Rough 'Round The Edges

Today would have been Elvis' eighty first birthday. Bill Clinton is sixty nine and they're starting to whisper that he's looking old. He is! I suppose that I'm looking to Einstein, Astaire, Jimmy Carter, William S. Burroughs or maybe one of those anonymous old chiefs from an Edward Curtis photograph. Leonard Cohen. Cary Grant.

Seems I've always had some older friends in my life. Captain Hamlin was in his late eighties when I moved in next door. I was in my late twenties. He missed his tugboat, the salt mist. He explained that there was nothing wrong with him that a fifteen year old on a bicycle couldn't fix. He wasn't a pedophile, just a politically incorrect wise guy.

Sometimes I wish I was working more. They're not beating the door down. The phone's not ringing off the hook. That's okay. I wasn't hip then, either. Realizing that there are folks who don't want to be associated with me based on longevity, that's okay. I'm not anxious to hang around with them, either.

There's great comfort for me in You Tube footage of Louis Armstrong. Young Satch was magnificent, a genius. The older Louis was other worldly. Thank goodness for Jimmy Durante, Walter Brennan, Maurice Chevalier.

Now, I'm not running for genius. I'm not running for anything. I'm not finished, either, though. It's been a slow start.

Our Place In Line

Man will never be my favorite animal, I'm afraid. Surely the meanest, nastiest bonobo alive is classier and kinder than some presidential candidates who will go unnamed here. On the other hand, I see people every day who radiate love. Here's to the good ones and here's to love. Don't ever give up on the others, either. They're the ones who need the love the most.

Money and Art

At some point you're an amateur, a beginner. You have to start somewhere, as they say, learn your craft. There isn't much of what we call "art" without copying, borrowing, stealing. After all, without a frame of reference there is no connection with an audience. Maybe it's nature. There are some magnificent colors on a peacock, a pigeon. I've heard some beautiful melodies from mockingbirds in something of a pythagorean scale.

There's no cubist art without Picasso and Duchamp and Gris and Braque breaking new ground. Of course those bozos don't get tagged "genius" without lifting all the good stuff from African art. "Primitive," indeed.

Bob Dylan has influenced more writers of my generation than Shakespeare, Irving Berlin, Hemingway. Of course he got it from Oklahoma hillbillies, early rockers, Japanese poets and Scottish folk songs.

It all comes from somewhere. Art is like language, like love. There are rules, forms, patterns. If you're gonna make art, you're gonna have to break some, change some. Ask Jack Kerouac. Ask David Amram. Ask Charlie Parker.

Once you're tagged, once the money flows, once the praise is sung, is it still art? If Jeff Koons merely runs the factory that produces the five million dollar balloon dog that is like the last five million dollar balloon dog, is he a great artist? Don't ask me. I like him. He once married Cicciolina! Ask the Japanese patron buying the balloon dog.

Years ago I accompanied a friend trying to place her photography with a fancy San Francisco gallery. The proprietor was so kind and such a gentleman. He pointed out the Rolls and Bentleys parked along the sidewalk. He explained in a a kind and patient manner that his business was "selling very expensive autographs." It's good to know your field, to understand your customer.

With sincere humility I defend my work as art. Sticks and stones, buddy. Sticks and stones.

Topsy Turvy

How many times will I pronounce rock'n'roll dead? The first several times that I thought it had expired I looked at the world and its music with disgust. Now everything is perfect. Well, everything but climate change, the middle East and Don Trump.

Remember on the Mike Douglas show when John Lennon said that if they had called rock'n'roll something else, it could have been "Chuck Berry?"

Well, no, of course you don't. You're not old enough to remember and it's no longer particularly relevant. Oh, maybe for some history book some day.

Innocence was a necessary ingredient in a culture for rock'n'roll to flourish. Innocence isn't rare today. It's extinct. Nobody wants to hold anybody's hand. Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis perform occasionally. Fats Domino and Little Richard don't play at all. We wait.

Smart guys like Nathaniel Rateliff will rework "Little Bitty Pretty One" forever. It's in our DNA now.

I don't know that I miss rock'n'roll all that much. I could use some innocence. We could all use some more love.

Juvenile Delinquents

Sometimes my babble onstage brings back memories from adolescence. Free therapy for me at some audience's expense, I suppose. I reminded myself last night that there came a point where I had to choose between rock'n'roll and juvenile delinquency. 

Tampa was a one hood town. We had Daryl Barcoot and he was known far and wide. I don't think he was very bad. He was what the Crystals and the Shangra Las sang about. I was probably his biggest admirer. My cousin, George, and I would sneak out of church and hide in his folks' station wagon to get a glimpse of Daryl coming and going. The Barcoots lived just across the street from Trinity Methodist Church. There were only one or two spottings on record but it kept us out of church.

We only had one real rocker, too. Benny Joy. In our defense, with Benny Joy on the home team, you don't need any more. I only saw Benny onstage a couple of times and rockabilly was on its way out by then. It didn't matter. Benny was the real deal. He didn't need fashion. Benny was fashion.

We got to be close friends later. We were together in a coffee shop when Howard Cosell told the world that John Lennon had been killed. Benny still turned up his collar at that point.

All my life decisions were based on movies. Most probably still are. Same movies. I had to choose between "Don't Knock The Rock" and "Rumble On The Docks." Once I figured out that juvenile delinquents did bad things, my choice was easy. After all, there were plenty of Sunday school lessons and church sermons that I didn't miss.

Well, sir, I've been in the rock'n'roll racket for long enough that somebody owes me a gold watch. I hesitate to say that I don't have much to show for it. I'm rich with memories.

I would have made a terrible hoodlum.

                                       

Bang Bang

Fireworks is just art for tough guys. Ralph Cramden would never have painted Alice in the nude. He would never have written her a poem laying bare his unbridled passion. He would have brought home a roman candle. He and Norton might have plotted to drop a cherry bomb down a toilet in some rival to the International Brotherhood of Loyal Raccoons' lodge.

America loves Dale. He turned right that one time and became a martyr. A saint. A legend.

Hey, I'm from Alabama. Nobody ever loved Elvis more than I do and I'll still fight you by the swings on the playground to prove it if I have to. I'll end a sentence with a goldarned preposition if I want to.

This is not my century, boys. Neither was the last.

                                     

Same To You

Did you miss me this time? This may be the first time that I have felt positive about a new year, Ever. There are folks who don't like me. Well, that's not really front page news.

This is the prettiest that I can sing, the truest that I can write, the best that I can be. Yeah, I'm a slow learner but I can read the writing on the wall. One foot in front of the other and I've used up most of my time onstage. On the air. On the planet.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a radio show to do. It's all about love. It's all about love. Happy New Year.