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Book 4. “LIVE”
Book 4. “LIVE”
This week the MAAC Island Band and I will be recording a” LIVE” album at Union Street Blues, in the MAAC Gallery in, Middletown Pennsylvania. We will be doing a number of interesting songs in a variety of interesting ways. Among them will be “Shake A Bum” a tune that a number of people are quite excited about.
I have plexed on this and concluded that folks are excited because the song is…well I guess there’s no other way to ‘splain it other than the song is plain out fun, It gets people up and shaking their bums. There is some talk about creating an iconic type visual of a hiney in motion, to go on T shirts and bum…per stickers, and perhaps even a poster or painting or two hilkighting and celkebrating the action described in the song. Sounds like fun on well… fun. We shall see.
One of the oddest things that I’ve learned in forty seven years as a recording artist, is that sometimes regardless of the enthusiasm for a song and they careful preparation in arranging and recording the song, sometimes, inexplicably it just doesn’t come off as intended. This has happened to every artist, every lyricist, every producer, every arranger and composer at one time or another.
That’s why in the daze of yore, the rule for a singles session was “always go in with three tunes”, because any one of them may not come out the way every one had hoped.
We are going into recording an album with fifteen, hoping to come away with ten if not twelve good recordings. There will be no multi-tracking; instead, we are doing it the old fashioned way. Play like heck hoping that no one instrument is too loud or trips over a cord or chord and upstruckalates the take.
And even though the band looks like a bunch of Frenchies and Tortola men (with un Ricanio stuck in the middle) the truth is they (excepting the Ricanio) are statesideers. Therefore the possibility of a “Contemporary Caribbean” tune losing its way through excessive engagement and entanglement and finally bogging down enmeshed with a sideways polka riff and the maracas from hell, is always a possibility.
But no, we won’t think about that, instead, we will be heck bent on creating the proper musical bed for a Carabilly Caruso, to screech and yowl against, with all the passion (purple and otherwise) he/me can struffel up.
There are a number of songs, each with their own story. However, I am aware that, more often than not it’s best to let the listener bring their own story to the song. The more that they can do that, the more personal their experience with the song is likely to be. Having said and knowing that, my little sweetie in the first grade down in the bongo Isles was named Maryann and she has been on my mind from then to now. Maryann left with her family to go to the states (in those days that meant New York) and I have never seen or heard hide nor word about her.
What an innocence we were. And will always be, to me.
How often I have wished her well. I have been singing about her from then to now. God Bless Maryanne.
Continues…
BOOK 4. One year into the Memwa?
BOOK 4. One year into the Memwa?
I started writing the Memwa? Ten days before my sixty-fourth Birthday (Aug 16th and Aug 26) now it’s Aug 24th, two days before my sixty-fifth. I began in St. Thomas where I was recording (or attempting to record), my new Musical “The Virgin Islands Songs”. I’m now in the states performing my concert version of “The Virgin Islands Songs” and working with a collection of musicians from the MAAC collective as “Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band”.
I started out by committing to 1000 words a day for ninety days and was able to maintain that schedule through the commitment. Since then, (or more accurately, most recently) it’s become catch as catch can. In part because of the requirements of gigging, earning my little fazools, and my commitment to the collective… I have had great fun and lots of laughs writing the Memwa? Still though, it is far from finished, and it is clear that I will need to create and sustain a more productive Memwa? schedule.
My eyesight has gone from great to glasses to fuzzy grey all over the place; I have to do something about that also. I have much , much more work (writing and singing and other things) to do, but I am feeling oddly spooky about turning sixty-five. I am generally completely unconcerned about the chronological tick-tock but at the moment, I am becoming afraid that I won’t be able to get it done.
Part of it, a large part of it is of course, is finding my success (or my audience as we like to put it these days) and having my work recognized as having had some value and creative quality.
This particular life area is a mishmash of emotions which I usually deal with my unusually well-developed skill at denial, however, even I am becoming concerned that, not only will I be going too quietly into that dark night, but I will be gone without raising enough ruckus or, God help us “blowing my own horn loud enough”, to leave any thing of tangible value for my beautiful and long, long-suffering little ones.
If I only knew which massive boulder to roll up Everest, or which 12 foot grizzly I had to wrassel mano a mano, or what heretofore impossible cosmo-mathological equation I needed to smite and solve… but I’ve been made dumb by that question since I’m six years old. And now I’m feeling that my time is running out. And let me tell you something, call me confused or a liar, or in pre-limino flagrento dementia, but I am certain that time goes faster and faster the older you get.
I could easily pretend that that’s all I know about getting older, but the fact is, this Peter Pan has accidentally accumulated a small treasure box of shocking and completely unexpected information (and experiential knowing) about this grey ah…I mean great and mysterious stage of life.
Possibly first and foremost in importance, is the fact that chicks don’t look at you the same. And if you’re a chick, Cats (no not kitty cats, Hip Cats) don’t look at you the same either.
(Kitty cats however, do have a whole new appreciation of older chicks and ex Hep, now no pep, Cats. I‘ve been told that felines consider old dears in their dotage to be a special gift just for them from “Super Cat” creator of the catmos.
Why one wonders? Have you ever heard of young people braving the elements at all hours of the day or night to set out cat food in the darkest alleys and vacant lots of this or that Urban hell? Or living in pads (house or apt) over run by kitty critters?
Well…now that I mention it, I have. My wild Annie the Artist Girl and I once lived in a basement apartment on west 84th street, with something like eight dogs and thirty two cats, all at once. Each and every one named something or other bean. Like You Bean and New Bean and Two Bean and Who Bean and Who-You Bean and You-Hoo Bean, all the way up past thirty two Bean to forty.
However, while we were quite young in those days, we were also smote by chemistry that looked and felt like dotage, so possibly we cornfuseled (one of Annie’s favorite words in those days) ourselves and each other and cornfuseled the critters by extension.
