2017     Concert Schedule           —         FINAL
Date           Community / Venue   —   Location              Concert Theme
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Feb       23         Pine Run, Doylestown PA                                   —         When Love Was Nifty

         Mar        2          Friends Village, Woodstown NJ                          —         Juke Joint Jive

         Mar       11         Old Bridge Library, Old Bridge NJ                      —         Juke Joint Jive

         Mar       24         Luther Crest, Allentown PA                                —         Vintage Guitars + Songs

         Mar       28         Jeffersons Ferry, South Setauket NY                 —         Big Band Idols

         Mar       30         Bronxville Library, Bronxville NY                       —         She Did It Her Way

         Apr          8         Chesterfield Cnty Library, Chester VA              —         Tin Pan Alley Cats

         Apr        10         Cypress Club, Raleigh NC                                 —         Sunny Side of the Street

         Apr        15         Denville Public Library, Denville NJ                  —         Big Band Idols

         Apr        18         Bergenfield Library, Bergenfield NJ                  —         Juke Joint Jive

         Apr        25         Shannondell - Bradford, Audubon PA               —         He Did It His Way

         Apr        26         Springhill, Erie PA                                            —         She Did It Her Way

         May      18          Arbors, Manchester CT                                      —         Sunny Side of the Street

         Jun         8          Monroe Senior Center, Monroe Twp NJ              —         Tin Pan Alley Cats

         Jun         9          Lake Prince Woods, Suffolk VA                         —         Great American Cabaret

         Jun       13         The Oaks, Orangeburg SC                                  —         He Did It His Way

         Aug          7         West Milford Library, West Milford NJ                —         She Did It Her Way

         Aug       17         Bristol Public Library, Bristol CT                       —         Love Builds Better World

         Sep       21         Friends Village, Woodstown NJ                          —         Sunny Side of the Street

         Sep       22         Luther Crest, Allentown PA                                —         Sunny Side of the Street

         Oct        15         Reed Memorial Library, Carmel NY                   —         Juke Joint Jive

         Oct        16         Friends of Enfield Library, Enfield CT               —         Folksong Boomers

         Oct        17         Plymouth Library, Plymouth MA                        —         Great American Cabaret

         Oct        18         Greendale Mens Club, Worcester MA                 —         She Did It Her Way

         Oct        19         Wilmington Library, Wilmington MA                  —         Tin Pan Alley Cats

         Oct        20         Halifax Council on Aging, Halifax MA                —         Spooky Side of the Street

         Oct        23         Jeffersons Ferry, South Setauket NY                 —         Juke Joint Jive

         Oct        30         Shannondell - Ashcroft, Audubon PA                                          —         Great American Cabaret

         Nov         1         Springhill, Erie PA                                             —         Radio Ramblers

         Nov         8         Cypress Club, Raleigh NC                                  —         Great American Cabaret

         Nov         9         Bermuda Village, Advance NC                           —         Great American Cabaret

         Nov       11         The Oaks, Orangeburg SC                                  —         Great American Cabaret

         Nov       15         Meadowood, Lansdale PA                                   —         Great American Cabaret

         Nov       29         Heath Village, Hackettstown NJ                          —         Broadway Song Mementos

         Dec         1         Monroe Senior Center, Monroe Twp NJ               —         Juke Joint Jive

                                          ©  2017 — Kenneth Lelen — All Rights Reserved
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Mississippi John Hurt’s Emory Reappears

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                  © 2017  — Kenneth Lelen - All Rights Reserved

Emory Guitar: http://kenlelen.blogspot.com/2015/03/mississippi-john-hurt-and-emory-guitar.html

                        Luthier Darrell Guinn and c. 1910 Emory guitar played by

                        Mississippi John Hurt at Newport Folk Festival, July 1963.

The long-lost Emory acoustic guitar, played by Mississippi John Hurt for two legendary sets at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1963, has been found alive and well in Upcountry South Carolina.

Its whereabouts unknown since 2001, the guitar is now owned by Darrell Guinn, a 62-year-old luthier in Greer SC. In May he found the rosewood-bodied, grand concert-sized instrument among a stash of guitars stored in his shop.

