My Favorite Westerns

Norm Geras of Normblog has conducted a number of reader polls over the years and I've participated in  a fair number. His latest is favorite Westerns and the deadline is the end of November. (To enter, look for Norm's email link in the upper right-hand corner of his blog.

I've put together my list. It doesn't include very many classic Westerns and no Clint Eastwood.  On the other hand, it is heavy on what might be called anti-Westerns.

Here's my list with the top three picks as allowed by Norm's rules.

1. McCabe and Mrs. Miller

2. True Grit (2010)

3. Dances With Wolves

The Assassination of Jesse James

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Maverick

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Soldier Blue
The Searchers

Blues ona Saturday: Big Bill Broonzy "Summertime Blues"

Big Bill Broonzy, Wikipedia tells us "began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with working class Black audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century."

Broonzy was picked to replace Robert Johnson at the legendary 1938 From Spirituals to Swing , but there was no Big Bill craze similar to that for Johnson. Which is a shame because Bronzy was a very important bluesman and made some very great music. Here's a 1947 performance "Summertime Blues"--not the Eddie Cochran/Who/Blue Cheer rocker. It's very interesting, starting with piano and guitar lines that might been played in the 1930s,then horns enter with lines from swing and jump blues. This was a dominant sound in Chicago and other African-American urban centers. Even the very early Chess Records and Willie Dixon sides were in this vein. Then in 1948, Muddy Waters recorded "I Can't Be Satisfied" and "Rolling Stone" and a blues styles that had been considered out-of-date was again relevant. A preservationist stream keeping country blues alive was created on the white folk circuit, meanwhile Waters went electric and the modern Chicago blues was created.

If you want to learn more about Broonzy, there are over 100 YouTube videos.Bob Riesman has written a highly-regarded biography I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy Bob Riesman. which has a very nice website, which includes an appreciation by Pete Townsend, Foreword by Peter Guralnick, multimedia, and other features.

This seems like a good place to put in a plug for Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. While it is focused on Johnson, it is essential to understanding the whole scope of blues and American popular music. Including Broonzy.

Blues on a Saturday: Magic Sam "Easy Baby"

 Magic Sam had a short career, dying in 1969 at the age of 32, but among blues afficianados he has a very high reputation.  His two albums on Delmark, West Side Soul and Black Magic, are highly regarded. Here's a sample.

Partners for Progressive Israel on Violence in Israel and Gaza

I find a lot to agree with in this statement from Partners for a Progressive Israel, a group of Americans who support Israel's Meretz, a left wing Zionist social democratic, pro-peace party with roots in Mapam.

 Statement on the latest violence in Israel and Gaza
 

November 16, 2012

Partners for Progressive Israel is deeply dismayed by the killing and destruction in Israel and the Gaza Strip over these last days, and we urge all sides to refrain from further escalation and reach a negotiated cease-fire with all due speed.  In the last day, Palestinian rockets from Gaza have claimed their first three Israeli lives in the latest round of violence, and the shelling has now reached the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem areas.  Over a dozen Palestinian civilians, including children, have been killed by Israeli bombing.  We mourn the loss of all innocent life.

As we learned four years ago, massive Israeli military action, divorced from diplomatic progress, does not deliver long-term results. Precious human lives are wasted for short-term gains, or no gains at all. And sometimes the use of force inadvertently creates worse scenarios, as we have witnessed repeatedly throughout the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While Israel clearly has the right to, and must, defend itself from Hamas and the rockets fired from Gaza, Israel has an obligation to use this right and its overwhelming firepower prudently: to seek negotiation first to defuse tensions, to respect the lives of innocent Palestinians, and to recognize that, ultimately, the conflict can be fully resolved only through diplomacy.  Unfortunately, Israel’s current government has not always fulfilled these basic obligations to its citizens.

