Frank Beacham's Journal

The Dylanologists: The Book Tour Begins

David Kinney, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the new book, The Dylanologists: Adventures in the Land of Bob, kicked off his book tour last night in New York City.

Kinney appeared at The Half King’s Monday night reading series. The Half King is a bar and restaurant owned by Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm.

In The Dylanologists, Kinney introduces readers to a vibrant underground: diggers searching for unheard tapes and lost manuscripts, researchers obsessing over the facts of Dylan's life and career, writers working to decode the unyieldingly mysterious songs, collectors snapping up prized artifacts (including Dylan's high chair and the house he grew up in), travelers caravanning from concert to concert.

It's an affectionate mania, but as far as Dylan is concerned, a mania nonetheless. Over the years, he has been frightened, annoyed and perplexed by fans who try to peel back his layers. Intensely private and fiercely combative, Dylan makes one thing plain: He does not wish to be known.

At the reading were several subjects from the book, as well as notable Dylan fans and experts. Clinton Heylin, the English author who has written extensively about popular music and the work of Bob Dylan, was there.

Heylin has published a full-length biography, Dylan: Behind the Shades (1991), a detailed analysis of every song by Dylan in two volumes: Revolution In The Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan: Vol. 1: 1957-73 (2009), and Still On The Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan: Vol. 2: 1974-2008 (2010).

Clinton Heylin

New Multimedia e-Books Reveal Little Known South Carolina Stories on the “Shag,” “Beach Music,” Racial Violence and Textile Labor Strife

A series of three new multimedia e-Books that focus on three little known historical events that helped define South Carolina in the last century are now available. All three were written by Frank Beacham.

The three separate eBooks, published by Vook in New York City, combine video, audio, photographs and text in a new kind of storytelling that work on a range if e-Book readers and personal computers (iPad, Kindle, Nook, Macintosh and PC). This state-of-the-art storytelling technology is available across platforms the first time this year.

The first e-Book, Charlie’s Place, examines the remarkable interracial collaboration in the segregated post-World War II years that led to the creation of South Carolina’s official state music (beach music) and dance (the shag).

The second e-Book, The Legacy of the Orangeburg Massacre, deals with the nearly 50-year legacy of the Orangeburg Massacre. The story centers on the killing of black college students in 1968 at South Carolina State College and the state’s continuing cover-up of the facts surrounding the shootings.

The third e-Book, Mill Town Murder, is  the author’s personal story of his grandfather’s involvement in the killing of seven mill workers in his hometown of Honea Path during the Textile Strike of 1934.

“Powerful forces have shaped and defined a sanitized version of Southern history,” said author Frank Beacham, now a New York City-based writer and media producer. “These eBooks, born of the frustration of learning more about my own history growing up in South Carolina, became an attempt to meet these distortions head-on by exploring my memories and answering some lingering questions.

“For years I have been collecting video, audio and photographs relating to these stories,” Beacham continued. “Now, for the first time, the technology exists to put all these elements together in a compelling way to tell their stories in a fuller way.”

The result of the Beacham’s work are three compelling new multimedia e-Books that destroy carefully constructed myths to reveal three extraordinary events that many influential Southerners would just as soon forget.

In addition to the three new multimedia e-Books, a new third print edition of Whitewash: A Southern Journey through Music, Mayhem and Murder by Frank Beacham (ISBN:1591131871, Price: $15.00) has been released. The new edition of the print book contains all the updates for the three stories found in the individual multimedia e-Books without the audio, video and photographs. It can be purchased or ordered through major retail book outlets or online at: http://www.booklocker.com/books/939.html/.

In Charlie’s Place, Beacham tells the true story of the Ku Klux Klan's violent attempt in South Carolina in the post World War II years to stop dirty dancing and kill the emerging black music behind it—rhythm & blues.

He describes how a handful of adventurous young black & white dancers—with the help of a fearless black nightclub owner—risked life and limb in an era of racial segregation to create a bold new dance and an enduring Southern musical legacy. For the first time, the reader can see and hear these dance pioneers tell the story in their own words.

