2023/2024 Merry Christmas/Happy New Year: Santana ABRAXAS, Version 10

Steve Gallanter’s Blog: https://stevegallanter.wordpress.com

is a modest enterprise.  I usually send out about 40 or so Facebook copies and another 20 email copies of  brain candy with the occasional response from a friend being more than welcome as were the pass alongs which on 2 occasions reconnected me with folks from the past.

In April 2014 I began tweeting and my number of views exploded to about 200 altogether.

Oh joy!

...But wait there’s more…

I am both absurdly proud and humbled by the 1217 visitors this brain candy dispensary has tallied so far in 2023.

When the Christmas 2013 blog was passed along quite a bit it broke into the Top 5 of my Google search.

Most gratifying were several comments along the lines of “Thank you for this acknowledgement of a personal Christmas tradition, as I too have one.”

I responded to all of these comments gladly.  I was pleasantly taken aback at the number and intensity of these very private traditions and their importance to their adherents.

One gentleman took the time to send a message about his private tradition of chewing Trident spearmint gum after Christmas dinner as his now gone father had.

The last 10 years have brought thoughts of other Christmases to mind as my memory bank is thankfully still accepting deposits.  Indeed, this blog has precipitated thoughts of Christmases past to the extent that a 2023/2024 addition is appropriate.

 Keeping the faith is part of Christmas and the promise of a New Year is always uplifting even as the holiday transforms.

Christmas cards have largely been supplanted by a virtual blizzard of social media greetings.

Black Friday’s throng of shoppers have seen their number diminished by Cyber Monday’s ever increasing bandwidth and deliveries.

Indeed, grand-parenting, retirement, disability, estrangement and relocation change Christmas more with every passing year.

Still the Christmas spirit is till in my heart and those of many others…

In that spirit I am sending:

Merry Christmas: Santana ABRAXAS

Merry Christmas/New Year 2023/2024

Christmas is a time when we, even those of us who do not share in the religious meaning of the holiday, each have our own meaning for this day.

Santana’s ABRAXAS LP signifies Christmas for me. 

I bought ABRAXAS for my Mom for Christmas 1970.  Mom, Peter and I had seen WOODSTOCK and Mom was mightily impressed with Mike Shrieve’s epic drum solo on “Soul Sacrifice”.  While Mom always tried a little too hard to like what I liked her enthusiasm was more than sincere.

I saved my .75 a week allowance, pestered Dad for money and raked some leaves to conjure up the $3.49 to buy the LP at Port Chemists.

(I gave Dad innumerable promotional packs of aftershave and Borkum Riff pipe tobacco.  My brother Peter got Johnny Lightning 500 while I received several slot cars and Joe Paterno’s FOOTBALL MY WAY from Dad, a Penn. State grad.

It was my first “adult” gift-giving.

In 1970 I was 12.  It was to be my last boyhood Christmas.

Turkey, homemade cranberry sauce, (my Mom never, ever served that jellied, canned..uh.. stuff), and visits from neighborhood kids fulfilled every expectation.

Mom was surprised and delighted with ABRAXAS even with its “dirty” cover.  It played endlessly on the turntable of the Gallanter household’s Harman-Kardon Turntable, AM-FM Stereo with Recording Cassette Compact Stereo.

(Dad was quick to nudge me as a way of reminding me that he had purchased the stereo and had paid me to rake leaves.  On this Christmas I actually found this habit of his endearing).

Christmas 1970 was to be the last Christmas of our family as a unit although neither Mom, Dad, Peter or myself knew so at the time.

1971’s Christmas crystallized the cataclysmic changes, voluntary AND involuntary, familial AND cultural, well-intended AND malicious that would sweep through the lives of Mom, Dad, Peter and myself.

Christmas 1971 couldn’t have all of us in the same room for any length of time. I brought ABRAXAS to our North Shore Unitarian Universalist Congregation’s Jr. High room where I played ABRAXAS through headphones repeatedly to the puzzlement of the folks I willfully disregarded.

Headphones were clamped over my head as the congas of “Oye Como Va” reverberated.

“When Steven doesn’t talk, he really doesn’t talk,” I overheard one girl mention as I re-cued ABRAXAS.

