W.C. Handy's "Beale Street Blues"

W.C. Handy's "Beale Street Blues"

I recently traveled to New York City for my end of the year vacation. For me, usually the most fun things are those that take me by surprise. Well, “Beale Street Blues.” While walking the streets after dinner one night I came across loud music playing in a bar. I walked in and, to my surprise a blues and jazz band were playing away. Never before have I heard so much energy in music other than Beethoven. W.C. Handy’s band was so good that night I had to go find out what these songs they were playing were. Thankfully, Handy was a personable, light-hearted guy who had an unforgettable loud laugh. He told me they started with his recent hit “St. Louis Blues” a song he told me was actually written with tango music in mind. But this song was definitely my favorite of the night and left not one person at the bar in their seats. Lucky for me, there were many a fine young woman and, frankly, I didn’t complain with the racy style of dancing Handy’s song evoked. Another song that was playing in my head as I walked out into the chill New York City air was Handy’s newest song, “Beale Street Blues.” Handy told me that, like many of his songs, “Beale Street Blues” “is a hybrid of the blues style with the popular ballad style of the day.” After telling me that, with the song, he tried to capture the festive musical air always imbued in Beale Street in his hometown in Tennessee, thinking that the song was probably inspired by negro life in the south and, noticing there were mostly black people at the bar we were at, I asked him why the band he played with was all white, he responded with, "I was under the impression that these Negro musicians would jump at the chance to patronize one of their own publishers. They didn't... The Negro musicians simply played the hits of the day...They followed the parade. Many white bands and orchestra leaders, on the other hand, were on the alert for novelties. They were therefore the ones most ready to introduce our numbers." But, "Negro vaudeville artists...wanted songs that would not conflict with white acts on the bill. The result was that these performers became our most effective pluggers." 

Once my interview was through I thanked Handy and went out into the night. As I was skipping home, tapping my foot to the jazz songs stuck in my head, casually thinking about how strange it was the African American musicians in New York aren’t following Handy like disciples to play this great music, a pretty girl with a group of her friends swooped by me. I stopped thinking about it and followed.

Here's a recording from 1916 of "Beale Street Blues"

The Death of Jack London

The Death of Jack London

Naturalist/Realist writer Jack London died this year. Famous for his book about a dog The Call of the Wild, London, along with Mark Twain, was one of the most famous writers in America. The renowned journalist H.L Mencken said of Call of the Wild, "No other popular writer of his time did any better writing than you will find in The Call of the Wild.” When The Call of the Wild was published the first printing of 10,000 copies sold out immediately and it is still one the best known stories written by an American author. After his success as a novelist, London bought a ranch in Sonoma County, California where he lived with his wife. He loved his ranch apparently, and was quoted saying, "I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate." Unfortunately, most of London’s work after 1910 was of the quality of dime-novels, and was mainly written out of the need to finance his ranch. According to reports, London died November 22, 1916, in his bed in a cottage on his ranch. He was in extreme pain and taking , morphine, and it is possible that a morphine overdose, accidental or deliberate, may have contributed to his death.

Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats

Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats

In response to his deep emotions in regard to the Easter Uprising in Dublin, Ireland, famous Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote the poem “Easter 1916.” Though an outspoken nationalist, Yeat’s rigidly opposed violence as a means to secure Irish independence. In the poem, many of Yeat’s conflicting emotions towards the violent event that helped further the fight for Irish independence.

I have met them at close of day   

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey   

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head   

Or polite meaningless words,   

Or have lingered awhile and said   

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done   

Of a mocking tale or a gibe   

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,   

Being certain that they and I   

But lived where motley is worn:   

All changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent   

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers   

When, young and beautiful,   

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school   

And rode our wingèd horse;   

This other his helper and friend   

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,   

So sensitive his nature seemed,   

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,   

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,   

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone   

Through summer and winter seem   

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,   

The rider, the birds that range   

From cloud to tumbling cloud,   

Minute by minute they change;   

A shadow of cloud on the stream   

Changes minute by minute;   

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,   

And a horse plashes within it;   

The long-legged moor-hens dive,   

And hens to moor-cocks call;   

Minute by minute they live:   

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.   

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part   

To murmur name upon name,   

As a mother names her child   

When sleep at last has come   

On limbs that had run wild.   

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;   

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith   

For all that is done and said.   

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;   

And what if excess of love   

Bewildered them till they died?   

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride   

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

Easter Uprising in Ireland

Easter Uprising in Ireland

What is being hailed as “The Easter Rebellion” caught the British off guard while they were preoccupied fighting in World War 1. Organized by seven members of the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood the Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, and lasted for six days. About 100 Irishmen were killed in the Easter Rebellion and the Irish rebel forces were subdued by the British Army. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the Irish Rebellion of 1798 where almost 50,000 people Irishmen were killed. Most of the leaders of this uprising were executed by the British.

Emma Goldman's Arrest for Speaking in Favor of Birth Control

Emma Goldman

Outspoken anarchist, American Emma Goldman was arrested recently for her speech on birth control. According to the Comstock Act (enacted 1873), it is “illegal to send any "obscene" materials through the mail, including contraceptive devices and information.” Well, the law-enforcers used this act to arrest Emma for speaking in favor of birth-control and distributing pamphlets condoning it. Apparently, Goldman’s speech was spoken from a car-window in Union Square in New York City and drew a crowd of thousands. I admire Emma’s boldness and her uncompromising vision that led her to become such a powerful force in the women’s rights movement.

Pancho Villa's Raid on Columbus, New Mexico

Pancho Villa's Raid on Columbus, New Mexico

The Mexican Revolution’s battleground, previously in Mexico, has finally moved to the United States. Mexican general Pancho Villa led a group of Mexican soldiers into the small town of Columbus, New Mexico that escalated into an intense battle with the U.S. Army. Despite Pancho Villa’s audacity, his army got slaughtered and the U.S. only lost 8 troops. Villa’s raid was a tactical disaster and led to the U.S. army to respond by entering Mexico to search for Villa. 

Amores by D.H. Lawrence

Amores by D.H. Lawrence

Though mostly known for his great novel Sons and Lovers in the literary world, DH Lawrence published a collection of poems this year called Amores. The poems are romantic and more in the tradition of the Romantic poets of the previous Gregorian era. Still, Lawrence’s free verse works at portraying what he thinks are “the unconscious” passions of humans through imagery and symbolism. Although Lawrence remains well-known mainly for his prose, his poetry, as essayist Sam Alexander says in his essay on Lawrence’s poetry “uses a rich and complex symbolic matrix to explore issues that would remain at the center of Lawrence’s work for the rest of his career.” Here's a poem from the collection Amores called Epilogue that I enjoyed.

Epilogue

PATIENCE, little Heart.

One day a heavy, June-hot woman

Will enter and shut the door to stay.

 And when your stifling heart would summon

Cool, lonely night, her roused breasts will keep the night at bay,

Sitting in your room like two tiger-lilies

Flaming on after sunset,

Destroying the cool, lonely night with the glow of their hot twilight;

There in the morning, still, while the fierce strange scent comes yet

Stronger, hot and red; till you thirst for the daffodillies

With an anguished, husky thirst that you cannot assuage,

When the daffodillies are dead, and a woman of the dog-days holds you in gage.

Patience, little Heart.