The lady who swings the band...

There was a song once called "The Lady Who Swings the Band", performed by Andy Kirk and His 12 Clouds of Joy. The 'Lady' in question was Mary Lou Williams who played a mean boogie woogie as the band's pianist. She also composed and arranged for some of the biggest names in the business. Her husband was touring with his own band when he got the invitation to join Andy Kirk. She took over the band for their rest of their tour before joining her husband. She was 19 at the time.

Mary Lou Williams as photographed by William Gottlieb

There were many women who played in swing bands, and who led swing bands - of both the "all girl" and "all boy" variety. In the volumes of jazz and swing music history, the ladies had, until recently, been left out, forgotten, and omitted - sometimes on purpose.

Today, March the 8th, 2015, is International Women's Day. And this coming Friday, March 13th, is the birthday of Ina Ray Hutton, who led the 'all girl' Melodears in the 1930's, and an 'all boy' Orchestra during WWII (no easy feat as many of the smaller bands closed down due to an inability to keep their musicians who were being drafted).  Ina Rae was a blonde bombshell who danced around the stage with a shimmy and a sway that I gather was reminiscent of the first black woman known to have led an all male band, Blanche Calloway.

Blanche Calloway

Ms. Calloway was a fan of hot jazz. After touring as a dancer in an all black musical, she settled in the Chicago of 1927 because that's where the music was. She soon recorded two songs (one 78 record) with the billing of "Blanche Calloway and Her Joy Boys" - which included the young Louis Armstrong.  She soon formed her own orchestra using the 'Joy Boys' name. At various times the band included future jazz giants Ben Webster, Cozy Cole, Chick Webb, and Bennie Moten. Ms. Calloway had a wild flamboyant performing style which she taught to her younger brother Cab. Needless to say, being a young black woman in a male dominated profession provided a number of challenges. So did touring the American South, where she was arrested for using a public restroom. One of the musicians who came to her aid was pistol whipped and arrested as well. While they were in jail, someone absconded with the band's money. She sold her yellow Cadillac to raise the funds to get home. At the outbreak of the war, she tried to start another band - this one with women musicians, but bookings were scarce and she retied form the business. In Florida she took up politics, and worked as a disc jockey for a radio station where she spent 20 years as program manager.

Ina Ray Hutton was a singer and dancer who appeared on Broadway in both the George White Scandals and the Ziegfeld Follies. In 1934 she was approached by music publisher Irving Mills and asked to lead an all girl band called the Melodears. They were hugely popular, and appeared in many "soundies" and musical short subjects. Here's a prime example:




The Melodears disbanded in 1939. At the outbreak of the war, Ms. Hutton started an all male orchestra which was also hugely popular. Over the last several years, there has been a great deal of research claiming to prove that Ms. Hutton and her sister June (who replaced Jo Stafford in the Pied Pipers) were of African American descent, and passing for white. One member of the family gave an interview in which she stated that Ms. Hutton's mother had told her that the family was Irish/Scots and Cherokee. Sadly, the was she or wasn't she ruckus has come to overshadow Ms. Hutton's accomplishments - which included a lot of damned good music.

In Mississippi there existed the Piney Woods County Life School, which educated orphans and poor children from their area. The school's founder heard Ina Ray Hutton and the Melodears and decided to create and all girl swing band to help the school raise money. The only band which could be said to be 'girls' came into being as The International Sweethearts of Rhythm. The Sweethearts turned professional and added a few of the top women musicians in the country - including Anna Mae Winburn who had been leading an all male band. The Sweethearts were an integrated band of African Americans, Asians, Caucasians, Latinas, Mexicans, and Indian. They were one of the best swing congregations out there. When they competed in a battle of the bands with Erskine Hawkins, 10,000 listeners declared the Sweethearts the winners. It was not unusual to see some of the top bandleaders of the day listening to them from the wings during performances. Those performances, by the way, took place in mostly African American venues. Touring the South provided extra problems - the lighter skinned women had to use makeup to darken up lest they be arrested for being whites performing on the same stage as blacks. Two of the best arrangers in the business worked for them - and quit in protest when they saw how the women were being treated and found out how badly they were being paid. After they performed on the war era 'for the soldiers' Jubilee radio program, demands for more came pouring in. In 1945, the Sweethearts became the first black women to be presented by the USO as they toured army camps in France and Germany. After the war, the change in musical tastes made making a living even more difficult, and the Sweethearts disbanded. When the ladies tried to retire, they discovered the money withheld for social security had never been paid to Uncle Sam. The band slipped into the obscurity of the footnote. In 1980, Marian McPartland convinced a jazz festival to reunite the Sweethearts. Feminists and musicians took up their cause. A popular documentary on the band premiered in 1986 at the New York Film Festival. The Sweethearts first trumpet, Tiny Davis, and their drummer Ruby Lucas, were the subjects of another documentary, 'Hell Drivin' Women'. Only a couple of sides were ever recorded. What remains are bits of film (often incomplete fragments) and a few radio shows.

Lil Hardin Armstrong

Lil Hardin was a pianist working in Chicago in the 1920's when King Oliver came to town. After hearing her perform, he asked her to sit in with the band. It wasn't long before she became a part of the band. According to her own account, she was, at first unimpressed by a young coronet player who was "too country". She took him under her wing, taught him how to dress and present himself to the public. She ended up being the  pianist, composer, and arranger for many of his early recordings. She also married him, becoming Mrs. Louis Armstrong. After they separated, she formed an 'all girl' orchestra, followed by one with both female and male musicians. She faded from public view, emerging every now and then with a band or as a soloist. She planned to release an autobiography, but decided to shelve work on it lest it embarrass her ex. When Mr. Armstrong died, she was by all accounts devastated. A month later, while performing at a memorial concert, she collapsed and died. Her papers and autobiography disappeared.