Hamas is an unsavory neighbor which shoulders a very large degree of responsibility for the current escalation and the ongoing conflict, due to its unwillingness to accept Israel’s fundamental legitimacy. Yet Israel has no choice but to find a way to live alongside the Hamas government for the foreseeable future.  Reports that Israel’s government did not pursue promising third-party efforts to mediate an extended truce with Hamas are therefore a cause for deep concern.

To quote the group of Israelis living in Sderot and nearby communities who have created the organization, “Another Voice”:

“We call on the Israeli government to immediately launch negotiations with the Hamas government.  Rockets and bombs don’t protect us.  We have tried warfare long enough, and both sides have paid, and are still paying, a high price of suffering and loss.  The time has come to talk and seek long-term solutions that will allow citizens on both sides of the border to lead normal lives.”

Above all, at a time when Israel has potential partners in President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Palestinian leaders who are keeping alive the flagging hopes for peace by reaffirming their commitment to a two-state solution, rejecting violence and terrorism, and preparing their people for necessary concessions regarding the ‘right of return’, it is unconscionable for the current Israeli government to continue to rely on military action alone and to resist ending the occupation.

For the long term, a political solution is the only way out of violence and despair, and the only hope for the peace which so many Israelis and Palestinians yearn for and deserve.

Stop the Koch Brothers Greed Agenda Tour Reaches Kansas: Teacherken Reports

Patriot Majority USA has run two bus tours, one on the West Coast, and one in the eastern  half of the country. focused on the Koch Brothers and their Greed Agenda, which they push with hundreds of millions of dollars and through organizations they have established and funded such as Americans for Prosperity, American Legislative Exchange Council, and Freedomworks.

Ken Bernstein,  a recently retired National Board Certified Social known for his blogging as teacherken at Daily Kos reported on the trip. Here is his report from Kansas re-posted with permission from the Education Votes website

When I say “we” it is because on Friday both buses, the one I was on in the East and the one that had been traveling the West, caught up with one another in Topeka, the state capitol, and then finished the tour at a union hall in Kansas City. Oh yes, and Bill Burke and some others first went to Wichita, to the headquarters of Koch Industries, founded by Fred C. Koch, father of the Koch Brothers Charles and David, who are the perpetrators of the Greed Agenda.

In Topeka, we set up outside the Kansas State Capitol

to hold a press conference and deliver a letter to Gov. Sam Brownback asking him to break his ties with the Koch Brothers and end his support of the Greed Agenda.

We had lots of press. There were interviews both before and after the formal event. For example, Sid Voorakkara from the West bus got interviewed by Kansas One News

and Mariah Hatta of the East Bus (on which I traveled) by CBS affiliate WIBW-TV, Channel 13:

We had coverage from all four networks, from the AP, and from several print and radio organizations.
Mariah began the press conference by covering the content of the Greed Agenda:

She was followed by Jim McCullough, Director of The Topeka Center for Peace and Justice:

who spoke on voter suppression. He said it was nice to have someone talking about the 99% and pointed out that the Koch Brothers are Kansans. He told us

Your taxes are helping out their profit margins.

Joy Ginsburg, a concenred parent (of the charming young lady next to her):

told us of her concerns about what the Greed Agenda was doing to her public schools. She referred to this editorial from The Wichita Eagle and the Kansas City Star, which criticized Governor Brownback appointing an “efficiency task force” to wring more saving out public schools whose 10 “experts” included no one based in schools or serving as educators. As the editorial, to which I will return later, noted:

Intended or not, the exclusion of practicing educators comes across as a show of disrespect for the people in the trenches who understand what resources are necessary to educate the children of Kansas.

Sid closed the pressed conference

 

by announcing and reading the letter to Gov. Brownback, which is signed by Patriot Majority but also backed by more than 84,000 people who “LIKE” (and if you follow the link you will see the numbers keep going up – feel free to “LIKE” it as well) the Patriot Majority’s Facebook Page before he and others then headed off to the Capitol:

to deliver the letter to the Governor’s office.
After a brief stop for some barbecue – how can you visit Kansas City and not eat local barbecue? – both buses traveled to a union hall in Kansas City: 

You will note this local hall servers both Laborers (who do construction) and Public Employees.

