“If You Ever Plan to Motor West:” A Story of U.S. Route 66

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Once a road was built to accommodate the American automobile, it was only a matter of time before an appropriate sort of music came along for the ride.  It was inevitable that a new, fast moving way of life and the excitement of the open road would have an infectious musical accompaniment.

No song better complements the great American highway and the sense of possibilities and promise it holds than the Bobby Troup classic, Route 66.  In no other country or culture on earth could lyrics comprising little more that a litany of place names make the spirit soar and swing: “Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona…”  Troup and his wife Cynthia literally wrote the song on a 1946 American Automobile Association road map as they drove west from Lancaster, PA bound for Los Angeles and a songwriting career.

The highway that the Troups connected with several days into their trip got its start in downtown Chicago, Illinois:  Jackson Boulevard at the Michigan Avenue intersection.  Between Jackson Boulevard and the highway’s end at Santa Monica’s, Ocean Avenue (at its intersection with the Pacific Ocean.) were old wagon roads, animal trails, and Indian paths.  Stitched into a unified highway, Route 66 became the 20th century equivalent of the transcontinental railroad with the difference that it was not some company’s property; it was everyman’s road.  You didn’t need a ticket.  Just your automobile or your thumb and away you went.

“Get your kicks on Route 60” would be unlikely to spark a hit song.  But in 1925, when the demand for some sort of orderliness resulted in a uniform designation for a highway from Illinois to southern California, the original name assigned was U.S. Highway Number 60.  It was comprised of sections of the Ozark Trails and the National Old Trails and in 1926, maps duly labeled the combination of dedicated roads as Route 60.

But a fuss ensued.  The Midland Trail, from Kentucky to Virginia, was also Route 60.  Governors got into the fray and the proponents of the western highway eventually accepted the alternative “66” for their road.  After all, it was a bigger number.  Then too, it sounded faster, and its pronunciation provided a pleasing and memorable sibilance.  Route 66 it was.

Soon distinctively patterned wooden signs appeared beside the road in Peoria, in Albuquerque, in Joplin.  A combination of a shield and a sheriff’s badge and emblazoned with a sturdy “66” graphic, they were patterned after the sort of markers oil companies had been providing for the convenience of their motoring customers.  These companies provided free maps and thoughtfully installed their own private route signs to aid the motorist traveling unfamiliar, unmarked roads.  Soon the Bureau of Public Roads adopted the idea and the handy devices sprang up all along America’s highways.

Route 66 was a symbol in its heyday.  It was the route west, to California, for those trying to leave their ruined dustbowl farms and towns.  They went in the direction nomads have always taken hoping to follow the sun to a place where its light was eternal.  John Steinbeck drove the road, gathering details for his novel The Grapes of Wrath as he went. He then sends the Joad family along Route 66.  In the movie version of The Grapes of Wrath, scenes of the real pre-war Route 66 grace the screen.  A little later and a slightly more hip author Jack Kerouac, traveled extensively on Route 66.  Kerouac took a lot different trip than the Joad family in his classic novel, On the Road.

Progress, prosperity and the resulting interstate highway system gradually made Route 66 seem old fashioned and cumbersome.  Eventually, inevitably the cobbled together interstate was superseded.  By the late 1960’s, parts of the original highway had grass growing through the pavement.  Almost as an afterthought, in 1985, “66” was deactivated as a U.S. Route number.  Though Route 66 lived just fifty-nine years as a highway, it survives as a perfect part of an American lore that probably never really was but ever shall be.

As a matter of interest–and further enshrining Route 66 in the rock and roll ethos–Paul McCartney and his then fiancé (and now wife) Nancy Shevell, planned a trip.  They rented an SUV and toured the country, their itinerary: driving on or paralleling old Route 66.  And a final, additional rock and roll Route 66 tidbit: the Eagles were “standing on a corner,” namely the northwest corner of Kinsley Avenue and Second Street in Winslow, Arizona.