Valaida Snow

While all of these ladies deserve to have their stories told (and their music played) I've never understood why Valaida Snow hasn't been the subject of a movie or stage show. Louis Armstrong may have tried to hire Tiny Davis away from the Sweethearts (she chose to stay), but it was Valaida Snow whom he described as the second best jazz trumpet player in the business (after himself).

A multi-instrumentalist singer and dancer, Ms. Snow was performing professionally by the time she was 15. The press loved her, and the audiences loved her. She toured the US, Europe, China, and became the toast of London and Paris. Her good friend Josephine Baker tried to convince her to return to the US as war clouds gathered, but Ms. Snow didn't take the advice. She was arrested as a drug addict (and according to some accounts for being a lesbian) by the Nazis. She may have been a prisoner in a concentration camp. There are stories. Ms. Snow, however, was known for telling stories as flamboyant as her personality. Some researchers claim she was only in a Danish prison and the stories were fabrication. Whatever really happened, she never recovered from the experience. In the 1950's, she began an attempt to regain her career. She was backstage at the Palace Theater when she collapsed and died from a brain hemorrhage.

Valaida Snow and one of her Orchestras

And there was Dolly Dawn and Her Dawn Patrol. Ms. Dawn was a vocalist who joined George Hall's Taft Hotel Orchestra. Hall was a violinist who didn't play swing;  he  led an competent but uninspired band. Once Ms. Dawn joined up, their 6 day a week broadcasts became extremely popular. Ms. Dawn soon had a 'band within the band' set up for recordings, released as ""Dolly Dawn and Her Dawn Patrol". With record sales increasing, Hall saw his opportunity to retire from leading the band and took it, turning the band over to Ms. Dawn in a public ceremony at the Roseland Ballroom. The band gained new energy and spirit, recording under the "Dawn Patrol" moniker. It only lasted a year. The war arrived, the draft took many of the musicians, and Ms,. Dawn set out on a solo singing career. During the post war years, she too faded from public view. A 2 disc reissue of her old recordings in 1975 brought her new attention, there was a new album, and she began to perform occasionally in New York clubs.

My radio show this week featured these ladies and their music. It had been a difficult week; by the time I started the show I was exhausted and that problem I have in which thought can't quite translate into coherent speech came by for a visit. Hopefully, listeners will enjoy the music enough that my verbal stumbling won't be of concern.

Dispatch

So here I am, 62 years old, writing from the front lines of early retirement on Memorial Day. But it's not the real Memorial Day. I'm old enough that I remember when Memorial Day was on May the 30th. That was before the United States Congress changed it to a 3 day weekend shopping extravaganza intended to kick off the summer vacation spending season.

I've lived in New England for over a quarter of a century now. Here, the summer season used to be July 4th to Labor Day in September (that's the phony Labor Day; the one the rest of the world celebrates is on May the 1st and honors events that happened here in the U.S. of A., which big money interests don't want people to know about let alone remember). With the change in the weather the summer season starts earlier here now. This year has been a little more like the old days, with the result that newscasts bemoaned the rainy and cool weather we had Saturday and Sunday - so many open campsites, so many unused barbeques.

Memorial Day started when the widows of the Civil War (or the "War of the Insurrection of the Southern States" as it used to be known in these parts) brought flowers of remembrance to decorate the graves of soldiers, "Decoration Day". After other wars it became "Memorial Day". There used to be parades; people used to display the flag. When I was a kid, it was a mixture of honor to the fallen and patriotism with the jingoistic flavor of the Post World War II era.

By the time I was a teenager, the War in Vietnam was oh so au currant. But just as television and its news programs had shown the lies of prosperous equality versus the malarkey we were fed through civics classes and entertainment, it also told uncomfortable truths about Vietnam. It became more and more difficult for me to accept the unquestioning flag waving exemplified by a mirror I found in 1969 with a painting on it of Stephen Decatur with the Carl Schurz quote (attributed to Decatur), "My Country right or wrong, My Country!"

The other day, I found a movie coming attractions trailer on the internet which I decided to play. One of its stars is a young man whose career choices have interested me more than any talent he has displayed (which is considerable). He played Harry Potter in a stage musical he co-wrote and co-produced in his teens. He showed up on the tv show "Glee", playing a gay teenager in his first relationship - it is a main story thread. Such things were unthinkable once. Anyway, as the trailer played there was one quick shot that made me pause it. I was right, it was the boardwalk of my once beloved Ocean City, NJ where summers started on Memorial Day weekend.

There's a "Subway" on the boardwalk now. A chain store. When I lived there, chain stores had names like A & P, or Dairy Queen. And they weren't on the Boardwalk. And now there's junky signs. It's actually worse than how it looks in the frame grab. Here's another contemporary view:


























Back when I lived there, back before there were giant cheap backlit plastic signs, back before there were BigBucksMarts, before there were chains of inedible overblown thin hamburger patty plastic arches, back when gaudy wasn't acceptable unless you were whoring on 8th Avenue in New York City, back when Memorial Day had just been changed to a Monday, it looked more like this:

The last picture is a little out of focus, like so many memories tend to be. But you can see that the hard sell isn't there, signs are on a human scale. By today's standards you might say it's 'quaint'.