Another thing about getting older, is you don’t look at the chicks the same either; there seems to be a much greater awareness that they are human beans, with feelings and hearts, disappointments and dreams and deserving of consideration and human kindness. One of the realities of lusty young men is that well…while we may have heard tell that chicks had feelings…other “mating” imperatives forced their way to the fore, not blacking, but “redding” out more subtle and sensitive considerations.
Ah my Lord, it was all I… ah… I mean a lusty young man could do to keep his eyeballs from exploding out of his pounding head, and his arms from s’muffling and crushing her, and his lips from slobber-jabbering love lies and perfidiac promises ( every utterance as deeply felt as Gospel truth, in the heat of the moment).
It was all a lusty lad could ever do and all the time too. But now? God has dashed, decreed and made it so, that the heat madness be splashed by the ice water realization that “My God, she could be my Grand Daughter” or “My God, she is my Grand Daughter!” Ah yes…
From time to time (when I sit with old birds on a park bench like lizards in the sun), one or another will suggest that the “golden elder belles” see young men somewhat differently as well (Unless the old chick is stuck in panting mode). I’m told that they see ‘im remarkably similarly to the young lusty “lunk noggin” that I described earlier.
I’m not surprised to hear it; I always suspected that the Grand Mamere’s had my number.
There are a number of age-o-alities that it seems no one bothered to mention, (or if they did, it was in geriatric jargon perhaps in a treatment setting, about old, or rather, aging 60’s psychedelic casualties and how to break the news that they were what they were, to them.)
I will write what I can about all of that at another time, perhaps even exhaustively until it (and we) are exhausted. But, for the moment, the real shocker is that chicks look at you differently. (They most certainly are not seeing and responding to your beautiful, color phasing iridescent inside)
How interesting to wonder if and when there ever was a time or even a moment, in life when one’s outside was an accurate representation of who and how one really was inside.
All of that being whatever it may be, here’s what the wind whispers to me.
“Sing for your life” and leave the rest to the Great Artist who first imagined us all.
And…Boy, stay ready for the ever-so-much more important second set, which will be called for when you are tired to the center of your soul, and least expecting it…
Book 4. Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band…
We are doing a Big “Island Blowout Luau” Benefit on City Island on Sunday Aug 22nd to save the “Pride Of The Susquehanna” a wonderful little river boat here in Pennsylvania.
I thought you might enjoy seeing our band “one sheet”, new band photo and our National Dance Day “Shake a Bum” Video.Here ’tis!
SCOTT FAGAN and The MAAC ISLAND BAND have been tearing it up at the Middletown Area Arts Collective since Scott returned from St. Thomas at the beginning of May.
Scott Fagan (Singer) has been an international recording artist since he left high school in St. Thomas Virgin Islands to sign with Columbia Records in 1964. He presently divides his time between The MAAC collective in Middletown and his home in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.
Some reviews…
- Cashbox Magazine:
Spinal Tap melodies…His range is phenomenal - Billboard:
“A Poet” - William Krasilovsky, Author, THIS BUSINESS OF MUSIC, l & ll:
“Scott Fagan is a genius. I’ll certify that.”
The MAAC ISLAND BAND is:
Rafael “El Jefe” Martinez, (El Congero) Rafael was born in Armaguerros, Puerto Rico, he has been a “Congero” for over twenty Five years and a “Pennsylvaniero”since 1973.
Drew Washington, (Bass) Originally from New Mexico, Drew appeared at the MAAC Gallery in Middletown one winter night for an open jam and immediately became the BASS Man of Choice for the MAAC ISLAND BAND. Drew has played at the highest levels, for over thirty Years.
Tim Griesemer (Drums) is well known through out Pennsylvania (and beyond) for his extraordinary gifts as a drummer. He is master of a wide variety of percussion instruments and has made it his business to “pass it on”
Walter Mills Born in Boston MASS, Walter has been playing the guitar for over thirty years, He has a wonderfully diverse set of musical influences from Hendrix to Pavarotti and everything in between. That makes him a perfect fit for SCOTT FAGAN and The MAAC ISLAND BAND.
Sound Engineering for SCOTT FAGAN the MAAC ISLAND BAND is by digitaldave, 30 Years on the knobs.
CONTACT Tim Griesemer Home 717-944-3023 Cell 717-439-1919 or Scott Fagan 717-592-0853
scott@lilfishrecords.com www.scottfagan.com www.lilfishrecords.com www.thecollectedworksofscottfagan.com
Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band
“Here is Shake A Bum” our National Dance Day Video! What fun!
Book 1. The Blessed Virgins and Book 4. Concert in New York Continued…
Book 1. The Blessed Virgins
And so somewhere in the winter of 1958 Mud led her little band (Little Larry Gale and I) away from the land of the ice burger, to the lands of eternal spring and summer, the Blessed Virgins. Of course I wore my recently purchased black leather jacket (just as I would wear it both day and night until I completely and incontestibly physically out grew it over a year and a half later)
When we had left St. Thomas, fleeing {“The Bills” (who ever those guys were) four years earlier Gale and I were very different children. We now carried the depravation and esteem issues of absolute down and out poverty, disrupted education, and serious questions about (the theretofore unquestionable such as) Mud’s competence as leader of the pack, and all that that meant.
Just about the only thing that we never questioned about Mud was her taste in music, it was with out exxception, always great. Mud was never negative about music, any music. She just plain out andf out loved music. And while we never heard her say a negetive or angry word about it, a few years later our father Frankie, would surprise and hurt use by “hating” Rock And Roll and any and everything else that had replaced Big Band and Be Bop.
It was very disturbing to hear that kind of angry agrandiament of one kind of music over all others. It seemed so obvously stupid that, while trying to defend my self and the music, I was embarrased for him. How can anyone expect kids to primarily identify with and love the music which expresses the time and concerns of their parents, rather than the music that expresses the times and concerns of their own generations?