 

The Masked Marauders–A Musical Mystery Solved

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Our small crowded map company office is not very office-like. It is never visited by any business associates. Our important customers are not local and are not near enough to bother visiting us, nor would they have any need or reason to. So the office décor is relaxed and personal. Large shelves full of books, walls hung with pictures–from old, framed classroom images of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to color posters advertising The Beatles at the London Palladium, 1963. Photo calendars, tiny Civil War era flags, Statue of Liberty holding forth a working light, little circus figures, Civil War posters, D-Day maps, artifacts, political signage, posters advertising a 1977 Jasper Johns exhibit, framed photographs of Buddy Holly, grandfather Charlie McDermott in his WWI uniform somewhere in France, U.S. Grant, Antietam battlefield, PT Boat calendars…all visible from the corridor.

People tend to poke their heads in.

One of these people is a very nice chap named Mark Voorheis. He lives in nearby Friendship, NY. A very small town and like all of Western New York, it has seen better days a long, long time ago. Despite this small town residency, Mark is very much a man of the world. Heavily involved in Friendship affairs, the Underground Railroad, the Gatling gun in front of the American Legion, the library board, genealogy, the Civil War, veteran issues and knowledgeable to an extraordinary degree about all of them. Mark had actually attended a Beatle concert in 1966 in Boston and gave me his annotated program of the event. It’s hard to waste your time with anybody who pops in. Everybody who settles in to talk has some fascinating interest, background, area of expertise…and most have more than one.

Mark Voorheis stopped by one afternoon in late 2006. He was in the vicinity. His ultimate musical idol is Jerry Lee Lewis. He was talking Jerry Lee Lewis, highly recommending the Hellfire (?) biography and urging me to read it. (I did. Jerry is not exactly a charming cad. Pretty much just a cad. Though John Lennon stated for the record that The Beatles never recorded anything to compare with Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On, which canonizes Jerry Lee and covers a multitude of sins.)

We were talking music and enthusiasms. I mentioned that I collected bootleg Beatle albums. My first “bootleg,” passed to me by a friend in 1969, was The Beatles’ original Get Back album. It had been released in a plain jacket only to select DJ’s but then the trade release was nixed and the whole project was delayed and revamped. Ironically, this early version of the album, never officially released, was vastly superior to what was eventually “reproduced,” lathered up and released as Let It Be.

As with all the conversations carried on at our shop, this one wandered. Eventually it came to rest on another murky release around the same time period. I brought up the strange case of The Masked Marauders album. It had been clearly established that it wasn’t a supergroup recording anonymously but what it in fact was, I’d never heard.

Mark rather casually remarked that “The Masked Marauders” was he and his brother and a couple of his brother’s friends who sang and played on that album. Mark, sitting across from me, was, specifically, the droll voice that intoned the opening, “Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl…”

This he also remarked casually.

Thus the whole masked Marauders story emerged. Rhino records had, I learned, released a CD of the original album and supplemented it with voluminous liner notes (or whatever you call the copy that accompanies a CD) containing everything there was to know about the genesis of the recording, the deliberate mystery about it and some really quirky bits, such as the fact that Sharon Tate (Charles Manson’s victim) was originally to have graced the cover.

The startling local angle to this 60’s rock ruse and legend was passed along to the Olean Times Herald newspaper. Reporter Tom Donahue wasn’t as staggered by this breakthrough as I had been but he appreciated the exciting development and covered it with a fine and finally accurate account of a story which had percolated in my life for nearly forty years. I wonder what rock and roll mystery could wash up next at our door.

Elvis anyone?

The Masked Marauders–A Musical Mystery Revealed

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Dateline: St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY, Sophomore year, 1969.

In the enclave of a college campus the real world only intruded when you allowed it to come in. Otherwise the routine of classes and studies, prelims and papers, professors and deans, absorbed the days’ business. Fraternity life, heavy affairs of the heart, the University Center juke box and hanging out there generally, a couple of local bars with their bands on weekends, rumors of drug busts, esoteric games based on the configuration of the nine cement blocks that made up the front landing of the fraternity house, stale lukewarm coffee, endless smoking and bumming of smokes while carrying on rambling, deeply existential discourses long into the night… mostly rounded out our existence. This synopsis applies most specifically to XI Chapter of Phi Sigma Kappa.

The living room of the house featured leather chairs and sofas beautifully softened through years of hard wear till they were as comfortable as a warm lap. The electronic feature of the living room was a beautiful stereo with immense speakers set up around a big brick fireplace. This was the centerpiece of the living room. A black and white television, a clear indication of fraternity priorities, occupied a decrepit , dark, dreary room deep in the back basement, beyond the boiler and past the empty coal bin.

