THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Kinky Friedman At The Opry

Friends, does the whole Kinky Friedman and His Texas Jewboys shtik make you a tad uneasy? Do you sometimes think that, sure, that album was really funny, but he’d be better off if he left it right there or he’s going to run it into the ground fast? Does “The Ballad of Charles Whitman” strike you as being the way psychedelic Texans show they can be as decadent as all those geeks up in New York? Does his apparent acceptance with the Nashville crowd leave you wondering who’s putting on whom?

Perhaps a few words from the man himself would ease your suspicions. For example, Kinky is the first to admit that“you can only flail the passive horse of Judaism for so long,” and says that on the next album he’ll be going for “.. .a War-type thing — you know, that greasy Puerto Rican ethnic heavy sound.” Likewise, while he claims that he’d “hate to lose that country audience, you know, turn on ’em after they’ve been so good to us,” he adds quickly that “The reason all those songs come out country is that’s the only three chords I know; country ain’t where I’m at at-all.” (Indeed, the band formed just after his first album came out, with the three guitars and the harmonies, is much more'reminiscent of prime folk-rockers like the Byrds, and Kinky seems to think it’s very important that people at his concerts keep quiet and listen to his lyrics.)

The other point in his favor is that, for now anyhow, the scam is working, which means that at best he’s hit a chord that some people are relating to quite strongly, and at worst he’s some kind of bizarro mutation from the Terry Knight School of Tasteless Promotion. Hank Snow, no flaming liberal even by Nashville standards, sends Kinky warm notes of encouragement. Bill Monroe, who refused to take part in the Nitty, Gritty Dirt Band country music compendium because of his intense dislike for long-hairs, sent a letter plugging Kinky out to country deejays. His appearances iri the rock clubs have never failed to draw people in.

And yes, fans,-'it’s true — Kinky Friedman and His Texas Jewboys actually made it onto the Grand Ole Opry, where they wowed the usual Opry crowd with their rendition of “Carrying the Torch,” a weeper that didn’t make it onto the first album. The song concerns a returning POW who falls mindlessly in love with a shapely figure he spots when his ship enters the New York harbor. The object of his rhapsody turns out to be the Statue of Liberty.

Kinky’s appearance was a guest shot on Snow’s segment of the show. Artists must play the Opry something like 18 times before they become members, but anyone can appear as a member’s guest. A small irony of the evening was that Loretta Lynn was also making her Opry debut, and the audience saw nothing to get excited about in that.

So there were Kinky and the boys, backstage at the Ryman, chatting with the stage hands and eyeballing Barbara Mandrell, scared shitless because “it was not at all a mixed crowd; we didn’t have shills in the . audience or anything like that.” They had passed" out Jewboy stickers beforehand, and most recipients had reacted like they were being handed the hammer and sickle. The Fruit Jar Drinkers finished their routine, and Tompall (late of the Glaser Brothers, and Kinky’s country music Godfather) went out to introduce the band. Kinky had planned on doing “Ride ’Em Jewboy” along with the new tune, but the show was running late and they still had to squeeze in Marty Robbins and the Coke commercial, so that song was dropped.

They were introduced to the audience as “a modern Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys,” but Tompall got a little carried away then and threw out his arms in a mock crucifixion as he screamed the band’s name. Nobody seemed to notice.

“Most people were still looking at their programs when we were coming on anyhow,” Kinky recalls. “They didn’t know what was going on. I was nervous cuz we didn’t know at all if they’d go for that kosher guitar sound, but when we finished they went crazy and damn hear brought the house down cheering. There was a busload come down from Fairfield, Ohio, to see the show, and the next week Sold American went to 23 on the country charts there.”

It was that simple. Hank Snow came back out and gave a short speech about how difficult it is for new talent to break into the country music business and concluded by saying, “So let’s have a great big hand for Kinky Friedman and.. . uh.. .that fine act!” The conquest of the Opry was complete, leaving but one question unanswered.'

Can he get into the Nashville synagogue yet?

John Morthland

Curbs Mayfield Is No Pusnermon

It’s been a year since the release of Superfly and Curtis Mayfield’s epochal soundtrack to the definitive drug culture movie of the Seventies. In that time both film and record have become sensationally popular, and not only the album but its tape configurations have been certified gold. In the meantime, Superfly has been widely criticised for its hip, glamor-oriented treatment of the coke dealer’s lifestyle.

