--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Steve Novak
<Cinefrog@c...> wrote:
> I¹m extremely glad to learn all this info abot Kersh
and to learn
also that
> a bio is forthcoming by Paul Duncan. Also very
interested by the
info
> concerning boxing legend Archie Moore that I
remember seeing on
French TV as
> a youngster and who had such a dramatic face...the
quintesential
fighter and
> in fact when I lived in Louisiana in 69 I met in New
Orleans
several old
> fighters for whom he remained a hero...
If you are interested in Archie Moore he published his
autobiography in 1960 or 61 about the time he was starring in
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" directed by Michael
Curtiz. Dodged by champions, Moore did not get a shot at a
title before he won the Light-Heavy Weight championship at
the age of 39. He held the title for ten years and is the
only man to fight both Marciano and Ali. He was a genius in
the ring and a smart man anywhere. He died in 1998 with his
last moments in the spotlight as an advisor to George Foreman
in his improbable but successful comeback. I recommend A.J.
Leibling's THE SWEET SCIENCE as it has some chapters on Moore
and it is also about the best book ever on boxing. And if you
like that one, and love Paris (as I think you do), then pick
up Leibling's BETWEEN MEALS.
Who were the fighters you met in New Orleans in 1969? Ralph
Dupas, Willie Pastrano, Joe Brown...there were so many good
ones.
But your mention of New Orleans in 1969 brings back many
memories to my ADHD brain. I was not only in New Orleans in
1969, I was on my honeymoon! Ah, Claire, we only made it six
years to forever but it was enough to convince me that every
man's first wife should be a redhead. We made our
headquarters the Court of Two Sisters' tavern because we
loved the cigar-chomping, gold teeth-flashing piano player in
the bar. It was Roosevelt Sykes, a man who made his first
recording in 1929 and hundreds since and knew Robert Johnson,
Bessie Smith, jammed with Muddy Waters and…well, I curse my
ignorance of that time. I knew John Lee Hooker and a couple
of others but not enough to quiz this walking legend. I did
find a recording of his first two songs and he autographed it
for me.
But my first visits to New Orleans came a few years before
that when I was a college student--1965 and 1966. One of the
places I went to was a neat French Quarter restaurant owned
by a blind former bantamweight champion of the world Pete
Herman. I remember him at his table holding court. He is
considered one of the best "in- fighters" ever in boxing. No
one knew when was in his heyday-WWI and the early 1920s-that
he had to be good in the clinch as he couldn't see anything
at arm's length! He was going blind.
A Google search is a great thing for a mind like mine. I
found an autobiography by a former Pete Herman girlfriend
(THE LAST MADAM: A LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS) and another
(BACKBEAT) on the life of Earl Palmer, a legendary rock and
roll and jazz drummer, who danced in Herman's club before
becoming a musician.
Archie Moore has a very ornate style (less seen in his
ghosted autobiography than in interviews) that reminds me of
Chuck Berry's autobiography. Palmer in BAKCBEAT is gutter
tough, very hardboiled but with a hint of natural
grace.
Who was Earl Palmer? Little Richard correctly said he was the
greatest session dummer of all time. Little Richard should
know as Palmer practically invented the R&R backbeat when
he did "Tutti Frutti" and other hits. He was also the drummer
on Fats Domino's "I'm Walking", Richie Valens' "La Bamba",
Bobby Day's "Rockin' Robin", plus "You've Lost That Loving
Feeling", "Summertime Blues", "Deadman's Curve", and a host
of other hits by Lloyd Price, Eddie Cochran, Bobby Darin,
Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Sonny & Cher, Tom Waits,
Elvis Costello, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles and too many
others to name.
Sitting in a session more recently with a group called
Cracker, the lead asked Palmer if he needed to rehearse.
"Nah, I invented this shit."
He also has a great hardboiled style, as witness this
paragraph about growing up in New Orleans:
"Round there it was protect yourself. You came up hard. The
Treme
(minus the accent mark my keyboard doesn't have) is the
ghetto; the gangbangers and the drug dealers will rob you
there. It's not a safe place to be! Back then it wasn't like
it is now, but it was always tough. They had this chick named
Ruth, she was known to be a tough chick around there. Stand
up straight like a man and fight you with her fists. On
Robertson between St.Phillip and Urulines, Ruth and another
woman fought with knives to the death. Women were crying. I
was crying, because I knew Ruth. People begged them, `Please
stop, y'all, please don't, y'all gonna kill each other.