Hostility was assumed to be my motivation, and not one completely inaccurate, but astral projection back to 1970 was the guiding star.  It was still my Mom’s LP but she was caught up in her own affairs and didn’t notice it missing.  Dad lived in Forest Hills, Queens as the divorce was now final.

(I remember looking at a snapshot of Christmas 1962 in our home at 86 Henry St, Merrick, Long Island.  There is a tower of blocks in front of me wearing a devilish grin with my Mom kneeling beside me with a bemused expression.  I remember kicking the blocks over.  1962 is my earliest Christmas memory).

For several years I continued to play ABRAXAS at Christmas.  Most memorably in 1975 when my Mom returned home from a hospitalization and I wanted to comfort her.  ABRAXAS proved to be more curative than the turkey I attempted to cook with tomato soup flavored stuffing).

By 1973 I was not speaking to my Dad, an estrangement that lasted more than 3 years.  ABRAXAS’ “Oye Como Va” reminded me of the photo of Mom and Dad celebrating their 1st. anniversary with a grinning Tito Puente, the author of the original “Oye Como Va,” at the Palladium in Manhattan, where my paternal grandfather worked.

ABRAXAS signified Dad as well as Mom and the paternal grandparents who posed with me on their laps but who I have no memories of.

The summers of 1974,1975 and 1976 found me at  Rowe Unitarian Universalist Camp and Conference Center.  ABRAXAS was in the ‘Radio Rowe’ LP pile for the public address system that broadcast on a loud, sporadic basis throughout the camp. Santana was very popular with my brother and sister campers although they would have been taken aback, to say the least, at the talisman it was to me.

Boston gained me as a resident in 1978.  I left ABRAXAS with Mom.  I played it upon my early Christmas sojourns to the ancestral home.

In 1981 a group of we Port Washingtonians had a Christmas celebration at the New York, New York discotheque in Manhattan.  Mom remarked that the percussion of much disco reminded her of ABRAXAS.  The next day I played the now battered LP.  Upon hitching back to Boston I purchased a used copy at Looney Tunes Used Records.

1982 brought the realization that college graduation was beyond my capability.  At home in Port Washington I put on ABRAXAS to please Mom before disappointing her.

By 1984 my Dad had passed.  Yes, “Oye Como Va” reminded me that once upon a time Dad and Mom were deeply in love and Peter and I were fortunate to be the offspring of their union.  I have no recollection of my grandparents on either side but ABRAXAS is a talisman of their lives causing mine.

10 years pass. ABRAXAS PLAYS annually on my Panasonic Plus Cassette-to-Cassette AM/FM with Auto Reverse boom box.

1995 found my brother Peter and I at odds to the extent that I spent Christmas in Boston brooding ambivalently although I did send presents to Peter, his wife Aida and Mom.

I consoled myself with ABRAXAS “Hope You’re Feeling Better”s theme of ambivalence powered by congas and Carlos Santana’s wah-wah guitar pyrotechnics.

2022’s first week has made “Hope You’re Feeling Better” a talisman of COVID even more than “Oye Como Va.”

“Is that you

Your eyes slowly fading?

Is that you

Your mind full of tears?

Is that you

Searching for a good time?

Is that you

Waiting for all these years?

Is that you?

Look across the ocean

And I hope you’re feeling better.”

https://youtu.be/P_vJBz2_LtE

The clever wordplay of shifting from the declarative voice to the interrogative voice is the kind of lyrical daring do that seems to have vanished, along with the presence of rock music in general.

But make no mistake; “Hope You’re Feeling better” is perhaps Greg Rolie’s finest vocals on ABRAXAS. The questing baritone being cut off by the fiery pyrotechnics of Carole Santana’s wah-wah wailing is a metaphor that is far more descriptive than any printed lyric can give voice to.

ABRAXAS is definitely the gift that keeps on giving.

The repeated playing of “Hope You’re Feeling Better” is an uplift in much the same way as “Oye Como Va.”

