Dancin' With Wilson

Lynchburg Virginia in 1967 was not a great place to be black. However if you were up on stage with a rack of brass horns, a throbbing bass line, a wicked guitar wailing away, and you were singing about the fact that you just “gotta have it”, you were loved.

In December of 1967 when Otis Redding died in a plane crash the one thousand students of Lynchburg College went into mourning. Most of them were dead set against any civil right legislation, but when it came to soul music, well that was a different story.

We drank a lot in college and that made soul music sound oh so good. And when we drank we would dance, and when we danced, we would only dance to rhythm and blues. Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Roofus Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Marvin Gay and Martha Reeves they were our dance heroes.

While people our age were tripping out in California and fighting in the jungles of Vietnam we were drinking Bourbon and Ginger Ale and doing the “Monkey” and “The Funky Chicken to the music of Sam & Dave and Wilson Pickett.”

In February of 1968 word got out that Wilson Pickett would be performing just seventy-five miles west of Lynchburg at a little redneck school called Ferrum College. This was a major deal for all lovers of R&B as the big acts like Pickett usually only worked the larger cities.

Wilson Pickett was 26 years old at this time and at the peak of his career. Like many of the great soul artists Wilson came from the gospel tradition. He had initially worked with a group called The Falcons who were one of the first vocal groups to bring gospel into a “pop” context. After departing from The Falcons Wilson wrote a few minor R&B hits for small independent labels. In 1964 Pickett was signed to Atlantic records and in 1965 he broke into the charts with a song he co-wrote with guitarist Steve Cropper titled In the Midnight Hour.

I had a friend, Ron Monk, who was from southwest Virginia. Between his thick Appalachian drawl and my Brooklyn utterance we could hardly understand each other but we were buddies and we both loved Wilson Pickett. Ron had a sister, Edna, who attended Ferrum and she not only got us tickets to the show but also secured us with dates.

When the day of the concert arrived we were extremely excited. We picked up our three-piece suits from the cleaners, shined up our wing tips and put on our ties. On the way out of town we made an important stop at the Alcohol Beverage Control store to pick up our Bourbon. We had our own unique and original way of applying spirits into our bodies. We employed what we known a “drinking machine” which in a very real sense was an alcoholic bong.

It was shaped like an hourglass. In the bottom we would pour in ginger ale and in the top portion would go the Old Grand Dad or the Jim Beam. It was extremely efficient. Just when the shot of whiskey would become overwhelming, the ginger ale would kick in and quickly deliver the mixture of sugar and grain into one’s vessel. One drink would get the party going, two would alter the senses and three, well you just didn’t drink three shots out of a drinking machine.

We headed west on Route 460 in my pearl white 1959 Buick Skylark and quickly drove the 75 miles to Ferrum College. Before we picked up our dates we decided to have a quick go round with the drinking machine. After our short libation I asked Monk if he know where we were to meet the appointed women. Monk looked at me funny as he was lighting up a smoke and said “well Neal I wrote it down on a piece of paper and gave it to you before we left, didn’t I?” Already feeling the Bourbon kick in I replied “I remember the paper but the last place I saw it was on your desk in the dorm room.” We both gazed at each other in silence and realized we had no idea where our dates were. We stumbled to a phone booth and called Edna. Edna was not in a good mood. Apparently we were to show up at 2:00 to take our dates to a party, it was now 6:00 and just two hours before show time. “Well Ron” I overheard Edna say “you boys can get your sorry asses over to the Omega Nu Phi Delta Lamba frat house and see if Becky and Fran are still available but you know this is a big party night and you just might be too late.” Ron replied “but we have their tickets, they won’t be able to go without us, would they?” I could hear Ron’s sister laugh through the receiver as she said “Ron are you listening to me? There’s plenty of boys over at that frat with tickets and lots of booze, you know what I mean little brother?” Ron nodded as he hung the receiver up and said “let’s give it a shot, maybe they have a live band and some free food.”

There was a band and they were loud and everyone was dancing. We waited for the song to end, jumped up on a ratty old couch and announced that Neal and Ron have arrived from Lynchburg and were looking Becky and Fran. As the music was starting up again we heard a girl’s voice shout out from the crowed “you jerks are three Bourbons and ten songs too late.

