M. Nixon—he wasn’t vicious enough to get to the White House. Since he ran in 1968, we’ve had no one—and I mean no one—of his character and caliber.

It is hard not to be wistful about how far our national politics has fallen since 1968. I knew McGovern, followed his work and reported on it, listened to his speeches, had a few drinks with him and always admired him.

When in college—being from the still impoverished state of South Carolina—I came to Washington to report on McGovern’s hearings on hunger. In 1968, I was a very green 20-year-old reporter, but I could not help being impressed. Yes, McGovern was a liberal of the highest order—one who wanted to help poor people live a better life.

And, yes, even then he was attacked for that. Little has changed since that day, including the lack of popularity of helping the poor. But I was completely on board with McGovern and his policies.

As one facing the draft and the war in Vietnam, I also appreciated McGovern’s opposition to the war. He was unlike the racist hypocrites who served and still serve in Congress from South Carolina.

Later, when I worked on Capitol Hill for Sen. Robert Byrd, I got to know McGovern and his top aide, Gary Hart (later to become a senator himself). We all became friendly. Hart offered me a job on McGovern’s presidential campaign, which I refused, deciding to leave Washington to become a reporter and writer instead.

In the era of Richard Nixon, whose reign of power turned out to be far more toxic than anyone could even imagine back in the 60s, McGovern offered an antidote of incredible decency and solid thinking.

America’s rejection of him was tough for me to swallow. But one thing is clear—the quality of our presidential candidates has gone down ever since.

I heard McGovern speak again in 2008 in New York City. Even then at his advanced age, he was dead on right with everything he said. I still wanted him to be president more than ever, but it was not to be.

McGovern remains a shining symbol of the best of this country’s political left—particularly in relation to the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s when the country was torn by U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and the corruption and abuse of power of the Nixon administration.

Even he recognized the mixed results of his 1972 candidacy, saying, "I opened the doors of the Democratic Party and 20 million people walked out." McGovern had also become more forceful in recent years in drawing historical parallels between the Nixon and Bush administrations and the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

McGovern's post-political career generally enhanced his reputation. Tom Brokaw wrote in 1998 that “he remains one of the country's most decent and thoughtful public servants.”

Sadly, the nation has run out of this breed of politician. Now, in this election, we’ve hit bottom on all sides. But, for those who remember, it wasn’t always that way.

George McGovern was definitely some kind of man. I’m proud to have known him and thankful I lived in his time. May he finally rest in peace.

Folk Reunion at Washington Square Park in New York City

The Washington Square Folk Reunion was held Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012, at Washington Square Park in New York City. Less than two hours after it started, rain came—forcing the contingent to squeeze under the arch. Here are some video clips shot before the rain came.

 

The Man Who Took the Great Pictures from Outer Space

After a talk by astronaut Don Pettit at a photography conference in New York City this week, someone in the audience tweeted: “For someone who spent a year in space, Dr. Pettit is a down to earth guy.”

When the message was read, the audience burst into applaud. Many had already had one-on-one talks with Pettit at lunch at the Luminance conference and found him an incredibly accessible, ready to answer any question, and well—as said—a genuinely “down to earth guy.”


Pettit is a chemical engineer and astronaut who, in three stays over the past decade, spent more than a year on the International Space Station. He worked as a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory until 1996, when he was selected as an astronaut candidate. In addition to all his other skills and adventures, Pettit is a passionate amateur photographer.

Yes, NASA trains all astronauts in photography, but doesn’t assign photography duties in space. “It’s more of a hobby thing,” Pettit said. “There are some astronauts who—if the camera wasn't set to "P"—would never be able to take a picture. It's a personal thing for me. I enjoyed photography before becoming an astronaut and continued to grow and learn the photo equipment."


At NASA, Pettit said, the photo trainers badger the trainees by showing all of these hundreds of awful pictures that previous astronauts have taken. “They say don't take a picture like that,” he said. “Up the nose shots, where you can see how many hairs are there, are frowned upon.”


The problem with the above shot, Pettit said, is it's not reality. In a weightless environment, the members of the station crew are everywhere—attached to walls, on the ceiling and in coffin-sized beds in the floor. “You get used to seeing a humbo jumbo of crewmates in all these positions. So you might be looking into somebody's nose. As creatures on Earth, we are not used to seeing this. The pictures you take of your crewmates look perfectly normal to you, but when a normal picture gets to Earth, you get instructed to take pictures like this.

“Of course, you’d be hard pressed looking at that picture to know whether the group is in space or not. We only have some fancy backdrop.”


Pettit likes to shoot inside the cramped spacecraft with a Nikkor 8mm fisheye lens. “We have six people living in space and an Android which we are working the bugs out of. We refer to it as him or possibly her. I've been back on earth for about two months from a 192-day space mission. We started the mission referring to the Robonaut as him and somewhere in the mission we began referring to it as her.” (Big laugh from the audience.)


Among his favorite photo subjects are the approaching unmanned supply vehicles that bring food and other necessities on a periodic basic. “These are fire breathing creatures,” Pettit said. “They will belch fire and I try to record these images.

“These supply vehicles dock automatically unless the automatics break down and then we have to manually dock it. They are filled full of goodies—a chamber about two and half meters in diameter. We unload all the stuff and then fill the chamber with all of our garbage, which are mostly buckets filled with poop. You gotta do something with that stuff, right? You just don't flush it. We put it in the spacecraft and undock it and it blows up in the atmosphere. So at least it’s a sanitary way of getting rid of this stuff.”


To take pictures outside, Pettit uses the station’s Cupola, a seven window observatory module in the station that looks at Earth. It was launched aboard a Space Shuttle mission on Feb. 8, 2010 and attached to the Tranquility Node 3. The Cupola's 31-inch window is the largest ever used in space.


“We fill it with as many as eight different cameras,” Pettit said.“Earth goes by really fast. You go 24,000 miles in 90 minutes. If you want to take a picture of your hometown or whatever, you have three to five seconds to get that shot. Or you'll have to wait another 11 days before you're over your hometown again. We have all these cameras set-up because there is no time to change lenses or settings. They are never turned off.


“You have this amazing perspective of Earth—you can see it on the length-scale of half a continent. It's definitely a wide angle view. If you are over central Australia, you can see the east coast and west coast at the same time. The truly unique thing through my eyes is to capture the wide angle nature of what your views are.

“We have all kinds of telephoto lenses, but if you're not careful, you get images not as good as Google Earth. In my view, you want to capture something different from what a satellite can capture.”

Infrared

“I was able to talk NASA into taking a perfectly fine Nikon D3F body and pulling the IR blocking filter out. The reason is we stopped shooting film in my first flight in 2002. With that, we lost the ability to do color infrared photography. It was all film based. Now we can do infrared digitally with this modified Nikon camera.


"This is the Ganges river delta (a trans-boundary river of India and Bangladesh). The deep red is the mangrove wilderness. You can see on the left side where agriculture is starting to infringe into the wilderness area. 


"This is in the Bahamas. Coral reef and turquoise water and sediments give these amazing colors in the near infrared.


“If you want to go for a jaunt outside, and we all do, you'd be better be wearing a set of clothes that look like this.

"Shadows in space are really stark.


"You are either in full blown sunlight or pitch black. There is almost nothing in between. Even when you bring the camera outside, you have these shadows you have to deal with. I sent a picture home to my boy and said we had found Godzilla in space.


"One of my favorites are star trail pictures. Nighttime doesn't really look like this, but it has all of these elements in it. These are multiple 30 second exposures stacked to show the orbital motion as well as the star trail motion. The circle is made by the pitch access of the spacecraft. These are fun pictures primarily for data."

Cities at Night

“Cities at night are fascinating. You look at how human beings sprinkle their light bulbs at night. It's amazing from an orbital perspective. Nobody on earth designs their cities by how they look to space. They just happen to turn out that way. Until 2002, all these pictures were soft focused due to orbital motion.


“I was unhappy about that. So I cobbled this piece of equipment up with spare parts that were on the space station. The big black thing is an IMAX movie camera mount. It wasn't being used because we no longer had film on the station. So I figured no one would mind if I used it. I got out our drill driver. I needed a long bolt. I found one in the progress vehicle. I figured no one will miss just one bolt.” (More laughter.)