Included in the new multimedia edition are audio and video interviews and clips with such notables as Jerry Wexler, John R, Hoss Allen, Marion Carter, Leon Williams, George Lineberry, Harry Driver, Chicken Hicks, Bill Pinkney, Clarice Reavis, Bill Wingate, Billy Jeffers, Maurice Williams and Clifford Curry. There are also dozens of photographs included in the publication.

The new eBook and print versions also contain newly updated material from FBI records that offer far greater detail to the story than in previous editions.

The story evolved from a series of recorded interviews by the Beacham with many of the key figures credited with the creation of South Carolina’s state dance, the shag, and the state’s music, a sub-genre of rhythm and blues now called Carolina “beach music.”

In a vivid and newly detailed description, Beacham reconstructs the violent armed assault in 1950 by the Ku Klux Klan in an attempt to shut down “Charlie’s Place,” an influential Myrtle Beach night club where white and black dancers shared the dance floor and helped create what is now called the shag. The violence sprang from the aftermath of one of the state’s most openly racist political  campaigns, the 1950 U.S. Senate election between Strom Thurmond and Olin D. Johnston.

“Young black and white South Carolinians—in a time of segregation—put their lives on the line to defy the state’s white establishment and create a genuine musical  legacy,” said Beacham. “An irony is that South Carolina’s government officials made the shag and beach music the official dance and music of the state without even understanding or noting it’s remarkable historical significance.”

Over the years, Beacham said, the state’s music and dance has almost completely been co-opted by Southern whites, leaving a new generation of blacks unaware of the cultural phenomenon they helped create. “It is sad that many young blacks in South Carolina have rejected beach music and the shag because they think the music has white-only roots. Years of racism and a lack of education have helped erase one of South Carolina’s most notable creative accomplishments,” Beacham said.

An act of racism in a small college town leads to peaceful protest by frustrated black students. The governor, elected on a platform of racial moderation, responds with a vast show of armed force.  Each side misreads the other, escalating the conflict.  Then, in a peak of emotional frenzy, nine white highway patrolmen open fire on the students. In less than ten seconds, the campus turns into a bloodbath.

Over four days in early February, 1968, this scenario played out in Orangeburg. On the final day, three black students were killed and 27 others wounded when the lawmen sprayed deadly buckshot onto the campus of South Carolina State College.  Most of the students, in retreat at the time, were shot from the rear—some in the back, others in the soles of their feet. None carried weapons.

The killings occurred in a southern state heralded for its record of nonviolence during the civil rights era. In attempt to preserve its carefully-cultivated image of racial harmony, a web of official deceptions was created to distort the facts and conceal the truth about what happened in Orangeburg. The state's young governor, Robert E. McNair, claimed the deaths were the result of a two-way gun battle between students and lawmen. The highway patrolmen insisted their shooting was done in self-defense—to protect themselves from an attacking mob of students.

At first, the state’s cover-up worked. Later, it unraveled. Now, after nearly 50 years, the story of Orangeburg continues to simmer unresolved in a twilight zone of blame and denial. Author Frank Beacham, a young reporter at WIS-TV in Columbia at the time of the shooting in 1968, re-examines “a story whose significance  I totally missed at the time.”

Beacham asks why, after so many years, does an aggressive effort continue in South Carolina to hide and distort the role of former Gov. McNair and his white state police in the 1968 killing of three black college students in Orangeburg, South Carolina.  He found the answers—many on video and audio in this new eBook—disturbing.

The e-Book contains interviews with former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, former Gov. Robert McNair, Cleveland Sellers, Jordan Simmons, Gladys Simmons-Suddeth, Nat Abraham, Rhett Jackson, Former Gov. John West, George Dean, the first black S.C. National Guardsman, Fred Mott, Rep. Bakari Sellers and survivors of the Orangeburg shooting.

“The Orangeburg Massacre is a complex Southern epic that contains the essential elements of the best of Shakespeare’s plays,” Beacham noted. “The continuing silence in the aftermath of the killing is perhaps one of the most revealing and important historical stories of modern South Carolina and very deep dive into the basics of Southern culture.”



On the morning of September 6, 1934, in the tiny town of Honea Path, South Carolina, friends and neighbors came to blows in a labor dispute. When it was over, seven people were dead and 30 others wounded.