Sid kicked off the proceedings, and introduced Mark Nidiffer (in the ball cap on your left): who is the business manager and Secretary-Treasurer of Local 1290, who welcomed us and thanked us for what we were doing. He was followed by Andrea Veronica Hodges of Patriot Majority: who told us the Koch Brothers are attempting to rob us of our rights. She mentioned that ALEC has supported 38 pieces of legislation that effectively rob us of our civil rights. We need to send a message to the Koch Brothers that we will not let them get away with it.

After Joy Ginsburg spoke again, the final speaker was Don Jones of Patriot Majority:

who talked about growing up in a union hall like this. Both of his parents, his uncles, now even his 21 year old son, were/are union members.

I was raised and taught that you get a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

But the Koch Brothers and others pushing the Greed Agenda want to take these jobs overseas. Don said that what we want is jobs to provided “everyday stuff” like our houses, being able to send our kids to school, to be able to pay for our cars.

This is OUR country… Labor hands built this country.

Kansas is an appropriate place to end this Stop the Greed Agenda Bus Tour for a number of reasons. First, let me return to the editorial from which I quote:

Once again, Brownback has shown he will heavy-handedly wield the state’s authority over local communities even as he decries the idea that the federal government should have a say in what goes on in the states.

A key approach of the Greed Agenda is to take power away from the Federal government, including the power to regulate corporations as much as possible, and to return it to state government, where through organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council, with its cooperation between state legislators and corporations shaping laws government can be perverted to benefit corporations and the rich. If the Federal Government is hamstrung and limited in what can be done, and state governments are controlled by ALEC and other similar organizations, then the ability of local governments to protect their people begins to disappear, as does the meaning of democracy as a form of government that is rule by “We the people.”

Kansas is also ground zero for something else. One needs to remember that Governor Brownback is on record as not fully supporting evolution – as seen by his raising his hand at a Republican primary debate and by this op ed in the New York Times – even though the Roman Catholic Church to which he converted as an adult has no difficulty with Darwin’s theory. Kansas is also the state whose elected state school board sought to downplay evolution and require the teaching of  ”intelligent design.” While that school board was eventually voted out by the people of Kansas, this points at something to which we often do not pay attention. Those pushing the Greed Agenda realistically care little about such social issues – what they want is unfettered ability to run their corporations, break the unions, and maximize their profits. They have seen that they can use the concerns of some fearful of change to rile them up about social issues and vote for legislators and others who will be compliant on the economic issues that concern the likes of the Koch Brothers, and these same legislators, having been courted and financially supported by organizations like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks will then join ALEC and support the Greed Agenda which is the real concern of the Koch Brothers.

Remember, many people who are anti-evolution also tend not to believe in anthropogenic Global climate change. Wanting people not to accept climate changes is important to those whose profits depend upon continued reliance on fossil fuels, which is an apt description of Charles and David Koch.

We cannot merely push back when legislation is passed or state constitutional amendments are placed on the ballot. We must recognize what is going on, and fight strongly on every election through which the Greed Agenda is being advanced, or we will lose our democracy.

We must be informed and inform others.

This is my last post from the road, describing particular events.

I will offer one more post, without additional pictures, focusing on the issues of concern to those of us who work in and for public schools and/or who support public education.

It has been an honor to travel on behalf of Education Votes, and to share my observations and thoughts here.

Remembering Thelonious Monk on his 95th anniversary

The great Thelonious Monk was born on October 1917, 95 years ago. He was truly one of a kind. A vinyl Grdatest Hits on Columbia was among the first 10 or so jazz records I bought. I wore it out. Here's a performance of his classic "'Round Midnight" recorded in Poland in 1966 with ( in addition to Thelonious on piano)Charlie Rouse on tenor sax Larry Gales on bass, and Ben Riley on drums.