“So you drive that bolt and it pushes against the platform and you can move one axis of a gimbel in a controlled manner depending on how much you squeeze the trigger. I took a Hasselblad camera with a 70 mm film back, though we had no film anymore. I put the 350mm lens on it. It became a fancy spotting telescope. You look through that camera and squeeze the trigger on the drill driver until the images are stationary and then you take a picture with the other camera mounted on the mount.

“If you're an amateur astronomer, you realize this is nothing more than a barn door tracker. Barn door trackers are used to take pictures of space to counter Earth motion. I was in space countering orbital motion so I could take a picture of Earth.

"Times have changed. The space agency has built a computer controlled tracker. This is New Orleans taken from the mission I just got back from. Taken with a Nikon D3F we can now get down to 10 meter resolution. You can see the Mississippi River and the French Quarter and see it's a pretty hopping place at this time of night."

Pettit said it turns out there is a triangle between culture, technology and geography that dictates how humans move lighting around. One can see different types of lighting by region, he said. “Embedded in this data about our cities is something about who we are as a species. Cities at night may be one of the most beautiful unintentional consequences of human activity.”

Pettit was asked if he had ever used Photoshop on his images while in space. “Most images are downloaded from space. During my mission, we had six hard drives fail. Hard drives somehow fail when they get into weightlessness. They don't last like they do on Earth. Nobody understands why, but they just do.

So the quicker you can get your images off of a hard drive and downloaded, the better. NASA does a good just of ferreting out all the RAW files, which are stored as NEF files. I do hold some of my favorites and I do have a copy of Photoshop and I work with some of them in my spare time just because I can.

But I'd rather spend my time taking the pictures while in orbit than doing image processing. You have plenty of time to do that when you're back on Earth.”

Finally, with all the usage of his images being manipulated on YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook over the past year, Pettit was asked if had ever seen them online and what is his opinion.

“I have seen many of these time lapse movies and it does me good that people are actually using the pictures that I take,” he said. “I think whatever art form you enjoy creating the best compliment is to see somebody take it and enjoy it themselves. At NASA, I can't use copyright music unless we can arrange with the musician. But people on YouTube do that. So they make these marvelous film clips that I can't do. Some of these are so beautiful, it brings a tear to my eye.”

Don Pettit with Frank Beacham at the Luminance Conference sponsored by Photoshelter in New York City

Joan Osborne "Haunted" with Bob Dylan's Joy

Joan Osborne says she is “haunted” by the new, joyous Bob Dylan. Osborne, who performed Wednesday night at the City Winery in New York City, was in the audience to see Dylan’s performance at Bethel Woods on Sept. 2.

Even though she has performed with Dylan in the past, she—like so many others in recent concerts—couldn’t believe how much fun Dylan seemed to having on stage. This carried over to the Port Chester concert Tuesday at the Capitol Theatre, where Dylan smiled often and jumped around the stage constantly throughout the show.

On Sept. 5, Osborne performed a Dylan song—“Every Grain of Sand” with Amy Helm, Levon’s daughter.  She closed the show, with Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love.”

Bob Dylan Re-Opens the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York

Port Chester, New York’s Capitol Theatre, in the 1970s, was a great performance space for rock and roll. The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, Traffic, David Bowie and Phish played there. The Grateful Dead played the theatre 18 times in one year from 1970 to 71. Jerry Garcia, the Dead’s guitarist, called it one of the best two performance spaces in the nation along with Fillmore West in San Francisco.

The great theatre was designed by noted theater architect Thomas W. Lamb and built in 1926. It was constructed for vaudeville and cinema and continued as a movie theater until 1970, after which it was renovated for use as a performance space. In 1984, The Capitol Theatre was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

By 1976, however, the theatre was shut down due to a village ordinance that prohibited live entertainment after 1 a.m. It was at this time that mother nature became the sole owner of the Capitol Theatre. The roof decayed, and pigeons made the stage their new home. The theatre remained dark until the early 80’s.

Last December, it was announced that the Capitol would be re-opened by music entrepreneur Peter Shapiro, who would present major concerts at the venue. It would undergo a two million dollar renovation with new sound and lighting equipment installed.

Before the renovation, Bob Dylan and his band often used the Capitol as a secret rehearsal space. Dylan apparently liked the acoustics. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Dylan offered to the play as the opening act at the newly renovated hall. That happened last night, when he opened the Capitol with “Watching the River Flow.”

As one who has seen Dylan many times over the past 30 years, it was one of the most energetic shows I've ever seen him perform. It was clear the man was having a good time. He smiled more last night than all the other concerts I've seen him in combined. Others who have been following him on the road told me he has been consistently in good spirits lately, so it probably had nothing to do with being at the Capitol.

  

As to the theatre staff, they did a lot right. The security was actually friendly. There were no bag checks at the door and no one hassled photographers. It was clear they were glad to see the people there.

A new video projection system used before the concert was amazing. It projected everything from psychedelic patterns on the walls and ceiling to an outer space scene, with an astronaut passing overhead. Trees grew up walls and at one point, the marble theatre walls crumbled, showing images of the next door train station. It was as if the entire building collapsed before your eyes. A bizarre scene, for sure, but a lot of fun.

                        

The Capitol is back and Dylan gave it a rousing send off. The house was packed with Dylan notables, including Sean Willentz, the Princeton historian who wrote Bob Dylan in America, Greil Marcus, who wrote The Old, Weird America and Mitch Blank, Dylan’s archivist.

All photographs by Frank Beacham

George Stoney: Changing a Town and the Lives of Its People Forever

                    

George Stoney, the great documentary filmmaker, has died at age 96. Though he had made films since the early 1950s, Stoney made one in 1995 that turned my world upside down.

The Uprising of ’34, made with his former student, Judith Helfand, was about the Textile Strike of 1934. In it was a section about how, on September 6, 1934, seven workers were shot and killed and 30 others wounded at the Chiquola Mill in my home town of Honea Path, South Carolina.

It was an act that has shaped the town’s history and attitudes in ways that few could have imagined. I had a special interest in the film because my late grandfather, Dan Beacham, Honea Path’s mayor and superintendent of the mill in 1934, organized the gunmen who fired their weapons at the workers. That day became known as “Bloody Thursday.”

My grandfather died in 1936, many years before I was born. When I was growing up in Honea Path during the 1960s, the subject of the mill violence was taboo. There were hints of what happened, of course, but the topic was never discussed in the open. I learned the truth about Honea Path’s history in 1994 from a rough-cut of Stoney’s film.

Since that film essentially ended Honea Path’s six-decade long secret, I’ve learned about the history of the town and its people through many conversations and stories. I wrote about it in my book, Whitewash: A Southern Journey through Music, Mayhem and Murder.

As a writer who makes his living telling stories, I was shocked to find one of the most compelling stories I’ve ever heard connected to my own family and hometown. Even more shocking, I found, was how an event of such magnitude and importance to the lives of generations of Honea Path families could have been hidden and buried for so long. Of course the reason that I and so few of my fellow baby boomers didn’t know the story of Chiquola Mill was because it was purposely denied us.

There was a campaign of fear and intimidation after the shootings that effectively erased public discussion of what had happened. Fearful workers who wanted to keep their jobs put a self-imposed lid on their own past. Somehow, as the years went by, the violence at Chiquola evolved into a source of shame.

George Stoney, a Southerner himself, understood all this. He explained more to me about where I came from than I ever learned while living there. After the film’s release, he came to Honea Path and we did a radio talk show together. He organized a retreat at the Highlander Center in Tennessee where we discussed what happened in Honea Path for several days.

Later, we spoke, not only in his classes at New York University, but at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Natural History in New York City. We always winged it and the endless conversations were never boring.

As I learned from all this, a documentary filmmaker’s job is never done. George invited me to one of his film classes last year at NYU, still teaching well into his 90s.

George addressed the many myths that built up over the years about the workers who died in Honea Path more than 75 years ago. They were called an isolated group of troublemakers and rabble-rousers. Some, mainly the mill’s former management, claimed they deserved what happened to them.

