Larry Kart

Interested in the AFLAC gig? They need help, and badly. Don't have the voice for it. BTW, Manduck was the title character in a terrific old Mad (when it was still a comic book) parody of Mandrake the Magician.

No -- a guy, can't recall his name. I'll try to track down that Litweiler review, may have it in a bound volume of DB. Yes, and I can't believe I left out Larry!!! Semi-invisibilty is one of my secrets and often a very useful one. The call me Manduck the Magician.

I did, too. Same time, same place. On Wells St., don't recall the name of the club/bar (the Something or Other SquIre), but I know where it was physically, that you could see the band in the front window (I think), and that Shaw played great. There was a fine Litweiler review of the band in Down Beat.

Same here...usually.

Gentlemen -- the leering and comments like "Tell her everything. And don't be gentle when you do." are getting out of control IMO. 'Taint funny, McGhee.

Singlesnet.com?

Remaindered! There's justice after all! Not necessarily -- the previous owner may have sold it.

Hey -- I bought the "Baraka Reader" today at Half-Price Books.

Yes: http://www.amazon.com/Go-West-Young-Med-Flory/dp/B00005EBU2 Other tracks are by Med's 1956-57 West Coast band, which became the core of the Terry Gibbs band, plus two brief and forgettable "exotic" 1959 tracks by a reeds and rhythm ensemble.

Sorry -- Feb. 4, 1954. Born in 1926, Med would have been in his late 20s. He'd been in bands since he joined Claude Thornhill in 1950. Those 1954 performances, four of them, were recorded by John Bello, Al Derisi, Jerry Kail, Doug Mettome, tpts; Billy Byers, Urbie Green, Milt Gold, trbs.; Med, Hal McKusick, Al Cohn, Jack Agee, reeds; John Williams, pno.; Teddy Kotick, bs., Art Mardigan, drms. These days Med sounds as vigorous as all get out -- more so than I do most days.

Called Flory today (first time for me) in search of info about a set of liner notes. Med said, "Howdy," and we were off. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell me much about my subject, cornetist Don Joseph, other than that Joseph's eyes were always red (ha!), but we were having a good time and wandered onto other subjects, including an IMO great Al Cohn chart with a stunning shout chorus, "No Thanks," that Med's NY rehearsal band recorded in 1953. Whereupon Med onomatopoetically sang the whole damn, almost 4-minute piece -- "Blee-bop-bud-dah-bop" etc. -- with immense gusto. Somewhat dumbfounded, I asked how long ago it was that he'd played "No Thanks." "When we recorded it," he said -- i.e. some 59 years ago. How remarkable a feat of memory that is, I don't know, but I have a feeling that it's evidence that when jazz musicians really care about something, they really care about it. One other thing. Speaking of Joseph and his friend Tony Fruscella's drug use, I stumbled into the familiar phrase "victims of the times" or something like it. "Victims?" snorted Med. "They were enjoying themselves."

Speaking as a genuine psychopath myself, and having opened the door by mentioning and quoting from Roy Campbell, I vow to not attempt to discuss any further here why and how any number of the 20th Century's more talented literary artists -- e.g. Pound, Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, Celine, D. H. Lawrence, Robinson Jeffers, the list (however internally varied each figure might be) does go on and on -- were reactionary, anti-democratic, and in some cases outright Fascist, if only (but not only) because my head probably would explode if I tried.

Baraka is a better writer than anyone in this thread. I don't think the poem is especially good, but aside from the conspiratorial nonsense, I don't think it is bad either. But again, it works better as spoken word than on the printed page. That's an impossible question to answer unless you provide an example of a right-wing rant. Of course, part of the problem is that there is more truth to left-wing rants than right-wing ones. For one, there's the South African poet Roy Campbell (1901-57): http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/10/roy-campbell-2/ about as far on the Right as you can get (he was a fervent supporter of Franco during the Spanish Civil War, when he and his wife lived in Spain). An excerpt from his epic poem about Spain and the Civil War, "Flowering Rifle": To cheapen thus for slavery and hire The racket of the Invert and the Jew Which is through art and science to subdue, Humiliate, and to pulp reduce The Human Spirit for industrial use Whether by Capital or by Communism It’s all the same despite their seeming schisms Got a certain lilt to it; Campbell was far from without talent. Speaking of "Flowering Rifle," Campbell did have an arguably "off" taste in titles. The book that made his name, his first, was another epic poem "The Flaming Terrapin" -- another was "Talking Bronco." Hardly a surprise that like many on the Far Right, Campbell demonized the Jews. The League of Nations, he wrote, was that " sheeny club of communists and masons," while behind both Capitalism and Communism stood “the Yiddisher’s convulsive gold.” Again, "convulsive" in "convulsive gold" is quite good IMO. Campbell had an ear, as of course did Ezra Pound, who much of time had (you should pardon the expression) a golden one.