Somebody please stop them!' Al Dennis tried to break it up,
and Big Red, big light- complected guy. These were guys you'd
expect could just walk in there and stop it-couldn't get
close. I saw the other woman fall down for good, and Ruth
kept on stabbing her. She was dead by the time the ambulance
came. Ruth was on her knees, groggy, looked like she didn't
have the strength to fall over. Blood running everywhere in
the dirt. We later heard Ruth died in the hospital; she may
have died on the way there. The ambulance driver probably
took his time, didn't give a shit how long it took two
niggers to kill each other."
Friends, if that isn't hardboiled, I don't know it when I
read it. And all this from one reference to New Orleans that
awakened old memories and then a Google search on Peter
Herman plus New Orleans! Heck, I am skipping the story of the
burlesque star Wild Cherry, who danced in Herman's club or
the discovery that the fine, modern noir writer Katherine
Dunn is writing for boxing magazines. But back to Steve's
post:
> The only book of Kersh I ever read was Night &
The City, and I had
come to
> the book through the magnificent J. Dassin film (the
best and
meanest film
> noir to my eyes) with brilliant performances of
Richard Widmark,
Francis L.
> Sullivan and Stanislaus Zbyszko as Gregorius the
Great, and the
story of the
> Polish wrestler/intellectual is worth reading since
it probably
inspired a
> lot of the Kersh
> story...(
http://www.pwinsider.com/ViewArticle.asp?id=4243&p=1).
Stanislaus
> was inducted in the Wrestler¹s Hall of Fame in 2003
and I learned
about that
> in a French film magazine!!...
> I read in France as a younster the S鲩e Noire version
called ³Les
Forbans
> de la Nuit² (SN480), translated by S. Henry and R.
Amblard, which
I still
> have, and about 20 years ago bought a copy of the
Dell Book (#374)
at a
> second hand bookstore in a small town in Michigan.
This version has
a
> picture from the film on the cover and a map of
Œunderworld London¹
on the
> back with a complete list of the locations mentioned
in the story
such as
> the Silver Fox Club or Fabian Promotions or East
& West Caf鮮..
> I bought a cassette of the Dassin film on e-Bay for
about $5.00, 6
months
> ago since there are yet no DVD¹s of this magnificent
film. The 92
version is
> farce, and a sad reminder that a sometimes
interesting Producer
should
> remain on the phone and not behind the camera...poor
Jessica Lange
> participated (that¹s the best one can say in that
case) to this
debacle
> which has one redeeming value: the presence of Eli
Wallach....
>
> Steve Novak
> le Montois de D鴲oit
>
I love the old Dell Mapbacks but have never seen their
edition of Kersh's NIGHT AND THE CITY. I also love the Serie
Noire series, most especially SN 1925, SN 1929 and SN
1933.
Looking over the Kersh books I have handy I see another novel
not previously mentioned that has the hard edge. It is THE
DEAD LOOK ON
(Heinemann 1943) that describes in detail the Nazi atrocities
in Lidice. Here is the opening paragraph:
"'As long as iron can take a point, watch your backs!' Petz,
clutching his cigar, stood in a ring of ashes. Dry, hot-eyed
and dark, with his charred eye-sockets and his clipped grey
hair and moustache which had the carbonized iridescence of
coke, he seemed to have burnt himself out in the night. Even
his voice had a husky rasp, as of cinders. He said: `The
trees grow cudgels: wear your helmets! String can strangle:
mind your throats! While there is a roof for a stone to fall
from, watch your step! As long as men have toes to creep on,
sleep light! Beware of strange women, shadowy doorways, and
quiet streets. Dark nights are dangerous: don't walk
alone!'"
Ah, Mr. Kersh, I am a sucker for your stuff. And Crippen
& Landru has in print a collection by Kersh of his
Karmesin stories-KARMESIN- THE WORLD'S GREATEST CRIMINAL OR
MOST OUTRAGEOUS LIAR edited and with an introduction by Paul
Duncan that I highly recommend. While it is not Kersh at his
most serious, it is Kersh being quite entertaining. Kersh was
a master at the framed tale and as with so many others, in
the Karmesin stories Kersh himself provides the frame as the
writer who stumbles across the person with a story to
relate.
Kersh himself considered his best novel to be 1957's FOWLER'S
END
(Simon & Schuster), which alas I have not read. I have
owned a copy for years, and even picked up a second copy
because it was autographed, but it hasn't yet made my reading
schedule. Ranked before it on my "to-be-read" list is Kersh's
THE IMPLACABLE HUNTER
(Heinemann 1961) a novel about St. Paul.
There is much by Kersh I do not have, most never published in
the U.S. such as the collection with the great title THE UGLY
FACE OF LOVE and a novel entitled A LONG COOL DAY IN
HELL.
How can books with titles like that not be great reads!
Richard Moore
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