Goodbye Jimmy Reed

“You won't amount to much, the people all said
'Cause I didn't play guitar behind my head
Never pandered, never acted proud
Never took off my shoes, throw 'em in the crowd
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, goodbye, goodnight
Put a jewel in your crown and I put out the lights

    “Goodbye, Jimmy Reed,” Bob Dylan

James Mathis “Jimmy” Reed (1925-1976) grew up in the small, unincorporated community of Dunleith, Mississippi, picked up the guitar at a young age, learned to play the harmonica (harp) from Eddie Tayler, and earned money busking (street performing) as a teenager. Soon after moving to Chicago he joined the navy during World War II.  After being discharged, he married his hometown sweetheart Mary (whom he called Mama Reed) and got work in an Armour meatpacking plant while getting occasional work as a session player at Chicago’s Chess records and sideman in Jim Brim’s Gary Kings along with future Blues legend Albert King. Brim’s band played clubs in Gary and Chicago, many owned or financed by policy bosses.  During this time Reed met Jimmy Bracken, who along with Gary partner Vivian Carter, founded Vee-Jay Records with a loan from a Gary pawnbroker involved in the numbers racket.  When Chess Records expressed no interest in him as a solo artist, Reed signed the Vee-Jay, along with a Gary doo wop group called the Spaniels, and recorded the label’s very first single.  From the beginning Reed’s songs, such as “High and Lonesome” and “You Don’t Have to Go,” charted on Billboard’s Rhythm and Blues top ten.  “Goodnite, Sweetheart” by the Spaniels did even better and enabled Vee-Jay to become an industry powerhouse that paved the way for Motown a decade later.

 

Known to be a heavy drinker and somewhat uncomfortable in a recording studio, Reed initially had to be kept under lock and key before sessions to ensure he’d be sober.  He’d have Mama Reed, who co-wrote many of his songs, by his side.  She sang background and sometimes could be heard whispering lyrics to him.  In 1957 Reed had a crossover hit with “Honest I Do” and followed that up with “Big Boss Man,” “Bright Lights, City Lights,” and others.  His soulful voice and unique guitar and harp stylings were a pronounced influence on many 60s British bands, including the Rolling Stones and the animals; both bands covered his songs, as did Elvis Presley, the Grateful Dead, and Hank Williams, Jr., among others. Suddenly in demand, Reed toured with various headliners and blues revival shows until the ravages of alcoholism and untreated epilepsy led to his death at age 51.

In 1991 Jimmy Reed was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with LaVern Baker, the Byrds, Tina Turner, John Lee Hooker, and The Impressions (with Jerry Butler and Curtis Mayfield, who recorded “For Your Precious Love on Vee-Jay Records). Christgau’s Record Guide states: “At his best—on Vee-Jay in the '50s—Reed sang with the languid self-assurance of a man who never ran for the bus because he wanted to spend the fare on a glass of wine, and the unindustrious shuffle rhythms of the Vee-Jay band ambled right along behind.”

 

“Goodbye Jimmy Reed” appears on ageless icon Bob Dylan’s 2020 album “Rough and Ready Ways.”  Considering himself like Reed a vagabond troubadour armed with a guitar, harp, and songs to sing, Dylan paid his mentor the ultimate compliment, comparing their lives, according to Douglas Brinkley of the New York Times,” in a high-octane showstopper that honors the Mississippi bluesman with dragon-fierce harmonica riffs and bawdy lyrics.”  Here’s the concluding verse:

God be with you, brother, dear
If you don't mind me asking, what brings you here?
Oh, nothing much, I'm just looking for the man
Need to see where he's lying in this lost land
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, and everything within ya
Can't you hear me calling from down in Virginia?