“The guitar is in the same condition that it was when I received it around 17 or 18 years ago from a gentleman in his 70s,” Guinn said. “He was from up north and had moved to North Carolina to retire. When he left it with me he said, ‘See what you can do with it.’

“When I tried to contact him to give him some options on what to do, the [telephone] number didn't work, and he never contacted me since,” Guinn said. “It's been stored in its case in my shop all these years.”

After he inspected the guitar, Guinn began an internet search for info on Emory guitar. That led him to an article, “Mississippi John Hurt and the Emory guitar,” in a March 13, 2015 posting at Vintage Music Concerts 
(http://kenlelen.blogspot.com/2015/03/mississippi-john-hurt-and-emory-guitar.html).

                                                                                                               Photo: © John Byrne Cooke

  Mississippi John Hurt and c. 1910 Emory guitar at  Newport Folk Festival in July 1963.

In the article he found photos of the very same Emory that he discovered in his shop — a black and white photo of Hurt playing the guitar in 1963 as well as a color photo made in the late 1990s of an artist's model with the guitar.

“I noticed the lines and cracks on the top are identical to mine,” Guinn said. “I believe I have the guitar that was loaned to John to play at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and thought you would want to know it is still around.”

After Newport, the Emory guitar disappeared

John Hurt borrowed the deep-bodied rosewood and spruce guitar for his 1963 Newport gig from its owner, musicologist Tom Hoskins. For the next 35 years its whereabouts were unknown. In the 1990s Hoskins left it with a friend, Neal Harpe, an artist and guitar dealer in Annapolis MD.

"Hoskins led a life very close to the edge, especially during the last years of his life," Harpe said. "I had it for a couple years in the 1990s, then one day Hoskins came by the house and retrieved it. It was unplayable at the time I had it, but I remember playing it quite a few times back in the mid-sixties. It was a really great sounding guitar."

                                                                                                                                           Photo: Neil Harpe

                                     A late 1990s photo shows an artist's model holding the Emory guitar played by John Hurt in July 1963.

While safeguarding the Emory, Harpe took photos. In one, a model held it so Harpe could paint a portrait of a guitar player. The Emory in this photo (above) has the same top cracks, edge binding and ivory block at the 16th fret as the guitar Guinn found in his shop (below).

                                                                                                                                                    Photo: Darrell Guinn

                             Front body of the Emory guitar luthier Darrell Guinn found in his shop in May 2017. To raise the
                             set up, the original bridge received a second piece of ebony between the pyramids, Guinn said.

After Hoskins died in 2001, the guitar disappeared. Some thought it went to Hoskins' sister in Georgia. Others said it went to Hurt's granddaughter, Mary Frances Hurt Wright, who called her grandfather "Daddy John."

However, according to blues aficionado and author Philip Ratcliffe, the Emory guitar was stolen. "[Hoskins’] Emory guitar was stolen from his trailer in Tallahassee FL after he died there, along with his TV and some other stuff," said Ratcliffe, author of "Mississippi John Hurt: His Life, His Times, His Blues" (2011, Univ. Press of MS).

Today, John Hurt’s Emory guitar has loud, deep sound

While John Hurt’s Emory guitar has seen better days, today it possesses a loud, deep sound, very good tone and projects well, according to Guinn.

“There are moisture cracks everywhere, but they’re not open,” he said. “They all were cleated and repaired a long, long time ago.”

Considering its age, the guitar is structurally sound, he said. The neck was reset some time ago and a shim placed under the fingerboard tongue. The action is low and the neck straight, though it has a pronounced V profile.

“It has its original machines with brass plate and ivory button tuners and its original case with decals,” he said. “It probably has an original bridge, though a piece was added to raise it up.”

Original tuning machines with brass plate and ivory buttons on Hurt's Emory guitar.
Guinn said he found 1166 stamped across the top edge of this guitar's headstock.

The John Hurt Emory owned by Guinn is stamped 1166 on the top edge of the headstock. Also visible are the letters EMORY inlaid in an ivory block across the fingerboard's 16th fret.

The only other Emory guitar known to exist is owned by Belgium artist and craftsman Dick Stallaert. This instrument was fully described in the March 13, 2015 article at Vintage Music Concerts.