 

In the 1970's or so, Memorial Day Weekend became the opening of the Hollywood extravaganza season. When I was in the business, a few of us used to say that a good picture would play in any season. When one studio dared to open a big budget picture at the beginning of May, the other studios thought they were crazy. It played. The old patterns (which had been new patterns maybe a decade before) started changing. Now it seems like almost every movie has a budget well over one hundred million dollars - and that's before advertising. Twenty years ago, an extremely successful movie might gross one hundred million dollars. "Iron Man 3" opened 3 weekends ago and has already grossed $1.15 Billion worldwide. And that's before cable, tv, DVD, Blue-Ray and streaming internet sales, before merchandising tie-ins. It's a live action cartoon. They all seem to be live action cartoons anymore. Well, this year there was a new adaptation of "The Great Gatsby", which has grossed over 100 million domestically, but in Brattleboro it was pushed off screen after two weeks to make way for "Fast and Furious 6" and "The Hangover Part whatever". Basically, live action cartoons. Don't get me wrong, I like live action cartoons. And these are usually very well made special effect bonanza live action cartoons. I can't often afford to part with close to ten dollars to go see one, though. And here it's not even in 3-D. But what happened to the other movies, you know, the ones that just told stories and attempted to uplift the spirits? Oh, we get the occasional art film about 90 year olds facing death with dignity, but that's not what I mean. We just don't live in a world where they make beach party movies with guest musical stars anymore. They don't even make suggestively dance your asses off in the Catskills summer movies anymore. Unless the dancers have superpowers and their pasodoble is used to kick the villains into the stratosphere.

 

A news article I read this morning reported on a study which revealed that the IQ's of people in western civilizations have declined by an average of 14 points since the Victorian era. That would include the Civil War, the Insurrection of the Southern States against the idea of Union.

 

And that brings my little roundelay back to Memorial Day. I don't like standing armies. I don't like the idea of conscription. Just today, in a guest editorial in the New York Times, a writer called for a return to the draft. The aftermath of the Vietnam War left us with a volunteer army. There are now army families. It's a job. It's a job the undereducated and the underclass can get. It's a profession-al army. If another marine holds an umbrella over the President, will Fox news call them the Praetorian Guard? Will the Fox News readers even know what the Praetorian Guard was?

 

I dislike the world we got, for which the honored dead allegedly fought. There is no real depth to it, it's a plastic chain store corrupted cartoon version of the American Dream. Which we once tried to sell as part of our presence in that miserable war in Vietnam. There was a summer movie I saw with friends here in Brattleboro the summer before I moved here called, "Forrest Gump". When the movie was over, one could have easily thought we'd won in Vietnam. A friend who was with me leaned against the Latchis' old outdoor box office and said, "We're getting ready for war again, aren't we?" Is that the real American Dream?

 

 

Over the years, I've made my peace with this day. I memorialize the very honored dead who fought the wars of government. Wars against evil. Wars of conquest. Wars of expansion and corruption. Wars of greedily grasping corporations hungry for oil. I also honor those who fought and those who died in our other wars. Economic Wars - the fight for the 8 hour workday, the end of child labor, the minimum wage, the end of hunger, health care. There are martyrs there too, non-military soldiers who fought on at the Haymarket, at the Hoovervilles, at the mills. Not all were killed - Inez Milholland collapsed and died of pernicious anemia at the age of 30 while giving a speech. Her last words were, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?" That was in 1916. And then there is Charlie Howard, who has been forgotten. He was killed, martyred, in the late 1980's in Bangor, Maine by teenagers who threw him over a bridge into a river because he was gay and walking alongside his boyfriend. He was 23 years old. Or Matthew Shepherd who was literally crucified on a split rail fence because he was gay. Or any of the unknown soldiers of this nasty little war - did you miss the news story in April of three teens who were tortured and killed at a "camp" to turn them into "men"? Oh, that's right the camp was in South Africa, so who cares? Who cares about the gay dead in Uganda and the gay dead and women dead in various Muslim countries? Who cares about Bradley Manning? It's been a long war, this war for simple human dignity. Times are changing. They always are. But now there's a President who is African American, women have rights if not yet equal pay, and there is a tv show with two main characters who are gay male teenagers who kissed right there in front of all America. Imagine. And so, on Memorial Day, the soldiers whose memory I honor are more varied than most might accept. The world, the changes, the Dream they fought and died for wasn't and isn't a plastic cartoon. These are the people I choose to remember. These are the soldiers I honor.

 

Requiescat in Pace.



 



Emma Smith

April the 3rd was a Tuesday that year. The banks had been closed the day before as part of Easter Holiday. People had a little extra money on them. It was an old neighborhood, the large houses the main remnant of the days when it had been fashionable. The French who had built them had moved out to the country. The Irish had come, and then the Jews. The jobs had gone. The big old houses built by and for wealthy merchants had been carved up into rooms.

In the early hours of the morning, Emma Elizabeth Smith was assaulted and robbed on the corner of Osborn Street and Brick Lane. No one knew much about her. There was something in the way she talked that hinted at a cultured and educated life; she might have once been well off. Someone said that she had two children, a son and a daughter who lived in another part of town. Even though she had been injured, she managed to walk the block to her rooming house at 18 George Street. She told Mary Russell that she had been attacked by three men, one a teenager. With the help of another tenant, Annie Lee, Russell took Smith to hospital where she was treated by surgeon George Haslip. Smith fell into a coma and died the next morning.

Two days went by before the police were notified. At the inquest, Dr. G. H. Hiller found that she had  been brutally raped  with a blunt object which ruptured several internal organs. The police report described her clothing as being comprised of rags so dirty that it was impossible to tell if there had been fresh tears in them. The official cause of death was listed as peritonitis. The police investigation noted that though she was poor and friendless, every effort was taken to find her assailant. Smith and been a prostitute. She was most likely attacked by her pimp or a gang of pimps as intimidation or for refusing to follow orders, they decided.

Several months later detective Walter Dew developed another theory. On the 7th of August, the day after another bank holiday, Martha Tabram was murdered in the same neighborhood. She was a prostitute and had been stabbed many times. At the end of that month, Mary Ann Nichols was murdered. A reporter from the Star may have talked to Walter Dew for the paper soon began to note theories similar to his: all three women had been prostitutes, all in their mid 40's, all from the same area, their murders thought to be the work of gangs of pimps. Perhaps the deaths were the work of the same person.

