WITH ME ~

When you're down to one or two stock photographs of yourself kicking around, you're either Thomas Pynchon or Tommy Johnson, top of the line author and bluesmaker of underbelly America. Both authors delving into the Seven Deadly Sins. Both fresh as a daisy. Scholars and copy cats tear their hair trying to figure out how it's all done. Long before Jimi Hendrix there was Tommy Johnson on guitar, with that growl or spine tingling falsetto, somewhat captured these days by Geof Muldaur. Johnson was born in rural Mississippi and lived there all his life. Died of a heart attack in 1956 after playing a party ~ what do we expect from one who truly sold his soul to the devil? A heavy drinker, he sang of drinking methanol from Sterno in his classic song "Canned Heat Blues". The roughest of the rough: Robert Nighthawk and Howlin' Wolf learned from him, and the Los Angeles group tore their name from his song.

EARTH ~

EDGAR MILLER

Self-portrait of an artist above, Edgar Miller (1899-1993), like Ezra Pound, Idaho-born, was cut out of the American frontier.

Miller landed in Chicago at age 17 and would inch-by-inch begin to transform the architecture of certain sections of this vast and original city.

"One should learn from nature" was how this prolific and gifted craftsman went about his work with animal and plant motifs that he would turn into woodcarvings, paintings, stained glass windows, ceramic tiles, frescoes, mosaics, and illustrious household murals.

Fond of using used materials, and in fact insisting on its use — everything was spared — and spun into gold. Oak doors layered with intricate chisel chop and entwined imagery stand to this day.

At age 89 it wasn't unusual for Miller to work a 12 hour day with his hand tools for ten days straight to complete a masterpiece entry door.

One more of the hidden delights of the world, dear Edgar Miller.

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pappy with a khaki sweatband

old bowed potbellied barnyard

that only he noticed

the old fart was smart


(continues)

STATE OF THE UNION ~
( REBUTTAL )

Deborah Harry

www.last.fm

WITH ME ~

Geraint Watkins



Something somewhat recent (2003) from the infrequent recording artist born in the blues roots capitol of South Wales, UK. Dylan Thomas blow me down.

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TACOMA BUST


Railroad dick throws us off —

we hop back on —

the smiling fisherman

waves.

WITH ME ~

When you settle into a night of Bobby Blue Bland, you settle into those early Duke records, even though at age 80 the lion of the blues is going on strong. Born in 1930 in Tennessee and raised in Memphis, I'm pulling up two gems from Bland's 1974 album Dreamer. Those Duke recordings are behind him here, so is alcoholism, some rocky relationships, and bands. He's got the look and sound all his own. The ideal blend of gospel, blues, R&B, and nothing comes easy.

EARTH ~

25 BELOW AND
ALL IS STILL



When the axe

handle busted

after thirty

years



(it was

fatigue)



I came inside

with two logs for

the wood fire and

added the axe head



to the fire —

it burned the old

wood handle out

clean



(we two who

heat a home)







photo © bob arnold

EARTH ~






THIS PLACE IN EVERY LIFE


A span of 20 feet —
Someone, but no
One’s around, once
Laid down these log
Poles and nailed the
Planks for what I balance
On and cross, and then
Turn and once again
Walk over, because I
Like the feeling, a
Mountain creek beneath
And leaves floating,
The range of light —
Now back across slowly
The last time
Finally into my direction


====================for John Levy






© Bob Arnold
from Where Rivers Meet
(Mad River Press)


photo © bob arnold

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Spanish ~ English poems.

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En mi soledad
he visto cosas muy claras
que no son verdad



In my solitude
I have seen very clear things
that weren't true

WITH ME ~

the kings of rhythm (clockwise): billy gayles, eugene washington, jesse knight, ike turner, eddie jones and raymond hill

The whammy bar of Ike Turner blows through the front door of this 1956 kicker he penned on the Federal label, and sung by Billy Gayles (also "Gales") who worked with Turner on his Clarksdale recordings in 1954.







That's Bob Dylan saying a little something at the tail end.

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SKYDOME ~

Robert Duncan

There are so many ways to say a book is fantastic. Maybe best here to allow the author some space to describe why the night sky (we all have) is fantastic.


~

=================================MARCH 10, FRIDAY. 1961. (1963)

Naming the stars out of the seas of heaven, men drew a net-work. The knots were suns, were burning. What the poets who bound the dragon of their confusion spun were lines of association where figures of light appeared, giving direction. All life is oriented to the light from which life comes. The bees in their dances are oriented to the sun and, if it is dark, will dance in relation to a candle flame. Men found at night a new orientation in the stars, found a heaven, a spreading mesh of lights, that became a projected screen of where and when they were as they danced, an image of another net that in memory we throw out over moment and place that are suns in time, the net of our selves. The bees dance to tell where the honey is.