…Indeed, the ambivalent holiday of 1995 seeped to mind…

Being well into my 30’s in 1995 I had made my own Christmas tradition of surprising someone that I liked with a gift that spoke to an affection that had not been fully expressed.  Being single, childless and employed in an industry that throws folks together and throws them away with equal speed I had learned that small blessings are sometimes the only blessings one can receive but that can be a good thing.

…I was sitting on the living room floor of 24 Haviland St, Apt. 28 at about 9 P.M. 2 days before Christmas wrapping up 2 gifts while ABRAXAS played through the open door of my bedroom.  My roommate was out of the country for the holidays so I felt little compunction about playing my music a tad louder than I might have otherwise.

I was wrapping 2 gifts for a former co-worker.  Patricia was a beautiful woman who had tended bar at the same venue as I.   Although it had been a brief and occasional job for her the chit-chat of the time when I was an afternoon employee at that venue had crossed over to more chit-chat when we briefly worked the same bar.

Patricia was in the midst of several transitions in her life and I was taken aback, although pleased, when she asked me to call her.

Over the course of more than a year these calls became more frequent and more intimate and I found myself listening more than I spoke.  Certainly, I was flattered to be trusted but more than that I trusted her with the pure aspects of my heart that had become very distant.

Pure and impure thoughts mingled, as Patricia was a beauty.

I was thinking about how to finesse a meeting with Patricia so as to give her both of her gifts.  One was a sardonic look at the recent past while the other was a light unto what was to come.

The phone rang, landlines had only begun too cede their domain to pagers, and it was Patricia.

“…Steve, I am at the bar. I have a present for you.  Where do you live?”

“I have 2 presents for you. I live 25 yards away I’ll be there in 5 minutes,” I replied.  My heart did a full-gainer. Steeling myself I managed to wind some Scotch tape around my gifts and jetted out the door to the bar.

Patricia was by the pay phone smiling.

I ordered drinks, we took a booth and we spoke briefly of the joy and relief of having finished Christmas shopping.

“What did you get me,” she asked with the slightly turned head that moved my eyes and heart.

I gave her the 1st. package and she ripped off the wrapping with an urgency that was enthralling.  Laughing out loud she proclaimed, “I don’t know what I would ever use this for!”

“I know, that’s why I got it for you!”

I slid the other gift over the booth’s table when the owner of the bar came by to shake my hand and wish me a Merry Christmas.

I thanked him and introduced Patricia who also wished him a Merry Christmas.

“You know him?”

“I’ve been coming here since 1979,” I offered while wondering what Patricia might think of my recreational habits.

Patricia unwrapped the second gift and plugged it into a socket. She smiled a closed mouthed gesture of gratitude while nodding slowly in a way that signaled that all was right in the world if for only this moment.

“C’mon open your present.”

I opened Patricia’s package to find a mustard colored turtleneck that would undoubtedly be a good fit underneath a leather jacket for Boston’s winters.

I blinked involuntarily and held her hands briefly.

“Hey, do you think that the Prudential Mall is still open?”

“If there is any night of the year when it would be open late tonight would be that night.”

“Let’s go, we can leave the stuff in my car.”

My mind was pondering whether this meeting was a gesture of sympathy for being estranged from my family, gratitude for being a shoulder to cry on or just because Patricia was a good kid…or something more.

We walked the 200 or so yards to the Prudential Mall and after determining that indeed the stores had closed at 9, walked back to the car and I removed my gift.

We hugged.

Patricia got into her car.

I returned to my apartment…

1997 found Mom in a nursing home for the final phase of her life.  I bought her a new Walkman with ABRAXAS poised to play.  She was delighted.

1999 found Mom receiving a Discman.  The first CD…?  Yes, she remembered.

2004 brought the end of Mom’s life.  On that Christmas I played ABRAXAS at 2 AM in the living room of 42 North Bayles Ave, Port Washington on my Discman in a private memorial to Mom.

2013 found my now gone friend Steve Boisson offering that he had “never thought of Santana as Christmas music” while offering blues artist Charles Brown as his own eccentric Yuletide troubadour.

2019 found me in brother Peter’s place in Port Washington, N.Y. the night after Christmas patting my protruding tummy and nursing a straight up Jameson.

Peter’s television was displaying a vivacious Latina declaiming the weather.