It was 1888, and in the slums of London, the legend of Jack the Ripper was born.

The Times they are

In 1963, Bob Dylan wrote a song that I think he first performed publicly the day after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It became an anthem of my youth, just as I entered into my teens.

"Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone..."

Last night, the American People returned Barack Obama to the Presidency.
As I just explained in my last post, I am not an Obama guy.
But I find tears of joy welling up in my eyes nonetheless.
And it isn't because we dodged what I fear was the Romney bullet.
It is because a huge portion of my country rejected fear, which in my view was the hidden power behind Republican positions - the fear of change chief among them.

When Dylan wrote that song, the idea of a black American president was close to ludicrous.
But times have changed.

Last night, at least two states voted to allow gay folks to marry.
One of those states, Maine, can not be called a liberal bastion - its Governor is a Republican. Since 1815,  it has had only two US Senators who were Democrats, the last in the 1970's.
When Dylan wrote that song, being publicly identified as homosexual was enough to get one fired and/or evicted from one's home. And killed. I well remember one of the "men's magazines" from those days that my brother kept hidden in his closet, the kind of pulp trash that featured uniformed nazis torturing blond women on its cover, which had a photo expose of the men who visited Fire Island. The pictures, taken at a distance, had the men's faces covered with black squares. Last night, not only was the first openly gay when running for office candidate for US Senator elected, the subject was not an issue in her campaign.

Last night, for the first time I can remember, citizens of at least two different states voted to allow the use of marijuana - and not just for medicinal purposes. If this can become a national movement, we would cut our prison costs and populations dramatically.  And that is just a start, but that is a topic for another day.

Last night, the American People stood up to conservative religious bullying and defeated a mindset that holds women to be subservient to men. It is with great happiness that I note that the men who made incredibly ludicrous statements about rape and pregnancy were defeated.

If Obama holds true to his promise to get us out of Afghanistan (and that target date is too far away to suit me) the US will end over a decade of having our armies and our National Guard (who should not have been used for such purposes) entangled in foreign wars.

I could go on, but I have to go off to work, and I think I've made my point.

Last night the people of the United States voted to resume the changes started in the 1960's, when it became important to our people to begin to live up to the fine words and ideals expressed in the opening lines of our Declaration of Independence, that -all- of us are created equal and are endowed with rights. I'm no longer a freshly minted teenager, I'm 62 now. It has been 50 years to get here, far too long. For now, I'm setting aside the pattern of "red versus blue" states and what that means, I'm setting aside the obscene cost of this election and what could have been accomplished with that kind of money. I'm setting aside the frustration I felt yesterday listening to young adults state that they weren't voting or had no time to vote. No, for now, for just a short bit, I'm going to savor those tears welling up in my eyes. And I'll be humming an old Bob Dylan song to myself all day.

In order to form a more perfect - say what?

Continuing on from yesterday's post... this was going to be illustrated, but I've decided against that choice - it is really just distraction from what I want to say.

Okay, so here's the thing. I'm not an Obama guy. I voted for him last time, which I think (just off the top of my head) is the first time I ever voted for the winning candidate. But while the Obama administration has done a number of good things, there are a number of missteps and mistakes that are galling.

Obama may tout his first day in office signing of the Lilly Ledbetter act, but it was passed by Congress before he took office and really doesn't do anything to make certain that women receive pay equal to men in the same job. What it does do is extend the period of time in which women have the right to sue over such a situation. Provided they can find out about it. Then again, guys going for a job don't necessarily get paid the same starting salary as the guy before them either. Companies expect to hire cheaper. They expect the applicant to name a salary range, but they want to get by without mentioning what they are offering. The potential employee is at a disadvantage - the employer controls the information to keep an upper hand. Why not just do away with such nonsense and state upfront the salary range the employer expects to pay for the job without regard to sex, race & etc?

Obama did not close the facility at Guantanamo Bay as promised. Its use as a torture prison by the Bush administration, along with the policies exemplified by it, further sullied the reputation of this country. It is a symbol of what went wrong, of America itself gone wrong, and it needs to be closed and dismantled or burned to the ground - Publicly - for everyone to see. The terrorists held there have no rights. This country was based on having equal civil rights. It may seem odd to give such guarantees of treatment to those who wish to kill us but we need to do it - we need to live by our ideals - they apply to everyone, not an anointed few. These were the ideals for which we stood, and for which we  let ourselves, our neighbors, and our children die in wars foreign and domestic. They mean something, dammit.

The Obama administration had majorities in both houses but was unable to pass a decent Health Care bill. The administration settled for a bastardized piece of legislation that will prove a boon to the insurance companies which helped create the problems we have with our healthcare system in the first place. They say it's a decent first step. Yeah, sure. This situation will not be resolved until part of the expense of healthcare is removed from the employer, who offers a lesser salary in order to pay it. Healthcare should not be tied to one's job. Certainly, in my low wage case, I paid a larger weekly sum for healthcare than the contribution required of my employer. Just like most other people I know, my portion, with its sizable deduction, left me unable to afford to use my coverage to go see a doctor or to purchase many of the medications I had been taking before I took that low wage job out of necessity. My weekly deduction would have served me better if it had been pooled into universal coverage. The Republicans claim that such a move would financially destroy the country, yet it hasn't destroyed all the other countries which adopted such a system as noted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in the post World War II environment. (The United States has never signed that portion of the Declaration.) European countries afforded it while rebuilding after the destruction of war.

