Cordley Coit
Culture Keeper / Music Producer, Photographer, Journalist, Dharma Bum. Get sage advice from aother scarred old dog. Who's your Rabbi?
Greetings,
As a very young man I worked for Ed Lutrup, Island Records, Oak Bluffs, Mass. as an assistant field recording engineer: Art, Poetry and Photography were my direction. Everyone of my mentors Tom Benton, Harry Hess, W. Eugene Smith, Chester Anderson, Kay Johnson, Ted Joans, Hillaire Hiler were serious about music. I owe understanding of film making and performance to Ornette Colemen and Norma Di Marco as well as Pauline Samuelson. The earth is about music.
My friend Ornette won the Pulitzer Prize 2007 ""Of all the languages that human beings are speaking on the planet, it's some form of grammar," Coleman said of his album. "For me, playing music is analyzing grammar."
East Coast
Ramblin Jack Elliott was the Best Man at my Wedding. I married Lady Margaret Crowther in 63 on the Vineyard.
Present but never part of the "Mel Lyman Family". David Gude whose music is on New Folk Vanguard album; Jesse Benton, Faith Franckenstein [1] Mel Lyman, Maria Muldaur (take it Mel),
and Jim Queskin whose band became the notorius east coast "family" formed the core of the Lymans in 62-63. The Jim Queskin Jug Band featured a fetching young Italian singer named Maria Grazia Rosa Domenica d'Amato who later married Geof Muldaur, (Maria Muldaur) Here's a very short clip of Maria singing Big Fat Woman Blues.
Partipated of the People's Democracy up in Belfast 1968-69. Ran with Sylvia Warren who owned part of the West End Bar up by Columbia and with Thomas Francis Noonan.
What was an anarchist like myself doing as the town Deputy Marshall?
In both the photography and police world in the long dead New York of the Fifties and early Sixties photographers would ask who's your rabbi?
Mine were Wee Gee, Gene Smith and Harry Hess. Wee Gee was a whiz with the ethical dust kicked up around news work. Smith was good for ethical problems with the subject and the structure of the picture it's self. Hess was great at the problems of working in a studio environment.
Years later as a cop (I did four years as a town Marshal) would use the question what would Frank Serpico ( my mentor) do with this problem? I had known him in passing in the Village and he was good with conflicted emotions that cops work under.
Europe
I first met Ornette at Berni Stollman's ESP Disk office in my building on West 57th Street and later in Paris. I also met Peter LaFarge + more there who knew the story of my grandfather and my great grandmother Lilla. Peter wrote the song Ira Hayes and he started FAIR an organization for urban Indians. He introduced me to the young Townes VanZandt with whom I had a lifetime friendship.
Present in Europe with Ornette Coleman and received the coveted Teducation with Ted Joans.
Obsenity: "I am not here to rock the damned boat...I'm here to sink it" ~
I knew Splivvy who played the Cowboy. Poet and side kick to Ted Joans who in my life turned education to Teducation. "You have to Walk and bop. Dress right wear the right shades, don't click your fingers but make like you are finger popping." (Lord Buckley another finger popping daddy's)
The bad mouthing of Swope found it was very important to film the person to the left of the hero who signifies. As the basketball player Splivvy plays Swope's conscience who brings the whole idea to it's logical end. Downey Sr. got a lot right and a bit wrong but what he did in terms of real filmmaking was make possible in The Harder They Come and other movies about real issues.
The Harder They Come inspired Michael X to return to Trinidad where he met his death / murder at the hands of American tools. Blood and Music. I think Jim Pines writes about the theme in Black cinema articles.
Some of my photographic work was published in British Gazette By Ray Gosling which appeared in the Balt Sun Papers in the mid sixties. Also I was lead photographer in "Poverty and Moral Degradation in Saint Anne's Nottingham" writers Ken Coates and Bill Silbourn University of Nottingham Press 1969.
I did some liner note pic for New Grass Revival's Third album, Penny Case Producer; Record album work for Reprise and films; action footage for BBC, ITN, NBC East German Television; and a longish film about Paris 68. Some of my footage shows up in Suffer Little Children a BBC documentary. Poetry Broken Mirror tribute to Ted Joans, Menchabee Journal Looking for Kaja and Blacklisted Journalist.
West Coast
West Coast 1989 Social Communer with Peter Coyote and the Diggers.
"In the sixties you used to think that the style was important, because the style showed who you weren't. What turns out to have settled down to be much more important, I think, is the total commitment and engagement. Once you've experienced that, you can't settle for being a lunch-box johnny, except at the expense of great personal psychic damage."