The bloody riot at the town's cotton mill on that warm Thursday morning shaped the lives of two generations to follow—not because of the shock of what was known, but by what was unknown. Fear, threats and intimidation were used to silence the story of the greatest tragedy in the town's history.

For 60 years, the story of a mass killing in a small town was successfully erased, not only from the history books, but from the public consciousness of those people most affected by it.  An instrument of fear—so powerful that parents were afraid to tell the story to their own children—formed a lifelong social contract for entire community's survival.
 
Ironically, Honea Path’s secret was finally revealed in a way the architects of its original cover-up could have never imagined: a video documentary made by three socially-conscious New York City filmmakers who unraveled the secret after rummaging through old letters from townspeople to President Franklin Roosevelt.

Yet, even after the truth was exposed in 1995, the story took another strange twist. South Carolina's intensely pro-business establishment, still heavily influenced by the region's textile industry, tried to suppress the documentary, first by banning it from broadcast on its state-supported television system and then by making it difficult for people to see in public places.

Author Frank Beacham grew up in Honea Path. His mother was the town's history teacher. His grandfather, he was to learn, organized the posse of gunmen who fired on their fellow workers in 1934.  Yet, only in his 46th year did he finally learn the deeper secrets that haunted Honea Path and the painful truth about his own family and the destructive series of events that distorted the perceptions he held of his childhood home.

In this compelling story, we hear the last living shooting victim, Williams Andrew Smith, tell Beacham that his grandfather lied about being at the mill when the violence occurred. In fact, Smith said, Dan Beacham was standing over him as he lay bleeding on the ground. An aunt, Hazel Beacham, confronts the writer about supporting the men his grandfather fought against, and we hear Beacham’s compelling appearance on a local radio station that turned the town around to support a memorial for the workers.

Mill Town Murder introduces a song about the shooting, Honea Path, by Matthew Grimm and features other interviews with Fred Moore,Tom Johnson, Sue Cannon Hill, Lydie Pinson, Mack Duncan and Jesse Mae Holder.

In this compelling story, we hear the last living shooting victim tell Beacham that his grandfather lied about being at the mill when the violence occurred. He, in fact, the man said, was standing over him as he lay bleeding on the ground. An aunt confronts the writer in audio about supporting the men his grandfather fought against, and we hear Beacham’s appearance on a local radio station that turned the town around to support a memorial for the workers.

“Each of these stories confronted me in different stages of my life. After carefully researching each story, I came to realize that each continues to live and remain fiercely unresolved for a reason,” said Beacham. “Elaborate efforts have been made to distort and misrepresent each story and to omit it from the state’s official history. Perhaps the reason for this, I found, is because these stories share cultural attributes that go back to the antebellum South: stubbornness, pride, honor and denial.”

The e-Books, priced at $9.99 each, are available at Apple’s iTunes, Amazon’s Kindle book store and Barnes & Noble’s Nook store. It can also be bought directly from the store at Vook at http://store.vook.com/ and read online there on Macintosh and PC platforms.

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

"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

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.

From Dylan & the Dead to “Blackie” the Dog, Minnesota Singer-Songwriter Paul Metsa’s New Memoir is a Compelling Rock 'n Roll Journey

For the past month, I have been slowly absorbing a great new book that has turned into an old friend. It’s called Blue Guitar Highway by Paul Metsa, a Minnesota musician I met online through my blog and who now I feel like I’ve known all my life.

I’m not a musician, but I love music and the people who make it. I especially like the little dive bar clubs—those tiny rock ’n roll dungeons where the genuine, real-life jams happen late at night after the paying crowd has left the building. Paul Metsa takes you into these clubs and navigates through the ups and downs of a working musician’s life. It is a mesmerizing journey in a real page-turner.

What’s unique is Paul Metsa, at least here in New York City, is not a household name. He’s not a “famous” musician living a privileged “rock star” life. Yet, as you learn as the story unfolds, he has played with and for a virtual who’s who of musicians at some of the top venues in the nation.

This is a guy who loves music and often lives gig to gig on minuscule paychecks, yet has a life that is rich with friendships, music, travel and remarkably colorful stories. His encounters with Minnesota’s more famous song-writing wizard—Bob Dylan—are scattered throughout the book and many are hilarious. He’s also a musician with balls, something that is illustrated clearly when he calls and goes to the hotel room of the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia after a gig to hand him a demo tape. 

