Authors: Glenn O'Brien
I’d listen to a lot of jazz and bebop records, too. Records by George Russell or Johnny Coles, Red Garland, Don Byas, Roland Kirk, Gil Evans—Evans had recorded a rendition of “Ella Speed,” the Leadbelly song. I tried to discern melodies and structures. There were a lot of similarities between some kinds of jazz and folk music. “Tattoo Bride,” “A Drum Is a Woman,” “Tourist Point of View” and “Jump for Joy”—all by Duke Ellington—they sounded like sophisticated folk music. The music world was getting bigger every day. There were records by Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Art Farmer and amazing ones by Charlie Christian and Benny Goodman. If I needed to wake up real quick, I’d put on “Swing Low Sweet Cadillac” or “Umbrella Man” by Dizzy Gillespie. “Hot House” by Charlie Parker was a good record to wake up to. There were a few souls around who had heard and seen Parker play and it seemed like he had transmitted some secret essence of life to them. “Ruby, My Dear” by Monk was another one. Monk played at the Blue Note on 3rd Street with John Ore on bass and the drummer Frankie Dunlop.
Sometimes he’d be in there in the afternoon sitting at the piano all alone playing stuff that sounded like Ivory Joe Hunter—a big half-eaten sandwich left on top of his piano. I dropped in there once in the afternoon, just to listen—told him that I played folk music up the street. “We all play folk music,” he said. Monk was in his own dynamic universe even when he dawdled around. Even then, he summoned magic shadows into being.
I liked modern jazz a lot, liked to listen to it in the clubs . . . but I didn’t follow it and I wasn’t caught up in it. There weren’t any ordinary words with specific meanings, and I needed to hear things plain and simple in the King’s English, and folk songs are what spoke to
me most directly. Tony Bennett sang in the King’s English and one of his records was laying around—the one called
Hit Songs of Tony Bennett
, which had “In the Middle of an Island,” “Rags to Riches” and the Hank Williams song “Cold, Cold Heart.”
The first time I heard Hank he was singing on the
Grand Ole Opry
, a Saturday night radio show broadcast out of Nashville. Roy Acuff, who MC’d the program, was referred to by the announcer as “The King of Country Music.” Someone would always be introduced as “the next governor of Tennessee” and the show advertised dog food and sold plans for old-age pensions. Hank sang “Move It On Over,” a song about living in the doghouse and it struck me really funny. He also sang spirituals like “When God Comes and Gathers His Jewels” and “Are You Walking and a-Talking for the Lord.” The sound of his voice went through me like an electric rod and I managed to get a hold of a few of his 78s—“Baby, We’re Really in Love” and “Honky Tonkin’” and “Lost Highway”—and I played them endlessly.
They called him a “hillbilly singer,” but I didn’t know what that was. Homer and Jethro were more like what I thought a hillbilly was. Hank was no burr head. There was nothing clownish about him. Even at a young age, I identified fully with him. I didn’t have to experience anything that Hank did to know what he was singing about. I’d never seen a robin weep, but could imagine it and it made me sad. When he sang “the news is out all over town,” I knew what news that was, even though I didn’t know. The first chance I got, I was going to go to the dance and wear out my shoes, too. I’d learn later that Hank had died in the backseat of a car on New Year’s Day, kept my fingers crossed, hoped it wasn’t true. But it was true. It was like a great tree had fallen. Hearing about Hank’s death caught me squarely on the shoulder. The silence of outer space never seemed so loud. Intuitively I knew, though, that his voice would never drop out of sight or fade away—a voice like a beautiful horn.
Much later, I’d discover that Hank had been in tremendous pain all his life, suffered from severe spinal problems—that the pain must have been torturous. In light of that, it’s all the more astonishing to
hear his records. It’s almost like he defied the laws of gravity. The
Luke the Drifter
record, I just about wore out. That’s the one where he sings and recites parables, like the Beatitudes. I could listen to the
Luke the Drifter
record all day and drift away from myself, become totally convinced in the goodness of man. When I hear Hank sing, all movement ceases. The slightest whisper seems sacrilege.
In time, I became aware that in Hank’s recorded songs were the archetype rules of poetic songwriting. The architectural forms are like marble pillars and they had to be there. Even his words—all of his syllables are divided up so they make perfect mathematical sense. You can learn a lot about the structure of songwriting by listening to his records, and I listened to them a lot and had them internalized. In a few years’ time, Robert Shelton, the folk and jazz critic for the
New York Times
, would review one of my performances and would say something like, “resembling a cross between a choirboy and a beatnik . . . he breaks all the rules in songwriting, except that of having something to say.” The rules, whether Shelton knew it or not, were Hank’s rules, but it wasn’t like I ever meant to break them. It’s just that what I was trying to express was beyond the circle.