These were the days when music was everything and musicians were king. Movie stars, other “celebrities” (the word didn’t exist yet) carried no weight. They were like sidewalk entertainers. Performers and bands were the cultural icons of those days. They filled the cultural firmament but their comings and goings were furtive, their lives a murky mystery, their 45 single releases and their eagerly awaited albums the only real glimpses we got of them, apart from Rolling Stone interviews and the very rare, dramatically photographed LIFE magazine spreads. The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and pre-eminently The Beatles occupied the cultural pinnacle.

These people were like misty magic creatures from out of the night. Their album covers were studied for hidden messages, tell-tale images, bizarre clues. Each appeared on the others’ album covers. Cognoscenti informed the uninitiated.

  • “The faces of The Beatles are here—upside down in the bark of the tree that Dylan and the swamis are standing in front of.”
  • “See. The rag doll has ‘Rolling Stones’ written on her. And there’s Dylan in the photomontage.”
  • “If you look really closely, that little clump in the background of the Rolling Stones’ new album is The Beatles.”
  •  “Why is Paul standing with his back to the photo? Because it’s not Paul!”
  • “The badge, see the badge?  It has the initials OPD. Officially Pronounced Dead.”
  • “See. The word Beatles on the wall?  Not ‘The’ Beatles. Just ‘Beatles.’ Now see on the wall. What’s that shape? Yes. Exactly. The number 3. You’re seeing  3 Beatles. I tell ya. He’s dead. Paul’s      dead.”
  • “I don’t know. Sometime about the time of ‘Sergeant Pepper.’”

Musicians got together. Played on one another’s recordings.

  • “That new Donovan song. Mellow Yellow. Paul McCartney is on it. He does some background vocals and that’s him, he plays bass.”
  •  “That really good blues guitar on George Harrison’s song. That’s not Burt Weedon. It’s Eric Clapton. George isn’t denying it.!”
  • “Isn’that Mick and Keith singing during the broadcast of All You Need Is Love ?” Rumors flew. He was here. He was there.
  • “That’s Brian Jones  playing saxophone on The Beatles single.”

So it was in that enchanted atmosphere that earnest rumors began to fly and were eagerly believed. An album was circulating—the rumors were cascading from a winking, smirking, suggestive article in Rolling Stone magazine no less—that John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger and [pop star of choice] had gotten together and secretly recorded an album of old chestnuts—Duke of Earl for one—and some one-off compositions like Can’t Get No Nookie.  They came together under the moniker “The Masked Marauders.” What to make of this?  And where to get it?

A friend from the independent republic of Ithaca arrived at school.  The album had turned up there in an alternative record shop. Where else? The album cover offered no clues. A sort of Psycho design, black and ominous.

The signs were propitious. On his most recent album Nashville Skyline’ Dylan had murmured to his producer in the intro to one of the songs, “Is it rolling Bob?” …i.e. is the tape running.

A voice with the same intonation on ‘Masked Marauders’ asks, “Is it rolling Al?’

We listened to every nuance, every note, every aside, every chord, every word.

“Yep. Not much question. This was it.” The songs were a little bawdy, a little bedraggled, clearly some good musicians were having fun, spoofing, goofing off, playing the sort of music you lean into, watching each others faces, laughingly catching one another’s mood, reacting, rocking back and forth, shuffling off the pressure of being a star, enjoying the fun of being a musician in a shaggy little band.

Yep. That had to be Mick. Listen to that. Oh yeah. That’s John Lennon all right. That’s John. Nah. You can’t mimic Bob Dylan. That’s Dylan. No question. Hey man. I know Paul McCartney when I hear him. Since I was 13. I know Paul McCartney and that is Paul McCartney. Listen guys. Mick is incomparable. That’s Mick.

Strangely enough, there were guys who were certain Paul McCartney was dead who were also absolutely sure that was Paul McCartney on this record. Go figure. We’re in college.

Only, and of course, it wasn’t. It wasn’t Paul. It wasn’t John. It wasn’t Bob. It wasn’t Mick. Was it???? Finally and definitively , No, it wasn’t.