Still, I see that same crazy conceit all around, all the time .It is so disappointing and transparently stupid…still.
That said, Me fadder dear was a hell of a singer and those tunes he sang were certainly very very good ones. Further, his emphasis and constant refrain on singing was “it’s all in the phrasing Fidel, (he lovingly called me “Fidel, The F*ckin bombthrower from the islands,) It’s all in the phraseing” has served me well. Continues…
Book 4. Concert in New York Continued
What a blast we had… the whole raggy band, a confoundation of experiences and ideologies a flim flam flashin dash-agoria of frantic -zigzagomania, a schreehin’ scramble of the lost push pulling the lost in concentric kaleidoscopic circles. And that was before we even got out the door and into our veehickles.
A Carnation, carvention, carfused, caravan of veehickles screwed tightly onto out of state licence plates, plates that I D’d us as hick-prey, thus fair game for the pent of frustrations and ever so inventive vulgarities of anxiety sizzled big city pedestrians. Even so.. we were so excited to see them that we reveled in their exotic and colorful stereotypically accented verbuse, and have recounted every single delicious expression and “cuss” phrase back and forth amongst us over and again. What fun we had. I really do wish you were there. The folks at BWAC (The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition) put the absolute once and for all kibosh on the fiction that New Yorkers are cold and distant.
These good people could not have been any warmer and more welcoming. And dear goodness, I had kinda sorta somehow forgotten how beautiful and intoxicating New York City Lady Girls have always been to me. Man o man, young and old silver and gold, each more beautiful than the last. What a joy it is to see a city full of ‘im!
We are booked to come back for an opening on Saturday, May the 7th 2011.
We will be there bells a ringing!
Here is a band photo that we took at BWAC just after our performance.
New Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band
This week we play for the third anniversary of the MAAC (Middletown Area Arts Collective) and next week we will play the benefit to save Harrisburg’s own Riverboat “The Pride Of The Susquehanna”. We are working on doing “The Virgin Islands Songs live in Concert” at the Richold Center For The Arts in St. Thomas, and filming it as a potential music special for PBS. We shall see…
Book 4 Concert In NYC
Book 4 Aug 8th, Concert In NYC
Just back from The islands, I am getting ready for my next gig. We (me and the MAAC ISLAND BAND) are doing a concert version of my new musical ‘THE VIRGIN ISLANDS SONGS” on Aug 8th at 3:00 pm at The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (www,bwac.org) 49 Vanbrunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn.
It’s odd to think that II haven’t done a gig in New York for over 28 years. I love New York City. Most recently, my little one Holiday and I took a bus from up from our pad in Pennsylvania and spent the day there.
We walked around the theater district looking at the markees and visited The Ritz Theater (Now the Walter Kerr) on 48th street, where my Rock Opera SOON played. We also took a ride on the Staten Island ferry, and ended our day by visiting Ground Zero.
I have much history in New York and am excited to do this gig.
A gaggle of characters from the collective will be coming along and I promise you that they (we) are as odd an assortment of people as has ever met the eye, ear, nose, or imagination. It will be fun…and friends, it’s looking like after all is said and done love and fun may be close to what it’s all, after all, all about.
Come see us in New York if you can, I’ll be looking for you!
Book 4. On Nicky Russell, Sad Beyond Words…Continued
Book 4. On Nicky Russell, Sad Beyond Words…Continued
The fact of Nicky’s demise has been too sad for words for me, for many days now, and has precluded my posting to the Memwa?
I have to move beyond that sad preclusion, I will save my wild ranting for another time., and I will instead, keep it simple..
It rained like hell at Nicky’s memorial and the grand assemblage under the striped circus tent at Magen’s Bay got soaked from above, aside (actually both sides) and flooded up from below.
Sensible people, which included the bands and sound system folks (I know that it sounds like an oxymoron) concluded that playing with electricity while standing in water up to your ankles was not wise. Many if not most packed up and split. I did not, (but only because I have never and never do, known or know when to go) consequently when Mssr. Pat Bailey and “Bongo Man Bar none”, Richard Spencly suggested that we “just play” regardless of the juicy water and lack of amplification, it felt like a mighty fine flashback to days of old. Days (and nights) of old wherein young men (flung about the waterfront across from Trader Dan’s) literally sang the sun up out of the sea.
We sang the sunrise welcoming many a mad morning. Mad mornings of the very best/worst kind. The kind that our friend Nicky elevated in memory and celebrated fight down to the end. So we did…
We played a rousing set of calypso caraho that included Nicky’s (and his straggler fans) favorites, “La Biega Carousel”,
“Cherrigo”,
and “Captain Creole”
As sweet sad a raucous rhapsody, as can be imagined.
As we moved from song to song we were joined by others who refused to let the music and the moment go. Morgan Rael on the mighty jaw bone, an unknown (to me) bell swacker and a mighty fine mystery conga man.
Someone was kind/foolish enough to plug in a microphone and guitar amp, the volume jumped and the joint got jumping.
Our little oddchestra was fronted by the ever enthusiastic prantastic dancing of the afore-mentioned Pat Bailey, who revved to wild, right off the bat.
You (in the audience) may not always be aware that we (on the band stand) see you and feel you and receive intense infusions of emotion and energy from you.
This “speed of light” zappage is a primary driving factor in the degree of intensity that charges the back and forth energy/passion/love/exchange between us.
The double polarity ultra zapbomb was in full force on this occasion.
The sad eyed ladies down front, were well past early spring but their energy and emotion for the moment and what the moment meant, was as strong as any ever.
We were all once young together and these songs were the sound track of that time, and all the time between, and of course our friend, who represented well, was gone and each and all of us knew that we are soon to follow. Ah Yes. Stuff like that will strum up a feeling or two.
To watch the girls of yesterday, dancing yesterday away, is enough to bring a fellow like me to his weeping knees.