One of the things that kept me glued to Metsa’s masterfully written narrative were the names of musicians he has played or worked with. So many—from Hubert Sumlin, Eric Weissberg and Scarlet Rivera to Louisiana Red, Honeyboy Edwards and Nappy Brown—I have known or had personal encounters with myself. As I read on, I was amazed by the constant connections Metsa makes with these familiar characters.

Paul Metsa nails the music scene with crisp, knowing prose. “American rock and roll started around a campfire in a dark and howling wind,” he wrote. “It was blues, country and hillbilly music then. Once it was moved into four walls—juke joint or gin joint, rent party apartment, greased alley garage, or some full-moon Ozark barn dance—it became rock and roll.

“First, gut-bucket whiskey passed around in coffee cans, then ordered over the bar, smoke from hand-rolled cigarettes misting blue windows, both inviting the night and keeping it at bay, beautiful women writhing with imaginary lovers on sawdust dance floors, young men on a weekend pass from some hell-forbidden job doing the Hucklebuck and the Chicken Strut, these sons and daughters then joining in this Church of Saturday night together, while the band in the corner jacks it up, like drill hammers toward heaven, until the sweaty crowd tumbles out sanctified and satisfied.”

As much as I like Metsa’s writing about his life in music, his colorful family—and his super dog, Blackie—are also important elements to this story. Blackie, one of those instant attractions who senses his future owner at an animal shelter, started as a “problem dog” and managed to max out Metsa’s new $5,000 credit limit card when he was hit by a car. From there, the story of Blackie is beautifully told as Metsa nurses him through surgery while tending to his own father, who was also healing from a serious illness.

When Blackie finally stood on all fours, unbowed by his trauma “like a canine Phoenix,” Metsa wrote “a water pail couldn’t have held my tears.”

Then he continues: “Blackie’s first paw-penned Christmas card described the whole story: price of adoption: $65. Price of emergency vet in Golden Valley: $1,400. Price of intensive care and surgery at the U of M vet hospital: $3,600. Price of having Minnesota’s second best folksinger take me out at 6 a.m. and hold me up while I poop: priceless.”

Metsa taps into one of the key reasons I like and respect musicians. These are people who—against all odds—create music out of thin air in a cruel world where “success” is normally measured by how much money a person makes. Anyone can learn to juggle financial deals in banks and on Wall Street, but it takes a special breed to survive and constantly make works of art in an environment where their talent is not celebrated or even recognized.

“The older I get, the more I am drawn to these kinds of men and women, tried-and-true American musicians, artists each and every one,” Metsa wrote. “From the heartbeat in their mother’s wombs, into a world that bounces us all around like pinballs, they became musicians because it was in their blood. They survived and prospered, not necessarily in terms of money but as beacons to guide the rest of us in troubled waters to that shore that we all call home.” 

Amen, brother!

(For more information on this book, visit the Blue Guitar Highway web site.) 

Paul Metsa's song:

Christmas At Molly's

New E-Books by Frank Beacham are Available

With E-book readers now in so many hands, I’m trying to make my stories available to a wider audience. The three key stories that make up my collection, Whitewash: A Southern Journey through Music, Mayhem and Murder, are now available individually for 99 cents each. You can still buy all the stories in the one volume E-Book of Whitewash for $3.99 or the print version for $15, or any individual story now for 99 cents.  

The new E-books are titled: Charlie’s Place: How the Ku Klux Klan Tried to Stop the Rise of Rhythm and Blues; The Legacy of the Orangeburg Massacre and Small Town Secret. Each are true Southern stories and each remains very controversial. They can be ordered on Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Apple’s iPad and Smashwords. Each is a very good read, but then I’m a bit biased.

Recommended Summer Flicks and Books

With summer upon us, I'd like to recommend a couple of excellent books and a movie for these lazy days. 

Good movies are so hard to find during the summer, so I was pleasantly surprised to see Woody Allen’s fine “Midnight in Paris.” I’ve spent some of the happiest working days of my life in Paris, so my view of the city of light is probably biased. 