“That’s Audrey Puentes.  Her father is Tito Puentes,” Peter offered.

“Hmmm..,” I said to myself.

My grandmother Marie Jack, biologically my Mom’s stepmom, gifted me a Christmas ornament featuring 2 cardinals in a gilded cage in, I believe 1973.  It never occurred to me at the time that I would never see Marie again although the passage of time and circumstances eventually made this reality evident.  From 1997 to 2017 I brought the ornament to the ancestral home for the talismanic Christmas tree.  In 2017 I neglected to bring it home but Aida was good enough to rescue the birds as they nestled in my rolling case for the Greyhound to Boston.

Much to my sadness the fragile frame of the cage was twisted in transit and my efforts to restore it fell short.  However, it is intact, if a little twisted, and resides next to Aunt Goldie’s sock monkey as ABRAXAS plays.

Our decade has brought the passage from this world and from my life of more than several folks; Martha Shaw among them, and places. Looney Tunes records, where I purchased my Santana ABRAXAS CD has been gone since 2012; likewise T.C’s Lounge, with local watering holes and record stores right up there, or down there, with trilobites as fossils.

ABRAXAS keeps record stores and Christmas alive at one and the same time as this mind contemplates Christmas 2022 and the New Year of 2023.

To all those folks both present and absent I humbly offer,

“Oye Como Va.”

ABRAXAS signifies Christmas; calling out to heart the folks who have passed, friends who are missed, places that are gone and the phases of the Christmases past, present and future.

ABRAXAS is a talisman as real as a rock, in LP, cassette,  CD and YouTube formats that holds in its notes the presents, love, tears and hopes of Christmas every time I so much as touch it.

I am listening to it right now.

“Oye Como Va”

“Hope You’re Feeling Better”

!Merry Christmas!

!Happy New Year!

RULES OF THE GAME: #3 ?..Forgive..?

?…Why..?

Forgive and forget

when

You

can

Blame and remember

PASSING: Jack Hague, 1949-2022

On Saturday, June 18th; I attended the memorial reception for my boss at Our House and Our House East, Jack Hague.

I first met Jack at Our House in July of 1982…!?!…

I was working at the Landmark Cafe in Quincy Market 2-3 days and 2-3 nights as a waiter, before the current coinage of “server,” and then jumping on the B Line to 1277 Comm. Ave. Allston. This worked for me as the late wait shift at Our House began at 6 P.M.

It was my 2nd or 3rd shift…

Jack was a short guy cooking in short shorts.

This is how we met….

The late waiter’s shift involved taking the chafing dish which contained the buffet from Table 10 into the kitchen, emptying any leftovers and dismantling it for the dishwasher.

“Hey..uh..you.”

“My name is Steve.”

Jack inspected the remnants of the meatballs.

“Steve, you can eat these if you like.”

“I ate at work.”

“You can wrap these up to take home.”

“Actually, I’m a vegetarian.”

“Vegetarians can eat these meatballs.”

I laughed so hard snot bubbled from my nose.

…Jack Hague…

CHANGE 2022: 10 Signs of Aging

1) Your age is 448 in dog years.

2) The toenail of the big toe on your left foot that broke a year ago will not grow back…ever.

3) You understand the Federal budget deficit and the national debt and the difference between the two.

4) You are about to become a ‘great uncle’, at least in the chronological sense.

5) Ibuprofen before a shift is a sound strategy.

6) Cash is your preferred medium of exchange.

7) You remember when the Hynes stop on the Green Line was Auditorium.

8) You are proud of your earnings in the biz.

9) You don’t curse.

10) Let’s Go Mets!

Thank you to the readers of https://stevegallanter.wordpress.com in 2021

It is with an absurd amount of both pride and humility that I am posting that stevegallanter.wordpress.com had 1694 visitors with a total of 2080 views om 2021.

I thank you all.

HAIKI 5*7*5* Frozen pineapple juice

Thinking of my Mom

The frozen pineapple juice

Still the July bomb

PASSING: Little Richard and Richard Penniman, December 5, 1932-May 9, 2020

Little Richard/Richard Penniman passed on May 9, 2020 from bone cancer at his home in Tullahoma, Tennessee surrounded by his brother, sister and adopted son Danny Jones Penniman who gave the cause of death as bone cancer.