He saw it another way. He thought these mill workers risked everything—their jobs, their freedom and ultimately their lives—for a cause they believed in. They made a decision to exert some control over their changing place in an increasingly industrialized world. Their method was to attempt to organize their fellow workers into a labor union.

The amazing chain of events that caused friends and neighbors in Honea Path to turn on one another with weapons has to be viewed in the context of the time. In 1934 the cork finally blew and labor protests erupted all over the United States. There were 1,856 work stoppages involving 1,470,000 workers.

Honea Path represented a microcosm in a whirlwind of worker unrest. The shooting of the Honea Path mill workers was a pivotal moment in the General Textile Strike that was sweeping the South. Though the efforts of the workers ended in defeat and much suffering followed, the deaths of the seven Honea Path men was not in vain.

The disillusionment of the workers and the outrageous conduct by the mill owners made a strong impression on the Roosevelt Administration. This helped spur passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938. Out of these laws came reforms that vastly improved the lives of all American workers. One example was child labor. Before 1938, when the Fair Labor Standards Act outlawed employment of children under sixteen, the concept of “helping” was used in the mills.

Very young children were taught factory skills by their parents and soon “helped” by working in the mill to increase the family's piecemeal earnings. “Helping” became a form of apprenticeship and a major part of the mill’s labor system. Because this practice is now illegal, children have a better chance at a quality life by getting to stay in school rather than be exploited as cheap labor.

Other major reforms that came out of the labor unrest was the establishment of the minimum wage and the 40-hour work week. These are reforms—a direct result of what happened in Honea Path—have permeated modern life in the United States and have extended far beyond the textile industry. That’s why these workers were heroes and why their history should be honored.

The corrosive division that poisoned Honea Path after the shootings and the sense of shame that followed the shooting was concocted by those responsible for the violence. Fortunately that has mostly ended now, if for no other reason than fewer and fewer remain with us who can give a first person account of what happened.

Now, we have lost George Stoney, too. The Honea Path story is just one of many that George told. What a life! What a wonderful ability to change people's lives through storytelling. That’s what George Stoney did so well.

RIP, George!

 

Fox and CNN Get the Supreme Court Ruling Wrong

It is remarkable to me how people continue to watch, defend and put up with the sorry state of television news.

When I worked at United Press International in the 1970s, we had very difficult desegregation busing decisions that required quick, but thorough analysis. If I had gotten a decision wrong on the UPI wire, I would have been fired then and there. That’s no longer the case.

Both Fox News and CNN got the story flat wrong. In their rush to get the news out, coupled with their built-in bias as to what the decision would be, both networks initially reported that the Supreme Court had struck down the law’s individual mandate. Of course they were wrong, because the opposite actually happened.

“The mandate is gone,” Shannon Bream, a Fox News correspondent, announced at 10:08 a.m. as a graphic flashed on the screen that called it unconstitutional. A moment later, one of the Fox anchors, Megyn Kelly, cautioned that Bream might be wrong.

“We’re getting conflicting information,” Kelly said, while reading from Scotus blog, an a web site about the court. Citing the blog, she accurately told viewers that “the individual mandate is surviving as a tax.”

At the same time on CNN, relaying information from a producer, Bill Mears, on the phone inside the court building, a correspondent, Kate Bolduan, said, “It appears as if the Supreme Court justices have struck down the individual mandate.”

“Wow,” said Wolf Blitzer, the anchor, who immediately said that if the court had indeed done what she had said, it would be a setback for President Obama and the Democratic Party. Despite his qualified words, a banner on the screen read, “Supreme Ct. Kills Individual Mandate.” The mistake lingered for six minutes — well after other television networks and news outlets had reported that the opposite was true.

Editors and producers at several organizations said they would emphasize accuracy over speed in any coverage of the decision, lest they risk being wrong. But today news organizations hire amateur reporters at low pay scales and expect them to have the skill to report accurately. Fox was even taking information from a blog, not first-hand reporting. This was absolute proof of the low state of TV news.

“CNN regrets that it didn’t wait to report out the full and complete opinion regarding the mandate,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. “We made a correction within a few minutes and apologize for the error.”

Fox News did not issue an apology. In a statement, Michael Clemente, a Fox executive, said flatly, “Fox reported the facts as they came in.” Clemente should be fired for his arrogance, much less his incompetence.

Even the President of the United States, watching like much of the nation, was fooled by the bad reporting. He, of all people, should have known better.

That’s the difference in news today. It should be strong proof that television coverage is unreliable and amateur at best. Turn them off is my advice.

"Jug" Music Makes a Return to the Village Gaslight

Canon's Jug Stompers in 1928

---

Early jug bands in this country were usually formed by African American vaudeville and medicine show musicians, beginning in the 1920s. They played a mix of traditional and home-made instruments—ordinary objects adapted or modified for the making of sound, like the washtub bass, washboard, spoons, stovepipe and kazoo. 

Beginning in the urban south early in the last century, these bands played a mixture of Memphis blues (even before it was formally called the blues), ragtime and jazz. The informal and energetic music of the jug bands also contributed to the development of rock and roll.

The well known Memphis jug bands were small street groups, performing mainly on Beale Street, and had their own blues style—using guitar, harmonica, banjo and a jug to accompany their blues and dance songs. Then, with the Great Depression, jug bands mostly disappeared.

They made a resurgence in the late 1950s as part of the folk music revival in Greenwich Village. One of the first recordings of the folk era jug band revival was by The Orange Blossom Jug Five, made in 1958. It was also the first recording by folksinger Dave Van Ronk, and featured Sam Charters, author of The Country Blues, and his wife Ann as well as Len Kunstadt, co-owner of the Spivey Records label.

Van Ronk would revisit the genre in 1964 with the album Dave Van Ronk and the Ragtime Jug Stompers, a modern classic, though his ragtime guitar picking and repertoire influenced many subsequent jug bands.

This brief flurry of interest in the genre sparked the formation of a few jug bands that reached national prominence. The Jim Kweskin Jug Band of Cambridge, Mass., which recorded for the Vanguard label, featured the washtub bass and jug player Fritz Richmond, who later played jug on Warren Zevon's I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.

The New York-based Even Dozen Jug Band was the Elektra label's answer to the Kweskin band and featured (among others) Maria D'Amato, Joshua Rifkin, David Grisman, Stefan Grossman, John Sebastian and Steve Katz. Maria D'Amato then joined The Jim Kweskin Jug Band, later marrying guitarist Geoff Muldaur. She became, of course, Maria Muldaur.

The musicians playing in jug music revival groups went on to form other bands. John Sebastian founded the pop music group, The Lovin' Spoonful, and later continued as a successful solo artist. Country Joe and the Fish came from The Instant Action Jug Band.

One of the jug bands, formed in the spring of 1965, was the Dirdy Birdies Jug Band. The group was formed on the campus of Montclair State College in New Jersey and have been playing ever since at venues like Gerde's Folk City, The Bitter End, The Village Barn, The Red Garter and The Cafe Wha?

Last night, The Dirdy Birdies Jug Band played the old Gaslight in Greenwich Village on a double bill with Peter Stampfel. Four of the jug band’s original members played in a concert organized by Bob Porco, grandson of Mike Porco, owner of the original Gerdes Folk City. Each month Bob is bringing back vintage 60s acts that once played in his grandfather’s famous folk club.

It was clear the jug band members are still having a great time after nearly 50 years. Mixing traditional jug band sounds and instruments, with ragtime, bluegrass, gospel, country, blues and rock 'n roll, they played good time music that was fun to hear. Nothing heavy mind you, but fun songs like “Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian” and the “Ballad of Amelia Earhart.”

After a too quick set, the jug band gave way to another Village legend, Peter Stampfel. In the early 1960s, Stampfel and Steve Weber made up The Holy Modal Rounders. For a time the band also featured playwright and actor, Sam Shepard.

The Rounders' first album, The Holy Modal Rounders, was released in 1964, and their version of Hesitation Blues featured the first use of the term "psychedelic" in popular music. Shortly after their second album in 1965, The Holy Modal Rounders 2, they joined Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg in The Fugs for a short time.

