Lately I've been writing freelance stories for a publication in Newton, Kan. called Newton Now. It's an upstart paper that started two years ago as an alternative to the official city paper, the Newton Kansan -- a former employer of mine.
When I heard Pulitzer Prize winning Miami Herald columnist and author Leonard Pitts, Jr. was coming to the area, I excitedly volunteered to cover the event. The editor, Adam Strunk, wanted to be there, but had to cover a City Commission meeting. "Looks like you're gonna get your wish," he told me.
If you don't know of Pitts, you would do well to familiarize yourself with his writing. He's an African American writer who says things that need said about things like race, politics and culture.
I didn't get to see him when he came to Wichita a few months back, but I was not going to miss him in North Newton, a small town of around 1,700 people to the immediate north of Newton. Pitts was scheduled to speak at the town's Bethel College, and I would've attended his speech even if I wasn't covering it for the paper. His presentation was entitled "What Now? America in the Age of Trump."
Pitts called Trump and the toxic political climate he has stoked "a new and existential threat."
While not everyone who voted for Trump could be called a racist and misogynist, they (63 million Americans) supported somebody who was, he said.
He talked about the Republican politicians who referred to Pres. Obama as "boy," "uppity," "Chicago thug," referred to the Affordable Care Act as "reparations" for slavery, perpetuated the birther controversy and called his wife, Michelle, an "ape."
"Did this not represent a new low that we haven't seen in modern American history?" Pitts said. "You've heard the phrase 'barbarians at the gate.' Well the barbarians are through the gate, and they have their feet up on the couch."
Pitts' speech was peppered with such quips. He wasn't what I expected. Raised in Los Angeles, Pitts entered college at the University of Southern California at age 15 and graduated with a degree in English at 19. He has taught at schools like Hampton University, the University of Virginia Commonwealth and George Washington University. Hence, I thought his demeanor would be more scholarly, but Pitts was accessible and down to earth.
At the end of his speech, he took questions from the audience for 30 minutes. There was no way I was going to miss my chance to talk to the man.
I took to the microphone and mentioned how the man who introduced him, Mark McCormick, executive director of the Kansas African American Museum in Wichita -- had referred to James Baldwin -- the late writer who has had a resurgence lately through the documentary, I Am Not Your Negro.
"In his book, The Fire Next Time, Baldwin said if we don't have an honest, painful discussion about race, it's going to be a conflagration, Armageddon. But every time an issue about race is brought up, there are white people who cry about 'the race card' or they use Martin Luther King's quote about judging men 'not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character' to shut down any meaningful dialogue about race. How do we get past what seems like an impregnable mountain?"
Pitts talked about how Germany has confronted its Nazi past and South Africa's Truth Commission. If America doesn't get honest about race, he said, "there's gonna be someone standing up here 50 years from now" saying the same things he was about racism.
With all the Confederate memorials, it's like the South won the Civil War, Pitts said -- a subject James W. Loewen dedicated a whole chapter to in his book, Lies My Teacher Told Me. I've been a fan of Pitts' writing for over 20 years, but some things, probably as a white male, didn't come easy for me at first.
Pitts was talking about the racist legacy of Confederate statues back in the '90s, and he was taking on all the nonsense about a noble Southern heritage -- the Lost Cause mythology. He wrote in a column that these Confederate "heroes" might actually be called "traitors" and ended his piece, saying, "Hate is their heritage."
What? "Weren't these just people defending their homeland?" I thought. (I was more moderate than liberal then.) "Wasn't that extreme to say their heritage was steeped in hate?" No, I would say today. Racism was almost universal in America in the 19th century in the North and South. The entire Southern Confederate ideology was predicated on the disgusting premise that black people were inferior and slavery was a Christian God ordained arrangement.
Today, I see where Pitts is coming from. I get him.
Beyond his enlightened views, I'm influenced by Pitts by the fact that he's shown a certain prolific quality, branched out and evolved as a writer. McCormick said his favorite Pitts' book is the non-fiction Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood. I'm interested in how he became a novelist.
I bought his novel, Freeman, because I was interested in the historical research Pitts did about African Americans' lives in the early days after slavery was abolished. This was the book I would have Pitts autograph for me. Later, I want to read his novel, Grant Park, about white supremacists who kidnap a black columnist and plan to bomb Barack Obama's Presidential inauguration. I understand it's based on horrifyingly true events.