Wage theft in Philadelphia -- and elsewhere

 My write-up on two articles by Jake Blumgart on wage theft and low wage workers in Philadelphia appeared on Talking Union and Teamster Nation.

                                                                                 by Stuart Elliott

Talking Union contributor Jake Blumgart has written a couple of outstanding articles on low-wage workers and wage theft.  In an interesting cover story  on wage theft in Philadelphia’s City Paper. He portrays some victims of wage theft: an undocumented carpenter, a waitress forced to share tips with her manager, and a coffee shop worker who wasn’t paid overtime despite working every day for two weeks. He also places the problems of low wage workers in historical perspective with some surprising facts.

In the past, unionization was a strong option for workers who wanted to defend against employer abuses. During the 1950s, within the now theft-wracked restaurant industry, 25 percent of America’s waitresses were unionized. Today, just 1.5 percent of food-service workers are organized. There are few remaining unionized independent restaurants in greater Philadelphia: the stadium-adjacent McFadden’s, Hymie’s Deli in Lower Merion and the Pen and Pencil Club, for example. Now, organizers tend to focus their efforts on the industry’s biggest employers, like food-services provider Aramark.

Nontraditional worker organizations provide an alternative to unions, but in Philadelphia there are only two options: the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania and the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), which is barely a year old.

A recent report from the Progressive States Network gives Pennsylvania an F for its anti-wage theft efforts and shows why they are so inadequate.

They are alternatives, Blumgart notes.

The fact is, legislative models do exist. In recent years, Seattle and Miami passed anti-wage-theft ordinances, while Madison, the District of Columbia and San Francisco have bulked up enforcement. 

The wage-theft law passed in Florida’s Miami-Dade County in 2010 is one of the nation’s most compelling. It allows workers to contact the Department of Small Business Development with wage-theft complaints, and requires employers to answer those complaints with documentation. If the case cannot be settled, it goes to an administrative hearing. If the employer is found guilty, he or she must pay back the original wages and damages worth twice the original amount to the employee and administrative costs to the county.

In another article (“Want to Fight Poverty, Philly? Start at the Bottom, With the Low-Wage Jobs“) in the Next American City, Blumgart notes

Manufacturing isn’t intrinsically remunerative work: Workers, citizens and legislators faced challenges through the years to eventually turn those jobs into potential gateways to the middle class. 

Now that the economy has changed dramatically, these battles are being fought on new ground. Security guards in the office towers of Center City are organizing with the gargantuan Service Workers International Union, while their counterparts at the Art Museum and the University of Pennsylvania have formed an independent, locally based union.

South Africa in Crisis 1977

The August 2012 police shooting of approximately 34 striking miners has been widely compared to the 1960 Sharpeville massacre. It should also be compared to the 1976 Soweto uprising in which more than 170 youth were killed.  The Sharpeville massacre led to the banning of ANC and the Pan African Congress and their shift from passive to armed resistance.  Soweto was also a turning point.

I wrote the following article for New America, the paper of Social Democrats USA on the fallout a little more than a year later when the South African government instituted a severe political repression.  My last sentence was "Only a political miracle seems capable of reversing a political dynamic that is inevitable heading for confrontation and explosion." There was a miracle in 1990.  But it is now seems that the terms of the miracle and decisions since have had their own contradictions and that South Africa is entering a period of intense crisis.  I don't yet have a handle on all that is involved.

In the meantime, here is my 1977 take with some modern links added.

South Africa Lurches to The Precipice

by Stuart Elliott New America  Nov 1977 (?)

The most dramatic crackdown in two decades [a reference to the Sharpeville massacre] virtually forecloses the possibility of a peaceful resolution to South Africa's racial crisis. On October 19, the South African government banned black protest groups, closed down the leading black newspaper and arrested its editor, Percy Qoboza, and arrested at least fifty people and served an unknown number with banning orders, which bar them from political activities and curtail their freedoms for five years. Both urban black leaders, regarded as moderates, and white liberals were victims of the repression.