Stallaert's Emory guitar is stamped 1210 on the top edge of the headstock and also has an ivory hexagonal block on the fingerboard. However, the letters EMORY are inlaid at the 17th fret of Stallaert’s guitar.

Guinn said years ago he wrote a letter to vintage guitar expert George Gruhn asking for info on the Emory guitar. “He said he never heard of it.”

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John Hurt's Emory Guitar — Measurements & Materials
SOURCE: Darrell Guinn

                 Upper bout                             —      10-3/8 in.

                 Waist Width                            —        8-3/8 in.

                 Lower Bout Width                    —      14-1/2 in.

                 Body length                            —      19-1/2 in.

                 Scale length                            —      25 inches

                 Body depth @ neck heel          —        3-7/8 in.

                 Body depth @ end block          —        4-9/16 in.

                 Sound hole diameter               —        3-1/2 in.

                 Neck Wood              —     mahogany

                 Back and sides         —     rosewood

                 Top wood                —      spruce

                 Top bracing             —      lateral bracing and wide V brace

                                                       that straddles the bridge plate

                                                       and terminates at the end block

                 Fingerboard             —      ebony

                 Frets                       —     refretted with small banjo frets

                 Tuners                     —      3+3 on brass plate and ivory buttons

                 Bridge                     —     two-piece ebony—original + addition

                 Hard shell case         —     original to guitar

                Serial Number          —     1166 on headstock's top edge
                Inlaid ivory block      —     16th fret of ebony fingerboard

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© 2017  — Kenneth Lelen - All Rights Reserved

Juke Joint Jive characters abound
at Old Bridge Twp. library concert
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   ©  2017 — Kenneth Lelen — Al Rights Reserved

The public library in Old Bridge Township NJ recently hosted vocalist-guitarist Ken Lelen in a Juke Joint Jive concert. During the 75-minute show he sang radio, bandstand, recording and jukebox hits from the 1930s and 1940s and played vintage acoustic guitars from the same era for a back-in-the-day sound.

      Ken Lelen's Juke Joint Jive concert at Old Bridge Public Library — 11 March 2017

The event, part of the library's Second Saturday Concert Series, was recorded on video by the township and secretly posted on YouTube (see above). Though the free event filled a large room with an audience of 75 locals, sponsors asked people to bring non-perishable items to donate to the Old Bridge Food Pantry.

"Ken's concerts offer audiences an opportunity to experience great American ragtime, jazz and swing, along with clever lyrics, memorable melodies and charming anecdotes," said library director Nancy Cohen. "Our patrons thoroughly enjoyed this trip down memory lane."

Favorite hits of 1930s and 1940s youth
Lelen's Juke Joint Jive concert features songs that were hits for rebellious youths of the mid-20th Century. Called lindy hoppers, stage door johnnies, swing shift maisies, jitter buggers, drugstore cowboys, bobby soxers and zoot suiters, these labels were considered descriptive and derogatory at the time.

"These tags seem quaint to us today because popular tastes in music, dance, dress, socializing and romance were different in the 1930s and 1940s," Lelen said. "But some things have not changed in 80 years. Boys must still meet girls and music is the glow that brings them together."

Audiences enjoy Juke Joint Jive concerts, the musician added. "It comes from bringing attention to the people, music and styles of a bygone era in our culture with period tunes, vintage guitars and tales of yore."

                                               All photos  & illus: Wikipedia and Google Images
Lindy Hoppers — 1940s

Characters abound at Old Bridge event
The musician performed a program of 16 tunes favored by and associated with the period characters he described in musical, historic and romantic anecdotes. Some of these eccentrics and their songs included:

Frank Sinatra and bobby soxers — 1940s

Bobby soxers — These young rebels were teenage girls who acquired the name because they wore fashionable outfits that included poodle skirts, saddle shoes and socks rolled down to the ankle.

My mother was a bobby soxer who ran away from home in 1945 at the age of 17 to join the roller skating shows. I once asked her what was the big deal about bobby soxers. "Oh, we were rebels," she said.

OK, rebels. But today, if you search Google or Wikipedia for the term "bobby soxer," you'll find "rabid fan of Frank Sinatra" and other performers of popular music during the 1940s.