Curtis Mayfield has moved from drugs to other subjects, such as the alienation of a returning vet described in “Back to the World,” but when CREEM spoke to him recently it seemed as good a time as any40 get his opinions on the relationship, if any, between Superfly and the chemical derailment scene. Doesn’t it seem to you, we wondered aloud, that the drug lyrics in Superfly (and specifically “Pusherman,”) are ambiguous enough to be taken by different listeners as either negation or support of hard drug use?

“ ‘Pusherman’ describes a pusherman,” explained Curtis. “It tells you just what he is, how else would he come across? If I was gonna be in a movie and play the part of a pusherman, would I come in sophisticated, or would I come in the down manner that I implied and teach people that might happen to run into him on the street? I’m sure that those that wish not to be helped will take even the teachings of Jesus Christ and make it something that will help their weaknesses, rather than to give them strength. Let’s pray for all of them, and hope that the masses that saw it can take it for something that they could educate themselves with whether they were involved or what, and say ‘Yeah, I’m lookin’ at myself,’ and pull out of it.”

But don’t you think that films and songs like Superfly tend to lend a glamour to the cocaine culture?

“No. First of all, I think that the glamour of cocaine has been a flourishing market before anybody ever even thought of Superfly. So the movie’s just speaking on it, for people like me that lives in such areas and has to cope with such a problem. That’s just recognising your block in a movie. That don’t mean you have to fall in, any more than learning from it and saying, ‘This ain’t too hip.’

“We need our heroes, whether they be hustlers or pimps or whatever. You gotta remember that the whole ghetto situation has to do with people who are much Wealthier, much more educated. . . Remember a pusherman is one of the bottom people on the totem pole, as far as money, being earned. And cocaine, as it was played up in that movie, no black child can really afford. It’s a rich man’s blow.”

So then would you fit “Pusherman” in with your previous anthems to black consciousness, such as “We’re a Winner”?

“Yes. I will always believe that people already know how to shake their shaggy-shaggy, why keep doin’ that to ’em? While they’re doin’ that why not speak to them in terms of ‘give yourself strength, respect people, be of love.’ ”

Then you expect to continue writing socially oriented lyrics?

“It has to do with if there’s a need for it. Every time I wrote a song that was looked upon as political or social, it wasn’t that I was trying to imply that particular situation. As a writer, social or political or nothing else hits me more than how I might hear people, the masses making comment on whatever it might be. If times change as to where people are already aware or they already have the inspiration and we all together, then there’s no need for me, not in that manner. But I’m sure then that I’ll' be able to speak on whatever the environment might be. I work to stay with the times.”

Look Out John Lennon: Here Comes A Real Working Class Hero

There is a resurgence of working class literature currently and it’s a good thing. Too many pompous arses have been getting away with their biographies (at age 25) telling about their dull lives in suburbia, on the farm, in New York and on the road. Who cares? It’s time for some stories of factory towns, greasers and spending half your life under cars. Yes, it’s time to find working class roots, and what better place is there than your local auto parts store. The literature behind the counter in a parts store can rival Brentano’s any day. I’m not talking about Motor Trend magazine, although that wouldn’t be a bad place to start; no, I’m referring to the parts catalogs.

Did you ever stop and read through one of those things? How else would you know what size wiper blades fit your 67 Chevy? Or what size generator to put into the 59 Ford your sister is rebuilding, huh? Yep, these automotive parts catalogs will give you more useful information than all of last month’s Random House releases, you can bet your bottom air-filter on that.

It is clear that the class nature of literature is prejudiced against these proletarian books. I’ve never seen a parts catalog reviewed in the New York Review of Books or the Chicago SunTimes Book Week section but these books are as valid as I.F. Stone on Cambodia or Arthur Waskow on radical Judaism.

I first ran into the works of Glen A. Johnson a few months ago when someone swiped the gas-cap off my 1967 Sunbeam Arrow station wagon. Sunbeam is a British car but it isn’t made any more, so parts are generally hard to find. Sometimes you have to send to a warehouse in Newark for them, sometimes Chrysler — the company which bought out Sunbeam — has to send to England for parts. There are maybe three Sunbeams in Tucson and two4 Sunbeam gas-caps. I think the three of us play musical gas-caps. After my cap was pilfered I went to an auto parts store and they looked in their catalog. No Sunbeam Arrow listed. I checked the catalog, and the woman behind the counter was right. She had looked through the pages of the Stant Auto* motive Filler Caps catalog No. C-312. I checked a few more places and tried on gas-caps at random. Still, no cap fit. This was getting serious; I was losing gas daily, and the danger of a capless gas tank was almost too much to bear. I took matters into my own hands. I called the Stant Manufacturing Company in Connersville, Indiana.