A Rounder’s song is found on the soundtrack for the film, Easy Rider. Stampfel is said to be the only person ever to play music with Bob Dylan, Sam Shepard, Mississippi John Hurt and Buckminster Fuller—not, of course, at the same time. Last night, however, Stampfel played with Zoë, his 26-year-old daughter, and some members of his latest band, The Ether Frolic Mob.

Where the jug bands leaves off, Stampfel begins. He and Zoë performed some songs from their new CD, Ass in the Air. To say Stampfel has a unique take on the world is a major understatement.

The liner notes are hilarious explanations from some of his absurd lyrics. One song is called Drink America. Stampfel wrote “Fred Koller intended this to be a jingle/song for Miller High Life, which is based in Milwaukee. The idiots could have had an iconic song. The fools, the utterly witless fools.”

Or Take Me Away, which is described as a “song inspired at an AA meeting when this guy was going on about the serious bad shit happening to him in the last few days and then said: ‘Take me away!’ On went the light bulb over my head,” Stampfel wrote. Other terrific songs were Eat That Roadkill, which was “killed by a car,” and Hanging Out in a Bar.

Ironically, it was in this same room, more than 50 years earlier, that Stampfel played with a very young Bob Dylan and Jim Kweskin, who formed his own very famous jug band.

In an interview with Perfect Sound Forever magazine, Stampfel recalled those days with Dylan: “I was 22 and he was 20. It was a real lesson. When you're in your early 20's, you think you're hot shit and that younger people can't show you anything. It taught me that having that attitude towards younger people is really stupid. I went to him afterwards and met him,” he said.

“(Dylan and I) started hanging out together and he was crashing at different places all the time. He came and stayed with us for a while. We played together for a while. I started playing really good then because he was playing SO FUCKING SOLID. Suddenly, I was playing better. We both played at the Gaslight Cafe with Jim Kweskin. I joined him on fiddle and kazoo,” Stampfel said.

So at this historic concert series at the Gaslight, the world comes full circle. Even if you missed the glory days in the 1960s, you can still revisit the past and the get benefit of age at the same time. It's a concert series for anyone who wishes they could relive the past.

Peter Stampfel and Bob Porco

A New York Tribute to the Legacy of Rev. Gary Davis 40 Years After His Death

To visit Laurens, South Carolina today, one would never know it had much of a rich musical heritage. With a population of less than 10,000 people, one of the town’s most famous stops these days is the Red Neck Shop and Ku Klux Klan museum. 

In the front of a converted movie theatre in the center of downtown Laurens, tourists can buy neo-Nazi clothing, KKK robes, T-shirts with Confederate flags and anti-Obama “Satan in the White House” propaganda from former Klan leader John Howard. Then they enter the museum, where one sees a shocking display of hate. The place has been popular for years.

Ironically, the movie theatre that houses the Red Neck Shop is owned by a black minister and civil rights leader. The minister bought the building at a good price, agreeing to allow the Klan museum to stay for the life of its owner, John Howard. People shake their heads when they hear this, but it’s the kind of unnatural arrangement that seems to happen too frequently in the deep South.

In 1820, Andrew Johnson, who became the 17th President of the United States, owned and operated a tailor shop on the Laurens town square near the Red Neck Shop. He later became vice president under Abraham Lincoln, and upon Lincoln's assassination, assumed the presidency.

But where the history of Laurens really shines is with its musical heritage. And I don’t mean the only music mentioned on the town’s web site that celebrates the time that a band called Hootie and the Blowfish played there.

Rev. Gary Davis

Laurens is also the home of the Rev. Gary Davis and Pink Anderson, two acclaimed acoustic blues musicians who were both born there. Davis was born in 1896, while Anderson was born four years later in 1900. Both would be forgotten in their home town, but would go on to become major figures in the Piedmont Blues and beyond.

Syd Barrett, of the progressive rock band, Pink Floyd, came up with the band's name by juxtaposing the first names of Anderson and North Carolina bluesman, Floyd Council. Barrett noticed the names in the liner notes of a 1962 Blind Boy Fuller album. 

The text said “Pink Anderson or Floyd Council—these were a few amongst the many blues singers that were to be heard in the rolling hills of the Piedmont, or meandering with the streams through the wooded valleys."

Gary Davis, who became blind as an infant, took to the guitar and and played the towns around Laurens. He quickly assumed a unique multi-voice style produced solely with his thumb and index finger, playing not only ragtime and blues tunes, but also traditional and original tunes in four-part harmony. He played in South Carolina for both and white and black audiences.

In the mid-1920s, Davis left Laurens and moved to Durham, North Carolina, a major center for black culture at the time. There he collaborated with a number of other artists in the Piedmont blues scene including Blind Boy Fuller and Bull City Red.

In 1935, J. B. Long, a store manager with a reputation for supporting local artists, introduced Davis, Fuller and Red to the American Record Company. The subsequent recording sessions marked the real beginning of Davis' career. It was also during his time in Durham that Davis converted to Christianity. He would later become ordained as a Baptist minister.

In the 1940’s, Davis moved to New York City. His finger-picking guitar style caught on and many students of the guitar sought him out for lessons. Among those students were Stefan Grossman and Ray Book Binder. 

Last night, forty years after the death of Rev. Davis, Grossman and Book Binder returned to a packed house at the historic Gaslight Cafe at 116 MacDougal street in Greenwich Village to pay tribute to the man who taught them to play guitar. Both men had played at this historic bastion of folk music when they were younger and were back for another fling.

    

Roy Book Binder

Book Binder opened the night, telling how after getting out of the military at age 22, he was in Greenwich Village in the late 1960s and given a matchbook cover with Rev. Davis’s phone number written on it. He called the number.

Davis told him lessons cost $5. “I said I can come a week from Thursday,” Book Binder said. “He told me, ‘I’m an old man. You better come and get it while it's here.’”

Davis’s wife invited Book Binder for supper after the lesson. “The house smelled weird...it was soul food cooking. The most horrible thing I'd ever eaten.” So Book Binder, to avoid future meals, started telling the Davises he couldn't stay past five. 

“After the second guitar lesson, he told me not to come back for three weeks...he was going on a tour. I told him I had $50 saved up and would like to go on tour with him. He said $50 won't get you nowhere. But when I left that night, he said you bring your $50 tomorrow and I’ll carry you the rest of the way. 

“The next day I was banging on the door at 6:30 in the morning. Mrs. Davis opened the door wearing a housecoat and curlers. She asked what are you doing here, Roy. I told her I was making the trip with Rev. Davis. Well, Rev. Davis is sound asleep and the train doesn't leave till 6:30 tonight. But, come in, I'll make you a good healthy breakfast.” 

The audience gave Book Binder a big laugh as he launched into songs he’d learned from Davis.

After the trip, Book Binder hung out with Rev. Davis and ended up driving him and his wife to church. “At first we called Mrs. Davis ‘Sister Davis.’ At some point there must have been a promotion to ‘Mother Davis.’ She was a great lady,” he said. The one rule, when around Mrs. Davis, is the blues weren’t played, only church music.

“Rev. Davis passed away 40 years ago this month. Mrs. Davis lived to be 103. I used to visit her once a year. Since we didn’t play the blues around her, I realized that she probably thought I'd been on the road preaching for 35 years,” Book Binder joked.

Then came Grossman, an amazing guitarist who, like Book Binder, personally knew many of the great black players of the era. In fact, at 15, Grossman recorded performances of Davis, which has been released in a three CD box set in 2009 called Live at Gerde’s Folk City.

Stefan Grossman

“When Rev. Davis was teaching me how to play guitar, he said, ‘Stefan, it's very easy. You have to play the guitar like its a piano.’ I said OK and I wrote that down in my book. He said piano players only have two hands. They have one hand that plays the bass and another hand that plays the treble…the melody. But guitar players have three hands. I was 15 and I thought, wow, this is mystical. 

“We have this hand (his left) to play a chord. On the other hand we have a thumb, that can play the left hand of the piano. And this finger that can play the right hand of the piano. I said, just two fingers? He said “yes, that's all I need.”