Indeed, between 1942 and 1947, whenever Sinatra performed She's Funny That Way, his fans (female and male) went wild. Written in 1928 by Richard Whiting and Neil Moret, the song opens with, "I'm not much to look at, nothin' to see." When Sinatra sang those words at his concerts at New York City's Paramount Theater in January 1942, thousands of hysterical bobby soxers screamed out, "Frankieee!!"

WW II propaganda poster

Swing Shift Maisies — A swing shift maisie was a woman who took a man's job during World War II when the men were drafted into combat. The label applied to farm, factory and office jobs, which often paid women more than they could achieve in traditional roles and domestic settings. About 20 million women were employed during WW II, or 30 percent of the U.S. workforce.

The term was slang for substitutes of real workers. Said with a sneer, it applied to the women and some men who held jobs everyone knew would evaporate once soldiers came home.

More relevant to modern interests, swing shift maisies were the focus of Sherrie Tucker's 2001 Swing Shift. Her absorbing history covers unexpected breaks and setbacks faced by all-female musical groups (African-American and white). The women performed on the home front and abroad while their male counterparts, away in the war, left a vacuum in the market for Big Band music. Tucker interviewed 100 remarkable female musicians who endured travel restrictions, gas rationing, sexual discrimination and Jim Crow laws during the war years. Lamentably, she concluded, wartime job opportunities only reinforced the notion that female musicians — no matter how experienced, talented or resourceful — were nothing more than "swing shift maisies."

The term was well-known during WW II. In 1943 "Swing Shift Maisie," one of several films with Ann Southern, appeared across the country. The romantic comedy's plot centered on Southern's character, "a gum-cracking, back-talking Brooklyn bombshell," who takes a man's job in an aircraft assembly plant during WW II. She falls in love with, who else, the factory's male pilot.

Big Band leader Ted Weems

To honor swing shift maisies at the Old Bridge concert Lelen sang Heartaches, a big hit for Big Band leader Ted Weems (1901 - 1963). Recorded in August 1933 with Elmo Tanner whistling the melody, the record never charted. In November 1942 the Ted Weems Orchestra was disbanded and the entire musical crew enlisted in the U.S. Merchant Marine.

Five years later a Charlotte NC disk jockey found the 14-year old recording in a box of old records. He played it again and again as local callers in his audience as well as record stores and juke box operators requested the song over and over.

RCA eventually re-issued the record and it quickly grew popular across the country, reaching #1 in February 1947 with 16 weeks on Billboard's best seller chart. Neither Weems nor Tanner received any compensation for the reissued platter, as both men let their recording contracts expire during the war years.

Stage Door Johnnies — These Depression-era and wartime Lotharios were unknown to me until about 2001, when a diminutive and dignified dowager explained them to me after a Vintage Music Concert in Red Bank NJ. Though she didn't tell me her name, she announced she was "95 years old and a former Rockette," who had danced at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

I'd sung Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen's Over The Rainbow, Judy Garland’s signature song from the 1939 movie, “The Wizard of Oz.” Hearing the song, she said, reminded her she knew “all the swells” in the 1940s as well as a date she once had with Mickey Rooney (1920 - 2014), who appeared in 43 films between the ages of 15 and 25.

Mickey Rooney — 1945

"Back in the day, after a performance, men would come around to the stage door at Radio City Music Hall and offer large bouquets of flowers to the dancers they wanted to, ah, date," she recalled.

"Well, one night I dated Mickey Rooney, who brought me flowers after a show," she said with a grin and a wink as she referred to Garland’s co-star and friend. Short in stature (5 ft. 2 in.), but never short of confidence, Rooney was MGM's most successful actor in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

“OK,” I said. “You dated Mickey Rooney.” “No,” she said, “I dated Mickey Rooney,” and winked again.

Her wink, I realized, was key to the recollection. But unsure what, exactly, she wanted me to know about this long-ago assignation, I asked, “What do you want to tell me about this date?”

“You know Mickey was married eight times, including to Ava Gardner,” she said. “Well, our date lasted all night,” she said with another wink, “but I didn't have to marry the SOB.”

So there it was. My nonagenarian friend from Red Bank NJ was the One Who Got Away. One of many, I suspect, for Mr. Rooney.