They memorized as they realized. In turn, now, the surfaces and involvements of the brain were an imprint of the seas above; and the skydome above was the image of another configuration in the skulldome below. So, a network there too bound the dragon of a confusion in constellations of living cells that made up a body or series of imaginary bodies a man was, is, would be.

.

It was a map. It was a great design of where they were and then of when. Night after night here in the country I have been learning my stars. The wavering cold of a mixed winter and spring, as if those distant lights were within the aroma of March blossomings, the lilac, lemon, and grasses, of the star-world, brings a fragrance of stars. Earth sparks of scent seem just to have flown up into those signs of the ancient ways in which the book of when-where sparkles and glows. As we come home from an evening with neighbors, Orion is in the high heaven.

I found my copy, new, uncorrected proof, last fall tucked into the corner of a children's book display at a local bookseller's trade show...as if not quite knowing where to categorize the book. $2, "NOT FOR RESALE". I'm going by the early tatters of this text — affection for my found copy.

A VERY FINE BOOK ~

Elizabeth Smart

Born to an upper-crust Canadian family in 1913, the poet Elizabeth Smart wrote one of the more fallen from grace memoirs with By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept, first published in 1945 in only 2000 copies, and maybe most of those were banned in Canada through the influence of her mother — not at all happy about the book — and what wasn't banned, mommie dearest bought up and burned.

Smart was a long time lover with poet George Barker, a married man. Passion holds no bounds, together they had four children that Smart raised herself while working as an advertising copy writer.

It's been said Lucian Freud went to paint her portrait and only got down as far as her eyebrows.

Her poems must be read, and her volumes of journals. There is something special about an independent soul up against the odds. This one was stopped in London in 1986 by a heart attack. In the meantime, her books have a life of their own.

WITH ME ~

Some evenings it's James Booker playing, or Otis Spann, or Mose Allison, Percy Mayfield and when none of the above, someone cut from the same cloth of all these hombres: Mercy Dee Walton. Rural-rooted Texan (b. 1915) who moved to California before WW2 and maybe best known for the blues standard "One Room Country Shack" originally cut on Speciality Records. He made ends meet working in the fields of California and playing a million club dates, touring often with Big Jay McNeely. Arhoolie would release the LP above in 1961. The following year, Mercy was gone.

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Nashville warbler

lost deep in a box elder —

the master plan.

MIKE ~

Dead Reckoning (1947) with Humphrey Bogart has always been my favorite Lizabeth Scott film. As soon as I say this I say to self, "But wait a minute! — how about I Walk Alone and how about The Racket? Yeah, how about it?

Lizabeth Scott was born in 1922 of Ukrainian background and is with us today at age 88. If there is anything I marvel at, and I like to quietly marvel, is how many silver screen legends are still with us. Women. Often living as quietly as my marveling, after decades of dynamic work, unforgettable performances, and often being treated as second fiddle because of the heroic male squad, which ain't always as heroic as the women. Think of Bogart without Bacall in Dark Passage. Think of Hollywood without Bergman, Davis, Crawford, Hepburn, Lombard, Lupino, Garbo, Arthur, Hayworth, Grahame, Stanwyck, Gardner, Colbert, Taylor, Novak, Winters, Bacall, Tierney, Scott, Kerr and we haven't even left the country yet. Or warmed up.

So here's to "Mike", "Slim", "Veronica", "Angel Face". And Marie Windsor. And Audrey Totter. And Ann Savage. And Jean Gillie. And Linda Darnell. And...

Of Lizabeth Scott's twenty films (she dropped the "E" on Elizabeth purposely) three-quarters were out of the smoke of film noir. No other actress appeared in more as a key element. She began in John Farrow's You Came Along (1945) and retired from film no less than twelve years later alongside Elvis in his second film Loving You (1957). Personal troubles and controversy may have spurred this disappearance from the screen. She did appear one more time in 1972 with the film Pulp, but forget about it. Swim between 1945 and the next ten years with Lizabeth Scott.

WRITER ~

EARTH ~

photo © bob arnold

A VERY FINE BOOK ~
{ many more to be showcased }







HANK WILLIAMS : THE COMPLETE LYRICS
edited by Don Cusic (1993)



I'M SO LONESOME I COULD CRY


Hear the lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I'm so lonesome I could cry


I've never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry


Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die?
That means he's lost the will to live
I'm so lonesome I could cry


The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I'm so lonesome I could cry