The Black ConsciousnessMovement, founded by Stephen Biko in 1969, which filled the gap left by the earlier banning of the African National Congress and the Pan-AfricanistCongress, was only one of many organizations to be banned. Also proscribed were non-political self-help organizations like Black Community Programs, a business-financed group which ran a network of medical clinics. The main targets of the crackdown, however, appear to be the organizations which are the political expression of urban blacks. Among the groups covered by the ban are the South African Students Movement, a high school group; the South African Students Organization, a university group ; and the Black People's Convention, an umbrella group that is the closest thing to a black political party. The Soweto Teachers Action Committee which coordinated the resignations of several hundred high school teachers last month in support of students who have boycotted classes for more than three months in demand for the upgrading of black education was also banned. Leaders of the  Committee of  Ten, an organization of black moderates, which was formed earlier in the year in an attempt to end the near-anarchy that prevailed in Soweto since last year's rioting, were also arrested. The action of the South African .government was a clear statement that : not only has no intention of ever allowing blacks to have a voice in a federal structure, but that it will not even permit blacks to organize for peaceful political change.

The South African government also struck at leading white liberals like those around the Christian Institute of Southern Africa, an ecumenical group noted for its authoritative reports on apartheid. Donald Woods, the white editor of the Daily Dispatch, was arrested as he was preparing to board a flight to New York. Invited to the United States by the American ambassador to South Africa, William G. Bowdler, Woods was to have met with Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young, and possibly President Carter. Under banning, Woods is forbidden to work as a journalist or to write or speak for publication. In addition, he is restricted to East London in Cape Province, subject to a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and limited to meeting only one person at a time other than members of his own family. Just as the crackdown was a clear rebuke of Western opinion, the arrest of Woods was a challenge to the Carter administration's human rights policy and its opposition to apartheid. The South African action undoubtedly complicated the British-American effort to secure a peaceful transition to majority rule in Rhodesia as well.

The crackdown also marked an accelerating restriction of the political freedoms that have long been South Africa's selling point in asking for time and tolerance from the West. Not only was the World, the leading black newspaper and the second largest in all of South Africa, closed down, but its editor Percy Qoboza was detained without trial, a status that can be prolonged indefinitely by the government. Along with the arrest of Woods, this was clearly intended to warn other newspapers "not to abuse" the right of criticism. Threats against the press have become a regular feature of speeches by government leaders in recent weeks and it is widely expected that harsh measures controlling the press will be passed by the new Parliament in January.

The willingness to consider the need for change that existed among white South Africans for a brief interlude following the Soweto riots has been extinguished. With white liberals and moderates weak and disunited, the overwhelming majority of whites appear determined to retain their domination by increased repression and the abridgement of democracy, whatever the cost. The cost is likely to be high. Only a political miracle seems capable of reversing a political dynamic that is inevitable heading for confrontation and explosion.

Blues on a Saturday: Taj Mahal "Bourgeois Blues"

On Labor Day weekend what better BoaS selection than Taj Mahal's 1991 performance of Ledbetter's "Bourgeois Blues." The instrumental backing of Taj's barreelhouse piano and mandolin may seem a little odd to modern ears. But the mandolin did make appearances on some early blues records and there was a vibrant black string band tradition, which was neglected by both commercial recording companies and folklorists.

Blues on a Saturday: Allman Borthers Band

The Allman Brothers Band perfroms Elmore James' "The Sky is Crying" at on 12/3/2011 at the Orpheum Theater, Boston, MA.For some fans this is a controversial and inferior lineup with neither Duane Allman or Dickey Betts, the twin guitars who made the band's sound. To my ears, Warren Hayes and Derek Trucks play at a level barely below Duane and Dickey.

Separated at Birth?

Rachel Maddow says Paul Ryan is a Ayn Randist, not a fiscal conserviate

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Blues on a Saturday: Robert Cray "Smokin' Gun"

I've heard Robert Cray live several times. Once in Washington DC when he was first rising on the scene and several years ago in Wichita after he had become an established star of the blues. He gave great performances both times. As a star, howoever, his security people wouldn't let amateur photographers close to the stage.

