The Beats, the Blues & the Film Noirs.

In my personal iconography, I make no distinction between blues, beat writing and film noir. They all run together seamlessly, an undifferentiated mass of influence on my formative stages.

I was listening to blues when I was very young (9, 10, 11) over WLAC out of Nashville, late at night, hearing potent black music on the transistor radio. Later, (6th, 7^th, 8^th grades), I watched hundreds of TV detective shows coming on the heels of film noir. The ‘classic’ film noir cycle ended in1958 (w/Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil) around the time that Peter Gunn, Richard Diamond, Johnny Staccato, M-Squad, Mike Hammer, et al were in full bloom. A little later (11^th, 12^th grades) I read On the Road and discovered beat literature, totally obliterating my narrow 1950’s, Southern world-view.

Those three – blues, film noir, and beat literature – formed something essential in my world-view, particularly when it comes to music.

No sound means much to me if I don’t hear the sound of alienation and the desire to over-come it. Anything that sounds too comfortable, too self-satisfied, too at home in this middle-class fantasy called America sounds false to me.

All of the best in blues music, beat writing and film noir filmmaking have a common message: there’s redemption afoot, though it’s likely to come through pain, sadness, and suffering.

These things cannot be ignored, but they can be over-come. Not through flinching or sugarcoating but through acceptance and honest expression. The stark acceptance that life unremittingly serves itself up hard-boiled to underdogs everywhere gives solace to those of us who can’t (or won’t) accept the platitudes of middle-class comfort seeking.

Blue-notes & wails, shadows on wet pavement, pools of striped light, ecstatic escapes from down & out-ness intermingle in my world, resonating far beneath the surface of gung-ho, work ethic, flag-waving respectability.

Those on the outside, looking not so much to be included but to proclaim their outsider-ness, are the ones who inspire, who point to valuable truths.

Their truth is embedded, wholly, in their sound, look and vision. Just look and listen closely – it’s right there. Over time, it’s been imitated, faked, appropriated and watered-down, but at its core, the seminal artists and their visions have remained potent. Both sprang from a culture coming to grips with its illusions and false promises & from artists who couldn’t/wouldn’t be satisfied with the superficial pieties of post-WWII America.

Every blues musician, beat hero or film noir protagonist of the 40’s and 50’s, who, when faced with the world of numbing subservience, conformity, repression and drudgery, said, in effect: you don’t have to accept it. You don’t have to live in their world. You don’t have to play their game. You don’t have to see yourself in their eyes. You can speak from your gut. You can say and act how you really feel.

No doubt some could say, with assurance, that the stance of the ‘alienated outsider’ is but another romance; a compensating myth for loser-hood. Given the perspective of age, I might say “yes, you’re right”, but the fact remains (at least in my aesthetic) that the sound of the blues, the look of film noir, & the feel of beat writing contain a dark, deeply satisfying beauty no comfort-seeking art comes close to.

The joy, the sound of joy comes – has to come – from a hard-boiled, hard-earned transcendence. None other rings true.