Then “as I got older and older I realized that Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Ike Everly, Mose Rager, Lightin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb and Big Bill Broonzy played like that. Wow! It's simple. You make it sound like a piano and you just have to learn three chords. A ‘C’ chord, an ‘F’ chord and a ‘G’ chord,” said Grossman, making it all sound so simple to guitar players in the audience following his every move.

Grossman spoke of how competitive Rev. Davis was. 

“I’d say I just saw Bukka White at the Gaslight and his first question was how many people were there? When John Hurt was in the city, I took him up to Rev. Davis's house. They spent a wonderful afternoon playing music together. I was just listening. The next day I went back up and said ‘Rev. Davis, wasn't that just great?’ He said, ‘You like that type music? I said yeah, I like it. I love it.’ He said that's old fashioned pickin’.” 

Whenever he'd say something like that, I'd say "well you can't do it." Then out would come a whole bunch of tunes.” Two of those, “Cocaine Blues” and “Candy Man,” were songs Davis said he learned in 1905 from a traveling carnival musician, Porter Irving, who was coming through Laurens County, South Carolina. 

Davis’s version, performed by Grossman, is made up of rhyming couplets, followed by a refrain "Cocaine, running all around my brain" or "Cocaine, all around my brain.” The song is sometimes known as "Coco Blues," as on Davis’ 1965 album, Pure Religion and Bad Company.

Davis was a key influence on the folk revival singers of the early 1960s, including Dave Van Ronk, who learned his version of "Cocaine Blues" from Davis (it’s featured on his 1963 album, Folksinger) and Bob Dylan (a 1961 variant features on The Minnesota Tapes, a 1962 variant is on Gaslight Tapes and third version is on more recent compilation album, Tell Tale Signs). 

Davis’ version of "Cocaine Blues" was subsequently recorded by a number of artists in the folk revival/singer-songwriter tradition, including Richard Fariña and Eric Von Schmidt (1963), Hoyt Axton (1963, on Thunder 'n Lightning), Davey Graham (1964, on Folk, Blues and Beyond), Nick Drake (on Tanworth-in-Arden 1967-68), Jackson Browne (1977, on Running on Empty), Townes Van Zandt (1993, on Roadsongs) and Ramblin' Jack Elliott (1995, on South Coast), as well as by the punk band UK Subs. "Sweet Cocaine" by Fred Neil in 1966 is loosely based on the same song.

So this is how music travels and influences occur. The Rev. Gary Davis, essentially forgotten in his own hometown of Laurens, brings songs he heard there to much wider audiences in New York City. Among those under his influence were the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Townes van Zandt, Wizz Jones, Jorma Kaukonen, Keb' Mo', Ollabelle, Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Resurrection Band.

The Gaslight concerts are presented by Bob Porco, grandson of Gerde’s Folk City owner, Mike Porco. Both Grossman and Book Binder had performed at Gerdes in their younger years.

Roy Book Binder, Bob Porco, Stefan Grossman

Happy 71st Birthday, Bob Dylan!

Photo of Bob Dylan at the Rolling Thunder Review by Frank Beacham on April 25, 1976 at Gainesville, Florida.

HR3—Rare, Youthful Talent Hits a New York Stage

Very rarely in this life does one get to see—up close and personal—an eruption of singular young talent that is both mesmerizing and thrilling. But last night, I had such a moment in a small New York City nightclub at the American musical debut of two 20-year-old Canadians—guitarist Julien Sandiford and drummer Max Lazich.

Teamed with veteran bass player, Hansford Rowe, this new trio is called HR3. What was barely contained on this small stage at 78 Below on Columbus Ave. was a musical tour de force driven by three talented improvisational artists. 

Julien Sandiford—remember that name—is an extraordinary guitarist who is already among the best in the business. Yet, he’s only 20-years-old, and has been playing seriously since he was 12. He practices five to seven hours a day and can play anything, including even what he doesn’t know. (“He doesn’t know this song well, but you’ll never know it,” Rowe quipped.)

Julien Sandiford

Max Lazich is the drummer. He’s also 20. He met Sandiford when they were students at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. The pair then met Hansford Rowe, a professional bassist who has been a member of Pierre Moerlen’s Gong, Gongzilla and a project called Moment featuring Spanish guitarist Jordi Torrens. 

From these meetings, HR3 was born.

Hansford Rowe

The group officially plays jazz, but never the same way twice. Their list of influences pretty much explains what happens on stage. The names include Brice Marden, the minimalist painter; Miles Davis and Charles Mingus, the jazz pioneers; and Frank Zappa, the eclectic musician and composer.

Marden's paintings, which are hard to describe, are often born from a particular experience, or in reaction to having spent time in a specific place. 

Miles Davis created and manipulated ritual space, in which gestures could be endowed with symbolic power sufficient to form a functional communicative, and hence musical, vocabulary. He cared about individual expression, emphatic interaction and creative response to shifting content.

Mingus focused on collective improvisation, similar to the old New Orleans jazz parades, paying particular attention to how each band member interacted with the group as a whole. In creating his bands, Mingus looked not only at the skills of the available musicians, but also their personalities.

And Zappa dabbled in virtually all kinds of music—jazz-rock fusion, guitar virtuoso, electronics wizard and orchestral innovator. He was seen establishing a coherent and personal expression. 

When you take the sum of these influences, some of each can be found in HR3’s performance. The trio was clearly winging it often, and would trade smiles to communicate after pulling off a particularly thrilling improvisational challenge. It was fun to watch their on-stage interplay.

In fact, Rowe, who spoke for the group during the performance, said working with Sandiford and Lazich offered improv possibilities “higher than average” than with other players. An understatement, to be sure.

Lazich said after the performance that a recording of any HR3 show would be different from another because of the interplay between musicians. That was a big part of the magic of this group, combined with the uncompromising artistry of all the musicians.

Sandiford, who also composed several of the songs played, performs on a Framus guitar. Framus, a German company, made guitars, basses, lap steel guitars and banjos from 1946 to 1975. The Framus brand was revived in 1995 as part of Warwick GmbH & Co. Music Equipment KG in Markneukirchen (Germany). Rowe is also a pioneering artist using Warwick bass guitars. The company sponsored the HR3 performance.

In a Sandiford composition, titled “Ambivalent,” the young guitarist showed his stuff. His playing style reminded me of the work of guitarist Les Paul, who had a similar approach. The group also did a couple of Spanish songs in tribute to Torrens.

Sandiford and Lazich not only did their performance debut in New York City, but it’s their first trip to the United States. There is little doubt in my mind they will return soon. Their’s is a rare, undisputed talent that is the beginning what I suspect will be a long and fruitful career.

Julien Sandiford (left) and Max Lazich

Amy Coleman: A Stellar Blues Performer from Brooklyn

                    

What makes a great blues singer? 

The very question reminds me of the quip by the Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart when asked to describe his threshold for what is pornography. “I know it when I see it,” he snapped, instantly stamping into law books the subjective and lack of clearly defined parameters that surround certain slippery subjects.

I know Etta James, Janis Joplin, Alberta Hunter, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters, Victoria Spivey, Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe were great blues singers. Each of the bodies of these amazing performers was imbued with the blues as they sang with shouts, moans, wails and groans in their sad, melancholy way. They made the blues come alive.

While the blues originated in African-American communities in the deep South at the beginning of the 20th Century, it spread fast. Delta, Piedmont, Jump and Chicago blues developed. Then, after World War II, the electric blues.

Somehow, along the way, the blues hit Brooklyn, New York, and last night I saw a blues performer from that unlikely place that I would rank with the very best. 

“I know it when I see it.” 

   

Her name is Amy Coleman and she’s not a newcomer. A friend suggested I see her at 78 Below, the new music club at 78th Street and Columbus Ave. in New York City, where she plays once a month. It was the perfect intimate environment with a sound system to die for. 

She, and a veteran, polished backup band, started out strong with “Bump and Grind” and moved quickly into such rousing blues staples as “Hootchie Coochie Man” and “Honkey Tonk Woman.” But when she sang Etta James’ “Damn Your Eyes,” you instantly knew this was a one serious blues performer.

