Chronicles, Volume One Read online

  One afternoon I was in there pouring Coke into a glass from a milk pitcher when I heard a voice coming cool through the screen of the radio speaker. Ricky Nelson was singing his new song, “Travelin’ Man.” Ricky had a smooth touch, the way he crooned in fast rhythm, the tonation of his voice. He was different than the rest of the teen idols, had a great guitarist who played like a cross between a honky-tonk hero and a barn-dance fiddler. Nelson had never been a bold innovator like the early singers who sang like they were navigating burning ships. He didn’t sing desperately, do a lot of damage, and you’d never mistake him for a shaman. It didn’t feel like his endurance was ever being tested to the utmost, but it didn’t matter. He sang his songs calm and steady like he was in the middle of a storm, men hurling past him. His voice was sort of mysterious and made you fall into a certain mood.

  I had been a big fan of Ricky’s and still liked him, but that type of music was on its way out. It had no chance of meaning anything. There’d be no future for that stuff in the future. It was all a mistake. What was not a mistake was the ghost of Billy Lyons, rootin’ the mountain down, standing ’round in East Cairo, Black Betty bam be lam. That was no mistake. That’s the stuff that was happening. That’s the stuff that could make you question what you’d always accepted, could litter the landscape with broken hearts, had power of spirit. Ricky, as usual, was singing bleached out lyrics. Lyrics probably written just for him. I’d always felt kin to him, though. We were about the same age, probably liked the same things, from the same generation although our life experience had been so dissimilar, him being brought up out West on a family TV show. It was like he’d been born and raised on Walden Pond where everything was hunky-dory, and I’d come out of the dark demonic woods, same forest, just a different way of looking at things. Ricky’s talent was very accessible to me. I felt we had a lot in common. In a few years’ time he’d record some of my songs, make them sound like they were his own, like he had written them himself. He eventually did write one himself and mentioned my name in it. Ricky, in about ten years’ time, would even get booed while onstage for changing what was perceived as his musical direction. It turned out we did have a lot in common.

  There was no way to know that standing in the kitchen of the Café Wha? listening to that smooth, monotone drawl. The thing was that Ricky was still making records and that’s what I wanted to do, too. I envisioned myself recording for Folkways Records. That was the label I wanted to be on. That was the label that put out all the great records.

  Ricky’s song ended and I gave the rest of my French fries to Tiny Tim, went back into the outer room to see what Fred was up to. I had asked Fred once if he had any records out and he said, “That’s not my game.” Fred used darkness as a musically potent weapon, but as skilled and powerful as he was, there was something that he lacked as a performer. I couldn’t figure out what it was. When I saw Dave Van Ronk I knew.

  Van Ronk worked at the Gaslight, a cryptic club—had a dominant presence on the street, more prestige than anyplace else. It had mystique, a big colorful banner out front and paid a weekly wage. Down a flight of stairs next to a bar called the Kettle of Fish, the Gaslight was non-booze but you could bring a bottle in a paper bag. It was shut down in the day and opened early in the evening with about six performers that rotated throughout the night, a closed drawn circle that an unknown couldn’t break into. There weren’t any auditions. It was a club I wanted to play, needed to.

  Van Ronk played there. I’d heard Van Ronk back in the Midwest on records and thought he was pretty great, copied some of his recordings phrase for phrase. He was passionate and stinging, sang like a soldier of fortune and sounded like he paid the price. Van Ronk could howl and whisper, turn blues into ballads and ballads into blues. I loved his style. He was what the city was all about. In Greenwich Village, Van Ronk was king of the street, he reigned supreme.

