Down And Out In Love Town-With David Bromberg’s Try Me One More Time In Mind

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell:

Several years ago, maybe about eight years now that I think about it, I did a series of sketches on guys, folk-singers, folk-rockers, rock-folkers or whatever you want to call those who weened us away from the stale pablum rock in the early 1960s (Bobby Vee, Rydell, Darin, et al, Sandra Dee, Brenda Lee, et al) after the gold rush dried up in what is now called the classic age of rock and roll in the mid to late 1950s when Elvis, Jerry Lee, Buddy, Chuck, Bo and their kindred made us jump. (There were gals too like Wanda Jackson but mainly it was guys in those days.) I am referring of course to the savior folk minute of the early 1960 when a lot of guys with acoustic guitars, some self-made lyrics, or stuff from old Harry Smith Anthology times gave us a reprieve. The series titled Not Bob Dylan centered on why those budding folkies like Tom Rush, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Jesse Winchester and the man under review David Bromberg to name a few did not make the leap to be the “king of folk” that had been ceded by the media to Bob Dylan and whatever happened to them once the folk minute went south after the combined assault of the British invasion and the rise of acid rock put folk in the shade. (I also did a series on Not Joan Baez, the “queen of the folk minute” asking that same question on the female side but here dealing with one David Bromberg the male side of the question is what is of interest).

I did a couple of sketches on David Bromberg back then,   one reviewing an early album of his and the other a sketch based on his version of the classic blues number, Try Me One More Time. The latter sketch is what interests me here. See David Bromberg after the flame flickered (and after a long stint as outlaw cowboy country singer Jerry Jeff Walker’s side and vocals man) packed it in, said he had no more spirit or some such and gave up the road, the music and the struggle to made that music, as least professionally. As it turned out though he then, along with a number of other performers from that period, took a long time, many years off and pursued other things, mostly not involving the life blood music. Then he, they had an epiphany or something, got the juices flowing again and came back on the road.  That fact is to the good for old time folk aficionados like me.

What that fact of returning to the road also means is that my friend and I, (okay, okay my sweetie who prefers that I call her my soulmate but that is just between us so friend) now have many opportunities to see acts like Bromberg’s to see if we think they still “have it” (along with acts like Dylan’s who apparently is on an endless tour whether we want him to do so or not). That idea got started about a decade ago when we saw another come-back kid, Geoff Muldaur of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, solo. He had it. So we started looking for acts to check out that question- with the proviso before they die (unfortunately the actuarial tables took their tool before we could see some of them like Dave Von Ronk).

That brings us to David Bromberg’s return. We had actually seen him back in 2002 when he replaced the recently departed Von Ronk on the bill at Rosalie Sorrels’ Last Go-Round Concert at Harvard’s Saunders Theater. He was pretty good there but he was part of an ensemble as such tribute performances wind up being and so we didn’t get a chance to see him for a full program (or with a back-up band). Recently we did get a chance to see him in a cabaret setting at the Wilbur Theater in Boston with a big five piece back-up band. Yeah Brother Bromberg still has it (along with his mandolin player, fiddler, clarinet/sax player and drummer). While every tune didn’t resonant most did and we walked out of the theater with thumbs up. Bob Dylan move over, finally.  

Which brings us to that sketch I did based on Brother Bromberg’s version of the classic Try Me One More Time. When I got home I began to revise that piece included below. Now on to the next act in the great quest- a reunion of the three remaining active members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim Maria Mulduar, and of course Geoff at the Club Passim (which traces its genesis back to the folk minute’s iconic Club 47 over on Mount Auburn Street in Harvard Square. We’ll see if that is thumbs up too.     

…he could hear her cry for liquor even before she knocked at his four in the morning door, even before she came into his walk up flat apartment building where they had started their, what did she called it, their “love town love,” he could sense it in the walls or windows or something. He too could almost smell that gardenia perfume smell that meant she was coming back (and that always lingered a little in some corner of the apartment air, her air), coming back for the he no longer could count how many times, assured, always assured that she would have entrance and his bed when she came back. Maybe, as many times as he had tried to spill the damn stuff down the toilet, that is why he kept a flask for her, their, favorite scotch, Haig &Haig Royal Bonded, in the back kitchen cupboard. So she would come back, he did not know. One time he did spill it down the kitchen sink thinking to exorcise the demons but ten minutes later he was down the street at Mel’s Liquor buying another quart. Holding that thought sure enough a couple of minutes later he heard the knock, knock three times, their knock, and her patented purr, “Daddy, Daddy, let me in, your Laura’s back home, back home for good.”

