Visionaries

“Once meek, and in a perilous path

The just man kept his course along

The vale of death.”

    William Blake, quoted in “Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead”

Olga Takarczuk

There could only be one reason why I’d be reading an English translation of Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk’s depressing-sounding detective story “Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead” – on the recommendation of good friend Gaard Logan, whose judgment has never led me astray.  Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Tokarczuk tells the story through the eyes of an eccentric elderly woman.  Following an introductory quotation by William Blake (above), this is how “Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead” begins:

    I am already at an age and additionally in a state where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed by an ambulance in the Night.

Romantic poet and artist William Blake (1757-1827) was a true original who many contemporaries thought mad.  A Christian who despised organized religion, a devout husband who believed in free love, a visionary anarchist, as biographer Peter Marshall called him, who claimed to have experienced visions, Blake left posterity many provocative proclamations, such as “The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom” and “Each man must create his own system or else he is a slave to another man.”  One found I in “Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead” is “Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with the bricks of religion.”

Dave, James, and I watched my grandson’s former team bowl at Inman’s.  On the way I dropped off the new Steel Shavings at Fred and Diane Chary’s.  We talked about recent developments at IU Northwest, including both archivist Steve McShane and Chancellor Bill Lowe retiring at the end of June.  I told Fred that Lowe was teaching a seminar on Irish history and plans to join the History department after a year’s leave of absence.  At Inman’s Kaiden Horn rolled a 267, just one frame from a perfect game, leaving a ten-pin in the fifth.  His Uncle Tom asked me to pull the winning raffle ticket from a bowl.  Sharon Fisher, who used to bowl in my Hobart Lanes league, greeted me warmly.  Her grandkids Otto and Kaylee were competing against James’s old team.  They both wrestle in middle school.  Kaylee recently defeated a favored Crown Point grappler, and the guy refused to shake her hand as customary and tossed his protective gear across the room.  His coach should have publicly chastised him.  For lunch we stopped at Culver’s, like old times.

 SpongeBob SquarePants

Sunday, Maryland defeated Michigan for a share of the Big Ten title, and seventh seed Valpo bowed to Bradley in the Missouri Valley conference final - the Crusaders’ fourth game and four days; they held their own until the final minutes.  Toni served scallops, pan fried noodles, asparagus, and salad to six of us, including Dave’s family.  Afterwards, we played Telestrations.  Angie guessed that my drawing of SpongeBob SquarePants was a hunk of swiss cheese. My flamingo and snail were equally dismal.  I did nail big toe though, and Russia.  Mercifully, there are no winners nor losers, as the game is played for laughs, of which I provided plenty. James isin the midst of a two-week semester break – that’s why Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette are still galivanted through the Southwest.

Al and Liz at Plaza Blanca north of Santa Fe; on the climb Liz said she was only really scared once

Despite the Coronavirus scare, my Art in Focus talk in Munster on Rock and Roll Music, 1960 drew an overflow crowd, including bridge buddy Mary Kocevar and old friends Gloria Biondi, Vickie Voller, Patricia Gonzales, and Jan Trusty. Director Micah Bornstein always begins with a personal anecdote, this time regarding home repair. When he was a kid, he said, his father was fixing an electric socket and told him to stand nearby with a broom and hit with it to disconnect him with what he was holding in case he got an electric shock. Vic fancied himself a handyman and often would send down to his basement work bench for a tool. Without fail, I’d bring the wrong one.

The crowd got into it as I played two dozen songs mingled with commentary.  I saw folks mouthing the words to numerous songs.  I never used to notice audience reaction but got several big laughs, including the reply by Gary U.S. Bonds to rumors that lascivious words could be heard on the recording “Quarter to Three”: “My mother was at that session!”  Maybe she was the culprit, I suggested. Director Micah Bornstein had the 24 songs all cued on YouTube up in advance without the normal 5-10-second ads.  Positioned near me, he cut them off when I gave the signal.  Some I played all the way through, such as “Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go” by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, “Walkin’ to New Orleans” by Fats Domino, “Running Scared” by Roy Orbison, and “Stay” by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs.  

This paragraph got a big reaction:

    Appearing atop the hit parade in the winter of 1959-1960 were such vapid songs as “Venus” by Frankie Avalon, “Lonely Boy” by Paul Anka, “Come Softly to Me” by The Fleetwoods, theme from “A Summer Place” by the Percy Faith Orchestra, “Tall Paul” by Annette Funicello, a “Mickey Mouse Club” graduate, and “Cherry Pie,” the one big hit for Skip and Flip, which was catchy but more pop than Rock and Roll.  Many thought the innocent-sounding “Cherry Pie” lyrics had double meanings of a sexual nature (i.e., “singing in the living room, swinging in the kitchen, Swingin’ in there because she wanted to feed me, so I mixed up the batter and she licked the beater, she’s my cherry pie, tastes so good, makes a grown man cry”). 

Born in New Orleans in 1928, Rock and Roll pioneer Antoine “Fats” Domino began to play the piano and sing in Bourbon Street bars while still unable to buy a drink legally.  He had several Rhythm and Blues hits, including “The Fat Man” (1950)  before soaring to the top of the Billboard Pop charts with “Ain’t That a Shame” in 1956.  He followed with soulful versions of the old standards “My Blue Heaven” and “Blueberry Hill.” In 1960 “Walking to New Orleans” and “My Girl Josephine” were huge hits. I noted:

     In high school I had all his records I could get my hands onto and came across some rare Oldies at a Montgomeryville PA flea market. When Fats Domino performed on the road, he’d take his band with him unlike many Rock and Roll stars.  It featured Dave Bartholomew who co-wrote many of his songs and several saxophonists, a drummer, and a bassist.  Region promoter Henry Farag, who booked them into the Star Plaza in Merrillville, told me that Fats would also take soul food in and cook meals for the band (and Henry). 