The term "blues" comes from the "blue devils,” meaning the overriding sense of sadness felt by African-Americans living hard lives in the deep South. It goes all the way back to 1798 to playwright George Colman's one-act farce, Blue Devils, which first tackled the subject. Now—after years of rock, heavy metal, hip hop and reggae—were are back to the blues.

It’s still considered the “devil’s music,” with accusations that it stirs controversy, incites violence and creates poor behavior to all who embrace it. Amy Coleman incorporates that defiantly into her performances, and like all great entertainers, it’s imbued in her body movements and facial expressions. 

Watching Coleman perform reminded me of another great white blues performer I once saw. As she sang, I could visualize an older Janis Joplin on stage. In fact, it was as if Joplin had not died at age 27 and had lived on to have a fruitful career. This was especially true when Coleman performed “Me and Bobby McGee,” Joplin’s only number one hit. The resemblance between the two performers, at least to me, was eerie.

That didn’t escape others as well. Coleman, also an accomplished actress, was chosen to play Janis Joplin in “Beehive” at the Village Gate a few years ago. Astute casting, methinks!

   
Coleman’s band contributed in a major way to her stellar performance last night. Andy Bassford on guitar was simply superb. He co-wrote Coleman’s “Sad Old Blues” and sang with her on a few numbers. Leroy Guy played bass and Donna Kelly was on drums. Doing a guest stint on drums was Ronnie Murphy, regular drummer for Jimmy Cliff, the Jamaican musician, singer and actor. In all, this tight band provided a stellar set of electric blues.

Near the end, Coleman performed the stunningly beautiful “Stormy Monday,” a blues song written by T-Bone Walker and first recorded in 1947. The lyrics portray a person who is separated from their love, and is suffering from guilt in some way because of what they have done. A classic blues story.

The song has become a standard for blues and blues rock artists over the years, but Coleman made it her own. Adding that personal signature is why Coleman is such a fine artist.

I’m a new fan and you should be too.

               

"Friends of Mike Porco" Bring Folk Music Back to Greenwich Village

There’s little question that a room with a rich history sets a certain ambience for an event. The Gaslight Cafe was a coffee house located in the basement of 116 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village with just that history.

It started as a "basket house" where unpaid performers would pass around a basket at the end of each set and hope to be paid. Opened in 1958, the dark, steamy, subterranean Gaslight had showcased beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, but later became a folk-music club. 

Among those who performed at the Gaslight were Bob Dylan, Bill Cosby, Bruce Springsteen, Richie Havens, Jose Feliciano, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Eric Andersen, John Herald, Ralph Rinzler, The Greenbriar Boys and Dave Van Ronk.

The first public "electric" appearance of The Blues Project (with Danny Kalb) took place at the club. Mississippi John Hurt played there. Jimi Hendrix sat in one night at the Gaslight with John Hammond, Jr.  

An array of musicians also performed at the club in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Odetta, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Bonnie Raitt, Rev. Gary Davis, Big Mama Thornton, Link Wray, Mimi Farina, Charles Mingus, Happy and Artie Traum, Doug Kershaw, Bob Neuwirth and David Bromberg.

So it was with this history that I watched two remarkable performers last night in a new folk music series at the old Gaslight being promoted each month by Bob Porco, the grandson of Mike Porco, the owner of the original Gerdes Folk City. Bob uses the name “Friends of Mike Porco” because most of the performers at this series also performed at the original Gerdes for his grandfather.

                                                           Randy Burns

Last night two old pros, Randy Burns and David Massengill, performed in a splendid evening of folk music. The pair made a fine concert and have a great chemistry, though they don’t normally play together. 

Burns opened the set. A raconteur, he told wonderful stories of the old days, when Dylan held court in the Village clubs. At 18, he was hired as the permanent opening act at the Gaslight for folk stars like John Hammond, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, Sonny and Brownie, Phil Ochs and Carolyn Hester. 

He played all the major folk clubs, including Gerdes and the Bitter End. He described the original Gaslight (“all black, from floor to ceiling”) as compared to the club today, where a bar has replaced the original stage. However, the back room where Dylan held court is still there.

David Massengill

David Massengill came to New York City from Bristol, on the Virginia/Tennessee border, in the mid-1970s with an Appalachian dulcimer hand-built by the legendary Edsel Martin. A gifted songwriter who accompanies himself with the dulcimer, Massengill’s songs range from hilariously funny to about serious social issues like race and excessive wealth. 

He sang of a New York restaurant kitchen crew saving an illegal alien cook from the immigration man to the funeral he conducted for a mouse he found drowned in the toilet at the late folk singer Jack Hardy’s apartment.

Massengill said at a performance many years ago he told a story of how he also washed dishes at Marvin Gardens, a restaurant on 81st and Broadway. Joan Baez heard the story and asked if she could join him washing dishes. The next night she showed up and did just that, also singing and posing for pictures with the kitchen staff.

He also told of meeting Edsel Martin, the man who made his dulcimer. Born near Black Mountain, North Carolina, Martin came from a long line of musicians and "whittlers." Besides creating wooden figures that portrayed the poverty and struggle of living in the Blue Ridge Mountains, he was a simple philosopher and became of friend of Massengill. 

Massengill’s favorite dulcimer has a woman’s head carved on the end by Martin.

At the concert, Massengill wore a shirt once owned by another friend, the late film director Ken Russell, a man Massengill jokingly said never learned from his own mistakes. (“He took that as a compliment!”) He keeps the top of the shirt unbuttoned, he said, because Martin rarely buttoned his own shirt.

Burns, Porco, Massengill

Next month, on May 26, Porco will present Stefan Grossman and Roy Book Binder in a tribute to the Rev. Gary Davis. It will also be at the old Gaslight, now called 116 MacDougal Street. The time is 7 p.m.

   

The Death of Levon Helms Leaves a Huge Void in Americana Music

The loss of Levon Helm is devastating. He was an American icon. "A drummer who could make you cry," his own bandmates said.

I feel so lucky to have experienced so many of his concerts and to have visited his home in Woodstock, New York to attend a Midnight Ramble. It was one of the best experiences one can have today in music.

Audiences were invited to Levon’s "Barn,” which was actually a performance space and recording studio attached to Levon’s home. There is plenty of seating and a cozy fireplace to keep warm in the winter. Levon’s dog, Muddy, often greeted guests.

The Midnight Ramble Sessions were based on the southern medicine shows of Levon’s youth. Since they began in 2004, Levon has invited some of the most notable blues entertainers and musicians of the era to perform at his home. I have no idea if the Rambles will continue, but I know they will not be the same without Levon.

To one of the great musicians of this era and a man who gave me hours of pleasure, I can only say rest in peace.

Here, on January 15, 2011, a line waits to get into Levon’s Ramble on a snowy night. Photo by Frank Beacham.

Musicians Honor the Rolling Stones' "Hot Rocks" Album at Carnegie Hall Concert

It was billed as the music of the Rolling Stones and the entire concert consisted of a list of major artists performing one song each from the group's "Hot Rocks" album, a compilation of Stone's hits from 1964-1971. As with most such one-song-per-act benefit concerts, it was hit and miss—with the tried and true veterans delivering the best performances. Here's a brief photo essay, made from the nose bleed seats. And I mean that. I was in the very back row at the furtherest point from the stage in Carnegie Hall.

Marianne Faithfull sings "As Tears Go By"

Steve Earle sings "Mother's Little Helper"

Art Garfunkel sings "Ruby Tuesday"

Jackson Browne performs "Lets Spend the Night Together"

Rickie Lee Jones sings "Sympathy for the Devil"

Taj Mahal sings "Honky Tonk Woman"

Rosanne Cash sings "Gimme Shelter"

Marc Cohn with the help of Rosanne Cash and Jackson Browne sing "Wild Horses"

Civil War Buff Becomes Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina

In another bizarre event in my home state of South Carolina, former state Sen. Glenn McConnell, an avid civil war enthusiast, has ascended to lieutenant governor of the state after the indictment and conviction of the current Republican holding that office.

Former Lt. Gov. Ken Ard pleaded guilty Friday to criminal charges of spending campaign funds on personal expenses and fabricating donations. That money went for things like iPads, clothes, football tickets and family vacations, the indictment said.