In that vein, I (again) still cherish this (I hope) semi-ironic remark from Ethan Iverson about Jones/Baraka a number of posts back, in the course of a dialogue with Stanley Crouch: "Well, as a flabby white intellectual liberal, I will always be willing to give an angry black man a hearing."

Good point. I've changed the topic title.

God bless Lee.

I think he was being ironic or semi-ironic, but I treasure Ethan Iverson's remark about Jones/Baraka a number of posts back, in the course of a dialogue with Stanley Crouch: "Well, as a flabby white intellectual liberal, I will always be willing to give an angry black man a hearing."

Believe me, at one time that particular sexual ideology was a very dominant one among African-American males I knew, It was one of those "under the carpet" (no pun intended, I swear) things that didn't get discussed until guards were let all the way down. And this was in the sexually "liberated" mid-70s! Those who admitted to it were subject to much heat from their peers, believe me. Millie Jackson spent a large portion on one cut of her live album addressing the issue, essentially asserting that it was time for that nonsense (the enthusiastic rejection of cunnilingus) to end! Then there's the (mostly Southern, I believe) folkloric belief that putting menstrual blood in a man's food is a way to keep him hooked. That's some old, old hoodoo shit right there. So you're already cunillinguating with a menstruating woman. Being fat and Jewish is just icing on that particular Freak Cake! And...I can see readers recoiling in horror as we go down this road... Yeah, but again for Jones, in the context of this poem and the experiences it speaks of, the girlfriend on whom he performs cunnilingus being "fat and Jewish" seems to be a bit more than icing on the cake. For one thing, it seems to matter to Postell, whose opinion certainly matters to Jones. For another, assuming that by "fat" Jones means that she was not conventionally all that attractive, it's a way of saying that her being Jewish somehow was a point in her favor with Jones at the time -- a sign of how far, from his latter-day "enlightened" perspective, he had been into demeaning his own identity. As he says: "I strode with them, played with them, thought myself/ one with them, and jews were talking through/ my mouth."

In the context of the poem (and BTW, couple it with the previously quoted second stanza to see Jones' "evolution" in action) pussy eating for Jones (and it would seem for Postell) certainly has something to do with Jews because the girl he's "shacked up with" is "a fat jew girl" (that you, Hettie?), and further there is the sexual "ideology" in some circles that cunnilingus places the man in an unmanly subservient or servant relationship to the woman, while in genital intercourse he is manly and dominant. Then, and in tune with this, there is the direct oral contact with bodily fluids theme, which perhaps flows (so to speak) into the crucial "jews talked through my mouth" business. Finally, there is FWIW Jones' statement that he "wallowed" in Postell's poetic "intestines." It's a "gut instinct" poem for sure. Also, not to be too literal-minded, but it would seem that Jones' act of pussy eating probably took place in the sight of Postell and another guy, and that in the course of Postell's angry response to this (and other things), Jones says that "You screamed and slobbered on me, to hear you." (My emphasis) Ah, the intimacy. But again, I think that poem is all the better for putting it all in the pot and stirring.

Sorry -- I got the provenance of that poem Allen quoted wrong. But Baraka did eventually write a good many poems that IMO were self-consciously "artless" and would-be "street" in tone of voice.

Speaking of the evolution of Jones/Baraka, I should quote the first stanza of the poem I quoted from before, "For Ted Postell, Dead Black Poet": You told, you told me a thousand years ago. And the white man thing you screamed on me, all true, and the walk across from dead Trujillo, who grinned at us into yr dead room. Only the wine bottles lived and sparkled and sailed easily for completion. You screamed and slobbered on me, to hear you. And I didn't. Shacked up with a fat jew girl. Talking about Shakespeare, I didn't hear you brother. Pussy Eater, you said, and another nigger said the same, and the blood flowed down my face, and Lear laughed at his new fool. I wallowed in your intestines, brother, stole, and changed, your poems. And rode was rode by the cows and intelligent snakes of the age. While they killed you, while they ran you down third avenue, "talking through your mouth." And I didn't understand. You had your hand clapped tightly on your lips. Your eyes rolled rolled up Sanpaku dying. "The jews are talking through my mouth." And I was horrified so niggerish and unheroic was your death. And jews talked through my mouth, and I used your wine fume soul. I laughed among the beasts and meateaters. I strode with them, played with them, thought myself one with them, and jews were talking through my mouth. I had not the sense to stop them. A thousand years ago you told me. Horrified beyond breathing. Stiff with terror at the kikish evil pulling at your lips. I should have screamed for you. brother. I should have climbed to the tops of the buildings and screamed and dropped niggerbombs on their heads. For my dead. For my dead brother. Who told me. A thousand years ago. Very much a cry from the heart for the most part, and IMO all the better as a poem and as a human statement for that. But the way the "jews" enter into (even bodily invade) things here -- "And jews talked through my mouth," this coupled with Jones' own equivocal relationship with Postell ("I stole, and changed, your poems"), plus Postell's disparagement of Jones as a Pussy Eater (and of "a fat jew girl" to boot, and one who also might have been menstruating at the time ("and the blood flowed down my face) -- paints a not unfamiliar picture of the Jews as intimate invader-corruptor, and/or as an invader-corruptor through intimacy. Can't let them get too close to you. In that vein (so to speak), see Ezra Pound's reference in one of the Cantos to the alleged and quite alarmingly invasive "intra-vaginal warmth" of the Jewish family.

