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.
Archive | hungry blues RSS feed for this section
Hungry Blues II
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!
Hungry Blues I
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.
What Next
Those of you who don’t know me in real life don’t know that my wife lost her job on Friday. If you haven’t read my about page, you may not know that I’ve been the stay at home parent, taking care of our son (now 21 months old) during the day. On Wednesday morning when I heard the awful news about our elections I said to myself, when I start working outside the home full-time I have to do political work. What else is there to do now?
Some Notes On The Education of Paul Greenberg
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.
Lonesome Blues
[final draft from Long Days Short Nights ms., summer or fall, 1963]
by Paul A. Greenberg
Political Autobiography
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.
We Who Believe In Freedom . . .
We have an ongoing problem with racism and elections that has been amplified by recent technological developments. Presuming we remove the technological impediments to fair elections, I don’t foresee substantive improvement in African American access to voting without a broad based administrative response to racist machinations at the polls. We will establish more laws and improve technology to support the intent of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but the basic racist framework will remain intact.
In The Mood of Elegy
My friend Lisa died in her late 30s the day before yesterday, suddenly, of a brain aneurism. My friend Larry’s mother died this morning of cancer, in old age. Lisa was ill with rheumatoid arthritis since her 20s, but no one expected this.
I was practicing yoga tonight. My practice has been very steady for a couple of years now, usually without more than a couple of days off in any given week. Because of travel and other circumstances, tonight’s practice was the first time in seven days.
In a simple kneeling pose (adomukha virasana) I curled my toes under to push up and raise my tailbone vertically and settle back into downward facing dog (adomukha svanasana). Before there was any verticle movement at all, just in the simple act of bringing the pads of my feet into contact with the floor, I felt a wave of emotion, as if this somewhat more precise than usual repetition of a ritualized physical action was affirming something vast and elemental.
When people we love die, we need to affirm the good we mean to strive for. We feel guilty for getting diverted, for losing sight of our right intentions.
Coming Round to Satchmo
It’s still Independence Day a few more minutes, which means it’s still Louis Armstrong’s putative birthday. My father was passionate about many things, perhaps most so about music, especially Jazz music from the 20s, 30s and 40s. So July 4th seems a good occasion to say a few things about my father’s love of music and how in in a certain sense it all began with the Pops Armstrong.
Blogging off subject, though not really
This is meant as a preface to blogging Jeanne D’arc’s thoroughly great “Politics and Poetry” over at Body and Soul. But now I don’t know why I started this thinking that I’m blogging off subject. That I identify so strongly with Jeanne’s piece has everything to do with the things I’m writing about my father. “Politics and Poetry” is a gorgeous expression of the sort of realistic idealism about America that motivated my father to do the work that he did.
Reader comment: Another poem please . . .
My dear friend Jonathan David Jackson posted a comment to my previous post. “Another poem please” was his request. Just this once, I’ll do as he asks in this regard. But before I do, I think I’ll take the opportunity to say a little bit about the poems I’ve been posting on occasion, here at HungryBlues.
Mother’s Day
In honor of Mother’s Day, I’d like to make some mention of my mother, who married my father in 1951. When he died in 1997, they were married almost 47 years. As I’ve been doing this research about my father, I’ve been fortunate that I can ask my mother questions. She can add historical information, [...]
Subscriptions (RSS)
BLOG POSTS
COMMENTS
PODCASTSElsewhere
- St. Petersburg Police Bind Hands And Feet Of 5-Year-Old African-American Girl
- Lynching In Tuskegee —blog this now!!
- More On The Prisoners From Orleans Parish Prison
- Edgar Ray Killen Says God Will Get You (If You Helped Put Him Away)