Little Richard came into my ears upon my Dad’s 1970 purchase of the Gallanter family’s Harmon Kardon Slimline AM-FM/Turntable/Cassette stereo.

WCBS FM 101 SOLID GOLD became my first choice of radio as the Rock & Roll Revival of that time had spawned a radio format.

I had heard of Little Richard…

…hearing him was a whole other thing. A screaming messianic yell  filled with what this 12 year-old was just figuring out was sexuality along with an evangelical intensity that I associated with my Mom’s Mahalia Jackson records.

“Rip It Up,” “The Girl Can’t Help It” and “Reddy Teddy” prompted my begging my folks for headphones so that I could hear Little Richard as loudly as possible.

So taken with Little Richard was I that my brother Peter purchased me FRIENDS FROM THE BEGINNING-LITTLE RICHARD AND JIMI HENDRIX an album that purported to be from Hendrix’ time as a sideman for Little Richard.

(Whether either Jimi or Richard is on this LP is argued at Wikipedia).

en.wikipedia.org>wiki>Friends-from-the-Beginning

(Boston proto punks Reddy Teddy took their name from “Reddy Teddy” as sung by Little Richard in THE GIRL CAN’T HELP IT).

On that note, listening to Little Richard’s singing of “The Girl Can’t Help It” with Bobby Troup’s lascivious lyrics while watching  Jayne Mansfield clutching 2 bottles of milk to her 2 bottles of milk brings the glory of repression to fruition!

https://youtu.be/W4XVKl4j1VA

Sylvester’s masculine femininity wouldn’t exist without Little Richard.

Ru Paul’s feminine masculinity wouldn’t exist without Little Richard.

Richard Penniman played piano for Little Richard.  To listen to “Lucille” is to hear the caffeinated left hand banging out rapid rhythm on 80 gauge strings over an enthusiastic snare while the right hand plinks dainty suggestions of melody.

“LOU…SEAL..UHHH,” with the last elongated syllable adding a scoop of beat to Little Richard’s full throat declaration and then the sax comes in with a sensual wail echoing and commenting on Little Richard’s voice,which is a saxophone while Richard Penniman hammers away.

By beginning “Lucille’s lyrics with the title Little Richard anticipated James Brown’s vocabulary template of funk.

Femme? Yes.

Soft? Never.

Little Richard’s chart run began in January, 1956 with “Tutti Fruitti,” and ended with “Good Molly Miss Molly” in February, 1958, per MusicVF.com perhaps not a long run by today’s standards but remember that this era was the the rise of rock & roll.

It is integral to Little Richard’s story to understand that America was on the cusp of the civil rights era.  “Cover version” referred to versions of R&R and R&B hits, “race records,” as they were called at the time, were remade over by white artists as retailers such as Sears Roebuck were loath to display records with black performers.   Indeed, Little Richard his own self proclaimed in LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL that “Pat Boone couldn’t move his mouth fast enough to get around “a wop bop a lu bop a bomp bam boom.”

Indeed, Pat Boone’s version went to #12 while Little Richard’s original went to #17 per MusicVF.com

Richard Penniman took over from Little Richard in October, 1957.

“That night Russia sent off that very first Sputnik.  It looked as though the big ball of fire came directly over the stadium about two or three hundred feet above our heads.  It shook my mind.  It really shook my mind.  I got up from the piano and said ‘This is it.  I am through.  I am leaving show business to go back to God.”

Richard Penniman enrolled in Oakwood College, (now Oakwood University), and became an ordained Minister of the 7th. Day Adventist faith.

In 1958 Little Richard formed the Little Richard Evangelistic Team that criss-crossed the South bringing 7th. Day Adventist faith and gospel music.

In 1959 Richard Penniman married Ernestine Campbell.

As recounted to biographer Charles White in The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock; the 7th. Day Adventist faith “cured” Little Richard’s “contagious” homosexuality.

(This book will also tell you more than you could possibly want to know about Buddy Holly’s love life.  Not for the religious).

Richard Penniman was no more politically correct than Little Richard was correct.