Thanks, Jim. Actually, I would read it only half that way, the second half (but with some trimmings to take account of Baraka's twists and turns as he moved from one ideology to another). Basically, in Jones' first incarnation as a poet (more or less), I think of him (and thought of him at the time) as being roughly parallel to a valuable, individual second-wave figure of the nascent jazz avant garde -- say, a Marion Brown (if in fact Brown was in the second wave of the avant garde chronologically and in terms of influence; if Brown doesn't fit, there are others who would). That is, Jones the poet was significantly beholden to the so-called Black Mountain poets (Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Paul Blackburn, etc.) and their generally somewhat younger (but still older than Jones) New York-area offshoots -- Joel Oppenheimer, Gilbert Sorrentino -- plus, of course, Jones' friend, the marvelous Frank O'Hara. If so, then his eventual shift to the sort of self-conciously jingle-jangle poem and/or voice that Allen Lowe quoted from above ("Hey Jew boy with that yamaka on your head/ You pale faced Jew boy I wish you were dead"), and the other different, deliberately "artless" manners (that is, manners that would proclaim to his audiences that Jones was now not into being artful in ways that implicitly separated him from his community as he perceived it) would be as though Marion Brown eventually and self-consciously began to play like a latter-day Earl Bostic (actually, I like a fair amount of Bostic) and walk the bar like Big Jay McNeely. Of course, IIRC, Jones in his writings about music eventually did take just that stance toward the jazz avant garde, saying that it had broken faith with the "street," that is with "The People" and their needs -- this a la the Socialist Realism reaction to the Soviet artistic avant garde in the late '20s and early '30s in Russia, a chunk of history with which Jones was quite familiar.

Is there a word or two missing in your first sentence above? I can't quite make out what you mean (clearly it's about Jones' relation to "radical poetry," but what?) and think I might have something to say on the subject. Seriously. I was pretty much immersed in that particular world at that time and have tried to keep up.

The concluding stanza (of two) of Jones' circa 1966 poem "For Tom Postell, Dead Black Poet," from his book "Black Magic: Poetry 1961-1977": Now I know what the desert thing was. Why they fled from us into their caves. Why they hate me now. What Martin Duberman (what kind of man...) a Duber man, dobiedoo... Why they hate me having seen them as things, and the resistance to light, and the heart of goodness sucked off, vampires, flying in our midst, at the corner, selling us our few horrible minutes of discomfort and frus tration. Smile, jew, Dance, jew. Tell me you love me, jew. I got something for you now though. I got something foryou. like you dig, I got. I got this thing, goes pulsating through black everything universal meaning. I got the extermination blues, jewboys. I got the hitler syndrome figured. What that simpleton meant. He can't stand their desert smell, their closeness to the truth. What Father Moses gave them, and lifted them off their hands. A Magic Charm. A black toe sewn in their throats. To talk, to get up off their hands, and walk, like men (they will tell you. So come for the rent, jewboys, or come ask me for a book, or sit in the courts handing down yr judgments, still I got something for you, gonna give it to my brothers, so they'll know what your whole story is, then one day, jewboys, we all, even my wig wearing mother gonna put it on you all at once.

Baraka has stated that Israeli intelligence (traditionally more competent that the CIA) warned the Bush administration that the attack was coming, and the US ignored the warning. It's in the several-page note that follows the poem in his book. Oh, "Baraka has stated" in "the several page note." Then it must be true. First, as has been known for some time (see Richard Clarke's testimony, Bush's "now you've covered your ass" remark to the CIA rep who came to the ranch to pass on the agency's warning, etc., the U.S. had been told at the highest level by its own intelligence arms that something significantly bad probably was in the works but not specifically this. Second, the tone alone of these passages: "Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion And cracking they sides at the notion ... "Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers To stay home that day Why did Sharon stay away?" seems to me to speak of a noxious flippancy that scarcely inspires trust in the contents of that several page note. Further, what about those five filming Israelis "cracking they sides at the notion"? The non-existent 4000 Israeli workers who stayed away that day? And why did he think Sharon was supposed to be there and didn't show? All signs of the highly competent Israeli intelligence service hard at work, right? But I suppose the note covers all this.