No. Life went on. Groups broke up. They got religion. They got glammy and clammy. Everybody got older and then everybody got old. And then almost forty years later, way off in upstate New York—Olean—right on the Pennsylvania border, in the small office of a map company in an old hotel lobby on the hardscrabble main street of town, the whole dark mystery was dragged into the light.

Stay Tuned.  Coming Soon.

The Ten Best Rock & Roll Albums of All Time (1-4)

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The Ten Best Rock & Roll Albums of All Time – A Completely Subjective List in No Particular Order

  1. The Beatles. Please Please Me. If this had been the only album The Beatles ever made, they would still be in contention for being one of the best r&r bands of all time. It starts out with Paul’s jubilant count in –unique at that time I believe- to “I Saw Her Standing There.” In his last live appearance ever, John Lennon, at that moment bitterly at odds with Paul, couldn’t resist covering this galloping rock and roll number. Anybody could have written “Yesterday.” There are very few composers capable of penning a genuinely rocking song. This first Beatle album ends with “Twist and Shout.” I’ve actually heard it said that The Beatles, as compared to the Rolling Stones, never really rocked. Anything the Rolling Stones ever recorded is just pitter patter compared to The Beatles’ rendition of “Twist and Shout.”
  2.  The Bo Deans. Love and Hope and Sex and Dreams.  The most authentic and atmospheric and enigmatic album I know of. Somehow it conveys the impact of a thousand nights playing to the same anonymous, faceless, enraptured audience at a hundred different blurry bars on freezing nights in a wintery mid-west. The spare arrangements don’t need another note or another instrument. The lyrics are so grounded and revealing–they’re obviously the true stories of the band–their real girls, their dream girls, their families, their days, their nights, their loves and their losses. And the stellar drawl of their voices make it all valid. When this album ends, you have to look around to remember where you are. Produced by T-Bone Burnett, with its gritty vocals, brusque arrangements and cow girl atmosphere, this just might be the sturdiest, most utterly romantic album ever recorded.
  3. The Rolling Stones. “Some Girls.” This album salvaged the1970’s musically, coming out just as that dreadful, rotted and decayed decade was at last  grinding to a stop. Keith and Mick picked through the wreckage, salvaged bits and pieces of music, dabbed at styles, collated images, pieced together a trenchant commentary, wired it all up, got juiced, then spilled the entire mess into a microphone. In the early Sixties, when you had to take sides, I unhesitatingly chose The Beatles. No looking back there. But in the 70’s, as the former Beatles ricocheted off each other and squabbled through the decade, the Rolling Stones coalesced and came up with this shudderingly coherent record.
  4. Buddy Holly & The Crickets Legend. A Double album in a strangely desirable package. My first acquaintance with Buddy Holly came in 1966 when my favorite song on the USA Capitol release of The Beatles’ “The Beatles Sixth” album (and ever since then my favorite single recording of all time ) was “Words of Love.” I was slightly taken aback when the credit was one “Buddy Holly” and not Lennon, McCartney. Jump ahead eleven years to a record store on First Ave. in the E. 80’s (?) and this “Legend” album appeared as I flipped through the racks. I recalled “Words of Love.” Good enough for The Beatles, good enough for me. I asked the clerk, “Buddy Holly? He’s all right or what?” “He’s great.”  “Really? He’s great?” “He’s great.” I bought the album, got it to my apartment, and played it through. Through and through. Again and again. Lots of liner notes, photos. I’ve been a knocked out Holly fan from that moment to this. When I hear any Buddy Holly song, as it comes to an end, I can hear the next song as they’re sequenced on the “Legend” album. I still think The Beatles’ cover of “Words of Love” surpasses Buddy’s version.  The lead is less twangy and the singing–John Paul and George on a single mike at midnight on the outskirts of London–is breathier and more ardent, but “Legend” introduces Buddy Holly’s music in a staggering tour de force. The best of Buddy Holly is very good indeed and the album as a package of music and information, with its cover design, creates a wonderful ambiance, part of my criteria for greatness. The songs meld together perfectly. Norman Petty, who produced most of these tracks, was apparently a bit of a stinker but in the late 50’s in the middle of nowhere he was masterfully releasing timeless recordings.

Coming up:  Elvis Presley Sun Sessions, Bob Dylan Nashville Skyline, and Blood on the Tracks.

Civil War Questions with High School Students–Final Questions

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Question 12  Did you Ever consider that map-making wasn’t for you?  What do you like the most about making maps?  The least?