But to watch Owen Wilson time travel back to the 1920s to sip absinthe with Ernest Hemingway at Les Duex Magots or dine on choucroute garnie with Picasso at La Rotonde was a hoot. In fact, this film is crammed full of expatriates and bohemians from Jazz Age Paris. It’s wonderful fun. I may see it again.

For great reads, check out Patti Smith’s “Just Kids,” the remarkable story of Smith’s early days in New York City with Robert Mapplethorpe. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read about becoming an artist. Smith is a fine writer with a remarkable list of notable characters in a great era of New York life.

Also, check out “Tell to Win” by Peter Guber, the film producer, businessman and an old teacher of mine at UCLA. It’s a fine book on the importance of storytelling in our culture, from making movies to selling soap. A quick, easy read, it will open your eyes.

The Legacy of the Orangeburg Massacre

Today is the 43rd anniversary of the Orangeburg Massacre. It is the chilling story of the horrors of law enforcement motivated by racism and hatred—and the inability of a Southern state to admit the truth.

The central theme is “mendacity,” the web of lies a community spins in a desperate attempt to maintain its self-image and dignity when confronted by its own prejudice. It’s a culture where words are constantly being redefined in order that a people can more comfortably lie to themselves.

The story begins in 1968, when a group of white highway patrolmen shot and killed three black college students and wounded 27 others in Orangeburg, South Carolina. The killings occurred because the black students challenged authority and wanted to bowl in an all-white bowling alley.

All the students were unarmed and in retreat when they were shot in the back and in the heels of their feet. Yet—in spite of investigations finding the contrary—white officials of the state of South Carolina have falsely claimed self defense, and the existence of a two-way gun battle, for 43 years. 

The Orangeburg Massacre has become an epic unresolved civil rights drama pitting a state still resisting racial change against law enforcement’s chosen scapegoat for the shooting—now a college president—and his son, one of the youngest state legislators in the nation.

It also destroyed the political career of the state’s late governor, Robert McNair, who was being groomed to run as vice president on the Democratic ticket with Sen. Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential election.

The Orangeburg Massacre is an important American story that should not be forgotten.

 

With Shaky Voice, Levon Helm Wins Over Beacon Audience with Pure Charisma

Levon Helm is a remarkable figure in modern American music. Growing up the son of a cotton farmer in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet west of Helena, Arkansas, Levon heard the great Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided at that moment to become a musician himself.

It was just because he came from Arkansas—where the blues, country and R&B were all in full bloom in his youth—that Levon Helm has  brought a rich heritage to American rock and roll. Now, at 70 and a throat cancer survivor, the great man still performs a killer show.

At the Beacon Theatre last night, Levon was hoarse—at times he seemed to barely be able to talk. However, his band picked up the vocals, with him giving most of his energy to playing the drums and mandolin. At this stage in his career, all Levon Helm has to do is turn and smile at the audience to get a huge reception. He has that much charisma.

Levon’s story is long and rich, and it’s sad that most in his audience don’t know it. While they texted and talked with each other, as most modern audiences do, many missed the big picture.  

Levon started playing with Ronnie Hawkins, which later turned into the Band and a major collaboration with Bob Dylan. It was from their collaboration that The Basement Tapes made in the basement at Big Pink in Woodstock was born. As were a litany of hits by the Band that everyone knows today.

The Dylan legacy was rich at Friday’s concert. Levon was Dylan’s oldest former sideman. Larry Campbell, Dylan’s former lead guitarist, now plays and sings with Levon. Brian Mitchell, who played keyboard and accordion at the Beacon, can be heard throughout Bob Dylan's version of Return To Me on an episode of The Soprano's. The connections of the music and people go on and on.

Opening and then playing frequently during Levon’s set was Steve Earle, a prolific rock and country singer, songwriter and producer. Earle was simply fantastic, especially in a tribute to New Orleans that included This City and Mardi Gras. At Saturday’s show, Earle will be replaced by Bettye Lavette. She has some big shoes to fill.

For those who want to know more about Levon Helm and his legacy, read his great book, This Wheels on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band. A fantastic read. And also get The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes by Greil Marcus. It will open your mind.