By state law, this left McConnell, as President Pro Tempore of the state senate, to become the state's new second in command. 

McConnell is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Secession Camp #4. The Sons of Confederate Veterans were charged in 1906 by Lt. General Stephen Dill Lee, Commander General of the United Confederate Veterans, with "the vindication of the cause for which we fought."

In 2000, when the Confederate flag was brought down from atop the dome of the State House, McConnell successfully advocated flying another Confederate flag from a flagpole in the front of the Statehouse, on the grounds, near the Confederate Soldier Monument.

He rejected the suggestion that the Confederate flag be placed in a glass case by saying, "Encasement represents entombment," and by saying that he wanted "no part in symbolically burying the Confederate banner." The resulting bill that was passed in 2000 was called a compromise.

McConnell vigorously fights attempts to take down the currently-flying Confederate flag, and he declares such attempts as having the goal of carrying out a "cultural genocide." He has been featured as a guest on The Political Cesspool, a radio show that promotes the Confederacy.

McConnell, a Confederate heritage defender who has owned a Civil War memorabilia business, reportedly gets a kick out of reenacting battles and is known for firing his personal cannon, dubbed "Big Ray." Only in South Carolina!

Louisiana Red Is Dead at 79

Louisiana Red, another of the original bluesmen, has died of a stroke at age 79. He recorded more than 50 albums and was best known for his song, “Sweet Blood Call.”

His birth name was Iverson Minter. His mother died of pneumonia shortly after his birth and his father was lynched by Ku Klux Klansmen when he was only five. He recorded for Chess Records in 1949 and was then drafted into the army. Later, he played with John Lee Hooker for two years in Detroit and was then signed to Checker, billed as Tommy Tucker.

Red recorded and toured throughout the '60's and '70's recording for Chess, Checker, Atlas, Glover, Roulette, L&R and Tomato and won a WC Handy award in 1983 as Best Traditional Blues Male Artist. Last year, he released "Memphis Mojo" to broad public acclaim. To promote that recording, he toured Europe from his home base in Hanover, Germany, where he had lived since 1981.

In the image above, he was photographed by Frank Beacham performing at B.B. King's club in New York City on Sept. 30, 2005.

Beware! Much of Local TV News is Fake!

You probably didn’t know it, but much of the local television news you see is produced by corporations and not journalists. Stories are made to look like news, but they are actually disguised commercials trying to sell you something.

The practice is also perfectly legal, if the station buries the info about the fake reporting at the end of the newscast during the fast-moving credits. Otherwise, it could face a $10,000 fine.

This issue has been going on a long time. But don’t expect to hear about it on your local news.

A few years ago, several public interest groups complained to the Federal Communications Commission that television news operations were including commercial content in newscasts disguised as news. Now, the FCC is reacting, proposing a new regulation that would require all broadcast stations to disclose on the Internet all corporate interests behind their news content.

The FCC has determined that TV newscasts are increasingly seeded with corporate advertising masquerading as news, though the news program is portrayed as the work of independent journalists. Increasingly, paying companies are shaping news coverage at broadcast stations.

The FCC would change the rule from disclosure in the closing credits to making television stations maintain a public file managed online by the FCC. This way it will be easier to track fake news.

A recent Washington Post article documented a live interview segment in which a seemingly neutral reviewer recommended a series of products that the “reviewer” had been paid by sponsors to mention.

The newspaper also said television stations across the country have brokered “exclusive” relationships with local hospitals in which the hospitals pay the station to be featured in health stories. Other stations, the Post reported, have aired “news” programs that feature interviews with sponsors who’ve paid for the privilege.

The FCC said many television stations use “video news releases,” which is lookalike news footage produced by a sponsor or corporate interest that appears to be shot and edited by the station.

We have always said it is best not to watch or pay attention to local news at all. There has never been real “news” there to start with. But, if you watch, beware that you may be watching corporate commercials. Nothing in our culture is as it appears to be. So turn off the damn box.

Stop SOPA and PIPA Before It Destroys the Internet!

Most of us know that our Congress is corrupt. Money from corporate interests has infiltrated the entire body, making even the "best" members often use very bad judgement. The large media companies are pushing SOPA and PIPA, two bills that will allow private corporations to shut down web sites they suspect of stealing their content. Passage would be the end of a free Internet.

Today, many web sites are on strike. Go here and register your complaint with Congress. We live in dangerous times and this one of them. 

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Hostess, Makers of Kid Show Goodies, Files for Bankruptcy

Sorry, Doodyville, one of Howdy’s most dedicated sponsors from the 1950s has filed for bankruptcy. Hostess Brands, makers of Hostess Creme-Filled Cupcakes, Twinkies and Ding Dongs — not to mention Wonder Bread — has assets of about $1 billion but is struggling under a debt load of $860 million.

A privately held company located in Irving, Texas, Hostess became a staple junk food maker for kids, who grew up sneaking Twinkies and Hostess cupcakes when no one was looking after seeing them on TV's kid shows, like Howdy Doody. High-end restaurants took to duplicating the cupcakes as desserts in later years, playing on the nostalgia.

Buffalo Bob once told me he did private “blue” dress rehearsals for executives of the sponsors, which no doubt included Hostess. Later, when I was older I worked on the floor crew of “Mr. Knozit,” a kid show run by Joe Pinner, at WIS-TV in Columbia, S.C. 

On this show, Joe had to tear a slice of Wonder Break straight down the middle to prove how fresh it was. The trick worked because I would go to the factory and get the freshest loaves of bread available for the show. Otherwise, the bread would never tear straight.

Hostess is an iconic American name. We hope it survives long after its current financial problems. Those memories are still strong to this day.

Me, Howdy and Buffalo Bob of the Howdy Doody Show

NRBQ's Drummer Tom Ardolino Dies at 56

NRBQ Drummer Tom Ardolino died on Jan. 6 at age 56, according to the band's website.

I photographed Tom on a cruise ship in New York Harbor on Aug. 19, 2010 when he was backing the great guitarist Hubert Sumlin, who also recently died.

Ardolino joined NRBQ (for New Rhythm and Blues Quartet) in 1974 and played on 15 studio recordings. Though the group had limited mainstream followers, it had major music figures in its fan base, including Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Bonnie Raitt and Elvis Costello.

 

Bob Dylan and Joan Baez at the Rolling Thunder Review

I took this picture at Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review in Gainesville, Florida on April 25, 1976. Dylan is pictured with Joan Baez. I had no camera at the time and paid a fellow sitting next to me $10 to borrow his camera and to purchase one roll of film. Well worth it, I think! 

The Operative Word Is "Grace" in Christina Haag's "Come to the Edge"

The dictionary defines the word “grace” as elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion or action. After reading Christina Haag’s magnificent book, “Come to the Edge,” that definition has expanded for me to two very public members of the Kennedy family: John Jr. and Jackie.

One of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s college roommates perhaps put it best at his funeral, after he died in an airplane crash in 1999 at the age of 38: “He was an ordinary boy in extraordinary circumstances. And he lived his life with grace.”

For five years Kennedy was Christina Haag’s lover. In dream-like prose—with details like the color of the leaves and the name of every plant in sight—Haag takes us on a detailed journey of his privileged and adventurous life. At its core, this book is a tale of unresolved love between two lifelong friends in their mid 20’s.

It’s a great read on this level alone. Unfortunately, as with so many such relationships, the affair doesn’t last. It was perhaps for the best. Haag becomes an actress and a best-selling author, and Kennedy, sadly at age 38, crashes his small plane off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, killing his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette.

As a child, I remember the Kennedy family well. I watched on television the day John F. Kennedy was shot and viewed every moment of the funeral live. Who could forget the image of young John saluting his father’s coffin? Or of Jackie Kennedy’s classy charm every inch of this extraordinary journey.

In later years, adverse to the constant lies in our celebrity culture, I turned off the hundreds of contradictory television shows, movies and books about the Kennedy family. It was because of the recommendation of a mutual friend of myself and Christina Haag, Rebecca Boyd, that I read this one. I am so glad I did. It is incredibly well written, amazingly detailed and a loving portrait of a remarkable family.