O
NE
NIGHT
,
Albert Grossman, the manager of Odetta and Bob Gibson, came into the Gaslight to talk to Van Ronk. Whenever he came in, you couldn’t help but notice him. He looked like Sidney Greenstreet from
The Maltese Falcon
, had an enormous presence, dressed always in a conventional suit and tie, and he sat at a corner table. Usually when he talked, his voice was loud, like the booming of war drums. He didn’t talk so much as growl. Grossman was from Chicago, had a non-show business background but didn’t let that stand in his way. Not your usual shopkeeper, he had owned a nightclub in the Windy City and had to deal with district bosses and various fixes and ordinances and carried a .45. Grossman was no hayseed. Van Ronk told me later that Grossman had discussed with him the possibility of Dave playing in a new super folk group that he was putting together. Grossman had no illusions or doubts that the group was going to go straight to the top, be immensely popular.
Eventually, Dave passed on the opportunity. It wasn’t his cup of tea, but Noel Stookey would accept the offer. Grossman changed Stookey’s name to Paul and the group that Grossman had created was Peter, Paul and Mary. I had met Peter earlier back in Minneapolis when he was the guitarist for a dance troupe that came through town, and I’d known Mary ever since I first got into the Village.
It would have been interesting if Grossman had asked me to be in the group. I would have had to change my name to Paul, too. Grossman did hear me play from time to time, but I didn’t know what he made of me. It was premature for that anyway. I wasn’t yet the poet musician that I would become, Grossman couldn’t get behind me just yet. He would, though.
I
WOKE
up around midday to the smell of frying steak and onions on a gas burner. Chloe was standing over the stove and the pan was sizzling. She wore a Japanese kimono over a red flannel shirt, and the smell was assaulting my nostrils. I felt like I needed a face mask.
I had planned to go see Woody Guthrie earlier, but when I woke up the weather was too stormy. I had tried to visit Woody regularly, but now it was getting harder to do. Woody had been confined to Greystone Hospital in Morristown, New Jersey, and I would usually take the bus there from the Port Authority terminal, make the hour-and-a-half ride and then walk the rest of the half mile up the hill to the hospital, a gloomy and threatening granite building—looked like a medieval fortress. Woody always asked me to bring him cigarettes, Raleigh cigarettes. Usually I’d play him his songs during the afternoon. Sometimes he’d ask for specific ones—“Rangers Command,” “Do Re Me,” “Dust Bowl Blues,” “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “Tom Joad,” the song he’d written after seeing the movie
The Grapes of Wrath.
I knew all those songs and many more. Woody was not celebrated at this place, and it was a strange environment to meet anybody, least of all the true voice of the American spirit.
The place was really an asylum with no spiritual hope of any kind. Wailing could be heard in the hallways. Most of the patients wore ill-fitting striped uniforms and they would file in and out walking
aimlessly about while I played Woody songs. One guy’s head would be constantly falling forward on his knees. Then he’d raise up and he would fall forward again. Another guy thought he was being chased by spiders and he twirled in circles, hands slapping his arms and legs. Someone else who imagined he was the president wore an Uncle Sam hat. Patients rolled their eyes, tongues, sniffed the air. One guy, continually licking his lips. An orderly in a white gown told me that the guy eats communists for breakfast. The scene was frightful, but Woody Guthrie was oblivious to all of it. A male nurse would usually bring him out to see me and then after I’d been there a while, would lead him away. The experience was sobering and psychologically draining.
On one of my visits, Woody had told me about some boxes of songs and poems that he had written that had never been seen or set to melodies—that they were stored in the basement of his house in Coney Island and that I was welcome to them. He told me that if I wanted any of them to go see Margie, his wife, explain what I was there for. She’d unpack them for me. He gave me directions on how to find the house.
In the next day or so, I took the subway from the West 4th Street station all the way to the last stop, like he said, in Brooklyn, stepped out on the platform and went hunting for the house. Woody had said it was easy to find. I saw what looked to be a row of houses across a field, the kind he described, and I walked towards it only to discover I was walking out across a swamp. I sunk into the water, knee level, but kept going anyway—I could see the lights as I moved forward, didn’t really see any other way to go. When I came out on the other end, my pants from the knees down were drenched, frozen solid, and my feet almost numb but I found the house and knocked on the door. A babysitter opened it slightly, said that Margie, Woody’s wife, wasn’t there. One of Woody’s kids, Arlo, who would later become a professional singer and songwriter in his own right, told the babysitter to let me in. Arlo was probably about ten or twelve years old and didn’t know anything about any manuscripts locked in the basement.
