Judy Henske - Queen of the Beatniks

I don't know too much about Judy Henske. The Folk aspects of beatnik culture, I'm not too knowledgeable about. She was a folk singer dubbed The Queen Of The Beatniks. Along with Juliette Greco she seems to have driven home the black bob with bangs as thee look for beatnik chicks. Check out this video of here performing Wade In The Water. Powerful voice.

You have to click on the video to open it in another website, unfortunately.

Hootenanny Nurse

Found three huge boxes full of doctor and nurse paperbacks. Fun to look through but I only bought this one. How could I pass it up?

Once Upon A Coffee House aka Hootenanny A Go Go - Shepard Traube - 1965

As the 50's turned into the 60's elements of the 50's beat culture broke away and spawned their own scenes. The folkie or folknik scene was one of them. Folk was always part of the beatnik scene. All roots music, including folk and jazz was a part of the beatnik lifestyle actually but folk music really came into it's own in the early 60's. With artists like Judy Henske (dubbed The Queen of the Beatniks), Bob Dylan and Joan Baez playing the Greenwich Village coffee houses, it was only a matter of time before a movie was made. Once Upon A Coffee House is the story of a rich New York playboy who flies to Miami all the time to see his favorite folk singing girl, who he also has a crush on. He gets roped into buying the coffee house she sings in and tries to become like all the folkie kids in order to fit in in hopes she will one day fall for him.

Not sure why the name was changed to Hootenanny A Go Go unless it was to clarify that this is a folk music film. Seems to have been done for the video release.

This is really just a short, weak comedy that serves to string together several performances by various folk groups. Namely Oscar Brand, The Goldbriars, The Free Wheelers and Jim Jake and Joan (Joan Rivers). If you like folk music....I don't know...you might like it.

"Hey diddle dumpling pumpkin pie"

"Happy folk tonight!"

"Let me explain in more simple language. This cat John, has flipped for this chick Vicki. Every week he spends a fortune to fly down from New York to drool over her. But he doesn't make out, right? Now, lets get this picture in focus. Don't you think a rich cat like this might just buy our little establishment just to be the boss man and have Vicki work for him?"

����������"When I was a young girl my shoes were black"������������♭

��♭♫ "Too ra loo ra too la rye, a time to love a time to cry."♮♪♬

♫��������"Drop your burden down into the ocean, drop it down into the bottom of the sea."������♭♩

"John, I like you and I want you to look upon me as your friend, your benefactor."

"It's an espresso machine. Unusual and unique. I acquired it from a Grand Duchess in Amalfi. You have acquired for yourself, a goldmine."

Jim, Jake and Joan

♪♬♮"Whats in the news today"♩♫♭

The Freewheelers

"Tonight we have a beach party."

"Where?"

"Oh, down by the beach."

♩♫��"C'mon and do the turtle"♪♬��

"Oh darling, your neck is so slender and your lovely back. So smooth."

"What are we celebrating?"

"Well my first guitar lesson of course."

"What do you call it?"

"Nude girl with guitar."

"Take good care of it will you?"

��♬♪"I want to be with my honey tonight."♫♭♪

The most bizarre dream sequence ever

Even the folk clubs have a bad crowd

"Wow Corinne! You're a girl!"

Canadian Pulps

From The Dusty Bookcase

Coffee 'N Confusion

Anybody know where this place was/is ?

Wilbur!

More words of wisdom from my favorite TV beatnik. Wilbur!

Devil Take Her - Fan Nichols - 1954

A little while ago a friend of mine borrowed a couple of books. She hadn't read any noir before and said she enjoyed them but was wondering if I knew of any written by women. I got to thinking about it and aside from a couple of recent ones by Christa Faust and Madison Smartt Bell I couldn't think of any. I started digging through my collection and found Devil Take Her by Fan Nichols. As with many older pulp writers, there's not much info online. What I can find is a few other cover scans not much else. It would appear she wrote a handful of noir, a handful of romance. So this is the first noir I've read by a female writer and the protagonist is a woman as well. Something rare in this genre. I loved it. This one is screaming for a reprint.

The cover proclaims "Nature Gave Fay Everything - But Morals". A bit of an understatement there. Kitty Allen is a nightclub singer who goes on the lam after she is involved in a double murder. She didn't do it but there is no way anyone will believe her so off she goes to Bayport, Florida where she becomes Fay Adams and hides out for a while to plan her next move. Nichols has a real knack for the hard-boiled style and puts a bit of a spin on the old noir at the same time.

"She tried to pour the cool water of reason on the sudden flame of hope. A lot of men asked her to their tables for drinks. Some of them offered auditions, screen tests, T.V. spots. They were phonies. She could spot a phony a mile off. She hadn't kicked around New York six years for nothin'. Kitty Allen was no tonight's pushover for tomorrow's promise."

