The Beatles were my first musical obsession. When I became a fan of the Beatles in middle school, I collected every recording, poured over every liner note, read biographies, studied the lyrics, listened to the solo projects . . .
It was the first time I’d gotten into music like this. I think it was around […]
Everyone - John Lennon [1:43m]:
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Sorry it’s been so quiet over here. Had a bad cold last week and was also working on some writing for print publication (more on that soon).
Over Memorial Day weekend we visited my mother, and I spent some more time with my father’s papers. I brought a bunch of new papers back home, some […]
Thursday, February 24, 2005
1.
The hospice nurse checks again
The water temperature.
Swelling in the hands,
The legs, the sensitive feet,
My father in the lift device
Shows no discomfort,
Even beams a little,
Looking at me.
Fluorescent light in the poster frames.
Around a breezy field, silver coastline . . .
The patient closes his eyes
And moans as he is washed.
2.
Dream #2: I pull into the driveway
With a […]
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
I mentioned in part III of this series that I can date the handwritten drafts of Long Days Short Nights because of a passage about Frankie Newton. I am posting that passage here, though it was not intended for publication. It is an unpolished prose sketch, written in one shot, to get the material down […]
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Dad had a number of stories like this one, lessons in being on the outside. The most developed one, and the most fully fictionalized, is “Lonesome Blues” , the story I posted in September, named after the song by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Fives . In “Lonesome Blues,” the high school years of a suicide jazz musician, Mo Bartel, closely mirror my father’s.
Also filed in Books, Paul Greenberg 101, civil rights movement, document, family, hungry blues, jazz, jewish, labor movement, long days short nights ms., nyc politics, old left/new left, race and racism, writings of PG
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Tuesday, February 22, 2005
I wondered if Dan Morgenstern could help me find out more about Frankie Newton. A little googling revealed that Morgenstern is the director of the Institute of Jazz Studies , housed not at Princeton but at Rutgers. I sent him a letter on September 7, 1999. More than a month went by. I’d just about given up all hope of receiving a reply when in mid-October an envelope arrived in the mail with “Institute of Jazz Studies” in the return address. A letter from Morgenstern!
Sunday, February 20, 2005
The process began in 1991, when I made my first attempt to understand my father’s relationship with Frankie Newton, the mostly forgotten jazz trumpet player, whose career peaked in around 1939, during the period when his band backed Billie Holiday at the Cafe Society in New York.
Frank Newton and Vic Dickenson
Are playing ping pong in the kitchen
From the window, Union Sq
Listen! it’s Peewee Russell on the gramophone
Peewee got a letter all the way from China
To The Maker Of Heavenly Music
Nick’s, USA
And the pennies we always threw, by the net, in the rug
Anybody who shows up with pennies
Throws them on the floor
Tonight […]
My father graduated from the eighth grade of Public School 89, Elmhurst, NY (Queens), in June of 1941. Like other kids graduating PS 89, he planned to go on to high school about a half mile away, at Newtown High School. According to his 8th grade autograph book, my father’s favorite author was Jack London, his favorite book The Sea Wolf ; Stardust was his favorite song; he loved baseball and worshipped Mel Ott.
Thursday, September 2, 2004
Maybe it was 1937 when my oldest brother and I were in a local WPA theater production of Waiting For Lefty. I remember thinking that a union organizer was the noblest of all jobs even better than playing right field like Mel Ott. I also thought that Jewishsocialist was one word and that Jews who were not socialists were the exceptions even though my mother’s family was among the exceptions.
We were a decidedly secular family. Judaism was some old fashioned thing that my paternal grandmother held onto and it was sort of embarrassing. I did love seders at my Aunt Beck’s house because my Uncle Sam made Exodus come alive. To me Moses was a union organizer and socialist revolutionary and John L. Lewis all rolled into one.
Also filed in Paul Greenberg 101, alabama, civil rights movement, disarmament, document, family, hungry blues, jazz, labor movement, liberal party of new york, nyc politics, old left/new left, proportional representation, writings of PG
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3.
He saw
his own life—
New York, 1939: The 3 Deuces,
The Onyx —
Or in Chinatown,
where a hardhat tried to play him
for a nickel—calling
Christmas gift
Christmas gift
He looked up as it fell—
the girders
strung with lights
Or on Swing Street,
where a guy in uniform buys him
a whiskey because
“his color doesn’t matter
when he plays”—
I was born in 1969 when my father was 41. From about age 18 to age 36 (1945-1963) he was directly involved in many of the political struggles that shaped the American left—labor, disarmament, civil rights. From about age 14 to age 41(1941-1969), my father had close relationships with some of the finest jazz musicians of the swing era—Pee Wee Russell, Max Kaminsky, Rex Stewart and, especially, Frankie Newton. In the years following my birth, my father continued to be active politically and remained a passionate jazz listener, but the formative experiences that had shaped him were moving further into the past.
By the time I was growing up and could hear about my father’s earlier, exciting experiences, they had an air of unreality about them. In the suburbs of Albany, NY, talk about Minton’s and the Cafe Society or about labor or nuclear arms or civil rights activism seemed exotic. People Dad knew and worked with were names in History. At my public high school there was just the smallest handful of African-American students. At home, just a mile away from school, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, JR was simply Martin, my dad’s old boss. My father also was not one for keeping track of details or keeping chronologies straight. His memories were all in soft focus, warmed in the glow of his nostalgia.
I started researching my father’s life and times by accident . . .
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