Trailblazers

 “We used to go from bar to bar every night [in Greenwich Village] beginning at San Remo on Bleecker Street. The White Horse Tavern was in for a while.” Brigid Murnaghan

 

New York Times magazine presented portraits of memorable people who succumbed during the past year, including victim of police violence Breonna Taylor, “Black Panther” actor Chadwick Bronson, innovative Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson, and New York Mets legend Tom Seaver (who, ironically, was in the losing Red Sox dugout in 1986 when the Mets won their second world championship). The most fascinating personages profiled, in my opinion, were Blues singer Bill Withers and civil rights activist Mimi Jones.

 

Born in Slab Fork, in West Virginia coal country, Withers, who stuttered well into adulthood, joined the navy at age 17, enrolled in aircraft-mechanic’s school, and after nine years of service got a factory job making toilets for Boeing 747s. After visiting a nightclub to hear Lou Rawls and learning what a singer could earn, he bought a guitar at a pawnshop, composed songs in his head while at work, and managed to record an album, Just As I Am,” at age 34. On it was the irresistible Blues number “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and Withers followed that up with another classic, “Lean On Me.” In 2015 Stevie Wonder introduced him on the occasion of his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; John Legend then joined the two of them to sing “Use Me.”

 

Inspired while in high school by Martin Luther King and the activities of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Albany, Georgia, native Mimi Jones (then known as Mamie Ford) traveled to St. Augustine, Florida, while Congress was debating the 1964 Civil Rights Bill in order to take part in demonstrations against segregated facilities. Two white activists rented a room at the whites-only Monson Motor Lodge and invited Mimi and a second “guest,” Brenda Darten, to use the swimming pool with them. The racist manager called the police and then poured muriatic acid pool cleaning agent in the water. A photo of the outrageous action caused President Lyndon Johnson to exclaim that “our whole foreign policy and everything will go to Hell over this” and helped assure swift passage of the Civil Rights Act. Mimi was taken to jail in a squad car in her wet bathing suit. Brenda Darten was subsequently expelled from Albany State College for her action. Mimi went on to champion education for children in poor communities.

 

The category for Final Jeopardy the other day with new host Ken Jennings was “Pop Music.” The clue: “this song was number one in 1982 and a hit 17 years later and then 17 after that.” The answer: “1999” by originator of the Minneapolis funk fusion sound Prince Rogers Nelson, who died at his Paisley Park home at age 58 in 2016. “1999” is one of those party songs that demands that one get up and boogie. Along with Gary’s Michael Jackson, whom he much resembled in style and image as a sexy but nonthreatening biracial manchild, he was a perfect MTV trailblazer. His movie “Purple Rain” was incandescent, as was his 2007 Superbowl performance, fittingly in the rain, during which, in addition to “1999” and “Purple Rain,” he performed Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary,” and “Best of You” by the Foo Fighters. He was one of a kind and is sorely missed.

 

I’d never heard of “Bohemian hellraiser” Brigid Murnaghan (1930-2017) prior to reading kindred spirit Frank McCourt’s autobiography ‘Tis. To use a favorite phrase of Irish-American McCourt, Murnaghan didn’t give a fiddler’s fart (i.e., a tinker’s dam or a flying fuck) about conventional moral standards and escaped the Irish Catholic Bronx neighborhood where she grew up in 1946, the year she turned 16. She later described the people she hung out with as “a lot of homosexuals, nice people, much nicer than anyone in the fucking Bronx, except for the Bronx zoo.” She became friends with Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Delmore Schwartz and other Beat poets and artists and gave frequent poetry readings at such establishments as the Kettle of Fish. Village Voice writer Bill Manville wrote that the six-foot-tall, long-legged blond with “a sailor’s mouth” was quite a sensation, more popular with audiences than more established poets.

 

Only a few of Murnaghan’s poems have been published in anthologies, but here are parts of three, “Daisy,” “Tweed,” and “To Be a Poet”:

 

“When I see daisies I want to see

A field covered

So I can stretch out and know if

They were picked they’d be dead in an hour.

 

The nice thing about tweeds is that you can eat in

Them, sleep in them, and even wet your pants in them, wear

Them the next day and have people say: How nice you

Look in them – just like a lady.

 

Did you hear the one about the Polish poet

Who was in it for the money?

They claim we are a race apart.

It’s as if we frighten them.

They won’t understand.

 

Frank McCourt was a high school teacher whose marriage did not survive his love of Greenwich Village night life and all that entailed. Unconventional in the classroom, he'd have students discuss Saturday morning cartoons they enjoyed as a kid or TV advertising jingles. Once he had Creative Writing students write children's books and invited third graders to critique them.