While standing in line waiting for an autograph, I got into a conversation with a woman named Lori who had driven from Wichita to see Pitts. She took part in the Women's March in Topeka and regularly takes part in demonstrations.
When I got to the desk where Pitts was sitting, I opened the book for him to sign. "Would you like me to personalize it?," he asked. "Yeah, please personalize it," I said and gave him my name.
"I'm a writer too," I said. "I have a blog. A few years ago, I sent you a piece I wrote about Trayvon Martin. You didn't respond, but I know you get thousands of emails."
"I do."
He signed the book and told me, "Good luck with the writing."
Here I am sitting in a booth at Freddy's Frozen Custard on a Saturday night in Salina. I had business to take care of. That's what brought me here. Nothing illegal. Just stuff. I can't believe a Journalism King -- Dan Rather -- stopped through here earlier this summer on a road trip with his grandson. Years ago, my conservative, non-press understanding Dad (God love him) thought, held the weakened thinking that Rather was too tough on George H.W. Bush in that interview on TV. I took the view that a journalist -- and Rather, dark and hard ass, was a Journalist -- could ask a guy running for president damn near anything he wanted. In his hillarious, piss-in-a-beer-can book on press coverage '72 campaign, The Boys on the Bus, the young writer Timothy Crouse mentioned a then young hot shot Dan Rather getting awed at by all the nearby women and how he turned around and pointed his finger "reminiscent of Elvis Presley." I knew an old guy in East Texas who saw Elvis and the Blue Moon Boys at the Lousiana Hayride in Shreveport, Louisiana (circa 1954). "That kid," the man said. "When he left, the stage was still vibratin.'"
The old man in East Texas had his basic training for the Air Force in Salina, Kansas.
"September Gurls" -- Big Star
They originated in Memphis. Southern, but untraditional. Not rockabilly, southern rock or soul. Just jangling power pop that evoked seeing you at the pool with life where rock n' roll will never die, a thinking man's band bordering on nihilism. They emulated the harmonic and songwriting style of the Beatles, the rhytym mode of the Rolling Stones. They were Alex Chilton, Chris Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel. Lead singer Chilton was only 6-years-old when his older brother brought home a Coasters record "but by 1959, Elvis was syrup and Jerry Lee was over." The next wave, a tide from across the pond, would signal the picking up of guitars. At 16, Chilton sang lead on The Box Tops' hit, "The Letter." A few years later. 1971. Big Star was born in Memphis's Ardent Studio. Their album, Number 1 Record sold fewer copies than The Velvet Underground's debut, but was just as influential. Without Big Star, there would be no REM or Replacements. But that was years into the future. Unforseen. Circa 1972, it was fist fights, betrayal, break-ups with girlfriends, depression and hospital psych wards.
My musician and cartoonist friend, Richard Crowson, himself from Memphis, is a Big Star fan and it's only one of the reasons to love Crowson. He highly recommended seeing the documentary about the band -- Nothing Can Hurt Me.
Of the four original band members, only Stephens survives. Big Star. They will break your heart. Beautiful.
"On My Way" -- Split Lip Rayfield
1996. It was September. I was in the Pecan Grove with my reporter's notebook and pen in my back pocket and I was kind of drunk. A new band, built by members of Scroatbelly -- a Wichita band I'd loved -- were on the renegade Stage 5 at the Walnut Valley Flatpicking ("bluegrass") festival. A young lady at a table told me her boyfriend played in the band. They were thrashing rock accoustical bluegrass. Dark outside and they were outstanding. The Wichita band was Kirk Rundstrom-guitar, Eric Mardis-banjo, Wayne Gottstiner, Mandolin & Jeff Eaton, bass. Eaton played a one-string bass called "Stitchgiver," built from the gas tank of a 1978 Mercury Grand Marquis, a piece of hickory and strung with one piece of weedwhacker line.
In 2007, Rundstrom died of esophogeal cancer. The documentary, Never Make it Home, directed by Echternkamp, portrayed the founding group member's illness. Every show the band performs now is dedicated to Rundstrom. Split Lip Rayfield played the town festival in Burden, Kansas last night, but as I was in Salina, I was unable to attend. I'm sure they rocked it. And Burden is Gottstiner's hometown, which is cool. Glad to call these guys friends of mine. The above track is from their most recent album, On My Way.