Instead we jumped back into a reprise of Nicky’s “Theme Song” “La Biega Carousel /Tutsie” to close out these magic moments of this magical memorial.
When I originally wrote it back in 1964 the third chorus ines were, “And I wish I were like Tutsie and could do as I please, then I’d be barefoot at the Foxes Tamerindo”(Foxie’s bar in Jost Van Dyke) but through the years Nicky began to insert his own updated line “Then I’d be dancing naked at the Fox’s Tamerindo.” I thought it appropriate to sing Nicky’s line for this occasion (and will in remembrance from this point forward) as the line rang out good brother Pat, tore all his clothes off and really started prancing the light fandango. The dance fantastic.
We are trying to find the fellow who filmed the whole thing so that we can share this extraordinary fare-the-well to show the world how it was once upon a time down in the bongo Isles.
There could not have been a more fitting finale for our brother Nicky Russell. Thank you to all who made it so.
Nicky was a great eager and optimistic kid and stayed that way ‘til the day he died. We should all be so beautifully blessed. Three beautiful sisters, two beautiful sons, and one no matter what, steadfast wife. He was loved and accepted and loved (did I mention loved?) all the way through life, right down to the very end. God Blessed and Bless you Little Brother Nicky, we love you long time…
Book 1. En Nueva York 57-58 Continued…And Book 4. In Anticipation Of Nicky’s Memorial, July 18th, Magen’s Bay.
Book 1. En Nueva York 57-58 Continued…
It was the time of “Little Bitty Pretty One, “Wake Up Lil’ Susie”, “You Send Me”, “Honey Comb”, “That’ll Be The Day”, “Rockin’ Robin”, Don Larsen’s perfect game, Sputnik, and The Asiatic Flu. All of which made a big and lasting impression on me.
Years later I would spend two weeks in a tour bus with the Great Bobby Day (“Little Bitty Pretty One” and “Rockin’ Robin”) crisscrossing the US from Burlington Iowa, to Daytona Beach Fla, on a tour called the “Thirtieth Anniversary Of Rock N Roll”. Bobby Day was style and grace, talent and kindness personified. He was every bit as smooth, graceful and exciting as his tunes.
The Everly Brothers big hit “Wake Up Little Susie” was one of, if not the first song in which I was consciously aware of “the writer” inserting a “twist” and intentionally shaping the story line. I had a sort of moment of objective “ah ha” clarity (and believe me it only lasted a moment) before I fell back into full on non-thinking subjective acceptance of the idea that “all the singers were for real, and all their songs were “true for true.”
Years later when my manager Doc Pomus, began teaching me how things really worked i.e. How a song was written, how a session was produced, how a record was made, what a Music Publisher did, how Elvis got co-writing credits on Otis Blackwell’s songs, etc I was quite disappointed and very much upset and disillusioned.
I much preferred the illusion that the process was somehow magically organic, as if the song “emerged” from the singer while the joy and groove of the moment dictated the arrangement and the music played.
I was really disappointed with the truth. I felt as if something wonderful and life sustaining had been taken away. Of course I can now look back and (in knowledgeable company,) snerk aloud at what a silly and foolish boy I was, but the truth is I am still more he that any completely grown up me.
The facts are… When I performed (and still when I perform now) the emotion inherent in the moment DID dictate the arrangement (the timing, the rhythm, the dynamics and sometimes even the key) and as far as possible, the song DID emerge Which is why I seem unable to, hardly ever or maybe never play a tune exactly the same way twice.
In my first gig in the states after “getting off the boat” I was singing at a great folk club/coffee house called “The House Of Pegasus” in Fort Lauderdale.
The manager turned to the owner and said”listen he even does his own fade outs”. I remember wondering “why would he mention that?” and then “aren’t we supposed to do that?” that’s how we all did it in the Islands. We didn’t or I didn’t know that fade outs were artificial artifacts of studio recording rather than an expressive and soulful vocally managed dimuendo. Ahh… my dear friends, you could have filled a google parallel universes with what I didn’t know then, and possibly even more with what I don’t know now.
In any case, and lucky for me, it was a great season for song, Sputnik was the beginning of a painfully long, continuing and essential lesson in humility for “The Otherin” (and me too) and the freakin’ Asiatic Flu did everything but recycle me.
Often the “weakest” or most vulnerable part of the body is the first to go and in my case the weakest link resides in my poor frizzgaggled noggin.
When the fever (any fever) hits or comes upon me, my tenuous grip (on what foolish folk think is the one reality and I recognize as at most a temporary and consensual compromise) slips and I am gone. Replaced by a double babbling babushka balloon head, or “El Exehente Generalissimo Delirioso” aka the rock that wept, or the stone that squeaked and cried. Yezzer, I am vulnerable to fever.
In those days Gale and I had no beds, we slept instead on folding aluminum lounge chairs, the kind with woven plastic straps across an aluminum frame. When the Asiatic landed in my noggin, I was allowed or encouraged (or a combo of both) to move my recliner out of a shared bedroom and into a far corner of the living room, a sort of poor man’s quarantine, I s’ppose.
I spent two weeks out there in the ultra nunca never none land of delerioso serioso, babbling soliloquies all day waiting for Mud to come home from work.
It’s interesting to note that you can pile all the blankets in the world on top of the poor soul trying to sleep on such a device and they don’t and won’t do a bit of good. Until and unless you realize that the cold air is coming up from under, through and between the plastic straps. It’s a pitiful, follyishous thing. I confess that it took me an embarrassingly long and uncomfortable time to figger’ it out.
God Bless Mother, the music in the background and Red Candy Apples (the only thing I would eat) for getting me through.