1959 also brought Richard Penniman’s GOD is REAL LP.

The tension between the rock and roll sexual love of Little Richard and the gospel spiritual love of Richard Penniman love was to remain the dynamic for the rest both lives.

To see Little Richard discuss his faith and life as Richard Penniman this interview is very revealing .

https://youtu.be/OXldBnWFjB8

Richard Penniman had a certain machismo that shocked The Advocate in yet another twist in Richard Penniman’s challenge for the soul of Little Richard.

www.advocate.com..people.2017/10/06 “Little Richard, once Gay is Now Antigay-Again”

1961 brought his Mercury LP King of the Gospel Singers, produced by Quincy Jones no less, featuring Richard Penniman, billed as Little Richard singing the gospel classic [There Will Be] Peace in the Valley(For Me).  This is not similar to the version sung by Elvis on How Great Thou Art, but a more traditional rendition with a pipe organ behind Little Richard’s throaty tenor.

https://youtu.be/Ovz-98UAt80

Little Richard returned to rock in 1962, touring England and being watched and emulated by Paul McCartney as  Mr. McCartney relates in the Introduction to The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock.

1964 brought the LP Little Richard is Back(and There’s A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On) which slipped into obscurity. 

Little Richard’s time as a popular American  recording artist had passed.

Dedicated fans of Little Richard can enjoy his very swampy 1970 US hit #48, UK hit #27 “Freedom Blues”

https://youtube/zRNLyACJcSK

Indeed, England remained a vital market for Little Richard until the end of his performing career.

Richard Penniman continued to perform at 7th. Day Adventist churches on a regular basis adding straight up preaching to his gospel stylizations.

While Little Richard’s recording career had withered away his appeal as a live entertainer was about to skyrocket.

1973’s LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL movie showcased Little Richard performing as part of Richard Nader’s Rock & Roll Revival collated with footage of Little Richard performing in his 50’s heyday.

To see Little Richard fluffing his bouffant and proclaiming “Ooh, my soul,” in front of a mirror is to see a man who would be totally at home today.

By the filming of LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL Little Richard was performing in a flowing aquamarine caftan with trapezoids of mirrors affixed.

Little Richard’s drama queen persona was never in finer fettle than while chatting with manager Bump Blackwell in a limo on his way to a Rock n Roll Revival show, saying

“I was washing dishes in a Greyhound bus station in Macon, Georgia.  I was the only Jewish cat there.  Everyone else was colored.”

https://youtu.be/9vcGZdPxNBw

Humor aside Little Richard had most of his vocal range during his Rock n Roll Revival phase and the hyper dynamic left hand of Richard Penniman enabled all.

All through the 70s Little Richard was a staple guest of Dick Cavett on late night TV as the oldies radio format declined.

https//youtu.be/eSylFhKk8

Little Richard-Lucille and Lawdy Miss Clawdy (The Dick Cavett Show 1970).

  It is often offered that celebrities become “self parodies” but Richard’s makeup encrusted face seemed as natural as his appearance was unnatural.

The 70s also saw Little Richard drinking prodigiously and taking cocaine while performing up to 100 nights a year.

Richard Penniman remained in my mind when viewing the Cleophus Robinson show whose gospel enlivened my teen and Nassau Community College years.  When Al Green retired from popular music with the Belle LP’s  title pronouncement of “It’s you that I want, it’s Him that I need,” I wondered whether Little Richard had had such a thought and whether Richard Penniman had the LP.

Little Richard never really left my mind completely as his hysterical cameo in the 1986 movie DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS inspired my playing of “Lucille” as on the soundtrack of LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL.

Richard Penniman continued to wrestle with spirit and sex his entire life.  In 2017 telling GOD REPORTS, “If I had my life to do over again, I would be ‘Little Richard the Preacher,’ standing on street corners.”

At a certain age those who reached us at an early age pass.  On May 9, 2020 the passing of Little Richard prompted a digital wave of remembrances from rockers, critical evaluations of his musical legacy and lengthy treatises on Little Richard as a signifier of Afro-queerness.

It is Richard Penniman who has passed. His contradictions are now eased forever.

Little Richard?

