Source: Agave: A Celebration of Tequila in story, song, poetry, essay and graphic art — edited by Ashley and Nathan Brown Agave Art Image by kenne (08/26/13)
The Steven Schroeder poem’s title, all my doors are open, is a line in Pull My Daisy by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Neal Cassady. Note: It was written in the late 1940s in a similar way to the Surrealist “exquisite corpse” game, with one person writing the first line, the other writing the second, and so on sequentially, with each person only being shown the line before.
PULL MY DAISY
Pull my daisy tip my cup all my doors are open Cut my thoughts for coconuts all my eggs are broken Jack my Arden gate my shades woe my road is spoken Silk my garden rose my days now my prayers awaken
Bone my shadow dove my dream start my halo bleeding Milk my mind & make me cream drink me when you’re ready Hop my heart on harp my height seraphs hold me steady Hip my angel hype my light lay it on the needy
Heal the raindrop sow the eye bust my dust again Woe the worm work the wise dig my spade the same Stop the hoax what’s the hex where’s the wake how’s the hicks take my golden beam
Rob my locker lick my rocks leap my cock in school Rack my lacks lark my looks jump right up my hole Whore my door beat my boor eat my snake of fool Craze my hair bare my poor asshole shorn of wool
say my oops ope my shell Bite my naked nut Roll my bones ring my bell call my worm to sup Pope my parts pop my pot raise my daisy up Poke my papa pit my plum let my gap be shut
A ’70s Self‑Portrait (At my desk at Southern Illinois University.) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
In the early 1970s, I worked on a grant program called Career Development for Children Project (CDCP). The project’s core theses were founded on the concept of an educational serving the community through direct attention to individual citizens’ needs and goals. It intended to refocus the learning and related services of public education toward the individual’s development.
He had a blue wing tattooed on his shoulder Well, it might have been a bluebird, I don’t know but he’d get stone drunk and talk about Alaska The salmon boats and 45 below
Well, he got that blue wing up in Walla Walla and his cellmate there was a Little Willy John and Willie, he was once a great blues singer so Wing & Willie wrote him up a song
The Blues On Campus (Lone Star College, Montgomery – 02/19/03) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It’s better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues.”
Texas Johnny Brown at Houston’s Shakespeare Pub — Photo-Artistry by kenne (Click on Texas Johnny Brown to see archived blog posting on TJB)
Texas Johnny Brown is a major talent who simmered on the blues scene longer than all the beef stew cooked in the ’40s, the decade when he first began playing and recording. Like pianist Johnny Johnson of St. Louis, Brown is an artist who did not get a chance to record a full album as a leader until he had been in the music business more than half-a-century. Also like Johnson, the results of coming in so late in the game have been a pair of highly acclaimed, prize-winning albums including the righteous Blues Defender. Brown can take plenty of the credit, since he has taken over almost complete control of his ow arranging, production, and mixing, as well as the string bending and blues moaning. He began his career as a sideman for the Duke and Peacock outfits in the ’50s about which discographers make comments such as “… the record keeping at that time was less than desirable.” As a result, some of Brown’s playing on releases by artists such as Lightnin’ Hopkins and Joe Hinton remains uncredited. The guitarist, singer, and songwriter began his professional career as an original member of the great Amos Milburn band known as the Aladdin Chickenshackers. Brown’s picking is killer on early Aladdin recordings by both Milburn, and on Ruth Brown’s first Atlantic sides. Atlantic allowed Brown to make a few recordings of his own in 1949, buoyed by the enthusiasm the label had for Milburn, who played behind his sideman on these sessions along with the rest of the Aladdin Chickenshackers. T-Bone Walker is the dominating force in Brown’s stylistic palette, an influence that was considered something of a driving permit for any guitarist venturing out of Houston during this period. Before finally getting the biggie recording opportunities in the late ’90s, Brown did an ARC session in Houston in the early ’50s that was never released. He also performed regularly with Junior Parker during that decade, remaining based out of Houston. As a songwriter, Brown’s most famous work is “Two Steps from the Blues,” a big hit for Bobby “Blue” Bland, with whom he also toured as a lead guitarist in the ’50s and ’60s. By the ’80s, he was considered only sporadically active on the blues scene, but this turned out to be only a temporary brown-out, so to speak.