He opened the door and there she was, a little drunk as always at that hour if she was up, and she usually was, a slight whiff of reefer, low-grade reefer so he knew she was flat-busted, coming off her clothes, and that sweet mama smile, the one that assured (and she knew assured) that she had not knocked on the wrong door. He thought “here we go again” with that here we go again feeling but he was glad this time to see her, it had been a few months, maybe four. He noticed that her clothes, her low- cut blouse, low-cut that he had insisted one time did not help enhance her small breasts, and her skirt, her short skirt that did, no argument, highlighted by her well-turned legs and ankles, were a little disheveled, a little back seat of some car, back room of some gin mill, or of some flophouse room quickie disheveled that meant she had either been working her butt or some pick-up guy had gotten angry at some foolish stunt of hers and kicked her out early. Probably the former since she liked, with every guy she tangled with non-professionally anyway, to what she called “do the do” in the morning then take a shower right after and wash that love sweat and jimson off.

Yah, as he had looked more closely, he could tell that she had been doing a trick or two of late to keep her in liquor and dope. Like he said he was glad to see her and although she looked a little the worst for wear this time she still had that Anne Hathaway-like girlish look that had attracted her to him when they first met at Jimmy’s Pony Lounge almost four years before. He thought too though that at the rate she was going, as he noticed small etched crow’s’ feet forming around her eyes, eyes puffy from lack of sleep, too much liquor, high-shelf or not, and a little too many off-beat bed tumbles as well, that she would not age well, not age well at all. And yet she would still be attractive to him.

There she was though in all her Madonna angel child street whore persona and as he invited her in (as if she needed an invitation) she gave him that long wet kiss, a french kiss, that meant she was back, back for a little while anyway. He noticed too while they were kissing that she had something on her tongue. He asked her about it and she showed him a pierced tongue ring, a fad among some women in the new multiple piercing world after having seen Rosanna Arquette wearing one as a sexual stimulant in the film Pulp Fiction. She also said, if he was good, she would show him how she used it. Yah, Laura was her old self; ever inventive in every field she put her mind too. After that introduction he went out to the kitchen to perform step one of being good. As he went to that kitchen cabinet to get her a drink he also thought back, as he always did when she came back, about their stormy history right from the beginning.

That first night, a Monday night, as usual a kind of slow Monday, at Jimmy’s he had heard her singing, singing the blues, singing Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie –style barrelhouse blues. Stuff like Me And My Gin, Bedbug Blues, and Bumble Bee in front of a pick-up blues band, a pretty good band and her with a pretty good voice. Stuff that had plenty of double entendre meaning with the crowd who came to Jimmy’s looking to pick up a stray this or that, nothing serious, and known around town as a spot for just that purpose. And that was the attraction for him then, and her too. She with that doe-like sweet Madonna home to mother look and belting out those very sexually suggestive lyrics with a look like maybe you could spend a lifetime trying to figure out whether she was an angel or a whore. And not mind the effort. He ordered her a drink, a scotch, after asking the waitress what she drank, and had it sent over to her table at break. She came over and said thank you but Haig &Haig was all she drank. He ordered the drink, and was hooked.

Hooked bad, hooked bad even when about a fifteen minutes later as she went back the bandstand to do the last set she said while leaving that if he waited she would go home with him but that the band thing was just a guest gig and that she only did it that night because work was slow. Work being, as she explained straight out, working the bar for tricks. She said if he wanted a good time, and she knew how to give a guy a good time, he would have to show his appreciation with some dough. They could negotiate that later. Like he said he was hooked and so he waited for her, waited to take the ticket and take the ride. Later, early that next morning, after they had done the “do the do” (and she had taken her shower) as she was leaving she threw the money he gave her back on the bed. She said her asking for money was her way to be her own boss, in control of her own life, and if she liked a guy, and she liked him, then that was that. A few weeks later she moved in for the first time, and stayed, stayed until she found the next guy on whose bed she threw the money back. But thereafter she always came back, came back to walking daddy, her walking daddy who knew his sweet mama, and she always would.

And he thought as he passed her the scotch that he always would take her back, take her back just like that first time. What was a guy to do. And just then as if to weld that thought into his brain she said, “daddy, walking daddy, the sun is almost up and I am sleepy, let sweet mama show you what that tongue ring is all about.” Ah, Laura…