At the time of Obama's inauguration, the Republicans said upfront that they intended to stonewall his administration's legislation, and to do everything they could to make certain that he failed the country and become a one term president. And they delivered on their promise. They don't care about our lives. Yet Obama has never publicly taken them on, never used what was once called the "bully pulpit" to hoist the other rich bastards on their own petard. He should have used this situation to campaign, and lent the support of his person and office to Democrats, Independents, and Republicans willing to compromise who are running for the House and Congress. We don't need a passive aggressive President. We need a fighter, and a Leader.

I could go on, and I was prepared to, but there really isn't much point in it. People seem to think that Obama is some kind of populist President. He is not.  Most people who think this do so because the republicans and their o&o (owned and operated) media told them so. It is uncritical acceptance of an untruth as truth. He didn't start the bank bailouts, but he did administer them, and created and oversaw others. It should be noted that the work he did with the automotive industry was not a bailout, it was a bridge loan. The bailouts were probably necessary, and followed the system set up in the eerily similar Swedish banking crisis of 1991 brought on by the collapse of their housing/real estate markets engineered by speculators. The important thing here is that the Banks got bailed out. The mortgage companies got bailed out. The people did not. Most of the people who owned real estate were middle class. Obama, in his original campaign, talked a lot about the middle class. Too bad he didn't do much about it. In those campaigns, he did not talk about the poor. He barely mentioned the poor this time around. No one talks about the poor anymore except the poor. And Bernie Sanders. Under Obama, Wall Street came back and is enjoying record profits. Which means that the rich, and the corporations, oil companies, and etc. are doing very, very well. The big companies get to take out big loans through the non-government bank called the Federal Reserve  - loans backed by the government using our taxes - at 0% interest. When did we the people who pay the bills get that kind of service? The money the people lost (including pensions and retirement savings) in the banking crisis just "disappeared". That is mostly fiction. It was stolen. We were mugged, just not in a dark alley. Mr. Obama has continued many of the polices that created this situation, just as he has continued Guantanamo Bay, the onerous Homeland Security laws and etc. Do you really think that the financial crisis that came close to destroying us just happened? Do you think that Banks didn't learn anything from the Great Depression? Or the similar situation in Sweden in 1991 that was resolved by government bailouts? This crisis was less an accident than a managed event.

And the really sad thing is that none of this is new. It is a cycle that has repeated many, many times - and not just in the United States. This is the way things work. We pay taxes for services - most services are local - water, sewer, streets cleaned, etc. The larger share of taxes go to the government - for what? Only a small pittance goes to the arts, to education, to parks & etc. We are never asked how, or on what, we want our taxes spent. Why not healthcare? One thing I always adored about my country is that our forefathers chose the name United States. The initials read "us". It hasn't ever really been all of "us" now, has it? The rich and super rich are the 1%, the 5% or whatever. We outnumber them. We pay them to take care of things, but all they really do is take. It is time we demand more. Not request. Demand. Today is Guy Fawkes day. It used to be common to burn effigies of the disliked ruling classes on this day. We need to do more than burn effigies.

So why vote, and why vote for Obama? Because if you vote for the Republican candidate, things will get worse. Much worse. The republicans will use religion and morals (which they themselves do not follow) to make our lives completely miserable. The real reason they do this is to keep us busy trying to survive, and to distract us from the other things they are doing, like stealing everything they can.  I don't know about you, but with my meager income, I pay taxes. Money is taken out of my check. The government uses it without paying interest. I get a portion of it back as a refund - but by no means do I get the full amount back. Yet the Republican candidate states that 47% of the people of this country simply drain off the treasury, meaning the lesser than working men and women amount they put into the kitty. We work. We pay taxes. They stole our money, and they go unpunished. In voting for a President in this country, what you are really doing is voting for a philosophy. Do we the people want an almost illusory chance to move up the economic ladder, a chance to have a little trickle down to help our lives (acquired after the riots of the past), and a few paltry civil rights to attempt to live our lives with a modicum of dignity; or do we want to become serfs to the ruling classes which own the majority shares of the corporations in one giant company town? That's the choice we really have.

A note from the universe

 







Happy Birthday, Lady.
        
                 
                   

What Becomes A Legend Most?

This has been one of those weeks. The grippe has had me in its clutches. (Grippe is a good word, it hasn't been used in a long while, and vividly describes this cold or flu from a place I certainly hope is mythologically based, as I'm certainly headed there based on the precepts of various religions.) There has also been a mad rush of work to help get our local Community Radio Station, WVEW back on the air before we lose our license. More about that next week.

Mentioning religion is appropriate, as this is Easter Week. I've been trying to find time to write about my favorite Big Religious Epic movies. I still hope to do that, by the way. At the moment, all that is being set aside. As it turns out, today is Bette Davis' birthday.

As a kid growing up in a small town in the 1950's and 1960s, you couldn't get me to watch a Bette Davis or Joan Crawford movie. I just wasn't interested in "weepers". But one blessed day, when I was about 18 years old, Betty Black came into my life. She was from a wealthy Philadelphia area family, and was one of the most fun women I knew. We hung out together for awhile when I was living in Ocean City, New Jersey.

One day she found out that I had never seen a Bette Davis movie. She insisted that I correct the situation, and threatened to tie me to a chair if that's what it took to get me to do so. We watched my first Bette Davis movie on tv in the little house off the alley that I used to rent. (A tiny little cottage, I used to say that it looked like a doll's house, noting that every time I slammed the door it was the beginning of modern theatre.) We watched Now, Voyager. Davis morphs from frumpy maiden aunt into a fashionable socialite, and ends up taking care of the child of the man she loves but can't marry. "Let's not ask for the moon - we have the stars!" Good God, what an overwrought, over the top, silly, unrealistic, and absolutely wonderful movie. A few years later, it would be the third 16mm sound feature to enter my film collection.

