Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Big Joe Williams (out of the million guys who have covered the song, or pleaded) performing Baby Please Don’t Go.
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
You know now that I am “officially” retired from the public prints I have plenty of time to write a little about things other than the latest war (or wars), the latest governmental abridgement of our civil rights, the latest poor boy kid framed up for something, or the latest environmental disaster brought to us courtesy of some anonymous thing “too big to fail.” Now I have time to write about things less pressing on the daily world calendar, things like old timey flames, coming to young manhood up in Olde Saco (that’s in Maine, folks), teenage boyhood worries about fitting in, not fitting or to use a generational term, my generation “be cool.” That’s what I have on my plate today-girls, long lost flame girls. And what they could do to a guy, could do to a guy six ways to Sunday, and still have him grinning, asking for more.
What got me jumped up on this subject was the other night I was talking, lazily half-joking, half-spinning wheels talking with my old friend, Peter Paul Markin (always known as Pee-Pee and not that odd-ball Peter Paul thing like some old time yankee Brahmin getting ready to crash on his damn Irish-driven head) and he brought up some story about how he had snagged a date with some high school chick (read: term of art, term of love art, in the be-bop 1960s teen night to use Pee-Pee’s term for a young woman, me I called them frails) based solely on his ability to intelligently talk about every known Bob Dylan song and lyric of the day. Jesus, who was that poor frail?
That story though later got me to thinking about Loretta, Loretta D’Amboise, from my old neighborhood up in Olde Saco back in that same 1960s day. Yes, Loretta was something else. Now while Pee-Pee and I were talking that night he mentioned, and I agreed, that lately we had been spending a hell of a lot of time talking about old time flames, our so-called conquests of said flames, and our, ah, ah, ultimate defeat at their hands. Call it old age with time of our hands, call it male vanity, once removed, call it evoking that one last chance for immortality, hell, call it acting like, ah, dirty old men, but there you have it. Pee-Pee’s Dylan date honey was wrapped up by some archaic Bob Dylan swish but Loretta, ancient mist Loretta, would never come within ten miles of that scene. She was strictly a jazzy blues breeze, just my type then.
Although Loretta had lived in the old neighborhood all through school (we had graduated together from Olde Saco High School in 1967) other than about sixteen million leers, unsuccessful leers, on my part she had not given me a tumble not even close. See she was full French-Canadian (F.A.) like most other people in Olde Saco who came down from Canada way back when to work the textile and paper mills. Unlike me, who was strictly half and half, and that difference I found out from later talk mattered in her family, and to her preference for be-bop F.A. guys (with fast cars, some dough, and a willingness to spent that dough on her).
So Loretta and I never met up until one night after I had gotten back home from summer of love San Francisco in late 1968 and I had run into her at Jimmy Jack’s Blues Club (don’t let the Jimmy Jack’s name fool you, the owner’s name was really Jean Jacques Dubois) over on Atlantic Avenue right across from Olde Saco Beach. Ran into her alone sitting all by herself at the bar putting coins into the jukebox and playing Big Joe Williams’ Baby Please Don’t Go about six times. Six times that I counted.
I’ll tell you the why in a minute but let me tell you first that she called me over, not a big hello, long time, no see, what have you been up to, come on over but a hey, I didn’t know you likes the blues, Josh, come on over. And well yes I did like the blues all the way back to the times in early high school when I would be up in my room around midnight and get The Big Bopper Blues Blast from some mega-station in Chicago on my transistor radio. So, of course, I used this arcane knowledge to make my big Loretta move. Naturally I tossed out Muddy’s, Howlin’ Wolf’s, Elmore James’, and about twelve other electric blues guys names to show I was for real. And just as naturally I knew that Big Joe Williams was performing this Baby Please Don’t Go number on his six, five, eleven or whatever number strings he used string guitar. That tidbit impressed her.
What I wanted to know, and if you have been paying attention you would too, was why she was sitting very alone in Jimmy Jack’s on that late summer Saturday night. Well, you know the old story, male or female, young or old. Her boyfriend, Jean-Paul LaCroix, a name I couldn’t place in the town’s scheme of things, but who worked in the MacAdams Textile Mills, made “good money,” had a “boss” 1964 Mustang, didn’t mind spending said “good money” on her and who also did not mind sitting a few nights a week in Jimmy Jack’s feeding the jukebox had dumped her. Dumped her for some red-headed low-down Irish girl from Kittery down the coast. Hence her solace in Big Joe’s song (and a sipped glass of white wine).
Needless to say I expressed my condolences but I also thought to myself that this Jean-Paul jerk had a screw loose. There are lots of reasons for a guy (or a gal for that matter) to dump a guy, who knows, the reasons are legion. But to dump Loretta D’Amboise, no way, no sane way. Like I said a screw loose. Now Loretta was not drop-dead beautiful, most F.A. girls aren’t. She was slender, long-brown hair and blue eyes, a decent shape, very nice legs and not afraid to show them, no real bosom like most F.A. girls. Nice, but not beautiful. But that isn’t what counted because she had this great smile and that look, that look that come hither fresh ocean breeze look, like a guy, a leering guy, young or old, would day dream, night dream, day-night dream, night-day dream about all day, every day.
And so, for a few weeks, that look held me in thrall, no, transfixed. But even from our first date (at Jimmy Jack’s the next week, me feeding the jukebox and her looking, well looking) I sensed she was elsewhere, probably Jean-Paul elsewhere, because those nickels, dimes and quarters I was feeding the machine kept coming up quite a bit on Baby Please Don’t Go and it was not me she was pleaded with to stay. So one night we decided, or maybe she decided and I agreed, that we would just be kiss-of-death friends.
A few weeks later I noticed, as I was sitting in Jimmy Jack’s Diner (ya, that Jimmy Jack, he owned the diner too), Loretta sitting very happy up on the front seat of a 1964 Mustang. So I put a nickel in the jukebox and played Baby Please Don’t Go for what might have been. And now almost fifty years later I am just now putting it on the old CD player. For what might have been.
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