"Blue Monk" -- Thelonious Monk
I'm just getting into jazz iconoclast Thelonious Monk. Dean of Rock Critics Robert Christgau lists Monk, as one of his favorite artists of all time, along with the Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry, the Beatles and the New York Dolls. When my wife was pregnant with our first born, a baby book I was reading suggested the music you play for your child in the womb should be melodic -- which Monk's didn't. His sound was of dissonance and abrupt percussive piano. One reason I like Monk is because he battled mental illness and was prescribed drugs like Lithium. It's too bad the quality of help we have today wasn't around in Monk's time. Check out the documentary film, Straight No Chaser, which attributed his quirky behavior to mental illness.
"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" -- Johnny Cash
Forget any other versions. When Johnny Cash covered your song, it wasn't your song anymore. This love ballad, of course, is beautiful on its own, but interpreted by Cash's weathered end of life voice, it's lyrical and layered with vulnerability. A man wrote this song for his lover, while married to another woman. Don't misunderstand me, I believe fidelity is everything in a relationship, but there's something dark and intriguing about something so beautiful being born out of illicit origins. British folksinger, communist and labor activist Ewan MacColl wrote it for American folk singer Peggy Seeger (sister of Mike and Pete) a woman 20 years younger than he was. They later married.
Cash took the song back to its folk origins on his American Recordings IV: The Man Comes Around album, my favorite of the Rick Rubin recordings. Truly a desert isle pick. I wrote a review of this album on a napkin one Saturday afternoon, while sitting at a table by the window with my then wife, Maria, and two, then, small children. What I wrote must have been beautiful because Maria read it and started crying. I like making people cry. Like breaking hearts.
The Pusher -- Hoyt Axton
The late Hoyt Axton is underrated as a songwriter, but he wrote many songs that became hits for other artists: "Greenback Dollar" -- The Kingston Trio and "Joy To the World" and "Never Been to Spain," which were huge hits for Three Dog Nite. "The Pusher" is mostly known for Steppenwolf's version from the film, Easy Rider. But it's Hoyt's version that I love. He wrote the song in 1963 when he'd become addicted to cocaine and recorded it in 1970. Listening to his voice, you hear an angry, addicted man. His growls are mean and bring to mind the agony of jonesin'. You know this guy's been there. And the lyrics are somethin' mean.
You know I've smoked a lot of grass O'Lord, I've popped a lot of pills But I mever touched nothin' That my spirit could kill You know, I've seen a lot of people walkin' 'round With tombstones in their eyes But the pusher don't care Ah, if you live or if you die
God damn, the pusher God damn, I say the pusher I said God damn, God damn the pusher man
You know the dealer, the dealer is a man With the love grass in his hand Oh but the pusher is a monster Good God, he's not a natural man The dealer for a nickel Lord, will sell you lots of sweet dreams Ah, but the pusher ruin your body Lord, he'll leave your, he'll leave your mind to scream
God damn, the pusher God damn, I say the pusher I said God damn, God damn the pusher man Well, now if I were president of this land You know, I'd declare total war on the pusher man I'd cut if he stands, And I'd shoot him if he'd run Yes, I'd kill him with my Bible And my razor and my gun
God damn, the pusher God damn, the pusher I said God damn, God damn the pusher man
Coltohatta" (I think that's the name of the song) -- The Voluptuals
Chicago's own Voluptuals. Saw 'em playin' a favorite dive bar in Wichita. I'm not sure if they're signed, but man, they rocked. After the show, they had a few beers, went outside for cigarettes, mingled with the crowd. I talked to the lead singer, Matt. Nice guy. They hadn't booked a hotel yet. There was this tall blond girl, the same girl I overheard saying, "There's that picture of me sitting on the toilet smoking a joint." She was pretty cool. She was calling her roomate, asking if the band could crash at their place for the night. "You'll like 'em," she said. I think they're all right. And may they continue to benefit fro the kindness of strangers as they play bars across America.
"My Old Man" -- Joni Mitchell
Back in 1994, I was at Kirby's, a dive bar behind WSU. There was a box of record albums on the counter. $10 for the box. I bought it. There was great stuff like Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, Frank Sinatra's Only the Lonely and Blue by Joni Mitchell. A recent NPR list of what experts considered to be the 100 best albums by women put Blue at #1. My Old Man is a fun song. It's about the joy of domestic life, yet a reservation about marriage. It may have been about her relationship with live-in lover Graham Nash. I love that line, "We don't need a paper from the City Hall." It's a fun little Joni California-esque 1970 song.