Once I started making maps I never looked back. It’s a very satisfying activity and I like every aspect of it. The research is fun, the drawing is fun, using watercolors is fun, deciding what to include on the reverse side of the map is fun, the process of taking the original manuscript of the map to the printer is fun (great inky smells, huge thundering printing presses) and getting paid for doing something fun is fun.

Question 13  What do you think makes your maps about the Civil War better that others?

Our Civil War maps are essentially unique. No one else has done Civil War battlefield maps that contain so much cultural and physical information and present that information is such a stylized format. The corn fields look like cornfields, the fences look like fences, the orchards look like orchards. Our maps give modern visitors to the battlefield the same view of the terrain as the Civil War armies had. That’s why when West Point does its staff rides at Gettysburg or at Saratoga, they carry our maps with them. They want modern soldiers to see the roads and lanes, the farms and fences, the rivers and bridges, the terrain, that Civil War soldiers confronted and contended with. Because these were the features that settled the outcome of the battles.

Question 14 During the Civil War, what do you this was Lincoln’s most strategic move as president?

Lincoln’s most strategic move as president was to ignore the lurid gossip about U.S. Grant, saying to Grant’s detractors, “I can’t spare this man, he fights.” Lincoln, sight unseen, intuitively trusted Grant (a fellow mid-westerner) and when he appointed Grant overall commander of U.S. forces, the Confederacy  was done for because U.S. Grant brought William Tecumseh Sherman to the fore and the Southern Confederacy was done for.

Question 15  What do you think Lincoln would have done  the 13th Amendment hadn’t passed? What would have been his next step?

The 13th Amendment passed. There are no “if’s” in history. Every “if” brings more “if’s” and one drifts away into a mist.

Question 16  Lincoln is always refered to as “honest Abe,”  yet in the movie Lincoln, you see he could be very dishonest at times. 

I don’t see Lincoln being dishonest in the movie “Lincoln.” He was contending with existential challenges and had to manage the give and take of politics in the midst of the iron contingencies of war. And throughout, he had to contend with political opponents who were in fact undermining the war effort in ways that didn’t exist in U.S. politics until the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. But in neither of the latter wars was the nation’s life hanging in the balance. At different times in the Civil War, there were Rebel flags  from the White House.

Question 17  What would you say was the most important fact or scene put into the movie Lincoln?  Meaning, what would you say is the most influential fact about Lincoln we should take away from the movie?

The best thing about the movie was its realistic portrayal of the character Lincoln. He was a consummate politician, a very real man, the wisest of the wise, and the only person in all the country that could have managed the menagerie that was Civil War era America partly with an iron will and an iron fist and partly with the most thoughtful political words ever spoken.

 

Civil War Questions with High School Students–Questions 9, 10, 11

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Question 9:  How did the draft work during the Civil War?

The draft was a pretty shabby affair for both sides and it was also manifestly unfair. In the North a drafted man could buy out for $300. That was a lot of money then and only the wealthy could afford that. They would then get a substitute. They were often enough shady characters who would take money, enlist, desert at the first opportunity and enlist again, again for money, using an alias – and on and on. In the South, there were numerous exceptions and the saying was, “It’s a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” In other words, the wealthy men who owned the slaves (and they made up a tiny fraction of the overall population) that the war was really all about were not drafted because they had to stay home and oversee the slaves etc. Initially, in the South, draft age (and there were many occupations, including service in the non-fighting state militias e.g. that were exempt from the draft) was from 18 to 45. By the end of the war, they were taking men from “cradle to grave” 16-65. The draft, for both sides, was pretty much a disaster.

Question 10  Did we have the Medal of Honor during the Civil War?

There was a Medal of Honor during the Civil War. It was awarded much more liberally than the present day Medal of Honor and it was sometimes given to an entire unit for some especially meritorious action. There were several local Medal of Honor winners including a Mr. Oviatt (the street next to Boardmanville school is named for him)  and Stephen Welch. Mr. Welch, your OHS teacher, is a direct descendent. Stephen Welch is buried in Allegany cemetery. Mr. Welch can tell you all about him.

Question 11  What was the most important information a battle map could provide for the armies?  Elevated ground?