Interestingly, the Spanish flu epidemic (a related strain of two generations earlier) is what we think killed our people in Scotland, leaving our father Frankie’s Mother Sally, “an orphan girl alone in the world” and encouraging her migration to New York, her career as a tragic bar room singer, the arms of the naughty, cowardly married Irish rascal that knocked her up ah..Ah mean got her with child and then denied the little lad for fear of “The wrath of wife”. Our little orphan girl Grand Mother Sally Travis, Died in turn in the TB wards on Welfare Island at 26, leaving little Frankie all but orphaned himself. Crikey, Yikes! it feels like I’m having a flu-mo delerioso flashboink!
Yes, It was the winter of our discontent, my poor finger was bent forward and taped to the palm of my hand (if that whompin’ girl had seen me, she would have whupped me silly), Gale, in a flurry of belonging longing or longing to belong, joined a cigarette smoking, garrison belted, black leather jacketed gang, she was now known by two separate noms de guerre “Mike” and “The Cat” and in a flushed rush of tough teenage solidarity forever, she shaved her eyebrows absolutely and completely, clean off.
Mud was ready to get herself and her sprung off sprung back to the Antilles, The Archipelago, The West Indies, The Islands of The West, The Caribees, The Spanish Main, The Blessed Virgins…Continues…
Book 4. In Anticipation of Nicky’s Memorial, July 18th, Magen’s Bay.
I nave been invited to sing at Nicky’s (The Mighty Whitey) memorial scheduled for July the 18th at Magens Bay, in St. Thomas. I am arranging to be there and prepared to sing my heart out. I am so happy that Tuts and Tim and Nicky and I recently took a little trip together up to Jos Van Dyke to see the Fox. We were talking with him and Tessa about doing a three man concert there featuring Ruben, Nicky and Myself. That sadly will never be.
Take a look at “A Little Trip To Jos Van Dyke” and “Continued..A Little Trip To Jos Van Dyke” (March 2010) In them, I‘ve tried to capture some of what was wonderful about the time together.
Book 4. Sad Beyond Words.
Book 4. Sad Beyond v Words.
The phone rang a short while ago (7:30 AM July 3rd) and it was Tuts calling from St. Thomas to tell me that our friend Nicky (The Mighty Whitey) Russel was gone. Of course we (and he) and everyone else knew that his going was coming, or as we might say in the islands “He wa comin’ tu go”. Nevertheless, that he is now no more among us, that he has left this plane and phase shifted out of this dimension to who knows where, leaves many of us missing him and what might have been and sad beyond words. I am sad beyond words. I offer my most heartfelt condolences to his beautiful sisters, his beautiful sons, and his beautiful wife Janet.
LeBiega/Tuts, was Mighty Whitey’s un-official Theme song for over thirty years. Here is a recording of he and I doing LaBiega Carousel/Tutsie, in St. Thomas, not too long ago,
along with a recording of what he recently told me was his favorite of my songs, Captain Creole.
Listen and you will hear beautiful Nicky singing in all his glory on both of these recordings.
God and Good Blessed you Nicky, We Love you and we will miss you forever,
Book 1. In Nueva York Continued 57, 58 And.. Book 4. Gran Faddah Buckra An De Ol Geeal
Book 1. In Nueva York Continued 57, 58
It was just the beginning of one of the more interesting and consequential seasons of all…the fall.
“Island In The Sun” with Harry Belafonte had just came out and Mud, Gale and I took the subway (a long and dreary ride across cold mucky mud brown marshes, that Mud had to traverse twice a day to and from her job) into the City to see it at “The Roxey”. The minute the opening shots of the beautiful green Island in the beautiful blue sea appeared on-screen, I knew it was a deal done, a conclusion forgone, sooner or later, we were heading back to the bongo isles…
Gale and I were both in PS 198 AKA Benjamin Cardozo Junior High School, when Mud announced that she was going to St. Thomas on a “little Vacation”…
Gale, Little Larry and I stayed with Aunt Lea and her family just a few streets over in Far Rockaway while Mud was gone…
In those days I was wearing a little silver heart ring that I had bought for myself in Puerto Rico, from a street vendor for something like a quarter. The little ring said ”Yo Te Amo” (I Love You, in Spanish). I loved it and all it represented. I really did.
One day during lunch recess I was waiting my turn at the handball wall when someone hit the Spaulding over the school yard fence. It was a very tall chain link fence of the type favored by the New York City public school system, a design thought to be tall enough to discourage even the most defiant of kids from climbing over it. Unfortunately I had stuff to prove (being a shrimp with the cohones ah…rather, jive bravado, of Godzilla) and I rather quickly climbed (to a chorus of “Hey kid dontcha kno etc.) up and over the sky-high thing, down the other side and got the ball.
The truth is the world seemed a much more interesting and inviting place on the outside and I ought to have just thrown the pinky ball over my shoulder and strolled away to make a life with Arleta, but no…
Being a good boy, I climbed back up the blasted fence and when I reached the very tip-top, decided to jump all the way down thus ending my demonstration of casual but exemplary rule breaking/fence-climbing with what I thought would be great flourish and style.
Instead when I landed back in the concrete consciousness of PS 198 I discovered that my right ring finger (the one with my Te Amo Heart ring) was now all but ripped off my hand. The ring was gone and my poor finger from the knuckle up, was hanging by a grisly gristle-thread…
My dear friends, I was dumbfounded, shocked and deeply wounded at one and the same time…many an exclamation of confused horror followed me as I headed directly for the Principal’s office where I would turn myself in, confess my sin, beg mercy and petition all in authority for a miracle do-over of the last five minutes. Ah…ah was tragical and upsetting in the extreme.
God bless my dear sister Gale, they summoned her to ride in the ambulance (sirens blaring) with me to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where we were met by poor overtaxed, stressed-out and worried sick, Aunt Lea.
Apparently, while I teetered sky high on the fence, planning my ascendant descent, the open crisscross at the top of the chain link had snuckeled in between my finger and my mighty fine ring and consequently, when I launched, my ring and finger did not. Meaning of course that something had to give. It was first my finger, and then my beautiful ring.