A WOP BOP A LU BOMP A BOMP BAM BOOM!

SOURCES: 

MusicVF.com for chart positions. 

The Billboard Hot 100 as a combined chart of retail, jukebox and airplay began August, 1958.  MusicVF.com combines the previously separate Billboard charts and is the citation for all chart positions noted.

Little Richard, GOD IS REAL Peacock GOSPEL CLASSICS, 1959

http://www.amazon.com>God-Real-Little Richard

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LITTLE RICHARD: THE QUASAR OF ROCK  Little Richard as told to Charles White. 1985. 269 pp. 33 B&W photos. New York

A chronological biography in the ‘as told to’ vein that recounts Little Richard’s rise to fame and the religious life of Richard Penniman.  Paul McCartney’s Introduction credits Little Richard with his ambition to become a musician.  Cool pix.  Available in the Boston Public Library.

God Reports

godreports.com.2017/10>little-richard-his-truth-frutti

LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL

https;//youtu.be/C90UuBWV8TS

A wonderful non-fiction film that includes wonderful performances, some not-so-wonderful performances and more than a little sadness.  Filmed at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y. and Cobo Hall, Detroit, MI.

http://www.bostongroupienews.com>ReddyTeddy

This website gives a short chronological history of the Boston proto-punk band that appropriated its name from Little Richard.

The Belle Album, Al Green, Hi, 1977

This was Reverend Al Green’s, now State Rep. TX/D, last secular L.P. of the 1970s.  The title track’s “It’s you that I want, it’s Him that I need,” sings the contradictions of Little Richard and Richard Penniman.

HAIKU 5*7*5* FACEBOOK “friends.”

Sometimes a life ends

Digital eternity

Still are FACEBOOK “friends”

First night in Boston: September 19, 1978, 45 years ago

First night in Boston

September 19, 1978

First night in Boston was something that had been foremost in my mind for better than a year.  I had spent the previous 2 days pacing a hole in the living room carpet while debating my leave taking for Boston.

I was enrolled in Northeastern University but the apartment I had secured had been rented out from under me leaving me to hitchhike, again, to Boston to find housing for the upcoming semester.

Boston Common Realty rented me a spacious, albeit dilapidated, studio on Huntington Ave. for $160 a month directly across the street from the N.U. quad.

I hitchhiked back home to Port Washington, N.Y. and packed the trusty foot locker which had seen me through a 12 year-old’s rustic New Hampshire summer camp, 2 summers of sports camp and 4 summers of Massachusetts religious camp, with underwear and the clock radio my parents had bought me for Christmas 1970.  I was undecided as to what else to bring.

As the departure day loomed my feet got cold as I contemplated moving to a city where I had no employment lined up, formidable academic challenges and less than $100 in liquid cash after having a summer camp counselor-in-training position defunded.

I did have a ride from a friend however…if only to the Throgs Neck Bridge.

My friend called.

“Hey Steve, you pussy.  Have you pulled the panties out of your crack?” offered my friend.

“Thanks for the reminder,” I wittily replied.

“Steve, you’ve hitched 200 miles at midnight with $10 in your pocket and you’re afraid of college?  You even said you wanted out of Port; like y’know, yesterday.”

I replied, “Yeah, I know what I said but it just seems that I’ll be moving into a new place without having a job or money.”

My friend was a good guy.

He answered, “You moved into that place on Main St. with only a little more..”

I interrupted and said, “But that was only a few hundred yards away and I moved back at the end of the summer.  This is a much bigger move in more ways than one.”

My friend answered, “I can give you a ride tomorrow but after that I have to get back to work.”

“I will call you tomorrow,” I answered and hung up.

I knew that it was now or never.

I bounced my foot locker down the 13 stairs to the dining room.

Ker plunk.

Ker plunk.

Ker plunk.

I stuffed my foot locker with shirts and more underwear.

I grabbed my green Army surplus duffle bag from the drying line in the basement and stuffed it with the books and records that I deemed worthy of sustaining me through whatever might transpire in my soon-to-be home.

And then anxiety, as evidenced by my sweating soles, overcame me.

I turned on our 12″ black and white TV to see the reassuring ineptitude of my N.Y. Mets.