The most important information a map could provide a Civil War commander was enough knowledge of the ground that he knew where he could march and maneuver his army (where he could pass through a mountain range, where he could ford a river, where he could feed his men and water his animals, what multiple roads he could spread his army out on and still maintain contact between the separated units and get them to the right place at the same time.) A commander mostly wanted to know from a map where he could go and what he could do and equally important to him, where his enemy could go and what the enemy’s options were. It was while the armies were angling for a battle that maps were most important. Once contact was made and battle was joined, they could scout around for information and to a limited extent see what was going on.

Civil War Q&A With High School Students–Questions 6, 7, 8

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Question 6:  How many people survived the prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia?

There were about 45,000 Union prisoners at Andersonville. Something like 13,000 of them died there, so there was about a 27% casualty rate. The biggest Union POW camp was in Elmira, NY.  There was less excuse for the approximate 25% casualty rate for Confederate prisoners there since the Union, in contrast to the South, was thriving throughout the war.  But those were very hard times and very hard people.

Question 7:  Would you consider Robert E. Lee a traitor?

Robert E. Lee was still in the U.S. Army in early 1861 and he received a promotion. When you receive a new rank, you take a new oath of allegiance.  You swear to defend the United States of America against any enemy, foreign or domestic.  Within weeks of taking that oath, Robert E. Lee was a domestic enemy of the nation he had just sworn an oath to defend.  That pretty much makes him a traitor I’m afraid.

I think the Southern aristocracy—which Lee was part of—had such a high opinion of their personal “honor” that whatever they did had to be honorable because it was their honorable selves doing it. I also think that their absolute power over their black slaves, and the iron handed rule they had over their plantations and their society gave them a bad case of arrested development. Their actions and opinions were so unchallenged that they had been gradually lulled into simple-mindedness.

Question 8:   What was your favorite map to make? Why?

I really can’t say which was my favorite map to make.  Each mapping project is really exciting, first because it’s a new job and it means money and it means you’re going to be profitably and happily employed for months and that’s nice. And it’s also wonderful to have a new subject to delve into, to dig around for resources and information.  So I like that.  It’s also a lot of fun to do the drawing and I really enjoy, for example, doing the lettering of the map titles.  I usually meet some interesting people and get to travel to interesting places when I do the research…And as I got better at doing the maps, the ones done with more expertise were more enjoyable than ones done early on that I look back on and wish I’d done a better job. Long and short, I guess I’d have to say my favorite map is the one I’m working on or the next one I’m about to do. I guess my Pearl Harbor map is right up there though.

 

Questions About A Beatle Photo

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The figure I have read is 1200 or more.  That’s the number of times it’s estimated that The Beatles had performed together (anyway, John, Paul & George) by the time they appeared, relaxed and confident, on that first Ed Sullivan Show, 49 years ago this Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013.

But their appearance three days later in Washington at the Washington Coliseum stands out from every other Beatle appearance I’ve ever seen.  Used as a venue for boxing matches, the Coliseum was likely the first time The Beatles had ever played in such an enormous venue, completely surrounded by a huge, enraptured but well behaved crowd and it was the first time that they had to rotate so they’d face everybody in every direction.  It provides some perspective on what The Beatles did for the stature of rock & roll to see Ringo himself struggling to tug his drum set around to play to a new sea of faces.

This is the only Beatle performance I’ve seen where The Beatles are in as tumultuous a mood as their audience, the first I’ve ever seen where The Beatles seem on the verge of being washed away by the sea of screams and cheers and contagious (even the performers caught it) excitement. The film shows constant little furtive flicks of light, like meteors, whizzing across the camera lens.  Jelly beans.  The hard shelled American kind, not the soft gummy sort the English kids would throw.  Ringo’s drum sticks visibly split and shatter as he plays.  Ringo was especially worked up for the concert.  He said afterwards he would have played all night for that crowd.  As a final reminder that it wasn’t until The Beatles’ success that rock & roll reached the heights of big time entertainment, the black and white concert footage ends, “bang” like that, abruptly in mid-song.  The movie camera had run out of film.

Last year a gentleman named Mike Mitchell emerged with a series of photographs he’d taken as, I believe, an 18 year old amateur photographer, when he attended the Coliseum concert.  He apparently moved freely around the perimeter of the stage snapping pictures of The Beatles performing without anyone shooing him away… if true, another indication that rock & roll was still in its “this too shall pass” stage.