Ms. Davis as Charlotte Vale, of the Boston Vales (one of the lesser ones), with Paul Henreid in "Now, Voyager".

I remember once I was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I don't remember if I was in the city on a visit, or if I had already moved there (which would make it after November 1972). What I do remember is that they were showing a Bette Davis movie that day. The movie was "Dark Victory".

In it, a young heiress goes through the hell of accidentally discovering that she's "Prognosis Negative" - with an unspecified fatal disease.She still marries her doctor beau George Brent, flirts with stable hand Humphrey Bogart ("Are you afraid to burn, Michael? Are You afraid to die?", "What a relief to know that you're no better than I am.") and  moves to the country. At one point she and the hubby prepare to pick up a friend arriving at the local train station in Brattleboro, Vermont. After more exquisite suffering, she goes blind while gardening, packs her husband off to an important conference while pretending that nothing is wrong, lays down on a bed and closes her eyes forever as the angels sing. I'm not kidding. As the audience left the auditorium, I noted that a group of black high school kids had been in attendance. One of the boys made fun of the story. His girlfriend upbraided him on the spot, "Don't you have any feelings?", she asked through tears. Here was a black teenager, 30 years and a world away from the one which created this movie, who had become totally invested in the story. As had her girlfriends. Such is the power of a Bette Davis movie.


Davis had an incredible career, full of famous moments, iconic performances, and fights with the studio system. She co-founded the Hollywood Canteen, a popular club and service organization for the soldiers of WWII. She was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (whose most public work is in giving out the "Oscars" - which she named, by the way, when she noted that the statuette's backside reminded her of her husband's). She would win the award twice, and be nominated 10 times. Over the years, she changed the way Hollywood worked, went from ingenue to respected box office actress, fell out of favor when movie styles changed, and reemerged in now classic low budget horrors like "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane". She probably had more well known quotable lines that any other performer in the business. And she has provided me with a great deal of entertainment pleasure.

From the opening scene (really!) of "The Letter".

Actress Bette Davis signs autographs at a Vermont War Bond rally.

"What a dump!" from "Beyond the Forest".

A theatre poster featuring her character in "All About Eve".

"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night."

"Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies."

"The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"

"Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition."

"With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn't consider dying."

 Thank You, and Happy Birthday, Ms. Davis. (And Thank You, Betty Black!)

Have you heard the news, there's good rockin' tonight

Well.
The news is out, Dick Cheney has had a heart transplant.
My guess is that it won't help.
Considering how few people get heart transplants, out of a waiting list of thousands, I don't think it untoward to ask what part money, power and influence had in getting him a heart.  Especially when
there really isn't anything in that black bag for the rest of us.The rest of us includes anyone without healthcare, anyone struggling to make their bills due to the cost of healthcare, and etcetera.  The Health Care legislation that was the first priority of the Obama presidency, is about to have a hearing before the Supreme Court of the United States to determine if it is legal. The bill requires every citizen to have healthcare insurance, or to pay a penalty if not. It is based on a similar bill passed in the state of Massachusetts when Presidential wanna-be Mitt Romney was governor. The bill does not say how one is to afford the cost of such insurance. The bill does not create a low cost National Insurance policy. It does create business, and lots of it, for the insurance companies, who were big financial backers of Mr. Obama's campaign for the Presidency. And the rich get richer.

Speaking of the elite and reactions against them, the folks behind the "Occupy" movements (at least I think it is them) have called for a national/international strike on May the 1st. Mayday. A term with more than one implication.

Meanwhile, down in Florida, the case of the black teenager who was gunned down dead has stoked a new fire this time of righteous anger, and brought up old resentments. The usual suspects, leaders quick to find the closest network camera, were a little slow on the uptake, but are now busy fanning the flames. Protests are growing. So is an insane and reprehensible response as in this graphic found on Facebook:

Also found were claims that this skinny 17 year old was seen on top of the much heavier shooter as he was beating the shooter with his fists. And that the voice crying out in pain or fear on the tape of the 911 call was actually the shooter, not the dying 17 year old. Which doesn't explain why there is a witness who says that they saw the 17 year old, face down on the ground, with the shooter on top of the kid, knee pressed into the kid's back. The shooter only moved away when he realized there was a witness. The kid was found face down on the ground when the police got there, by the way. People are also pointing out media "bias", not just by using a 'less threatening' picture of the kid at 14, but in using a mugshot of the shooter. And there is a report that a new version of what was represented as the Black Panther party has offered a $10,000.00 reward for the capture and arrest of the shooter, who has gone into hiding.

The Associated Press reported last week that it is becoming commonplace for prospective employers to demand job seeker's passwords to their Facebook accounts so the prospective employer can rummage around in the job seeker's personal life. If denied their request, some prospective employers then ask the job seeker to "friend" the employers' personnel department, which gives access to anything someone might have restricted from mass availability viewing to just their 'friends'..

This past week, a Supreme Court decision found that workers in government jobs (federal or state) can not cite the Family and Medical Leave Act in lawsuits against their public employers. This means that anyone needing medical leave - or pregnancy or childbirth leave - has no recourse if they are then dismissed from their jobs. And, as a case which came up a couple of weeks ago in New Mexico made evident, there doesn't seem to be any protections from teachers publicly humiliating an 8th grade student for being pregnant and kicking her out of school.

How much more can or will people take? Especially when the flames are being fanned by the self righteous? We must understand that there is a war on in the United States. It is most definitely a class war. Over the last several years, we have had an economic restructuring which reduced the size of the middle class while enlarging the size of the poor and underclass. There are now more workers available for desperation wages, and the pool of National Guard soldiers and potential volunteer army recruits is larger for those bigger and better wars to come. I guess that's better than having so many folks forever on the public dole. Speaking of which, in 2011, around 36 states had some form of proposed legislation requiring any person receiving any form of public assistance to undergo drug testing. Better have a prescription for that pill there. If you smoke a little pot (which leaves a little traceable residual chemical something in your body for several months after smoking), no food stamps for you.
Forget assistance you out of work mothers of fatherless children. 