On Their Shoulders

“I'm here because I stand on many, many shoulders, and that's true of every black person I know who has achieved.” Vernon Jordan, National Urban League President, 1971-1980

At one time I had planned to write a book titled “On Their Shoulder” about the parents of successful Gary personages, including musicians Michael Jackson and Deniece Williams, football greats Hank Stram and Alex Karras, and mayors Richard Gordan Hatcher and Karen Freeman-Wilson. I have used the material in Steel Shavingsissues and Tracesarticles plus have given talks on the subject. The debt most of us owe our parents is particularly central to the immigrant experience, as I conveyed in books on Mexican-Americans Maria Arredondo and Rogelio “Roy” Dominguez. In preparing a talk on Vivian Carter and Vee-Jay Records I took pains to note her parents emigrating from Mississippi to seek better economic and educational opportunities for themselves and their children.  The daughter of a steelworker and restaurant manager, Vivian attended first-rate, albeit, segregated schools.  I’ll also describe the deep roots of black music and performers who blazed a path for the breakthrough artists whom Vivian recorded during the 1950s.  

Allison Schuette wrote these impressions of Gary pictorial history photos depicting bigwigs at a 1907 Gary Commercial Club banquet and a South Side ethnic family in 1908:

         The historian may have wished to make a point or sharpen our attention.
         Two photos, one atop the other. 

In the first, a banquet thrown by the Gary Commercial Club 

      to celebrate the opening of the Hotel Gary. 

In the second, an immigrant family from Eastern Europe. 

The banquet is packed, tables so close the men would

      have had trouble getting out of their seats once in. 

Dressed in their finest, beneath chandeliers and before linen and china 

      (aperitif at the ready), they rest on the cusp of tremendous influence. 

They will occupy rooms in the Hotel for years to come, 

      relocating when it rebuilds, 

      solidifying the voice of U. S. Steel, 

      the voice they will walk up Broadway to City Hall. 

A decorative flag fills the wall behind the dais, 

      one guesses it holds 45 stars within its folds

—     Oklahoma entered the union just one week prior. 

The immigrant family stands before a pile of large fallen branches, 

      surrounded by others eager to have their photo taken. 

Their long boarding house is just visible in the background. 

Snow is on the ground. 

The husband and wife put on smiles for the camera. 

Their infant standing on a chair in front of the mother has not held still, 

      face a blur, 

      hands raised and fisted at its chest. 

There are more genuine smiles on some of the others,

      broad grins arising spontaneously. 

One young immigrant raises his fist in a salute. 

Next to him another young immigrant sours—it’s cold

      and he’s just woken for a twelve-hour shift 

      and he thinks the man who rents the bunk with him has lice. 

Two other young men are caught at the edge of the photo. 

Their expressions belie emotion less than presence, 

      one cautiously watchful, 

      the other edging toward curious. 

The historian knows there is influence here, too, of another order, 

      less controlled, more disruptive, 

      erupting out of the ways we find our way, inch by inch.

Anne Balay (above) wrote: “Bill Tortat, one of the steelworkers whose story shaped my first book [Steel Closets],has died. He spoke to me for at least 8 hours at his home in Wisconsin. When I left and began my drive home, I had to pull over to the shoulder to cry because his fire -- his intense, campy, articulate, chilling heroism -- shook my soul. I knew I would never be the same. Thank you, Bill, and Rest In Peace. I will never forget you.”Former IUN secretary Dorothy Mokry responded: “As we say in Serbian,“Memory eternal!” “Вјечнајапамјат!”

 Nick Tarailo in 2009

Serbians settled in Gary to work in the steel mills from its earliest years. St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church, first located at 13th and Connecticut, was founded in 1913.  Former student Nick Tarailo wrote about grandfather Nikola from Montenegro, who on the very day in 1909 when he arrived in frontier Gary found work laying an open hearth foundation at Gary Works.  Next he became a machinist’s drill press operator at American Bridge and then back at the mill a rail straightener.  By 1917 he sent money for his sweetheart to join him in America; he eventually retired from U.S. Steel after 47 years.