Drugstore Cowboys — One way young people socialized during the 1930s and 1940s was by visiting the drugstore. In addition to the apothecary, they'd find a lunch counter with stools, booths, tables, chairs, juke box and phone booths.

Uniformed soda jerks behind a counter at
Jones Drug Store in Hastings NE — 1943

If they were thirsty a counter person called a soda jerk could sell bottles of soda, pop, coke or tonic (the name varied by locale). The same person offered egg creams (milk, chocolate syrup and seltzer), soft drinks (ice, flavored syrup and seltzer) and such ice cream treats as cones, sundaes, splits, frappes and malted milks.

Whether found in small town, mid-sized city or urban area, drugstores were often busy in the afternoon after school let out. That's when young people would get together for snacks and socializing.

After an October 2008 concert in Newport News VA, an oldster in my audience who grew up in a small town in Indiana recalled working as a teenage soda jerk in her father's drugstore during the war years.

Teenagers gathered near a juke box — 1940s

"Afternoons, the drugstore cowboys would come in to look for girls, buy a pop and maybe put a dime in the juke box," she said.

A favorite song of drugstore cowboys and the girls they chased was Paper Doll, she recalled. It was written in 1915 by a Tin Pan Alley songwriter, pianist and part-time boxer named Johnny Back. The song was inspired by a "fickle-minded real live girl" who jilted Black for another boxer. He died in 1936, six years before the Mills Brothers recorded the song that became a #1 hit between November 1943 and January 1944.

My Hoosier friend also reminded me public phones were important elements of a local drugstore. They were housed in 3-by-3-ft. wooden cells outfitted with short stools and glass doors with handles. Phone booths were often found in the back of a store, along the hallway leading to the bathrooms.

"Everyone in town knew the numbers on those phones, even your parents," she said. "So, if you were looking for someone, you'd call the drugstore. Someone would always pick up. Your mother could even call to leave a message: 'Tell her to come home by 6.'"

Zoot Suiters — A zoot suit included high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed trousers and long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. During the 1930s and 1940s zoot suiters wore color-coordinated fedoras or pork pie hats. Sometimes the look included pointy French-style shoes, a long feather as decoration and watch chain dangling from the belt to the knee or below, then back to a side pocket.

The style was popular with black musicians and youths in African American, Chicano and Italian-American communities. Still, during WW II zoot suits were prohibited in some areas because they required too much cloth and tailoring, making them luxury items.

Zoot Suited Cab Calloway — 1930s

Because the extravagance was deemed unpatriotic during the war, youths considered wearing an oversized suit a declaration of freedom, self esteem and rebelliousness. It may have been no surprise, then, when fights broke out between white American sailors and young Chicanos in Los Angeles during World War II in what were called the Zoot Suit Riots.

The song Moonglow was a hit for young people and jazz fans during the Depression. Written in 1933 by Will Hudson and Irving Mills with Eddie DeLange (lyrics), its popularity grew in the hands of such jazz musicians as Joe Venuti, Ethel Waters, the Boswell Sisters, Benny Goodman and a zoot-suited Cab Calloway.

Today, oldsters recall the song as a danceable hit from clarinetist Artie Shaw, who recorded the song in 1941. After WW II Moonglow was a hit by June Christy in 1946, Billie Holiday in 1952 and Sarah Vaughan in 1962.

Colorful characters in Old Bridge library audience
The audience at the library in Old Bridge included a cast of colorful characters who made their presence known during and after the concert.

They included:
     •  man dressed as a cowboy said his seizures had just stopped
     •  man used ruse to approach and drop Jews For Jesus flyers in my hand
     •  woman sat in the audience and read a book throughout the concert
     •  man promoted his pay-to-play video program in Princeton
     •  woman fumbled her photo-taking, despite library's prohibition on cells.

To my delight the audience included a woman who enjoyed hearing me sing Duke Ellington's 1942 song, Don't Get Around Much Anymore. She told me she realized she had misinterpreted the song's first few words, "Missed the Saturday dance," for many years. I'd sung the words so clearly, she said, she realized for the first time the song was not called, Mr. Saturday Dance.

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© 2017 — Kenneth Lelen — All Rights Reserved