You may think it odd, but I was very saddened at what happened to the little heart ring, I don’t believe I actually saw it again but I imagine it, popped and twisted (much like my poor finger) and abandoned all by it’s self alone.
The Doctor looked at me, looked at my finger and looked at me and said well. “I hope you won’t planning on playing the piano”.
I wasn’t in the slightest bit concerned about playing the piano, I was scared to death that they were going o take my finger off. However and perhaps in part as a result of my protesting the idea with everyone at every turn, I was asked to choose between having it set to stick (and stay stuck) straight out, or bent over in the shape of “a one finger fisticuff” (they couldn’t just set it okee dookee like, and back to normal, because the poor thing’s owner had krankfrangled it almost completely beyond repair, and was just plain lucky to have any finger at all even one that looked like it had been glued back on with an L plane) I choose the one finger fisticuff model, and ironically, when I’m writing a tune on the Piano, (I’ve written some good ones on it, but don’t ask me to play any) (on the piano that is) it’s the only finger in the whole gaggle , that consistently finds and hits the blasted note that it’s supposed to.
I spent the rest of the day and that night in the pediatric ward of the hospital, and therein met some kids whose lives were very different from my own, meaning that they had serious health problems as a fairly central issue and frankly, I hadn’t given much thought to kids in their situation before. My time with them was very touching and important. It was heartbreaking to see them, complete innocents, suffering… Continues
Book 4. Gran Faddah Buckra An De Ol Geeal
A time when I wa small ah went to see me ol granfaddah de ol Buckra de Paehae de fus fus fus. Ah sae Granfaddah! Ah come tu see yu! He sae Ok den, look me hare, but yu gon got tu bettah stay ou de way, a Ol Geeal coming to see me fo something an ah don wan yu get mashup when de action start! Ah sae “ A Ol Geeal? A Ol Geeal? Who it tis, granfaddah, who it tis? He sae “Ah me bouy, don worry bout dat, yu gon see, don worry bout dat.
I sae “but Granfaddah, wha kina action yu gon do wid a ol Geeal, yu gon teach ha how tu fall asleep in de chair? Yu gon teach ha how tu take out an put in ha teet dem? How to play domino? Granfaddah,Yu tink de ol Geeal gon wan tu hear bou when yu poisen yu self an almos whole a dounde road, when yu cook up dat Barracota in de olden days? Oh how yu used tu tief Mango? An Granfaddah wha yu gon gee she tu eat? De Ol Geeal ain gon wan no sardine and French bread to wash doun wid kool aid, Wha wrang wid yu, Granfaddah, you don know you too ol to have a ol Geeal?
“Ahh meboy” he sae “ahh meboy” das wae yu wrang, you mubbe tink yu Granfaddah ban ol”? Yu dunno yu Granfaddah is a sharp boy? Yu dunno yu talking tu de man de used to call “Buckre de Pale-Male, de champagne ah Gingerale?” Ahh mebouy, in dose days Yu Gran Papeeto had woman like mosquito, woman like whelks, like genip, woman wha couden done me boy. Yu tink ah spen me whole life scratchin me baney? No Sah, Yu tink all I cou do is siddown outside de kitchen do? No Sah, Not me me bouy, De ol Buckra still know a ting or two, yu gon see, don worry bou dat!
De minute Granfaddah see de Ol Gieall by de do, he suck in he belly an he stann up straight straight, den he sweep off he hat an he bow doun low like Erroll Flynn, he sae “Come right in my darling, come right in my dear,
Bouy, ah couldn believe me oy dem, de ol Geeal wa de famous Carnival Queen from Nineteen Fifty odd, a ol Geeal wha we da see in de newspapah almos every week for doin something good, Dis ol Geeal is like de fus lady of de lan. Wha she doin hare wid me Granfaddah?
Before ah could ask ha dat question, she watch me straight in me face and she sae “Good afternoon young man, I’m hear to take de measure of your Grandfaddah’s Curtin rods” and wid dat de two a dem went straight in side de bedroom.
De nex ting oy know, ah hearin’ tee hee hee and tae hae hae den something fall doun on de bed an de bed spring start to squeak and squeal , an Man, ah embarrass to tell yu wha come nex, ah hear de ol Geeal sae OY!, OY! Den she sae “Oh me dahlin Paehae yu know das how ah like it, yu know das how ah like it, den she start tu bawl out Oh Godee Oh Godee (Ah sae to me self what does dat have tu do wid curtin rods?)
She singing now, Yes Sah, Buckra, OOWEE! She singin now! Yes Sah! Buckra, OOWEE! Yu got me goin, yu got me goin OY OY, ah hear dem bouncing up an bouncing up! Oh Godee Oh Godee! She bawl out don stop now don stop now! Man anit soun like a donkey broke he win in de) wid A AAIIIEEEH! (ah sae tu meself, dat soun like de end a de worl) den a KA_POW! ah hear de bed broke doun! Den all ah hear.. is notin atall, noting atall me bouy, den ah hare de ol Geeal say .. Hello? HELLO?
De nex tin I know de oL Geeail bus out tru de do, bawlin out Oh God! Oh God! Sonny boy come quick, yu Granfaddah Dead, Yu Granfaddah dead!, Ah done kill yu po Granfaddah, Oh God Sonny boy, ah sae yu po ol Granfaddah dead”
Ah went in tu see fo meself, Man de ol boy wa white like a ghos, he oy dem wa roll back in he head, he toung hangin out de side a he mout,. De woman bawl out Oh God I’s a murderah, I’s a murderah! Ah done kill de sweet ol Buckra!
Den she sae Ah got to get outta hare befor me chrren dem fine out, ah gato go, I ain wan me chrren dem know I ain wan nobody kno…an wid dat she pick up ha wig an she run ou de back and clime doun in de gut an clim up de uddah side a de gut, den she broke thru de chicken coop by de cenep chtree an she wa gan..