James P. Muldoon River Center House

Steel Shavingssubscriber James P. Muldoon made a generous donation to IU Foundation on the magazine’s behalf. The Gary native and Lew Wallace grad (class of 1956) served in the air force, graduated from the University of Maryland in 1966, three months before I entered grad school at the College Park campus, worked as an assistant to Indiana Senator Birch Bayh, and founded the Washington DC firm METCOR. Among his numerous honors is the Nathanial G. Herreshoff Award, US Sailing’s highest honor.  His biography states: 

 Mr. Muldoon has been actively involved in international sailing or boat-related organizations for over 35 years and has accrued over 100,000 miles of blue water ocean sailing.  As skipper of s/v DONNYBROOK (80ft) he raced with a competitive amateur race crew along the coast of North America and in the Caribbean.

Muldoon served eight years as chairman of the board of trustees for St Mary’s College of Maryland. Its James P. Muldoon River Center houses marine biology labs devoted to studying the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal rivers.

 proposed Hatcher statue 

Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson expects that a statue of Richard Hatcher will be unveiled at City Hall prior to her leaving office at year’s end, defeated in a bid for a third term by the Lake County Democratic machine candidate, to become the position of CEO of Chicago’s Urban League chapter.  When plans were first revealed in November of 2017 at West Side Academy, Reverend Jesse Jackson and Minister Louis Farrakhan spoke, Jackson exhorting those in attendance to pledge support and promising a sizeable donation.  Gary native Deniece “Niecy” Williams sang her 1984 hit “Black Butterfly.”  Here are the first two verses:

Deniece Williams

Morning light, silken dream to flight
As the darkness gave way to dawn
You've survived, now your moment has arrived
Now your dream has finally been born

. . .

While you slept, the promise was unkept
But your faith was as sure as the stars
Now you're free, and the world has come to see
Just how proud and beautiful you are

I have written about Mayor Hatcher in many different contexts, but what most excited him was my 2012 Traces article on his father, “’Every Tub Its Own Bottom’: The Odyssey of Carlton Hatcher.”  He was teaching an IUN class when I presented it to him, and he teared up.

My Senior College talk on Vivian Carter and Vee-Jay Records attracted a full house, including jazz musician Billy Foster, a man from Hobart who shopped at Vivian’s store on 1640 Broadway (he brought several Vee-Jay albums, one signed by James “Pookie” Hudson of the Spaniels), and the daughter of one of the Spaniels who sang along to “Hey Little Girl” by Dee Clark and “It’s in His Kiss (The Shoop Shoop Song)” by Betty Everett.  Ron Cohen introduced me. I loved the audience participation and concluded that Vivian was a true pioneer who captured on vinyl the best and most original music of her era.

Tree of Life

“All theory is gray, gut the golden tree of life springs ever green,” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nanai people Tree drawing 

Mentioned in Genesis, the tree of life has come to symbolize the sustaining and enhancement of humanity.  Virtually all cultures have a tree of life myth growing from the center of creation, with branches sometimes containing magical fruit representative of layers of existence and understanding. The 2011 Terence Malick film “The Tree of Life,” starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, and Sean Penn and taking place in a Fifties Texas town, dealt with such universal themes as evolution, spirituality, and generational conflict.

 Bianca and Alex, 2017

Toni and I attended the wedding ceremony of Herb and Evelyn Passo’s son Alex to Bianca Angarola at Temple Israel in Miller in front of a stain glass window depicting the Tree of Life.  The invitation contained its image and the words, “Share love.  Spread light.”Our boys attended pre-school at the Temple; one day, after meeting the Rabbi, Dave thought he’d seen God.  We’ve known Alex, now an attorney, since he was a kid.  He took my survey American History course, performing brilliantly but often appearing to be lost in thought.   Rabbi Stanley Halpern, who had presided over Alex’s Bar Mitzvah, returned from Zionsville, Indiana, to perform the service.  Many friends were in the overflow audience. Cantorial soloist Sean Egan, a Hammond charter school principal and co-cost with Robin Rich of Temple Trivia Night, sang a haunting rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” during the Processional.  The theme being renewal and continuity, Alex’s cousin Hayden Adam was flower girl, a task her mother Michelle performed 36 years ago at Herb and Evelyn’s nuptials. 