  Once on a cold winter day near Thompson and 3rd, in a flurry of light snow when the feeble sun was filtering through the haze, I saw him walking towards me in a frosty silence. It was like the wind was blowing him my way. I wanted to talk to him, but something was off. I watched him go by, saw the flash in his eye. It was a fleeting moment and I let it go. I wanted to play for him, though. Actually, I wanted to play for anybody. I could never sit in a room and just play all by myself. I needed to play for people and all the time. You can say I practiced in public and my whole life was becoming what I practiced. I kept my sights on the Gaslight. How could I not? Compared to it, the rest of the places on the street were nameless and miserable, low-level basket houses or small coffeehouses where the performer passed the hat. But I began to play as many as I could. I had no choice. The narrow streets were infused with them. They were small and ranged in shape, loud and noisy and catered to the confection of tourists who swarmed through the streets at night. Anything could pass for one—double door parlor rooms, storefronts, second story walk-ups, basements below street level, all holes in the wall.

  There was an unusual beer and wine place on 3rd Street in what used to be Aaron Burr’s livery stable, now called Café Bizarre. The patrons were mostly workingmen who sat around laughing, cussing, eating red meat, talking pussy. There was a small stage in the back and I played there once or twice. I probably played all the places at one time or another. Most of them stayed open ’til the break of day, kerosene lamps and sawdust on the floor, some with wooden benches, a strong-armed guy at the door—no cover charge and the owners tried to offload as much coffee as they could. Performers either sat or stood in the window, visible to the street, or were positioned at the opposite end of the room facing the door, singing at the top of their voices. No microphones or anything.

  Talent scouts didn’t come to these dens. They were dark and dingy and the atmosphere was chaotic. Performers sang and passed the hat or played while watching tourists file past, hoping some of them would toss coins into a breadbasket or guitar case. On weekends, if you played all the joints from dusk ’til dawn, you could make maybe twenty dollars. Weeknights it was hard to tell. Sometimes not much because it was so competitive. You had to know a trick or two to survive.

  One singer I crossed paths with a lot, Richie Havens, always had a nice-looking girl with him who passed the hat and I noticed that he always did well. Sometimes she passed two hats. If you didn’t have some kind of trick, you’d come off with an invisible presence, which wasn’t good. A couple of times, I hooked up with a girl I knew from the Café Wha?, a waitress who was good to the eye. We’d go from place to place, I’d play and she’d take up collection, wear a funny little bonnet, heavy black mascara, low laced blouse—looked almost naked from the waist up under a capelike coat. I’d split the money with her later, but it was too much of a hassle to do it all the time. I still made more when she was with me than when I was working on my own.

  What really set me apart in these days was my repertoire. It was more formidable than the rest of the coffeehouse players, my template being hard-core folk songs backed by incessantly loud strumming. I’d either drive people away or they’d come in closer to see what it was all about. There was no in-between. There were a lot of better singers and better musicians around these places but there wasn’t anybody close in nature to what I was doing. Folk songs were the way I explored the universe, they were pictures and the pictures were worth more than anything I could say. I knew the inner substance of the thing. I could easily connect the pieces. It meant nothing for me to rattle off things like “Columbus Stockade,” “Pastures of Plenty,” “Brother in Korea” and “If I Lose, Let Me Lose” all back-to-back just like it was one long song. Most of the other performers tried to put themselves across, rather than the song, but I didn’t care about doing that. With me, it was about putting the song across.

  I had stopped going down to the Café Wha? in the afternoons. Never stepped foot in there again. Lost touch with Freddy Neil, too. Instead of going over there, I began hanging out at the Folklore Center, the citadel of Americana folk music. T
hat was also on MacDougal Street, between Bleecker and 3rd. The small store was up a flight of stairs and the place had an antique grace. It was like an ancient chapel, like a shoebox sized institute. The Folklore Center sold and reported on everything that had to do with folk music. It had a wide plate-glass window where records and instruments were displayed.

  One afternoon I went up the flight of stairs and wandered in there. I browsed around and met Izzy Young, the proprietor. Young was an old-line folk enthusiast, very sardonic and wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses, spoke in a thick Brooklyn dialect, wore wool slacks, skinny belt and work boots, tie at a careless slant. His voice was like a bulldozer and always seemed too loud for the little room. Izzy was always a little rattled over something or other. He was sloppily good natured. In reality, a romantic. To him, folk music glittered like a mound of gold. It did for me, too. The place was a crossroads junction for all the folk activity you could name and you might at any time see real hard-line folksingers in there. Some people picked up their mail there.

