German Krimi Pulps

From this amazing collection .

Really The Blues

Robert Huffstutter - Beatnik Poems From The 50's

This is just the kind of thing I love, and it's what makes the internet a great thing. I'm always on the lookout for cool stuff from the beat era. There's not as much as you might think. Obviously, people weren't documenting every moment with digital cameras like they do now. So many instances have just been lost into the ether and with the passage of time, more and more things disappear. Now, some 50 years and more from the time when these cats haunted the coffee houses of the worlds bohemian areas, it's rare that things turn up. I always wonder how much wonderful stuff is locked away in someone's attic or steamer trunk somewhere.

There's a guy named Robert Huffstutter. He has a fantastic collection of stuff on Flickr as well as a blog of photo essays and he is an original beatnik. Not one of the famous beats that hung out with Kerouac or Ginsberg, but of the unsung poets and artists whose work has been lost to us for decades. Recently he posted scans of the covers of a few of his spiral bound notebooks of poetry that he had re-discovered. I thought they were beautiful examples of the time period as well as the particular subculture of artists that I've devoted this blog to. He has graciously allowed me to post them here and told me he would send me some of the poems eventually. I'm really looking forward to reading them.

Dig these homemade covers.

The Private Eyes In Pulp

Who's your favorite?

Stu Bailey

Pete Gunn

or Johnny Staccato?

Beats On T.V. - Johnny Staccato

Staccato's Theme

John Cassavetes was already a pretty cool number starting in '59 when he directed "Shadows". A film about jazz,

love and race relations in the New York beat scene. After that he became jazz pianist turned private eye in the T.V.

series Johnny Staccato. Johnny Staccato only lasted one season, 27 episodes and was considered

a little too dark and gritty for prime time T.V. Frankly, this is what makes it perfect.

It is the most noir, it's everything I hoped Peter Gunn would be. My favorite

of the 50's private eye shows, it also has the highest concentration of beatniks. Johnny is a jazz

pianist an as such, he hangs out in a jazz cellar called Waldos, his home away from home. These shots were taken

of an episode called "The Parents" about a young couple who live in a cold water flat and are trying to get out of a

contract to sell their unborn baby, they enlist the help of Staccato, who incidentally, always seems to work for free,

and he begins to scour the jazz joints and espresso houses to get them out of this mess.

Johnny Staccato

"Take it easy man, you're so frantic, you're starting to panic."

Bongos and flute

"It was a typical coffee house. Second home for the beatniks, the avant guarde artists

and the plain, unlabeled, lost souls of the village."

"Ba rumba blue"

"Judging from the building, I figured the doctor not to be in the 50% tax bracket

if he payed taxes at all."

"Seeing those two making over their new born baby gave me a great feeling.

But it also made me think about my own life. So I decided to take a nice long walk.

And after a while...the walking helped.

I Made The Scene With Round-The -World Beatniks

From the June 1970 issue of New Man. From the cool cats at Vintage Girlie Mags