Silly sheeple - drugs, and their use, are for the rich who can afford them. 

On New Year's Eve 2011, at 9pm or so (when there would be little notice taken) , President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act. It authorizes $662 Billion Dollars (I guess they were worried about the deficit) for the defense of the country at home and abroad. This includes the arrest and military detention of any US citizen - without charge or trial - if suspected of terrorist leanings. That part really isn't new, it goes back to the 2001 version if I remember correctly. But I think the part including arrests of citizens on US soil is new. There doesn't seem to be a part where what constitutes proper terror accusations are clearly defined. To a bank, say one of the banks bailed out at taxpayer expense, protesters demanding repayment of the government 'loan', or maybe the jailing of thieving executives, could be terrorism interfering in the country's business. When the President signed the act, he also released a lengthy signing statement disagreeing with provisions in it. But he still signed it. A few days ago, on March the 16th, he also signed the National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order of 2012. It's an update of what is allowed in times of National Emergency, which has been around since pre WWII days. Most presidents have updated it. One of the changes is that the responsibility for many of its provisions have changed from FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) to National Security agencies - like the Department of Defense, as well as the Secretaries of the Department of Commerce, of Transportation, of Agriculture, of Energy, and of Health and Human Services. So, what does all this mean? Not much. Unless there is war with Iran. Or North Korea. Or disturbances with civil unrest here at home. I wonder if that includes protests over a dead teenager, Mayday strikes, or demands to treat women as something other than chattel?

This post had been intended to be a reminiscence of the country wide Moratoriums against the Vietnam War in which I participated in the late 1960's, contrasted with the hopeful signs of mass protests and the call for Mayday 2012 strikes.  Like so many things today, things got a little out of hand. I started thinking, and I should have known better. Thinking, say, about all the unused trailers in camps FEMA has sitting in out of the way (i.e.otherwise inhospitable to human life and human habitation?) locations. And how it seems like forces are pushing the country to huge mass protests, which God (whose, one wonders?) knows are needed for various reasons. And how these executive orders are there for use by any president of any party, those currently in power, or those yet to be elected. I shouldn't think about these things, I guess. Because then I begin to wonder how long it will be before a leader of the people, not of the government, gets openly assassinated and turned into a martyr.
Or Poland gets annexed.

When good people do nothing

Now it's happening in Idaho. A bill has just passed that state's Senate which would force a woman seeking an abortion to undergo and view an ultrasound before proceeding with the operation. Idaho is one of ten states actively working on such legislation. Eight states have already passed such laws. (Click here for a link to the Guttmacher list of states and their requirements) In Virginia, a new law soon to take effect originally called for a "transvaginal" insertion of a 10 inch sonogram device. Doonesbury creator Gary Trudeau dubbed it the "Shaming Wand". Alabama and Pennsylvania are currently considering this practice as part of their proposed legislation.

In the United States, abortion has been legal since 1972's Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision. Since that day, there has been a growing and dangerous attempt to divide this country along politically religious lines. Unable to overturn the law, the religious have resorted to everything from outright murder of abortion providers (rather ironic for a group which refers to itself as "pro-life"), bombings of abortion clinics, to insane, belittling and costly laws such as these. The people behind these laws bemoan what they see as government intrusion into their lives (again missing the irony of their advocacy). They are the conservative right. They are Tea Party members. They are candidates for the Presidency of the United States. And they insist on having their way. It does not, and will not, stop at abortion. Their arguments justify laws against gay people, people of other faiths, immigrants, and basically anyone who doesn't believe as they do. They are the mentality that makes up the Taliban.

If that seems like an outrageous statement, let me note a couple of things. Lets take a quick look at Iraq. Remember Iraq? The country we invaded because the no longer loyal to US dictator had allegedly acquired weapons of mass destruction and had some tenuous connection to the events of Sept 11th, 2001? After the US invaded, Iraq saw the rise of extremely conservative religious movements. In the last few weeks, according to news stories which lasted in the public eye for oh, about 15 minutes, it was reported that in Baghdad's conservative Sadr City district, teenagers and young adults who adopted what is labelled the "emo" lifestyle (a form of rebellion which includes having longish hair and wearing black clothes) are being killed at an alarming rate. About 60 dead in the last six weeks. Read that again - 60 - sixty - dead in six weeks. That's just the ones we know about, in one area of one city. There are pictures, but they are too disturbing to publish here. With one exception, the dead "emo" loving youth were perceived as being gay men. Lists appear as warning to the named targeted individuals to change their ways. Here's a typical message:

"We warn in the strongest terms to every male and female debauchee," the Shiite militia hit list says. "If you do not stop this dirty act within four days, then the punishment of God will fall on you at the hands of Mujahideen."

When found, the victim's heads are smashed in with cinder blocks. After they are tortured. Ever so much more effective than a shaming wand. Oh, by the way, seven of the dead were simply shot. No arrests have been made.

The best known modern Mujahideen came into being in Afghanistan in the late 1970's, as guerrilla fighters against the Soviet Occupation. Financed and trained by, among others, the United States, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, and various Europeans. Ronald Reagan called them "freedom fighters". As the various mujahideen groups fought each other in Afghanistan's civil war, a Pakistani backed mujahideen group headed by mullah Mohammed Omar seized control of that country. They became known as the Taliban.