The reception was at Allure on the Lake, minutes from our condo.  We sat next to Judy and Steve Tallackson, who left early because early next morning Steve was taking Calumet College History students to Tippecanoe River State Park.  They will observe a replica of a Shawnee village, interact with Voyageur re-enactors, and visit the 1812 battlefield site of the massacre that propelled William Henry Harrison (“Old Tippecanoe”) to the Presidency.  Robin Rich told me that she and Rebecca Hanscom interviewed Fred Chary for the Temple Israel Newsletter and that he is home again after rehabbing after an operation at Rush Memorial Hospital.  Here are some answers Fred provided:

  I moved here in 1966 to take a job at Indiana University Northwest. Prior to that I worked on my degrees at the University of Pennsylvania and at the University of Pittsburgh. I’ve been a member of Temple Israel since 1967. I was very attracted by the diverse community. 

  [My Jewish identity] led me to Bulgaria. My uncle was in the military during WW2, when Bulgaria was an ally of the Germans, but Bulgaria protected their Jewish population. In 1939, before Bulgaria joined the Axis, there were 44,000 Jews in Bulgaria; after WW2 there were 50,000. The Jewish population actually increased. [During my frequent visits] I found no discrimination against Jews in Bulgaria. I never had any difficulties there. The most significant fight in Bulgaria was a religious battle: the Greek Orthodox vs the Bulgarian Orthodox. 

  I’ve traveled extensively, of course in Bulgaria, but also Germany, Poland, the former Soviet Union, Great Britain, and Israel.  I’d love to visit Central Asia and Africa.  I collect stamps and like old movies—especially from the 1940s. I am working on a historical novel about 17th century Russia. I look forward to research, reading and writing—those are my favorite things to do.

Fred is a huge Philadelphia sports fan.  Last time I visited him, he invited me over to watch the Eagles as soon as he got home.  Confirming that he was home, I rang him up. He sounded great and repeated the offer.

 at Konrady Plastics table

Toni and I were Bernie Konrady, Jr.’s guests for One Region’s annual luncheon at Avalon Manor Banquet Center in Merrillville.  His daughter Leah is its President and introduced dynamic guest speaker Tom Murphy, formerly mayor of Pittsburgh (1994-2005) and presently with the Urban Land Institute, planners of city revitalization.  At the Konrady Plastics table, a company Bernie and wife Sue founded now located in Portage but originally on Arthur Street in Gary, I introduced them and cousin John Konrady, an IUN Business and Economics major who studied under Leslie Singer, to IUN Chancellor Lowe, a former chairman of the One Region council. Seated to my right were Bernie’s sisters Dee Gee, a Delta Airlines stewardess (now called flight attendants) for 30 years, and Ronnie, who had former IUN chancellor Peggy Elliott as a teacher at Horace Mann and recalled her coming to class with a bandaged hand from burning it getting something out of the oven.

At the Archives two documentarians from IU interviewed me about Vee-Jay Records co-founder Vivian Carter.  I stressed Vivian’s Gary background, segregated but with opportunities for talented and ambitious African Americans during the 1920s and postwar years. I emphasized how influential Vee-Jay hits such as “Goodnite, Sweetheart” and “For Your Precious Love” were on 1950s teenagers like myself and credited Vivian, with her gospel background, for helping give birth to the emergent soul music. Henry Farag, whose musical “The Signal” deals with Vee-Jay doo wop groups, arrived next. We both encouraged producer Adam Carroll to videotape the next live presentation of “The Signal.”

I spoke to Kenny Kincaid’s Purdue Northwest history class on Latinos about Ramon and Trisha Arredondo’s “Maria’s Journey,” which they’re reading, and talked about editing it and helping them find an appropriate publisher (i.e., Indiana Historical Society Press).  I brought up oral histories I had conducted with Mexican-Americans Jesse Villalpando, Louis Vasquez, Abe Morales, and Paulino Monterrubio.  Since in addition to “Maria’s Journey,” students were also assigned articles by John Fraire and Dan Simon, I noted that John’s mother was a star baseball player on an Indiana Harbor team (the Chicks) and that Dan was a retired Business professor with a lifelong interest in history. I gave Kincaid the current copy of Tracescontaining an article about a family of agricultural workers who settled in Southern Indiana.