  Young occasionally produced folk concerts by the unmistakably authentic folk and blues artists. He’d bring them in from out of town to play at Town Hall or at some university. At one time or another I saw Clarence Ashley, Gus Cannon, Mance Lipscomb, Tom Paley, Erik Darling hanging around in the place. There were a lot of esoteric folk records, too, all records I wanted to listen to. Extinct song folios of every type—sea shanties, Civil War songs, cowboy songs, songs of lament, church house songs, anti–Jim Crow songs, union songs—archaic books of folk tales, Wobbly journals, propaganda pamphlets about everything from women’s rights to the dangers of boozing, one by Daniel De Foe, the English author of Moll Flanders. A few instruments for sale, dulcimers, five-string banjos, kazoos, pennywhistles, acoustic guitars, mandolins. If you were wondering what folk music was all about, this was the place where you could get more than a vague glimmer.

  Izzy had a back room with a potbellied wood-burning stove, crooked pictures and rickety chairs—old patriots and heroes on the wall, pottery with crossed-stitch design, lacquered black candlesticks…lots of things having to do with craft. The little room was filled with American records and a phonograph. Izzy would let me stay back there and listen to them. I listened to as many as I could, even thumbed through a lot of his antediluvian folk scrolls. The madly complicated modern world was something I took little interest in. It had no relevancy, no weight. I wasn’t seduced by it. What was swinging, topical and up to date for me was stuff like the Titanic sinking, the Galveston flood, John Henry driving steel, John Hardy shooting a man on the West Virginia line. All this was current, played out and in the open. This was the news that I considered, followed and kept tabs on.

  As far as keeping tabs on things, Izzy kept a diary, too. It was some sort of ledger that he kept open on his desk. He’d ask me questions about myself like, where it was that I grew up and how did I get interested in folk music, where I discovered it, stuff like that. He’d then write about me in his diary. I couldn’t imagine why. His questions were annoying, but I liked him because he was gracious to me and I tried to be considerate and forthcoming. I was very careful when talking to outsiders, but Izzy was okay and I answered him in plain talk.

  He asked me about my family. I told him about my grandma on my mom’s side who lived with us. She was filled with nobility and goodness, told me once that happiness isn’t on the road to anything. That happiness is the road. Had also instructed me to be kind because everyone you’ll ever meet is fighting a hard battle.

  I couldn’t imagine what Izzy’s battles were. Internal, external, who knows? Young was a man that concerned himself with social injustice, hunger and homelessness and he didn’t mind telling you so. His heroes were Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Moby-Dick, the ultimate fish story, was his favorite tall tale. Young was besieged with bill collectors and dictates from the landlord. People were always chasing him down for money, but it didn’t seem to faze him. He had a lot of resilience, had even fought city hall into allowing folk music to be played in Washington Square Park. Everybody was for him.

  He’d pull out records for me. He’d given me a Country Gentlemen record and said I should listen to “Girl Behind the Bar.” He played me “White House Blues” by Charlie Poole and said that this would be perfect for me and pointed out that this was the exact version that The Ramblers did. He played me the Big Bill Broonzy song “Somebody’s Got to Go,” and that was right up my alley, too. I liked hanging around at Izzy’s. The fire was always crackling.

  One winter day a big burly guy stepped in off the street. He looked like he’d come from the Russian embassy, shook the snow off his coat sleeves, took off his gloves and put them on the counter, asked to see a Gibson guitar that was hanging up on the brick wall. It was Dave Van Ronk. He was gruff, a mass of bristling hair, don’t give a damn attitude, a confident hunter. My mind went into a rush. There was nothing between the man and me. Izzy took the guitar down and gave it to him. Dave fingered the strings and played some kind of jazzy waltz, put the guitar back on the counter. As he put the guitar down, I stepped over and put my hands on it and asked him at the same time how does someone get to work down at the Gaslight, who do you have to know? It’s not like I was trying to get buddy-buddy with him, I just wanted to know.