Of course, you say, such extreme actions and government can't happen here. In that case, you might want to know about the problem of teenage suicides in now withdrawn Presidential contender Congresswoman Michelle Bachman's home state. Nine kids have killed themselves in one school district in two years. Bachman's conservative evangelical supporters passed laws which restricted any discussion of gay issues. The dead teens were gay, or bullied because they were perceived to be gay. There was not one adult at their schools they could turn to. A supportive teacher could, after all, be fired. There is no law protecting them. In these schools, gay-straight alliances were labelled "sex clubs". I'm not making this up. Click here for an article in Mother Jones, and click here for an article in the February 2012 issue of Rolling Stone.

I could go on and on, but I won't. How do these people keep getting elected and getting their laws passed? They are not the majority. They have taken over because no one else wants to get involved in the day to day business of government under the media glare and conditions which have been prevalent for quite some time now. No one seems willing to stand up to them - especially when one considers that their demands are often crazily out of kilter with the way Americans live their lives in the here and now. And so they win, because every day good people do nothing.

Meanwhile, in the insanity haven known as Broward County, Florida (home of the last stand of the hanging chad which helped give you George W. Bush president) 14 members of a law firm were fired Friday for wearing orange shirts. They wanted to be identified as a group at their after work happy hour held at a local cocktail lounge. The law firm said that there was a rumor they were protesting something (unspecified at this point). The employees have no legal protection, Florida is a "right to work" state.

It was also in Florida that a black teenager, on the way home  from a store where he bought his younger brother a package of candy, was shot and killed in his gated community by an Hispanic wanna-be cop vigilante who had been told by police to cease pursuing the young man whom he found "suspicious". In his cell phone call, the shooter is heard to refer to "fucking coons". This man has been claiming that he shot the teenager (armed with a pack of Skittles) in self-defense. No arrests have been made. (I've heard that phrase before.) In just a few minutes, the Justice Department is scheduled to announce that they are stepping into the more than 3 week old case.

Rick Santorum, religous conservative candidate for US President, recently announced that he was "sickened" by John F. Kennedy's assertion that as President, he would put his Catholic faith aside when governing. At the time, Kennedy had been accused of potentially taking orders from the Pope. He clarified that he would be the President of all the people, not just Catholics. Rick Santorum may have been sickened at the time, but it would have been because he was two years old and probably choking on his own bile. Yesterday, Santorum noted that unemployment and the economy were not his issues for this campaign. His issue, along with stamping out pornography, is "freedom". The quote: “We need a candidate who's going to be a fighter for freedom." Freedom fighters. I've heard that term before, too.

The Kid Sister

Today is Marion Hutton's birthday. Most folks have probably never heard of her. For the elders among us, she probably sparks an uncertain memory. Her kid sister, Betty Hutton, became a fairly well known movie star in the mid to late 1940's and early 1950's.

When both girls were very young, their father abandoned his family for another woman, eventually ending his life a suicide. Their mother struggled to make ends meet until she found a career as a bootlegger. The sisters found work singing with the Vincent Lopez Orchestra. And then one day, Glen Miller found her and hired her as the girl singer for his band. She was 17 at the time. Miller and his wife Helen became Marion's legal guardian and foster parents.

Glenn Miller and Marion Hutton

At first, Miller wanted her to be billed as "Sissy Jones", thinking it enhanced her girl next door qualities. It lasted one night before she rebelled. The story may be apocryphal - her sister Betty was said to have appeared under the name once, too. The band called her by many names: The Kid, Kid Sister, Goldilocks, the Brat, the Whack, Tootsie-roll, the Dopey Duchess. The guys were, however, very protective of her. Even though she was so young and  the only female on the tour bus, she never had any problems with the guys. They saw to that, keeping each other in line.  I once heard that she could beat them all at shooting craps.

Here's the Miller band from one of their two movies, Orchestra Wives. Marion is the vivacious blond who can be seen singing with the Modernaires, backing Tex Beneke's vocal. Sadly, there is no footage of her singing any of her big hits with the Miller band (i.e. I Want a Hat With Cherries, The Jumpin' Jive, etc.) Although Marion is only briefly seen, one can get an idea of the sheer fun she must have projected onstage. This is the complete number - in early experimental movie stereo! (Thank You Daryl Zanuck.) Be sure to click the full screen option on the YouTube window before the Nicholas Brothers start dancing (in a sequence carefully placed so that it could be cut from use in theaters in the Southern U.S.).
   



     

Marion didn't have the best voice, but she made up for it with spunk and verve. In later years, she noted that she'd never thought of herself as a singer - she thought herself more of an entertainer. She was enormously popular with audiences (for many years, she was more popular than her sister), and stayed with the band through it's final performance in September 1942 when Miller dissolved the band to go into the army. She then went on tour with Tex and the Modernaires, landed a few small roles in movies, and after a few years faded from public view, more interested in starting a family than in having a career. In 1947, she married her third husband, Vic Schoen, a bandleader and arranger for the Andrews Sistrers, Bing Crosby, and most of the top names in the business.
   

The Modernaires surround Marion. Glenn Miller is seated going over the band's arrangements.
     

In the mid 1960's, Marion began treatment for various addictions, went to college and earned two degrees in psychology. She and Vic joined AA, and founded a drug and alcohol treatment center in the state of Washington called Residence XII. They perfomed together in numerous concerts to raise funds for the center. It was one of the first treatment programs specifically targeted to women.

Her sister Betty also suffered addiction problems, and attempted suicide after losing her voice. Betty regained control of her life through the help of a Catholic priest, and made national headlines in the 1970's when she was discovered working as a dishwasher in a rectory in Rhode Island. She followed in her older sister's footsteps and went to college, earning a master's degree in psychology.

In 1987, Marion, still married to Vic, succumbed to cancer. Residence XII still exists and still serves women with addiction problems. Their website is not linked here, as they don't even mention Marion Hutton, their founder who was once America's kid sister.