At Merrillville’s Star Plaza a quarter-century ago, Freddy “Boom Boom” Cannon was urging without much luck his audience of mostly seniors to get up and dance. From Revere, Massachusetts, Cannon (real name Frederick Picariello) grew up idolizing Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard.  His first hit was “Tallahassee Lassie” followed in 1960 by “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.” Recording on Swan Records , a label Dick Clark had a financial interest in, he appeared on American Bandstand a record 110 times.  One admirer wrote: “Freddy ‘Boom Boom’ Cannon was a true believer, a rocker to the bone.  Freddy Cannon made great noisy rock and roll records infused with a giant drum beat that was an automatic invitation to shake it on down anyplace there was a spot to dance.”  His biggest hit was “Palisades Park” (1962). Lesser known Freddy Cannon songs include “Transister Sister” and “Abigail Beecher (She’s Our History teacher)”. Lyrics went:

All the kids are just crazy about her
Central High would be a drag without her
She knows her history from A to Z
She'd teach a monkey the WatusiWhoa, it's Abigail Beecher Our history teacher, Whoa

“Prince of Soul” Sam Cooke started out as a child with a Chicago gospel group, the Highway QCs, and at age 20 joined the Soul Stirrers.  At live concerts young Sam Cooke stirred young female admirers in ways that had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with his sex appeal.  As a solo artist, between 1957 and 1964 Sam Cooke had a 30 U.S. top 40 hits that included “You Send Me,” “Cupid,” “Wonderful World,” “Chain Gang” (in 1960), and many more.  After playing “Chain gang” I noted that after Reconstruction many Southern states forced black men arrested on false or trivial charges to labor on chain gangs where life expectancy was less than two years. The hits kept coming for Cooke until he was fatally shot at age 33 under suspicious circumstances by the manager of a motel where he had taken a young woman with a shady past whom the hotel manager may have been in cahoots with.  Cooke’s song “A Change Is Gonna Come” would become one of the anthems of the civil rights movement.

The 1960 Billboard Top 40 charts also included crooners such as Johnny Mathis, folk singers such as Harry Belafonte, the Highwaymen, and the Kingston Trio, and instrumentals by the Ventures, Duane Eddy, and Floyd Kramer (“Raunchy” by Sun Records saxophonist Bill Justis, was banned from some radio stations even though it contained no words).  Country artists who crossed over into Rock and Roll, included Brenda Lee, Charlie Rich, and the Everly Brothers (“Bird Dog,” “Wake Up Little Susie”), whose 1960 hits included “Cathy’s Clown” and “When Will I Be Loved?”   At Ravinia we and the Hagelbergs saw the Everly Brothers open for the Beach Boys, whom they very much influenced.  Although rumor was that Don and Phil Everly couldn’t stand one another, they made beautiful harmonies and sang songs that spoke to teenagers. 1960 pop music, unlike today, embodied many different genres.  Young people were exposed to all types of music, including novelty songs like “Along Came Jones” by the Coasters and “Alley Oop” by the Hollywood Argyles, whose lyrics are still in the head of many aging rockers: “He got a chauffeur that’s a genuine dinosaur, And he can knuckle your head before you count to four.”  After playing “Alley Oop” but cutting it short to a few groans, I mentioned that after playing rock and roll hits in the Fifties college class, the only similar reaction I got cutting them short was “The Chipmunk Song” by Alvin and the Chipmunks.  Go figure.

Ending with “The Twist, to which I danced with Gloria, Vickie, her husband Dan, and a woman named Isabel (“Izzie,” she confided), I noted:

    Although Hank Ballard’s version of “The Twist” failed to become a hit, young people began dancing versions of the twist, often solo rather than connected to a partner.  Quick to notice the new trend, Dick Clark convinced Cameo Records to record “The Twist” by an ex-chicken plucker named Ernest Evans, whom Clark renamed Chubby Checker (a takeoff on the name Fats Domino).  It sounded so like the original that when Hank Ballard first heard it, he thought it was his.  

    In “Soul on Ice” black militant Eldridge Cleaver wrote: “It was Chubby Checker’s mission, bearing “The Twist” as good news. To teach the whites, whom history had taught to forget, how to shake their asses again.”

    “The Twist” became the most influential song of 1960, shaking rock and roll from its doldrums. During the next few years, one critic wrote, “the music would revitalize itself with dance crazes, surf and girl-group records, the British invasion, and soul music.  The old sounds were changing, but Rock and Roll appeared stronger than ever.”

At Bucknell when  bussing dishes at Women’s Cafeteria after meals, the women would put on a Bob Dylan album and guys would replace it with Chubby Checker.  The record player battle was played out on many occasions. 

 

I received a hearty round of applause, and Art in Focus director Micah Bornstein invited me to return next year.  Afterwards, East Chicago Washington Class of 1960 graduate Barbara Whittaker, a cheerleader for the state champion basketball team, asked if I could speak at her sixtieth reunion and Vickie wants me to reprise the talk to her Tri Kappa group. We’ll see. John Cain, one of more than a half-dozen men in the audience (a rarity) invited me to lunch.