Ah sae OH Godee!, OH Godee! De ol Geeial done gan an le me here alone wid me po dead Granfaddah… Ah sae “Oh Godee, how ah gone tell me Mammie, who it tis kill me Granfaddah? How a gone tell me Mamee wha dey wa doin in de bedroom?” Wha ah gon tell de Police? Ah dunno what u tell de whorl?
Jus den ah hear a voice sae “boy wha wrang wid yu, yu bettah stop yu bawlin if yu don wan some clout”..when ah tun around, it look like ah see me Granfaddah dae sittin down good as gol an winkin he oy.
Ah sae “but Granfaddah yu dunno yu dead like a ol keeat, de ol Geeal done kill yu, yu ain know yu done dead awreaddy Granfaddah? Yu don tink yu bettah lay doun?
He sae “Ahh me bouy, don be schupiddy, yu keean see das me good way tu get rid a dem guirl? Das de Ol Buckra trick tu mek dem go home when ah done had me way wid dem. He sae “ Ahh me Bouy…don worry bout a ting, an jus wait til yu see de two ol Geeal wha comin’ tomorrow!!!
Book 1. En Nueva York, 1957…
Book 1. En Nueva York, 1957.
As noted once and said twice, we would learn a great deal in Far Rockaway, New York, USA in the winter, spring, summer and fall, of 1957.
Right from the beginning, the music meant almost everything and was somehow more real than the reality that it was sound tracking, Gale and I went back to school to discover that we might as well have been studying moon rocks on Mars for all our previous book, (and lack of book,) larnin’ had to do with the New York City Public School curriculum.
The flash back was to sitting in La Escuela de San Juan Bautista where no one spoke a lick a da lingo (English) and I didn’t speak a lick a la lingua (Spanish) only this time we were able to comprende the sniddy snoody and snide comments made about our pathetic fraternal idiocy.
The only saving grace for me came in the person of a Puerto Rican kid whose command of English began and ended with a fruit salad of four letter words like you’ve never heard. It was fantastic. This angel faced boy knew nothing but cuss words and creative combinations of cuss words presented so fluently and floridly inappropriately that I’m certain that we today, would have an entire field of scatological study devoted to and franticly seeking the cure for FFFWS (Flagrantly Floridly Filthy Word Syndrome) it was amazing.
Anyway, I was able to demonstrate a smidge-lit of intelligence by virtue of the fact that I was the only person in the entire school able to translate his linguistic intentions (though there is the small possibility that I may have inadvertently taken too broad a horizon or perhaps one too many small liberties with my interpretations and translations, but only to demonstrate my own facility with multi-syllabic language, in the hope that they (the school) would realize the kind of intellects that they were too quickly dismissing as “the gang of three ..Idiots”.
He really was a sweet sincere kid who had more than likely been victimized by a psycho Tio (uncle) with his own hysterical but cruel agenda for getting even with all the school Marms and Principals in the New York City Public School system, and boy if his intention was to cuss ‘im out, he got ‘im good…
I can’t help but wonder how my life might have been different if a kid like me had been assigned to interpret for a kid like me at San Juan Bautista…Good Lord Awmighty.
Needless to say, my attention to my own school work was frustrating and minimal, in truth because we had missed so much of what led up to the sixth grade, but mostly because I was much more interested in The Spanish Main, the clash of sword against sword, the clash of cultures in the race for God Gold and Glory and most especially, the names and exact locations of the great treasure Galleons that had gone to the bottom bursting with doubloons and now swayed in the sea tide with red eyed skeletons guarding the golden pieces of eight, than in Millard Flurbush, or Floyd Huckabucket (who or what ever they were)
But that was school daze, and when not immersed in defending a translingual scatological diatribe, or my dream life along the Spanish Main, my antenna was “full tuned” out the window towards every passing car radio and the essential life lessons being broadcast freely into the air. Life lessons as only Chuck Berry and Rock n’ Roll could structure and present them…” Be Bop A Lula She’s Mah Ah Bay Bay” “Up in the Morning and off to school” These are the days of “Be Bop A Lula” “Hail Hail Rock n’ Roll” “Party Doll”, “Little Darlin” and “All Shook Up” music that moved us through winter to spring and into the summer of 57. (10 years later as a young staff writer in New York City, I would spend my days at Screen Gems writing “SOON”, cubicle to cubicle with the Great Otis Blackwell, writer of “All Shook up” “Don’t Be Cruel” “Great Balls A Fire” “Fever” and many other seminal, inspirational works of Rock And Roll, but that is another story. One which we will surely get to in it’s time)
Summer, dazzling full on blazing hot, tar melting Summer on the Boardwalk is (in my opinion) one of the elemental full sensory joys of life on Earth. Truly something that everyone ought to experience at least once in their lives.
Many people, especially the old folks and the teenage girls in Far Rockaway, seemed to live for it. The old folks would endure all the bitter winter winds, wearisome woes, disappointments and God awful depression of that seemingly endless time in between. Trudging along, their little spark of the divine flickering through dampness and the blasted semi-damnation of the dark time; waiting for the when the world would be born again.
The when, when a kind of honeyed hell comes to the city and Beelzebub’s own wicked heat hots up the place and the human race once again flings off the cloth (and all modesty) and prances out bellies bouncing, barely clothed, slathered in Sea and Ski, straw hat on the top knot, down to the glorious sea side.