Jump ahead 48 years. Mike Mitchell discovers the roll of film he’d shot, develops it and plans to auction the resulting pictures off at Christies.  The Wall Street Journal covers this story and runs one of the photos.  It’s this photo. John and Paul, plugged in and fancy free, dapper and spiffy, from the Coliseum concert.

beatles

Having seen the Coliseum concert in it’s entirety—at least everything the Maysles’ brothers captured—many times, and having watched the significant segment that The Beatles included in their Anthology DVD’s many times, something about the showcased photograph didn’t seem right.  Reviewing the filmed footage with this single photograph in mind, several things seem to be amiss.

  1. John Lennon is, in real life, slightly taller than Paul McCartney. He’s noticeably smaller than Paul in this photo, even taking into account the fact that he’s standing slightly back from Paul.
  2. The round stage at the Coliseum was ringed with mikes and mike stands. No mikes in this photo. John would occasionally wander away from a mike and step forward to sing his bit, but not Paul and not both of them.
  3. John Lennon is clearly actually singing in the photo and not merely mouthing a lyric but he’s singing into a void. Again, no mike.
  4. Where is the background in the photo? It’s a black void.

Perhaps someone can clarify or explain the photo and what it all means.

Civil War Q&A with High School Students–Questions 3, 4, 5

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How long does it typically take you to create a map of a famous battle?

 It typically takes six to eight months to do the research, draft the map, and then ink in the data and watercolor the whole concern.  In the midst of that process, I also work out the information and secure the images for the reverse side of the map.  That six or eight months means seven days a week, morning, noon and night.  The maps are great fun but they’re also a lot of work.

 What interests you most about the Civil War?

The most interesting thing about the Civil War is the participants. The panoply of characters, Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, JEB Stuart, and more obscure characters like Richard Ewell (he married a widow and always introduced his wife as “Mrs. Brown”), Confederate general Joe Johnston who hated president Jeff Davis so much that you wouldn’t know from his memoir that he was fighting the Yankees, he’s always fighting Davis.  Then George B. McClellan, Union general whose reputation collapsed because the stupid, vainglorious letters he wrote to his wife revealed him to be a supercilious jerk.  There was General George Custer (of Little Big Horn fame) who was a brilliant cavalry leader who perfumed his flowing locks and designed a uniform that made him look like a circus performer.  It was a wild bunch of characters.  England had Dickens’ characters.  We had these guys.  Some of the most noble people in history, and some of the most ignoble, made up the cast of our Civil War.

Also, most wars are futile. For example, the First World War led directly to the Second World War and the Second World War wasn’t even over when the Cold War got underway.  In contrast, the Civil War was fought to end slavery and preserve the United States.  When the Civil War was over, slavery was dead and the United States lived.  Success!

Who do you think was the greatest Confederate General?

I think Stonewall Jackson was the South’s great general but he had the advantage in that regard of dying too early in the war to confront the best Union generals.  But I also think there was something vaguely—for want of a better term—autistic, about him.  He seems kind of blank in terms of personality and he was a bewildering figure to his fellow generals.  And his successes came in the first half of the war when the south fought with the immense advantage of a friendly population and in familiar countryside.  His Valley Campaign, upon which his fame primarily rests, would not have been possible once Union forces knew the roads and topography as well as he did.  But circumstances are what they are and he was, in my mind, the best in the 1861-1863 timeframe.

What is the oldest battle that you mapped?

The oldest battle I’ve mapped is the Revolutionary battlefield of Saratoga in NYS.  It was fought in 1777.  The oldest Civil War battlefield I’ve mapped is Manassas or Bull Run, VA.  Two battles were fought there, 1861 and 1862.

Civil War Q&A With High School Students–Questions 1 & 2

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Time did not allow me to answer all of the questions of the American History Class at Olean High School, but I did respond to them by e-mail.  The first and second question were:

What information do you use to draw the maps?  Do you use photos along with studying the landscape?  What else do you use?  How do you decide if the information is reliable or legitmate?