We didn’t know if that was Becky or Fran but it didn’t matter. The music got louder and the entire room was doing this thing called “Dirty Dancing” which to Ron and I seemed like some type of South West Virginia mating ritual one in which we were surly not participating in. I turned to Ron and said “well shit what should we do now?” Ron took a drag off his Marlboro and replied “well at least we don’t have to worry about our dates, so lets eat some food and have another round from the drinking machine.” At that stage of the evening it sounded like a very logical idea.

We looked up at the clock and it was 7:30, we looked at each other and said “show time.” With Tennessee whiskey running through veins and food stains all over are now rumbled suits we proceeded to stumble and weave over to the auditorium for our date with Mr. Pickett. Before entering the concert we had one last taste of the drinking machine and we were ready to dance.

Wilson was smoking, he had a 12 piece horn section and they were all dancing in time to the music. He opened with his current hit “99 & a Half Won’t Do” and went right into “6345-789” and when he launched into his classic “In the Midnight Hour” everybody in the hall (which was the school gym) was up and dancing.

Being just two very inebriated men without any female companions Ron and I made our way up to the front of the stage. We then commenced to redifine the entire concept of The Boogaloo, The Philly Dog and The Funky Chicken.

Our inspired gyrations must have caught Wilson’s eye, for inbetween vairious na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na’s he looked down at us and pointed his long ebony finger our way and said “do you feel it, do you feel it?” We looked up at the almighty Mr. Pickett “Yes, yes, we do, yes, yes we do.” Wilson then screamed into the mic and said “then come up here and show it.”

We didn’t bother with the stairs. We hoisted ourselves up onto the front of the stage and after tripping over the moniters and a few mic cables we managed to right ourselves and started to dance on both sides of Wilson. Wilson was in the middle of “Land of A Thousand Dances” and as he sang out each dance Monk and I would try to do it. We might have gotton The Mashed Potatoes mixed up The Pony and the Alligator with the Watusi but we were holding our own. We were up there dancing with Wilson Pickett feeling the power of the horns, bass and drums pushing away at our backs.

When Wilson launched into “Mustang Sally” we figured our time was up but no one came to fetch us off stage so we kept right on dancing. It was hard keeping up with Wilson, as singing and dancing was his line of work. Halfway thgrough “Mustang Sally” Monk and I decided to do The Turtle. It was actually quite a simple dance. We got down on our backs and then kicked our arms and legs back and forth as it we were an upside down Teripen.

Without any warning Wilson then sequed into “The Funky Broadway” and we both jumped back into the bugaloo mode. We could tell Wilson was reaching the end of the set, he was grunting, “ugh I feel it, it feels soooo good, Lord have mercy, oh, hear me talking, ah-ow it feels so good.” He raised his arms up and said “help me boys, help me boys.” It’s funny how R& B musicians always seem to say everything twice. I got under one arm, Monk the other and we helped Wilson off stage. He then darted back on the stage, blew kisses to everyone and came back to where Monk and I were standing in our glowing post performance high. We had danced and sweated so much we were almost sober, but not quite. Wilson looked at us and said “you guys are a gas come on downstairs and I get you some cokes.”

Wilson brought us down to his dressing room (which was the gym looker room). “Hey help yourself to some sandwiches, pop, whatever you like, I got to jump in the shower and then jump on the bus.” Wilson talked to us as he undressed down to his boxer shorts, and as he was peeling off his clothes they were being picked up by his roadie and put in a bag.

Wilson was built like an athlete, he wasen’t a big man but he was tight all over from all that jumping around stage he did every night. Monk and I were almost tongue tied in his presence but the remaining Burbon in our system kept us talking. “So Wilson, where to next?” Monk and I asked at almost the same time. Smiling in just his boxes and soxs Wilson replied “Well we going north the Charlottsville, then across to Richmond, Washington DC, Philly and then to New York where I’ll be working The Apollo.”

Wilson dryed his sweat off with a beach towel. On the towel was pictured a verluptous black women in a bikini and an inscription that read “be my summer playmate.”

When Wilson was finished with the towel he let it drop down on the locker room bench. His roadie then said something about the shower on the bus, Wilson threw on a bathrobe gave us both a thumbs up and a wink and just like that he was gone.