Another group raring to go was the mysterious sideshow of pseudo carnies that opened and ran the flipped out, tripped out stands along the strand, that made and manned the crazy sand blasted or freshly painted pre-psychedelic, psychedelic art and amplified lunacy of the Boardwalk
Oh the smells, my God the smells, the French Fries, Candied popcorn and Hot Dogs (Kosher thank you) Cotton candy, Candied Apples, foot wide lolly pops, Soft Custard in Chocolate and Vanilla, the double Rainbow array of Popsicles and the sodas, Cel-Ray, Sarsaparilla, Orange Crush, Cream Soda, Cherry, Root beer, and the Coca-Pepsi and Chocolate syrup egg creams and the Lemon, Pineapple and Strawberry scent of twirling Salt Water Taffy,
I am sure that the Angeles in Heaven (but perhaps only the goodest of the good ones, like Vicki Sue and my dear partner Kookoolis) are from time to time allowed to part the firmament and stick their noggins down to whiff deeply the aromatics of the Boardwalk…and the Beach (the seaweed, salt air, sea and ski and the fishtunken stink-a-moids stuck in the flotsam and jetsam) because in the Summertime, the super heated swirled up smell of it all together, is well, all together, out of this world.
You understand of course that I (and we) were well adapted to the mystical turquoise tranquility of mountain sheltered coves along the Caribees and the sweet reflective solitude to be found ‘neath the shading (coconut) tree. I’m guessing that you know or have at least heard tell that the Beaches in the Rockaways are any and everything but that. In fact they are the opposite of that in every way.
They are a Symphonic, electronic, “Ca-ca-ca-ca-phony” of clashing color, scent, sound and crazy characters, double amped to the max. I could not believe my eyes and ears (and taste buds) nor the heat of the frying pan hot sand under my feet, the Icy cold water, sea birds screeching, wheeling and robbing, up down around and around, Kiddies screaming and yelling (as often as not because the sea gulls were making off with their samrichs,) people wall to wall everywhere ,standing sitting laying leaping running back and forth slipping, tripping, back flipping ball flying, babies crying, the guys screamin’ Ice Cream, “Hey uh huh getchur Ice Cold Ice Cream Heeya!” It was five towers of Babel fallen on their sides and popping open to spill man’s madness willy nilly upon the land..ah..sand
Every conceivable human activity was being plotted, planed or in process there, I understood it to be my first real exposure to Democracy, and the downtrodden, weary rabble yearning to really be free.. And weaving under around, through and ultimately over and above it all, was the music. The glorious music a never ending arrhythmic crescendo of clashing keys, the competing themes of ultimate liberation of the human spirit.
That was the summer of ”Good Golly Miss Molly” “Searchin’””Bye Bye Love” and well yes “Love Letters In The Sand” and “Tammy” (I WAS a 12 year old romantic, much the same as now) but most of all, it was the Summer of 16 year old Paul Anka’s beautiful record “Diana”. “Diana” was the dream theme of every cross-eyed lovesick skinny bagabones boy who had ever set his eyes and heart on a slightly more physically mature, and sophisticated teenaged dream queen… (you may recall how wide a gap a year or two means in early teen time), “Diana” playing full blast over and above it all took us out of the crazy mind-boggling and delirious Boardwalk Beach, Summer of 57, (so exciting to me), and into the Fall….
Un “supra-stuporus” impression that has lasted, pasted and blasted the test of time, (and still takes my breath away) was what I can only call “My Vision of Arleta”
One pre-adolescent September afternoon when I was twelve, there on a side street close to the Boardwalk just inside the slightly elevated doorway, standing coolly in the tidal wave of jingling boinging bell banging, screeching sirens rackety raucous, sizzled grease burnt electronics and sawdusty scent and sound cloud that is a pinball arcade, was a girl.
And Oh my dear Lord what a girl. A sixteen year old Garrison Belted gum snapping, cigarette dangling helmet haired black leather jacketed death in blue denim Queen, A 1957 New York City, Rock n’ Roll indigo dolly of the most extraordinary God help us, “first plus” order.
Heavy lidded, red lipped, rouge on ivory, pouty, sultry, tough teen atomically charged, motorcycle booted “A-Bomb Baby” white teethed, smooth skinned, insolent virgin seductress, big bang born goddess of love, ah.. Ah… I mean burning lust. Teen Venus Diana Magdalene Italian Valkeri, proud, ah… very proud, of bosom, switch blade flashing, ebony eyed, Arleta.
I stopped, heart pounding in my tracks right in front of her and looked dumb struck directly straight and completely into her face, into her eyes, searching, searching deeply into her soul, for her own registry of this moment. The impact of this momentous eye popping, jaw dropping of “fate in your face” moment.
I stood as her attention slowly shifted in my direction, and then to me, I imagined that the light flash kiss of a lifetime was a moment away that I would soon fling myself upon her bosom and mercy, for now and for the rest of my trembling life.
I steeled my self for her imminent ecstatic recognition, my collapse and complete surrender to her and her Arlettic ways, her eyes swept across my latitude, my geography, my place in time, my whole in the whole of the universe and registered… no thing, no one, nothing. As if my heaving chest and love flushed, thunder struck face was empty space. She registered nada, nada nada.
My friend just off my elbow, who had witnessed the whole thing said matter of factly “Her names Arleta, she’s sixteen” and then “she didn’t even see ya”
What I learned that day was that this particular friend had a way of loudly and UN necessarily belaboring the painfully obvious.
The Vision of Arleta was beyond learning it was just an “is was” or “was is” of the most extraordinary, exciting and lasting, power and inspiration.
The next New York girl that made a strong and lasting impression on me was one that I had also never seen before but got my attention by swacking me smack dab in the eye before raining a torrent of fisticuffs down upon (or rather across) upon me in a mano a mano toe to toe nose to nose, knee to knee belly to belly “watch me beat up this boy battle” that seemingly was born for no other reason than that. Apparently, she saw it to her advantage to demonstrate her ability to “beat up a boy” and scrawny me looked like a most likely candidate… This was a battle that I certainly could not win, however I did manage to avoid humiliating myself for the next sixty years by standing my ground and taking it (rather than running away in tears) until an adult stepped in and sent us each back to our own corner buildings.
Of course my right hand comentater man found it necessary to say loudly and repeat repeatedly “Boy, did you see that? That girl sure can fight” and “Man, a girl was beatin’ you up in front of all those people!”
Continues…
Scott Fagan's Mem.wa? 