I had to give a rather long answer to the question:

  1. I use contemporaneous photographs, taken within days of some of the major battles (Antietam, Gettysburg e.g.).  I got a Cornell agronomist (a crop expert) to study the panoramic photos of these fields to determine the crops in the fields. It was easy to figure out what type of fencing there was, where the orchards were, the extent of the woodlands etc. Essential to the use of these photographs was the 1970’s work of William Frassanito, who painstakingly determined the point-of-view and location of each extant wartime photograph of Gettysburg and Antietam.
  2. Then I used regimental histories – each regiment would occupy a small sector of the battlefield and their accounts and maps  would show their particular sector in great detail. The soldiers’ diaries and letters (this was probably the most literate war in history) also contain many references to their immediate surroundings. Many of them were themselves farmers and they would frequently comment on the crops and fields, fences, barns and orchards. The most poignant research items were “burial” maps. Dead men were often buried right where they had fallen by their fellow soldiers, who were usually their townsmen, friends, even relatives. They would then send the family a very detailed map so they could journey to the battlefield, locate the body and bring it home for burial.
  3. On the major battlefields such as Gettysburg, Antietam, Stones River in Tennessee, the National Park Service has tons of data that they gladly make available to a researcher.
  4. As I mentioned in the class, aerial photographs are very revealing if you know what you’re looking for. If I have a reasonably good Civil War era map and it shows a road or a lane that’s vanished, or a barn or a house, if you look very carefully, you can find a footprint or a trace of it. Also, the skeleton features in the landscape – the rivers, streams, hills, principal roads etc. – are obviously extant features on todays extremely accurate USGS maps. So those features are immediately drawn on my map so I immediately have a framework to go by. And the maps drawn and used by the actual Civil War armies, while not terribly accurate in terms of exact distances etc., are full of the sort of information the armies needed. They needed the name of residents along the roads because there were no route markers and there were not normally formal names for a given road or lane so the surest way to get reliable directions was to get pointed toward the Smith’s house or the Jones farm. Documenting the residents also gave the armies a idea of the local population. The more residents there were, the more resources there were for the armies to live off. (Union General Sherman set off across Georgia on November 16,1864 saying, “Where a million Georgians can live, my army will not starve.) The armies also had to know where they could find corn fields, wheat fields, orchards, hay fields, wells, springs etc. because an army on the march needed to feed 30, 40, 50 thousand men  and thousands of horses and mules. A typical mule would drink 10 gallons of water a day. Multiply that by 10,000! A Civil War army (and it didn’t matter whether they were friends or enemies, Union or Confederate) would devastate any countryside they marched through. They would take all the food for themselves and all the forage for their animals, drink the wells dry, destroy the fields they camped on, empty the barns, clear out the larders, tear down all the fences (to make their camp fires to brew their coffee) and raise havoc generally. But the armies need to live off the land is great for mapmakers because their military “route” maps detailed this sort of food and forage information so the armies knew where they could march and fend for themselves.
  5. A great aid in mapping Gettysburg was the work of John Bachelder, who arrived in Gettysburg immediately after the battle. Bachelder marched up and down the field, mapping it, and he had as a resource the thousands of wounded soldiers, Union and Confederate, remaining behind, who he interviewed. His map, a birds-eye view of the field, was very reliable and valuable.
  6. There were also quite accurate published county maps available of some areas, including Gettysburg, published prior to the Civil War that I could make use of. (They were also made use of by the armies and the generals.) Also, soon after the war, the U.S. War Department prepared surveys of many of the major battlefields. These maps were much more detailed and accurate than the maps made under wartime conditions. (The U.S. hired former Confederate mapmakers to work on these surveys. One Rebel named Blackford, who’d sworn he would die rather than live again under the stars and stripes, found himself, within a month of Appomattox, working for the U.S. Army mapping the battlefields.)
  7. Finally, most every Civil War battlefield has people who have devoted their lives to studying “their” battle. They know every nook and cranny of the field and like nothing more than to guide someone around the field, point out sites, recommend books and resources, provide access private lands and to other knowledgeable locals, and in some cases they fix parking tickets.
  8. There are other resources but the above provides a pretty good idea of what’s out there. I decide on the reliability of the information based on the resource I used. Photographs, for example, are irrefutable – at least back then they were, before photoshop – and other data would often be corroborated by some other data. And then you have to wonder why anybody would mislead about the existence of a stone wall or the presence in their front of a rye as opposed to a wheat field.