Kenny and his students are angry over the Purdue Board of Trustees intending to change graduates’ diplomas to read Purdue University Northwest rather than simply Purdue (IUN sheepskins say Indiana University without designating the campus).  The change was triggered because students and faculty on Purdue’s Lafayette campus were upset upon learning that online graduates attending former Kaplan University, now labeled Purdue Global, would receive diplomas identical to theirs. During the break I chatted with a bright student named Frank Rodriguez, a Munster resident who had located my blog on-line.  His dad was a union elevator repair worker.

I found the HBO documentary on Jane Fonda fascinating.  She once again apologized to Vietnam War veterans still upset over her misguided actions while visiting POWs and an anti-aircraft battery in Hanoi while under the influence of second husband Tom Hayden, who succeeded French film director Roger Vadim and preceded billionaire TV network founder Ted Turner.  Currently active in feminist causes, Fonda co-stars with Lily Tomlin in the comedy TV series “Grace and Frankie.” The 80-year-old was looking forward to an upcoming bedroom scene with Sam Elliott.

Novelist Sinclair Lewis’ creation George F. Babbitt regarded himself as a Solid Citizen and Regular Fellow and addressed Zenith Athletic Club lunch companions by such jocular epithets as “old Bolshevik” and “old horse thief.”  While talking to grandson James about best friend Paul Reisling, whom Babbitt often called Paulski or Paulibus, I brought up Paul Turk, who befriended me after my family moved to Birmingham, Michigan at Barnum Junior High (now a park with only the entranceway remaining) after entering eighth grade undersized and knowing nobody.  We played wiffleball and football; his mom was a great cook and his dad took us to an Indians-Tigers game. After my family moved back to Fort Washington we corresponded throughout high school and college.  His envelopes often employed clever take-offs on my middle name Buchanan (Buckmeister and Buckmillian were two of the shorter ones). In January 1965, Paul drove through a snowstorm from Ohio to attend our wedding. We still exchange occasional phone calls, usually after a sports event, but unlike me he does not like to reminisce.

Sports Illustrated writer Tim Layden’s “Fists of Fury” profiled Cahn Carlos and Tommie Smith 50 years after their clenched fist protest on the victory stand at the Mexico City Olympics.  Most photos only show winner Smith and Bronze Medalist Carlos from the waist up, which misses elements of their symbolic statement.  Layden explains:

    Their appearance on the stand remains riveting to this day.  Single shoes and bare feet covered only in black socks, signfying poverty at home. Carlos’s beads, recalling the lunching of black men.  Smith’s black scarf, highlighting a deep identity with his race.  The gloves, the fists shoved upward for the world to see, suggesting defiance and unity.

    The form of the protest came together only after the 200-meter race, in the well of the stadium.  “In the dungeon,”says Smith.  Smith’s wife Denise had brought a pair of black gloves. Carlos’s wife Kim had brought beads with her from the U.S. 

                                              

I’ve been listening to the Dandy Warhols, a Nineties alternative band from Portland.  One of their tracks, “Get Off,” refers to escaping everyday burdens and feeling a rush akin to sexual climax, not literally being on top of someone, like now-confirmed Justice Brett Kavanaugh allegedly hoisted himself onto Dr. Christine Blasey Ford at a high school party. In his day (and mine) dry-humping was considered within bounds – but not if met with resistance.  The Dandy’s most famous song, “Bohemian Like You.” Features this exchange between a customer and a waiter

So, what do you do?
Oh yeah, I wait tables too.
No, I haven't heard your band,
'Cause you guys are pretty new.
But if you dig on vegan food
Well come over to my work
I'll have them cook you

Years ago, Doc Lukas helped me lay out an issue of Steel Shavings,I gave him a Dandy Warhols CD after hearing that the band had a big gay following.  Turned out Terry was into electronic music. My bad.  Even more embarrassing was when I noted that he was wearing his “trademark pink shirt.”He shot me a hurt look. One time, seated across the gym floor at an amateur Mr. Bodybuilding contest at IUN, I waved and he waved back.  In 2013 Atlanta began hosting a world transgender bodybuilding competition. What I wouldn’t give to attend next year’s competition with Terry and Anne Balay.