I first heard of Connersville in a Tom T. Hall song about how he got his start playing in a bar there, so I figured the town couldn’t be all bad. When the switchboard operator answered the phone I knew things would go well. She had a friendly voice, not like record company switchboard operators. I explained my situation to her, told her I wasn’t an auto parts store or a wholesaler, just that I had a problem: I didn’t know what size gas-cap would fit my car. Within five seconds she had routed the call through to Glen A. Johnson. I patiently explained the problem to him, and he assured me I wouldn’t be without a cap for long. “By the way,” I said, “is this the customer relations department or something?” “Oh no,” he replied, “I’m a sales engineer. We match up caps with cars here. I can tell you almost any car’s cap size. We put the book together in mv office.”

I was dumbfounded. Quite by accident on long distance telephone I had stumbled into one of America’s bestread least-known authors. I wanted to ask him all sorts of questions — what type of books does he read at night? Who are his major influences? Andy Granitelli? A.J. Foyt? Is there a whole writers’ colony in Indiana made up of auto spec book authors? Glen said he thought he had the right size cap for me — after all, he is the country’s leading authority on fiHer caps — and would mail it out right away. If it fit I should remit the proper amount, if it didn’t just mail it back.

Four days later it arrived at my post office box. I could hardly wait to rush home and try it out; it was a G-83A locking cap — “do not turn, just press to lock” it said on the box. I carefully followed the instructions, and I was crestfallen. My G-83A locking cap did not fit. Glen A. Johnson had failed me. I wrote him a letter — I felt we were fast friends by then so I started it “Dear Glen.” I told him the G-83A didn’t fit and that I was returning it under separate cover. I also tried to describe the filler hole for him. Within a week I got a letter back. This is what it said:

CONTINUED ON PAGE 78.

Working Class Hero

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 22.

... we are unable to determine which if any of our caps will fit your vehicle. It appears that the inside diameter of the filler neck is larger than \Yi inches. If it is 1 7/8 to 1 15/16 inches diameter we would have only one cap which would fit it, our G-95. Enclosed is one of our catalogs with the cap encircled on page 6. If you will measure the I.D. of the filler neck (per sketch below) you can determine if the G-95 will fit.

Sincerely yours,

Glen A. Johnson

At the bottom of the page was a drawing of a filler neck, in detail, with appropriate lines and dotted lines and diameter markings.

But the nicest thing he sent was the catalog itself, the 24 page Stant booklet describing the size ana make for all sorts of caps. Page eight tells you that a 1967 Mercury Comet will take an R-12 size radiator pressure cap with 14 pounds pressure. A 1963 Pontiac Tempest, on the other hand, takes an SP-17 Lev-RVent Safety Type radiator cap holding 15 pounds pressure. A couple pages later I learned that a 1966 Dodge Coronet takes a G-92A gas-cap unless your Coronet is a station wagon in which case you use a G-83A size.

Early the next morning I called Glen Johnson. (What other authors are so accessible?) By this time I fancied us as close friends — we were both writers, we both owned cars, and I was sharing an intimate problem with him — so I called him collect. He accepted charges immediately. I told him I 1 thought the G-95 would fit fine, and he agreed to send it right out. A week later it arrived, and glory be, it fit. Now every time I get gas I think of Glen and how helpful he was to a complete stranger thousands of miles away.

Glen and I haven’t been in touch much lately; maybe it’s the weather. I’ve been busy finishing up an article for Ramparts. And Glen? I guess he’s hard at work writing the ,1974 edition of the Stant Automotive Filler Cap catalog. I can hardly wait to get my hands on it when it comes out. First thing I’ll do is • flip to the gas-cap page and see if the new catalog lists a 1967 Sunbeam Arrow station wagon. Maybe if enough of us buy the 1974 edition we can get Glen A. Johnson on the best-seller list where he belongs.

Tom Miller