Blues on a Saturday: Mose Allison Parchman Farm

Mose Allison was named a jazz master this week, so naturally I'm going to pick one of his great songs. Listen carefully all the way to the end. Mose stopped performing this live at some point. I've previously posted Allison songs here ("Your Mind is on Vacation" and here ("Ever Since the World Ended".

KItty Wells

It was reported today that Kitty Wells has died. Wells 1952 hit "It wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" was the first song by a female to top the country music charts. Wells paved the way for later generations of women in country music: Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, and many others owe her a debt of gratitude.  Her wikipedia entry reports that she is the sixth best selling female artists in country music.

There were women stars in country music before Wells--Maybelle Carter, Rose Maddox, and Patsy Montana come to mind,  but Wells was at another level and duration.    I fear some obits may not get this right.

Well's defining song "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" is the greatest answer song in American popular music. It outsold Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life." For a while, Wells' song was banned by the Grand Ole Opry and radio stations. That fate doesn't seem to have befallen Thompson's disc.
 Here's "The Wild Side of Life" performed by Hank Thompson in a guitar shop, decades after the
western-swingish original
Both songs share a melody with Roy Acuff's 1939 "Great Speckled Bird" and the 1929 Carter Family's "I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blues Eyes.



There are at least two other country songs written to this tune: Reno & Smiley's “I'm Using My Bible for a Roadmap,” and Townes Van Zandt's “Heavenly Houseboat Blues.” Rock historian Nick Tosches say that the melody is an ancient British tune.

The Obama Effect

Charles Dutton is one of our finest actors and he has now branched out to direct his first theatrical release "The Obama Effect."   It's debuting in AMC theaters across the country this weekend. There's not one near me, but if you have a chance to see it, I think it will be be  entertainment gamble worth taking.
Here's the description from the website

A serious health scare ignites John Thomas, an insurance salesman in his 50’s (played by writer/director Charles S. Dutton) to take a closer look at his life. Motivated by a misguided obsession with getting Barack Obama elected, John takes an overwhelming involvement in the Presidential campaign. While John becomes obsessed with the ideal of change that Obama represents for Americans, he has in turn neglected to create positive change in his own life, particularly with regard to his health and familial relationships.

Blues on a Saturday: Jimmy McGriff and Hank Crawford

Jimmy Mcgriff on organ and piano with Hank Crawford on alto sax, Bob Devos on guitar, and Jimmie Smith on drums. Performing the blues classic "Every Day I Have the Blues"

Blues on a Saturday: Lonnie Mack, Albert Collins, and Roy Buchanon--Further on Down the Road

Andy Griffith's Great Performance

When Andy Griffith died this week, most commentators focused on his classic role as Sheriff Andy Taylor on the CBS series Andy Griffith Show or his later role as the avuncular lawyer Matlock.  Less known is Griffith's performance as Lonesome Rhodes in the 1957 Elia Kazan movie A Face in the Crowd, which was selected in 2008 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

It's a great movie.  Interestingly, the trailer compares Griffith to Marlon Brando and James Dean.  

UN Take Over of Internet? :Congressman Mike Pompeo vs. New York Times

Mike Pompeo (R-KS4)

...there is an effort to manipulate the International Telecommunications Union—a treaty originally created in 1865 to address telegraph service—to provide the United Nations jurisdiction over the Internet.  The showdown over whether the UN will seize control will happen at the December 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai.

 Pompeo  boasts that he has written a House resolution opposing the UN takeover of the internet.

New York Times

Documents prepared for the December meeting, which leaked out last week — yes, on the Internet — show that there are no proposals to hand governance of the Net to the I.T.U. The union insists that it has no desire to play such a role. And even if some governments would like to give the agency increased regulatory powers, the United States and other like-minded countries could easily block them.