"A Nice Girl Doesn't Stay for Breakfast" -- Julie London
You never hear about Julie London anymore. You'll hear tracks from her if you buy some of the Cocktail Lounge series albums, but you don't hear about her the way you might hear about the Doors. Possibly because her music was pre-rock pop and jazz. But she was huge in the '50s and '60s. Her signature song was the 1955 hit "Cry Me a River." I like the above selection because listening to it, you knew the husky-voiced sensual Julie London was saying she wasn't that nice girl and she didn't care. If she stayed for breakfast after a one night stand, by God that's what she did. The song is sex and London was around 42 when she recorded it, which is a damn sexy age for a woman.
"Oklahoma Sunshine" -- Waylon Jennings
In his final years after his popularity had waned, I kept waiting for Waylon Jennings to be re-discovered and enjoy an end of life career resurgance like Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Glen Campbell did. But it wasn't to be. You'll just have to search out the old Waylon stuff on your own. In this song from his 1974 Ramblin' Man album, Jennings is singing about how he needs to get away from New York and this woman he's been laying down with -- a woman who's holding him down and return home to Oklahoma country, to folks, family, a blue-eyed girl for whom he'll dry her tears.
Also I picked this song because Oklahoma sunshine may play a role in one of my upcoming blog posts.
"Amanda" -- Don Williams
Saturday 6:40 a.m. September 10. I read the news on Facebook that country music's gentle giant had died. RIP, the messages read. I don't usually place videos of people who'd recently died on these kind of posts because there's so many of them, but I was planning on posting a Don Williams video anyway. He had a beautiful voice and it made you feel he was a beautiful man. You couldn't help but love him. My ex-mother-in-law was a big fan. She, her husband and kids, including my future ex-wife, saw Williams perform at a club in Wichita years after his 1970s and early '80s popularity had waned. They got to talk to him and he was a pure gentleman. In the early 2000s, I was in Branson, Missouri at the old Hillbilly Inn with my mother, infant son and then wife, Maria. There was an old guy in the diner, playing country music on his electric guitar and taking requests. Maria asked him if he knew any Don Williams. He did. The song, was of course, Amanda.
How many parents named their daughters Amanda after this beautiful song? A lot.
"Promised Land" -- Chuck Berry
Probably my favorite song by the Father of Rock n' Roll -- Chuck Berry. About a poor boy leaving Norfolk, Virginia with Los Angeles, California on his mind. He wrote it while in a Midwestern prison on a railroaded charge of violating the Mann Act. He used a map from the prison library to mark cities he would write about on the cross country journey of his rock n' roll story -- and Chuck Berry was a story teller. In the song, he hints at the travails of a black man traveling through the deep south in the early 60s. Boarding a Greyhound bus past Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, bypassing Rock Hill, South Carolina and heading into Atlanta by sundown till the bus gets stranded in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. He then takes a train across "Mississippi Clean" and "smokin' in the New Orleans", into Houston where the folks care a little about him and "won't let the poor boy down." They buy him a suit and tie and plane ticket to the Promised Land. Los Angeles was, in Berry-esque mythology, an American Eden. Highways, sky scrapers, fast food diners, cool cars -- it'll never be like that again.
Of course the song was derivative of Homer's The Odyssey and the Biblical pilgrimages of Abraham and Moses. The words "Promised Land," like Berry's reference to the Gospel song, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," evoked the Bible, Exodus, freedom, the original Civil Rights movement. And the Promised Land is where Berry's journey has finally taken him. The end of the road.
Los Angeles give me Norfolk Virginia Tidewater four ten O nine Tell the folks back home this is the promised land callin' And the poor boy's on the line
"Wake Me Up When September Ends" -- Green Day
Green Day exploded in 1994 as a post-punk group. They still create abrasive rock in songs like "Brain-Jaded Stew," but, under Billie Joe Armstrong's songwriting craft, the band has also created melodic radio friendly, mainstream songs like "Time of Your Life" and this one -- "Wake Me Up When September Ends." The song is about the painful transition from youth and loss of innocence. It's pop, but not in a sweet way, and it's beautiful.
I bought his novel, Freeman, because I was interested in the historical research Pitts did about African Americans' lives in the early days after slavery was abolished. This was the book I would have Pitts autograph for me. Later, I want to read his novel, Grant Park, about white supremacists who kidnap a black columnist and plan to bomb Barack Obama's Presidential inauguration. I understand it's based on horrifyingly true events.