Though I found the core love story of Christina and John fascinating, it was Haag’s side story of her relationship with Jackie Kennedy I found to be extraordinary. This is another place where the word “grace” comes into play.

About the time this romance was going on in the mid 1980s, I was working in Los Angeles with Orson Welles, the film director. I’d become the middle man between Orson and his old producer, John Houseman, who were no longer speaking with each other. I endured many petty fights and disputes between these giants, but one day Houseman told me something I never forgot.

“Frank, it’s very rare in our lifetime to meet a real genius—not the fake kind the press conjures up—but a real one,” Houseman said. “Orson is a real genius. And when a real genius touches you, he changes your life forever. Don’t forget that.”

It took years for those Wellesian words to prove true for me and I suspect they have proven true for Christina Haag about her time with Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Haag gives Jackie credit for the creation of elegance. An example, written after Haag visited Red Gate Farm, Jackie’s 464-acre retreat on the southwestern end of Martha’s Vineyard:

“I remember looking in the kitchen for a glass one morning. Instead, I found vases and, attached to the inside of the white cabinet door, an unlined index card in her hand—which flowers in which vase in which room. It surprised me. When I saw a small carafe of sweet peas or a clutch of dahlias in a room, it seemed unplanned—as though they had just happened there, as though they belonged. Or there’d be a path that appeared to go nowhere, but when you reached a meandering end, you felt its purpose. What seemed happenstance was crafted, chosen by her unerring artist’s eye.”

That paragraph, and so many more like it in this book, convinced me of Jackie’s artistic genius. She did it for the nation, from her incredible taste in music to her restoration of the White House. I knew it instinctively from when I watched her famous televised tour of the White House as a kid in 1962, but Haag’s comments nailed it for me. 

“Come to the Edge” will come out in paperback on Jan. 10. Don’t be like me and wait too long to read it. It is one of the best books of 2011 and I highly recommend it.

Reuniting with the Urb Brothers

It was the late 1980s and I was living in Los Angeles. From time to time, I worked on projects with the late Paul Rothchild, producer of The Doors, Janis Joplin, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and many others. He introduced me to the Urb Brothers, a duo who had won notoriety in Estonia during the Soviet era there and had defected to the United States.

The Urbs had an amazing story. Tarmo Urb once spent five years in and out of Soviet jails in an effort by the government to silence his voice. It was only when younger brother Thomas (who, during Tarmo's incarceration, had made his mark as an actor in the Soviet film industry) wrote a pleading letter to then President Gorbachev that Tarmo was finally released...only to face an assassination attempt by the KGB, an attempt that failed when the operation's chief officer became a fan of the Urb's music and message, allowing the brothers to defect by the skin of their teeth. 

Urbs in 1971

I visited with the Urbs on Venice Beach and actually pitched one of them to act in a movie I was then trying to get made at the time, “Cradle Will Rock.” I remember them as being really nice guys and sounding a bit like Simon and Garfunkel. But I was soon to move to New York City and—for whatever reason—Paul passed on producing the Urbs. Stuff and life happened and I’m sorry to say I forgot about the Urbs.

That is until the Sunday before Christmas. I was invited to a Ann Ruckert’s home to hear an “amazing” duo from Estonia produced by Geoff Gillette, an LA producer who has moved to New York City. At first I didn’t recognize the brothers or really get the name “Urb.” But as I listened to their story, a got a strange sense of deja vu. Finally, I blurted out “do I know you guys from LA?” “Yes, I think you do,” answered Thomas Urb, who had the same slow recognition.

Then, the pieces fell together. What are the odds we’d meet again after more than 21 years in a city on the other coast of the country?  I can only say it happened. The brothers now have six albums and have recorded a lot of music since I first met them. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

Tarmo Urb told me the story of meeting his “personal” KGB agent and being warned of his pending death.  Here’s Tarmo on video with the story...

Here the Urbs sing “Nightingale,” a song they wrote after seeing a small nightingale in some tattered bushes near where they lived. Tarmo said I kept asking myself why is this little bird singing in such an ugly place—it has wings, it could fly anywhere. “Then it dawned on me, you could be a nightingale wherever you find yourself,” Tarmo said. “We musicians are what we are, wherever we find ourselves.” 

Hubert Sumlin, One of the World’s Most Influential Chicago Blues Guitarists, Is Dead

Hubert Sumlin, 80, guitarist for the legendary Howlin’ Wolf from 1954 to 1976, died of heart failure on Sunday in a hospital in Wayne, New Jersey. One of the world’s most influential Chicago blues guitarists, Sumlin’s playing was characterized by “wrenched, shattering bursts of notes, sudden cliff-hanger silences and daring rhythmic suspensions,” said Guitar World magazine in naming Sumlin one of the 100 top guitarists of all time.

With the aid of an oxygen tank due to removal of a lung in 2004, Sumlin played frequently, especially around the New York City area. One of the more pleasant venues were his summer Rockin' the River cruises through New York harbor. The last, in 2010, he played with guitarist Jimmy Vivino, singer David Johansen and John Sebastian of Lovin’ Spoonful fame.

Hubert Sumlin with David Johansen

---

Born in Greenwood, Mississippi, Sumlin first met Howlin’ Wolf by sneaking into one of his performances as a kid. When Wolf relocated from Memphis to Chicago in 1953, his long-time guitarist Willie Johnson chose not to join him. In 1954, Wolf invited Sumlin to relocate to Chicago to play with his Chicago-based band. Sumlin became the primary guitarist in Wolf’s band, a position he held almost continuously (except for a brief spell playing with Muddy Waters around 1956) for the remainder of Wolf’s career. 

Sumlin shined on Wolf’s classic songs Wang Dang Doodle, Smokestack Lightin', Back Door Man and Killing Floor with his ferocious guitar work. He first recorded with Wolf at Sam Phillip's Sun Studios in Memphis in 1953. As solo player, his last record was About Them Shoes, released in 2004. It featured performances by Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Levon Helm, David Johansen and James Cotton and was nominated for a Grammy.

“We were like father and son, although we had some tremendous fights,” Sumlin said of the bonds between he and Wolf in a 1994 interview with Guitar World. “He knocked my teeth out, and I knocked his out. None of it mattered; we always got right back together.”

Sumlin was a member of the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame. In 2044, Mojo magazine named him the third greatest guitar album of all time. Last month, Rolling Stone named him the 43rd greatest in a list of 100 players. He frequently joined Jimmy Page, the Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton and the Allman Brothers on stage in performances. Jimi Hendrix was said to be influenced by Sumlin's use of distortion on recordings from the late 1950s.

“You try to tell a story, tell it right, you live the story,” Sumlin said of his guitar style. “It may be a little faster or a little classier, but it comes down to you playin’ the blues or you ain’t.”

All photos by Frank Beacham in 2010 on the NYC Rockin' the River Cruise

On the Great Film Director, Ken Russell

Carol Dickman’s Yoga DVDs Can Help Older People

I don’t usually hawk commercial items on this blog, so please excuse this unusual exception. It’s unusual because it involves two friends—one the seller and the other a buyer.

Carol Dickman, a yoga teacher, makes DVDs aimed at helping older people. She sent her programs to a client, Ann Ruckert, a musician living in New York City. Ann wrote back to Carol, telling this story:

“How do you tell someone that you would not be able to walk without her programs? I’m working hard and if were not for Carol's DVDs, I would be in serious trouble.  Each morning I use “Bed Top Yoga” while still in bed and work the whole program. Then to the next plateau, I work out with “Seated Yoga.”

Ann went on:

“Ta-da, now I am on my feet, in a hot shower, finishing with a cold shower. It takes close to four hours to be off and running, but I do not want to be stuck in a wheel chair…or worse. Keep moving has become my mantra. Thanks for all of  your help.”

Endorsements don’t come much better than that. Perhaps Ann’s experience can determine if those same DVDs can be of help to you or a loved one. They are targeted at older people—some have physical problems and some are just looking for a safe, very gentle introduction to yoga that they can do either in bed or in their favorite chair. The audio was originally scripted for the blind so she also reaches this audience. 

These DVDs could also make useful, low-cost Christmas gifts. Contact Carol at 800-233-9642 or e-mail at carol@stretch.com for more information.