A very short silence of 3 to 4 seconds followed, before we both grabbed opposite ends of the towel and pulled it tight. “Let go Yankee boy” Monk says “this is my home state and when a famous R&B player leaves a sweaty towel behind it belongs to me.” “No way” I said “remember whose car we came in Monk, and whose sister set us up with those lame dates.” At that moment we both let go and took a major tumble. I hit my lip on an open locker and it started to bleed, Monk hit his nose on the bench and it started instantly swelling. Monk’s got up and yelled “don’t bleed on the towel, whatever you do don’t bleed on the towel.” “Ok, ok” I said, lets sign a truce and agrre on it’s ultimate fate when we sober up.

We were sober enough to drive back to Lynchburg that night, Ron feel asleep with the towel tucked saftly in his arm. We knew what a treasure we had. Wilson Pickett’s towel with his real sweat on it. Sweat that transpired as he sung “Mustang Sally”, “In the Midnight Hour” and “Land of A Thousand Dances”.

The next morning Ron and I went down to the Tip-Top diner for buscuits and gravey and we took along a deck of cards. After a few buscuits and two cups of coffee we played five card stud for the towel and Ron won. He promised that wherever he lived I could come and visit the towel any time. We both agreed that it would never be washed.

I lost the towel but I’ll never loose the moment. The moment I jumped up on stage in a gym in Virginia I danced the night away with the Wicked Pickett and his rocking band doing that Funky Broadway.

Canary

With her long thin black fingers wrapped around her Kools she’d draw down hard on her cigarette enabling the smoke to quickly disappear through her lips and into her narrow frame. She’d then lift up her head and with one lengthy exhale she’d release it all out of our ninth story window. I was fascinated by how much paper she would burn on her smoke with just one inhale. It was magic to me. She would continue this ritual and as she did she would sometimes bob her head as if she was listening to a distant melody. I would sit near her and wonder as she stared out the window.

Sometimes when she would catch me peaking at her she would shake her head and say “don’t get any dumb ideas like stealing some of my smokes. I count em’ everyday honey and I would know if you took some. And I don’t think your parents would be too happy with their seven year old son if they know he was stealing their house cleaners smokes, now would they? When she would address me she would always point her long and bony index finger right at my eye level. She could be somewhat scary but I’m sure she never thought of herself that way. I would never disagree with Canary, I’d always shake my head yes and promised I would never put a cigarette in my mouth or adhere to whatever law she was laying down.

Canary would come twice a week to our red brick apartment on New York’s lower east side, to wash the floors, take out the laundry, do the dishes and vacuum the house. Her presence was always a welcomed sight to me as both my parents worked every day. When I’d arrive home from school she always had a sandwich ready and some milk. I loved how she greeted me “how you doing sugar, everything alright in the fourth grade? Did you learn something important today? Hey maybe someday you can help change this old mean world.”

I’d sit up on the table and she would keep working and talk to me as I ate. I only knew her as Canary and at that time in my life I imagined it was her first name. She was very long and very thin and had lines that told many stories as they ran up and down her face. The only thing I really knew about her was that she was around forty, had grown up in Alabama, had two children and lived in Brooklyn.

After setting out a little snack for me she would then draw up a chair in the living room and have her smoke while gazing out at the East River. I would quickly devour my sandwich and take my glass of milk and sit in front of the other window and we would both look out at the ships on the river and all the cars rolling across the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

In between drags we would talk a little, never about anything too important. Canary would sometimes say “this is some kind of view you have here, just look at all those cars going across the bridge.” We’d both enjoy seeing the Brighten Line subway make it’s way along the Manhattan Bridge. I’d would say “Canary the subway looks like a rolling snake as it rolls across the bridge, don’t you think?” She’d laugh and as she was drawing on her smoke reply “no honey it looks more like a big old dirty worm, you know what I mean?” And we’d both laugh. In the two years that Canary would come to clean my parents apartment that’s about as close as we would get.

Occasionally we would talk about television. Canary’s favorite show was the $64,000 question. “You know” she would always start as she pulled on her smoke “ I don’t think some of those questions are so hard, I mean I know some of them and so does my husband, do you watch that show?’ I’d nod and reply “oh yeah I think your right but it’s still a little hard for me.” “I know honey, it’s tricky but you’ll see when you get older it won’t seem that difficult. I’ll tell you though, I think something’s really funny about that show, I think they might be telling some of those contestants the answers before the show.” She would tell me that every week and every week I would just nod. She was somewhat disturbed when I told her that I wasn’t allowed to watch Disneyland. She would shake her head and laugh and ask me if my mother thought Mickey Mouse was too scary for me. “No” I’d reply “she says Walt Disney was unfair to working people and he never hired any Jews so we were not allowed to watch the show. “Well I never heard anyone say that before honey and anyway who cares what he thinks you just want to have fun, ain’t that right? I mean you just can’t stop people from thinking, it would be like trying to push a river uphill?” I somehow knew that Canary’s logic made sense but at the same time I knew it wouldn’t change my parents mind. The conversation would always end with Canary letting me know that if I wanted to come to Brooklyn I could watch Walt Disney at her house.