Ray Smock wrote the latest example of Trump’s “ceremonial arrogance of power”:

  Donald Trump could not accept victory quietly, or gracefully. He had to rub it in. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in immediately after his confirmation. He went to work at the Supreme Court. But this was not enough for our president. There were some scores to settle and some salt to pour into wounds. He needed to do this on national television.

  In an unusual nationally televised ceremonial swearing-in at the White House the President took the opportunity to gloat and campaign for next month’s elections. Trump said the occasion was historic. There was nothing historic about it, except for the minor fact that this was the first time a former Justice of the Supreme Court, was able to swear in one of his former law clerks.

  It was retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy who conducted the oath ceremony. Kavanaugh had clerked for him twenty-five years ago. I have no idea why Justice Kennedy was and is so outwardly friendly with Trump. Maybe it was because Kennedy’s son, Justin, had dealings with the Trump Organization as an official of Deutsche Bank. Kennedy said he was retiring to spend more time with his family, a standard Washington cliché. It gave Trump the opportunity to appoint his second Supreme Court justice.

  This event was the only time I ever heard Trump apologize for anything. And when he did, it was all wrong, it was ugly, and uncalled for. The president said that on behalf of the nation he apologized for the way that Brett Kavanaugh was treated during the hearings. Trump had no business declaring Justice Kavanaugh to be innocent of all the charges against him or to say that he was vindicated and proven innocent. He never once thought of apologizing to Dr. Ford, who has been humiliated by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the president.

  Early in the Kavanaugh hearings President Trump called Dr. Ford a credible witness and described her as a nice person. As the hearings heated up he mocked her shamelessly at campaign rallies and now calls her whole testimony, her personal anguish at coming forward, to be nothing but a hoax orchestrated by Democrats. Dear Dr. Ford, I humbly apologize to you for the way you were treated in your testimony and the way you have been so unfairly maligned by the President of the United States.

I’ve completed an essay John Cain requested for a South Shore Arts exhibit catalogue to go with “Urban Legend: Haunts,” opening in Munster.  Because I have included a paragraph on acclaimed photographer Camilo Vergara, who for a quarter-century has been documenting Gary ruins and am hoping he will include photos I’ve sent him of the Blackstone Hotel taken in 1993 titled “Survivor in a tough city” and City Methodist Church at dawn taken in 2004, titled “Rise of a City.”  My final paragraph rebuts the “Gary as abandoned city” stereotype:

  Outsiders sometimes mistake Gary for a ghost town.  To the contrary.  Often regarded downstate as a Hoosier stepchild and by suburbanites as a place to avoid at all costs, Gary has numerous viable neighborhoods.  True, signs of declension abound, but residents have demonstrated grit and resiliency. While the recent edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History,” covering the years 2004-2018,  includes photos of demolition efforts on the 800 black of Virginia St., most pages exemplify Gary’s ongoing spirit, diversity, and cultural life and are filled with signs of activity – church celebrations, sporting events, school activities, urban gardens, steelworker rallies, protests against locating an immigrant detention center adjacent to Gary Airport, crowds assembling at Michael Jackson’s family home, Calumet Artist Residency poetry workshops, Gary Air Show beach onlookers, and the IU Northwest campus, my intellectual home for 48 years.  Though Gary has lost much of its tangible heritage and remains a tough environment, especially for those  struggling to find work and raise families, potential exists for a brighter future not only in the development of the lakefront, airport, and academic corridor along Thirty-Fifth Avenue but even in downtown revitalization, with Gary’s alluring ruins hopefully surviving. Meanwhile, remarkable activities continue to occur in schools, churches, and community centers, some literally in the shadows of haunts that reflect its former glory.