I didn’t want to push it—the babysitter was uncomfortable, and I stayed just long enough to warm up, said a quick good-bye and left with my boots still waterlogged, trudged back across the swamp to the subway platform.
Forty years later, these lyrics would fall into the hands of Billy Bragg and the group Wilco and they would put melodies to them, bring them to full life and record them. It was all done under the direction of Woody’s daughter Nora. These performers probably weren’t even born when I had made that trip out to Brooklyn.
I wouldn’t be going to see Woody today. I was sitting in Chloe’s kitchen, and the wind was howling and whistling by the window. I could look out on the street and see in both directions. Snow was falling like white dust. Up the street, towards the river, I watched a blonde lady in a fur coat with a guy in a heavy overcoat who walked with a limp. I watched them for a while and then looked over to the calendar on the wall.
March was coming in like a lion and once more I wondered what it would take to get into a recording studio, to get signed by a folk record label—was I getting any closer? “No Happiness for Slater,” a song off The Modern Jazz Quartet’s record, played in the apartment.
One of Chloe’s hobbies was to put fancy buckles on old shoes and she suggested wanting to do it to mine.
“Those clodhoppers could use some buckles,” she said.
I told her, no thanks, I didn’t need any buckles.
She said, “You got forty-eight hours to change your mind.” I wasn’t going to change my mind. Sometimes Chloe tried to give me motherly advice, especially about the opposite sex . . . that people get into their own fixes and not to care about anybody more than they care about themselves. The apartment was a good place to hibernate.
Once I was in the kitchen listening to Malcolm X talking on the radio. He was lecturing on why not to eat pork or ham, said that a pig is actually one third cat, one third rat, one third dog—it’s unclean and you shouldn’t eat it. It’s funny how things stick with you. About ten years later I was having dinner at Johnny Cash’s house outside
of Nashville. There were a lot of songwriters there. Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Harlan Howard, Kris Kristofferson, Mickey Newberry and some others. Joe and Janette Carter were also there. Joe and Janette were the son and daughter of A.P and Sarah Carter and cousins to June Carter, Johnny’s wife. They were like the royalty of country music.
Johnny’s big fireplace was blazing and crackling. After dinner, everybody sat around in the rustic living room with high wooden beams and wide plate-glass windows that overlooked a lake. We sat in a circle and each songwriter would play a song and pass the guitar to the next player. Usually, there’d be comments made like “You really nailed that one.” Or “Yeah, man, you said it all in them few lines.” Or maybe something like “That song’s got a lot of history in it.” Or “You put all yourself into that tune.” Mostly just complimentary stuff. I played “Lay, Lady, Lay” and then I passed the guitar to Graham Nash, anticipating some kind of response. I didn’t have to wait long. “You don’t eat pork, do you?” Joe Carter asked. That was his comment. I waited for a second before replying. “Uh, no sir, I don’t,” I said back. Kristofferson almost swallowed his fork. Joe asked, “Why not?” It’s then that I remembered what Malcolm X had said. “Well, sir, it’s kind of a personal thing. I don’t eat that stuff, no. I don’t eat something that’s one third rat, one third cat and one third dog. It just doesn’t taste right.” There was an awkward momentary silence that you could have cut with one of the knives off the dinner table. Johnny Cash then almost doubled over. Kristofferson just shook his head. Joe Carter was quite a character.
There weren’t any Carter Family records up at the apartment, either. Chloe slapped some steak and onions on my plate and said, “Here, it’s good for you.” She was cool as pie, hip from head to toe, a Maltese kitten, a solid viper—always hit the nail on the head. I don’t know how much weed she smoked, but a lot. She also had her own ideas about the nature of things, told me that death was an impersonator, that birth is an invasion of privacy. What could you say? You couldn’t say anything back when she said stuff like that. It’s not
like you could prove her wrong. New York City didn’t faze her at all. “A bunch of monkeys in this town,” she’d say. Talking to her you’d get the idea right away. I put on my hat and coat, grabbed my guitar and started bundling up. Chloe knew that I was trying to get places. “Maybe someday your name will get around the country like wildfire,” she’d say. “If you ever get a couple of hundred bucks, buy me something.”