One day just a few months before my family moved away from the lower east side there was a crisis. I would sometimes allow my parakeets out of their cage and let them fly around my room. That afternoon I made the mistake of leaving my bedroom door open just enough to allow a little blue and white bird to escape into the living room. It landed on the couch in the living room and fortunately all the windows were closed. I could hear Canary in the kitchen washing dishes in the sink. I thought of calling to her to help me catch my bird but I was sure I could catch it myself. I crept ever so slowly to my pet and just as I put my hands on the sofa she took off and headed into the kitchen.

I quickly ran over to the entrance to the kitchen and as I did the bird flew around Canary and headed for the window, which was open at the bottom at least five inches. As the bird approached the glass it somehow flew up and then managed to get itself stuck between the lower window, which was raised up, and the rear window, which was lowered down a few inches. And there it struggled, frantically flapping its wings, trapped by a pane of glass on each side of it’s trembling body. If it were to make it’s way down it would fly away and if the rear window were moved up the bird would be crushed.

I started to cry and I grabbed Canary’s forearm and pleaded her to help save my parakeet. It was the first time I had ever touched her. “Please Canary” I said over and over again in a voice that was somewhere between panic and despair “please help, please help Sylvester to get out of the window.”

Canary then said “the first thing you got to do is let go of my arm. You’re not going to help your little bird by squeezing me half to death. The second thing is that you need to do is calm down. The bird is scared enough, look just look over there at the poor thing. Look at it struggle, don’t make it any more nervous by you being crazy ok, you hear what I’m saying?”
I nodded in the affirmative, let go of her arm and backed away from the window. Canary slowly approached the glass, put her long thin hand and arm down through the top and as she did she pulled the front window towards herself as best as she could. Fortunately the entire window and frame were very old and there was just enough give for Canary to perform her miracle. She managed to get her hand under the now exasperated bird and in one smooth motion lift it to the top of the window and back into the kitchen.

She quickly shut the window and in a few minutes I managed to catch Sylvester and place her back in the cage. When I came back into the living room I was still crying. Canary bent down on her knees and said “come here baby and let Canary give you a hug” I made my way over to her and as she held me she said “just be careful with that bird, their so small and so delicate, you know what I mean, baby, you know what I mean?” All I could do was to cry and hold on.

It was the only time that I could remember anyone holding me in that apartment.

In the last few months before we moved, Canary and I assumed our usual places. She would take her break and look out the window and while she smoked and I would sit in the big brown cozy chair read my book, look out the window and talk about school with Canary. I would sometimes wonder what it would be like if she was my mother. Although she always remained a mystery to me I always felt safe around her.

My mother would give her clothes to take home for her children and sometimes offer her food as well. Canary was always polite about the food, but I could tell that the dishes my mother created somehow disagreed with her southern sensibilities.

One morning my mother and I took the subway to Brooklyn. Since my mom didn’t drive we had to leave very early to meet my aunt in Bayridge for lunch. As the express train sped through Hoyt Street Station I looked through the window and noticed the platform was filled with at least a hundred woman and they were almost all black. Many of them wore those white stockings, just as Canary did when she would come to our house. I asked my mother if the women on the Hoyt Street platform were on their way to clean houses. She nodded yes and then I wondered if Canary had been standing there as well. They all stood there so motionless, except for their clothes, which moved ever so slightly from the wind of the speeding express train.

In July of 1958 my parents, my brother and I packed up our things in preparation for our move to Brooklyn. My mother told me to leave anything I didn’t want and she’d give it to Canary for her children. Along with some shirts and pants I put my old tattered baseball glove in the box as an uncle of mine had just bought me a new one. I then realized I might not see Canary before we moved so I wrote her a short note, which read: Dear Canary, thank you for saving Sylvester we will both miss you I hope you son like the baseball mitt. I then put the note in an envelope and placed it in the box with the clothes and my old glove.

