humanity, beauty, and Howlin' Wolf

The Past.

There's an interview with Jackie Kennedy which I viewed on TV sometime in the mid-90s -- it must have been done in 1960, soon after her husband was elected.  It's in black-and-white, her voice is very soft and low, with an out-of-date, posh, Eastern-seaboard upper-accent, and a smile in it...she says when she first went through the White House she was surprised, "because there was hardly anything of the past left in the house."

She felt the White House should be a meaningful symbol.  It should set an example with the "best" of everything -- the best musical entertainment, art, etc., and that America's history -- its past -- its proud past which begat the present -- should be represented and showcased.

The interviewer asks her something & her smiling, enthusiastic, brunette reply, "Just as long as it's the best" stays in your mind afterwards.

I took her point to be, With these accomplishments in the past to our credit and benefit, cannot we achieve positive things -- wonderful and inspiring things -- for America and mankind -- now, in the present?
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During my sophomore year in college someone introduced me to the music of the Rolling Stones.  He talked to me about how the Stones learned blues music from American bluesmen -- Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, & many more -- and then evolved their "Stones" sound and songwriting-style from what they learned.

I had never heard of any of those blues guys.  (Hell I had BARELY heard of the Stones.)  But right away I was very interested in the idea that the music had a history -- the ideas for it CAME FROM someplace and you could trace it back -- it "tracked back" to something.  I don't know why the Idea of that seemed so incredibly important to me, but it just did.  It made my day.  It seemed like something exciting and inspiring -- like something valuable, to be treasured.

Now a scrillion years later I can read in Keith Richards' book,

"...What I found about the blues and music, tracing things back, was that nothing came from itself.  As great as it is, this is not just one lone stroke of genius.  This cat was listening to somebody and it's his variation on the theme.  And so you suddenly realize that everybody's connectd here."

...Yes!  Keith!  [jumping up and down]  My man I know what you're talking about isn't it fantastic??????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Thus inspired, we each responded in our own style.

Mr. Richards -- went out and founded the greatest rock and roll band in the world;

I -- well -- named one gray cat after Chess Records.

Can we (we -- Americans; we -- humans) look at our history, our past, our accomplishments and struggles, and use the knowledge (and appreciation) of our common history to create good things, and to be our best (and not our worst) today?  And in the future?

(Whenever something awful happens, or is perpetrated, and the "news" "reports" it, my upper lip curls in disgust and disappointment, and a little thought inside me says, "We are better than this.")

Keith Richards says in the book, when punk music was banging away at the Youth Popularity record-sales in the late 70s -- "the punk groups were -- spitting -- on the audience.  And come on -- we can do better than that."

We can do better than that.
"We can do bett-ah than that."
We are BETTER than this.
Jackie:  "Just as long as it's the best."

--------------- (When she and Senator John Kennedy were first married in the early fifties, they got a house in the Georgetown section of D.C. and it's said she decorated and re-decorated several times to get it right.  She was very sensitive to visual impact and must have been a perfectionist...one story says Sen. Kennedy dashed down the stairs one day on his way out to Capitol Hill, and noticed his mother-in-law was there.  At the door he turned and looked around the room, assessing its current state, and asked quizzically, "Mrs. Auchincloss, do you think we're prisoners of beige?")

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