Lindsay Nelson’s calm baritone spoke through the speakers, “And the Yankees will be fending off the Brewers tomorrow night at Yankee Stadium as Dick Tidrow and Mike Caldwell face off.”

Being a Mets fan I loathed the Yankees and relished the chance to root against them.

I stepped to our side porch where my brother Peter and his friends were puzzled by my mixed emotions.

“Hey Steve, we can’t miss you if you don’t leave,” offered a friend of my brother Peter.

I now knew I had to leave.

I called my friend.

“What time can you drive me to the Throgs Neck?”

“I work until 6, so around 7.  So you finally made up your mind?” my friend asked in a question that was the answer.

The next day I was packed early and spent the afternoon bemoaning the defunding of my counselor-in-training earnings while taking in the sights of Port Washington’s Main St. and gazing at the apartment I had occupied for 90 days earlier in the summer.

I went to my bedroom and attempted to sleep.

I laid on my back.

I laid on my left side.

I laid on my right side.

I touched myself.

I turned on my clock radio, which I had retrieved from my foot locker and listened to WBLS…

“…Frankie Crocker with the world’s best looking sound…”

…eventually falling into a fitful sleep and awakening on a very warm afternoon.  I putzed around the house before bouncing my foot locker down the 13 stairs of 42 North Bayles Avenue, Port Washington, New York.

Ker plunk.

Ker plunk.

Ker plunk.

At the bottom of the stairs I opened my foot locker to make sure that my clock radio was wrapped in clothing so as not to be damaged on my trip.

I was too nervous to eat.  7 P.M. loomed and I wrestled in my mind whether to call my friend.  I wanted to push without being pushy.  My brother Peter’s friends came by and toasted me with a bong.

“Aw, you’re not going to go,” said one.

“Wanna bet?” I replied.

It was 7:30, dark, yet still very warm.  I tucked my Sweet-Orr work shirt into my Uncle Sam fatigues.

The phone rang.  It was my friend.

“Sorry I’m late.  Ready to go?”

“Yup,” I stammered as my heart hammered.

In 15 minutes my friend’s red VW squareback pulled up.  I had met my friend while hitchhiking 2 years ago and now that very same vehicle was to be my way out.

My Mom came out of the house and gave me a loaf of banana bread and told me that I could call collect when I made my arrival in Boston.  Mom’s eyes were wet.

My friend dragged my foot locker to the rear of the red VW squareback.

Ker plunk.

Ker plunk.

Ker plunk.

My friend shifted gears and we were off to the access road leading from the L.I.E. to the Grand Central Parkway.

“…this is Tony Pigg rocking ’til 10 PM tonight…”

“Hey, could change the station?” I asked.

“Please don’t tell me you want to listen to disco again.  Didn’t you get your fill at work?” my friend wondered.

“The Yanks are playing the Brewers and as a Mets fan the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

My friend smiled and dialed in WINS AM as the throaty tones of Frank Messer intoned. “Going for the Brewers tonight is Mike Caldwell who has been a great surprise for the Brewers thus far this year having won 20 games already with the Yankees sending Dick Tidrow to the hill.”

All the windows were open.  Traffic was light as Tuesday night wasn’t a going out night and rush hour was over.

My friend pulled over on the shoulder of the access road.  E.J. Korvettes’ discount department store’s parking lot lights shone across the L.I.E.

I took the foot locker out of the VW squareback.

Ker plunk.

Ker plunk.

Ker plunk.

“Well, I guess you are really going.  What time do you think your arrival in Boston will be?” my friend asked.

“I dunno…about 3 A.M. I guess.”

“For Christsakes be careful,” my friend offered.

And then, abruptly, “How much money do you have?”

“$37,” I answered.

My friend rolled his eyes and pressed a $20 bill into my hand, gave me a hug, and honked the horn while he drove to the next exit to return to Port Washington.

I put my thumb out being careful to stand under the Grand Central Parkway sign’s lights while glancing towards the Eastbound lane of the L.I.E. in the hope I could see the red VW squareback returning to Port Washington.

No such luck.

I wondered if the Brewers were beating the Yankees.

Up the road was my first night in Boston…