Etymology of Jazz:
Knock me down with a Black Thorn Stick. There's fusion going on here. Hiller who was there is dead as are almost all the grandfathers and grandmothers. One might look among the Cajun folk or in Oklahoma ( a lot of Black Indian fusion there and in far West Texas the town of Anthony where a lot of the Buffalo Solidiers musterd out. My aunt Gladys Kemp thought Jazz was a word that her "Colored" mother ; if you used it, would wash your mouth out with Fells Napha. Her mother was a well known wigggle dancer in her youth. Her dad was Irish. May be some one like Lucy Parsons wrote or spoke about such origins. Robson or Hughs were interested word origins. Hope your rigging is rosined cause it looks rough in the chute. As I said Great grandmother had a mouth full of soap for kids who talked like that. Check with the Cajuns. What a mine field, I love it. Dance on.
Whose Your Rabbi?
Best,
Cordley
Resources:
1) John Henry: As of the nineteen fifties an 'easy rider' was a guy who lived with a whore but was not her pimp, a boy friend. This is good work any readers familiar with H.L. Davis work in the 1920s will appreciate it.
2) MindF---kers: by David Felton
A source book on teh Rise of acid facisism in America, including material on Charles Manson, Mel Lyman, Victor Baranco and their followers ISBN G-87932-038-9
3) Author reappears forty years later Rock Me On The Water Review by C.Coit 10/2007 published by Animist Press
Just got though my old pal Renny Russell's new tome Rock Me On the Water a life On the Loose. In the mid sixties Terry and Renny Russell wrote and photographed a book called On the Loose. They talked Dave Brower into publishing it as a Sierra Club Book. On The Loose sold a million copies and made the Club a household word. Alas the Club, like America, has forgotten what freedom is.
Terry died before the book was published. Renny waited for the words and pivctures to come for the next volume. Winters came and went river rose, trails were hiked, ropes were shared and boats,cars and people came an went in our lives.
Renny built a river dory and took it down stream. He carries us with him in his journal. An American book like The Concord and Merrimac Rivers by Henry David Thoreau. His writing is acute like a rifle shot over iron sights. He is like a well picked tune flowing changing key and returning though the circle of fifths.
The photos by him, his family and friends are spot on. The original art work looks like come from a Canyon wall painted seven hundred years back or yesterday.
It is good to know that around the next bend we might well see a well made dory piloted by a man hand crafting his life.
Obit - Mike Stewart
I first met Mike Stewart in 1955 at the Chimark dump he was reviving tubes thrown out by the Coast guard and making amps out of old electonics parts. He was also learning to play the guitar. The music teacers on Martha's Vineyard were:Charlie Close, Tom Rush, David Gude, Peter Mitchell, Johnny Pankin, Fat Phil Rhoads , Billy Keith, Rambling Jack Elliot..
I encouraged Mike to join me working for Ed Lutrup at Island Records in Oak Bluffs recording the folk scene and putting on concerts. His mother worked as a cook and waiter for Louise Tate King a fine chef to the folk.
Mike became a fine picker as clear as Tom Paley. I went off to Mexico and Mike moved to Washington DC and played and worked out of Coffee and Confusion where he joined up with Tom Hoskins, Bill Barth, Ed Denson and the young John Fehey. They worked very hard putting together a style now known as American Primitive, some say as a reaction to the music of Bob Dylan and Mel Lyman. I moved to DC in 60 for a cup of coffee and helped with Hoskins Piedmont Records project which brought Mississippi John Hurt back to the public. I left to return to Mexico and later New York.
Mike moved to Upper New York State and then settled with Hoskins in North Carolina dealing in 78 records with his Green Mountain Records Auction. He told me he disliked the music business and was proud to not be a professional musician as a non pro he made seven albums as Backward Sam Firk.
Five years back I ran into his name and gave him a call, he sent me a disc and we tried to put together a reunion. Distance, the price of fuel, flat out poverty and bad timing kept us apart.
This spring I came up with an idea to busk the Democratic Convention with Mike our singing being likened favorably with Fahey's dog featured on the Resurrection of Blind Joe Death. It would be a chance for me to learn guitar and him a chance to woo the Hillary maids of honor. Unfortunately his son told me he's been dead for five months. I miss Mike, his humor, his music and his ability preserve and expand the body of American Music.
Good Music Alert:
Our local DJ just discovered Eleanor Ellis. She's channeling Dink and Victoria Splivvy as important to right now as Otis Taylor. She uses John Hurt's signature push on the beat to float the instrument though. She's in the Washington Balt Metroplex area.