It was quite interesting to get the woman's point of view. All the men around her are letches, but Fay can't help but get involved with them, several at a time. Talk about multi-tasking, this girl has three things on the go and as many boyfriends to help her out. It gets hard to keep up with her and all of her criminal activities and with the amount of drinking she is doing it's bound to start spiraling out of control. When it does, it takes an agonizingly long time. Nicols really drags it out into a nail biting conclusion. Great book. I'll be on the look out for more by Fan Nichols.

Stratusphunk!

Super cool Jazz. Thanks to C.K. Dexter Haven over at Hollywood Dreamland.

Juliette Greco - Sous Le Ciel De Paris

In case any of my faithful readers have been wondering who the gorgeous beatnik chick who lives at the top left of the page is. It's Juliette Greco. Greco was the epitome of Left Bank cool in post war paris. immersed in the bohemian lifestyle at the time she knew J.P. Sarte and Boris Vian and met most of the jazz musicians who came through and even had a love affair with Miles Davis. She sang and acted. Jean Cocteau put her in his film Orphée. She is still active today at the age of 83.

here's a cool video of her singing Sous Le Ciel De Paris in her unique style. I think from around '62

The Hustlers - Sam Ross - 1956

I was going to review this one for Mutant Family Values but since it has such a beat feel to the writing style, I figured it would go better here. The cover says Sam Ross was also the author of "You Belong To Me" but he may be better known for his novel "He Ran All The Way" which I haven't read but it was made into a interesting noir film with John Garfield and Shelly Winters.

Keeping with the Juvie theme, the Hustlers is just that. The story of a young Puerto Rican tough kid in Spanish Harlem.

I've read some JD books before. Mostly they tell stories of bored middle class white kids out for kicks in their hot rods. This is pretty different. I'm not going to pretend I know anything about what it must have been like to grow up in a large, poor, immigrant family in New York in the 50's but the sympathy with which Ross writes makes this novel feel accurate. I don't have much info, but it feels as though he really did his homework here.

I mentioned before that the writing has kind of a beat flow to it. When I started reading it, it was Kerouacs voice in my head. Kind of like Kerouac meets Jim Carroll.

This is my room, I said to myself. This is all my own. And I can do things here. Private. Nobody has to know. It makes me a man.

It felt big. I felt big. It felt as big as being with the gang, as big as the day I bought my first switchblade, bigger than the first time I padded down with a girl. Than all of a sudden I began to miss a million things: the sound of my mother's bare feet slapping across the wooden floor, the sound of the kids wrestling in bed, the sound of all the people living all around us, everything I was used to for so long, and I couldn't stand it. I busted out of my room.

The Wild Ride - Harvey Berman - 1960

Juvenile delinquents often get confused with beatniks in films of this era. The Wild Ride is a little confusing in this aspect. They all talk like beats and dance around on the beach listening to jazz and Johnny (Jack Nicholson) has that real beat, Maynard Krebs sweatshirt. But they all seem more like greaser types to me. Sporting ducktails and flattops, working on their hot rods and racing down at the local dirt track speedway, jitterbugging. If this was re-edited with a rockabilly soundtrack instead of the cool jazz with bongos and flute it would seem more fitting.

It's a pretty good film nonetheless. Your cookie cutter JD film. Nicholson here in one of his earliest roles, even then acting circles around the rest of the cast, plays Johnny, a bad kid already in trouble for various driving offences at the beginning of the film when he runs a cop off the road and his hauled into the sherrifs office. Johnny's pal Dave has a new girlfriend and she's been taking up a lot of is time, prompting Johnny to extreme measures to get her out of the picture. This leads to a car chase which doesn't end well for anybody.

"Are we gonna play games?"

"Sarge? Sarge, I wanna tell you something. You are a very far out stud."

"You afraid of my mother? She won't bother you. I told her how shy you are."

"God! You're draggin' yer axle! Like a funeral"

"What gives with Dave?"

"So like we're sleepin' on 32 with Dave on the big side. We're tickin' on real nice when this truck comes on and I give Dave his big chance...he goes shallow...big time."

"Dave chickened?"

"You shoulda heard his chick scream."

"That does it! A bad chick! She is too far out!"

"aaahhhhh"

"Like, Johnny's my best friend, and we can't even talk anymore!"

"Do it your way !? You listen to me. From now on you're gonna do what I tell ya. That chick doesn't even exist, and don't you forget it!"

"The new boy Johnny Varon."

VVVRRROOOOOOOM!

AAAAAHHHHH!

"Dave! I only did it to scare her! Dave! I did it for yoooouuuu!"

VVVRRRROOOOOM! SCCREEEEEECH!

"She was big with you, man."

The End

Watch the whole film right here!