  Van Ronk looked at me curiously, was snippy and surly, asked if I did janitor work.

  I told him, no, I didn’t and he could perish the thought, but could I play something for him? He said, “Sure.”

  I played him “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” Dave liked what he heard and asked me who I was and how long I’d been in town, then said I could come down about eight or nine in the evening and play a couple of songs in his set. That was how I met Dave Van Ronk.

  I left the Folklore Center and went back into the ice-chopping weather. Towards evening, I was over at the Mills Tavern on Bleecker Street where the basket-house singers would bunch up, chitchat and make the scene. My flamenco guitar–playing friend, Juan Moreno, told me about a new coffeehouse that had just opened on 3rd Street, called the Outré, but I was barely listening. Juan’s lips were moving, but they were moving almost without sound. I’d never play in the Outré, didn’t have to. I’d soon be hired to play at the Gaslight and never see the basket houses again. Outside of Mills Tavern the thermometer was creeping up to about ten below. My breath froze in the air, but I didn’t feel the cold. I was heading for the fantastic lights. No doubt about it. Could it be that I was being deceived? Not likely. I don’t think I had enough imagination to be deceived; had no false hope, either. I’d come from a long ways off and had started from a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.

  2

  The Lost Land

  I SAT UP in bed and looked around. The bed was a sofa in the living room and steam heat was rising out of the iron radiator. Above the fireplace, a framed portrait of a wigged colonial was staring back at me—near the sofa, a wooden cabinet supported by fluted columns, near that, an oval table with rounded drawers, a chair like a wheelbarrow, small desk of violet wood veneer with flip-down drawers—a couch that was a padded back car seat with spring upholstery, a low chair with rounded back and scroll armrests—a thick French rug on the floor, silver light gleaming through the blinds, painted planks accenting the rooflines.

  The room smelled of gin and tonic, wood alcohol and flowers. The place was a top floor walk-up in a Federal style building near Vestry Street below Canal and near the Hudson River. On the same block was the Bull’s Head, a cellar tavern where John Wilkes Booth, the American Brutus, used to drink. I’d been in there once and saw his ghost in the mirror—an ill spirit. Paul Clayton, a folksinger friend of Van Ronk, good-natured, forlorn and melancholic, who must have had at least thirty records out but was unknown to the American public—an intellectual, a scholar and a romantic with an encyclopedic knowledge of balladry—had introduced me to Ray Gooch and Chloe Kiel, the
occupants of the place. I walked over to the window and looked out into the white, gray streets and over towards the river. The air was bitter cold, always below zero, but the fire in my mind was never out, like a wind vane that was constantly spinning. It was midafternoon and both Ray and Chloe were gone.

  Ray was maybe ten years older than me—from Virginia—he was like an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred—came from a long line of ancestry made up of bishops, generals, even a colonial governor. He was a nonconformist, a nonintegrator and a Southern nationalist. He and Chloe lived in the place like they were hiding out. Ray was like a character from out of some of the songs I’d been singing, someone who had seen life, done deeds and lived romances—had traipsed around, had a broad grasp of the country, its conditions. Though there was an undercurrent of upheaval reverberating, and in a few years the American cities would tremble, Ray took little interest, said the real action was “in the Congo.”

  Chloe had red-gold hair, hazel eyes, an illegible smile, face like a doll and an even better figure, fingernails painted black. She worked as a hatcheck girl at the Egyptian Gardens, a belly-dancing dinner place on 8th Avenue—also posed as a model for Cavalier magazine. “I’ve always worked,” she said. They lived as husband and wife, or brother and sister, or cousins, it was hard to tell, they just lived here, that’s all. Chloe had her own primitive way of looking at things, always would say mad stuff that clicked in a cryptic way, told me once that I should wear eyeshadow because it keeps away the evil eye. I asked her whose evil eye and she said, “Joe Blow’s or Joe Schmoe’s.” According to her, Dracula ruled the world and he’s the son of Gutenberg, the guy who invented the printing press.