I would always look for her when I was on the subway passing through the Hoyt Street station. I never saw her again.

Liberating Richard

The part of my life I miss the most is when I was fearless. Not necessarily intelligent or insightful, just fearless. To be righteously fearless one must have a cause, and mine was the mountain dulcimer. My partner Sally and I wrote Life Is Like A Mountain Dulcimer while squatting in a hikers’ cabin in Squamish, British Columbia. Under the dim but warm glow of an oil lamp we scratched out forty arrangements in crayon and colored pencil. A few weeks after finishing my first draft, I was deported from Canada for working without a visa. Ten days later my little blue Volkswagen bug threw a rod in Winnemucca, Nevada. But I was not one to be stopped by legalities and expired automobiles, for I had a folio full of mountain dulcimer arrangements, and I was going to New York to get it published. I had no doubt that I would succeed.

The publishing industry in my hometown did not greet me as I’d expected. My first three rejections were a sobering experience, and my financial conditions dictated that I obtain some form of work. So I did as many unemployed actors, poets, musicians did—I drove a cab. And I soon concocted a plan to use the cab to help me find a publisher.

A few nights a week I’d put my dulcimer in a case and take it to work with me. I’d then sit the case up on the front seat. On any given night I’d have between 25 and 40 fares, which meant as many as 240 fares in a six-day week. During a given evening many folks in the back seat would ask, “Hey, what’s in the case?” And I’d reply, “ It’s a dulcimer, and I’ve just written a book for this instrument, would you know a publisher who might be looking for a dulcimer book?”

Sometime during my third month of rolling up and down New York in a checker, an attorney who specialized in books gave me a number to call. Within two weeks I signed my first contract with the Richmond Organization for my aptly named book Life Is Like A Mountain Dulcimer. I was now part of the little remembered dulcimer “boom” of the midseventies, which was sparked by the album Blue by songwriter Joni Mitchell.

I was fearless and confident, which basically made me into a mountain dulcimer zealot. And like any inspired zealot I had to keep creating. While driving a cab and living upstairs in my parents’ house in Brooklyn, I decided to write a book of arrangements based on my dulcimer hero, Richard Fariña. This project would be both my homage to the departed bard and a big money-making idea. Who wouldn’t (I thought) want to own a book of Fariña’s dulcimer arrangement and his poetry?

Richard George Fariña was born in 1937 and brought up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Linden Boulevard less then a mile from my parents’ house. His father, Liborio Ricardo, was from Cuba, and his mother, Theresa Crozier, was from Northern Ireland. He went to high school at Brooklyn Tech and won a regent scholarship to Cornell University.

While at Cornell he quickly changed his major from engineering to English and began writing poems and stories for the college literary magazine, The Cornell Writer. The junior editor for the magazine was Thomas Pynchon. Fariña and Pynchon soon became close friends and drinking buddies and influenced each other’s work. In time Fariña would dedicate his instrumental composition V to Pynchon, and Pynchon would dedicate his novel Gravity’s Rainbow to Fariña. In 1959 Fariña dropped out of Cornell, went to New York, and worked for a short time in advertising, but he was soon drawn into the folk scene happening in Lower Manhattan.

One evening he saw the Kentucky folk singer Jean Ritchie perform at folk club in Greenwich Village and became smitten by the mountain dulcimer. This, he decided, would be the perfect vehicle for his poetry. He soon married and toured with Carolyn Hester, but the relationship proved a disaster and ended in 1962. Folk legend has it that Carolyn pulled a gun on Richard in their Paris apartment shortly after he flirted with a young girl in a café. There are many stories like that surrounding the short life of Richard Fariña, all of which only added to his mystique.

In the spring of 1962 while still in Paris he met a sixteen-year-old dancer named Mimi Baez, and within a year they were married. The Baez family was skeptical of Richard at first, but in time his charm and wit won them over. Mimi and Richard composed music together on guitar and dulcimer, and by 1964 they were becoming a well-known folk duo. They recorded two wonderfully inspired and well-produced recordings for Vanguard Records—Celebrations for A Gray Day (April 1965) and Reflections in a Crystal Wind (December 1965). Their music consisted of Richard’s songs of political and social commentary as well as instrumentals he created for the mountain dulcimer. Mimi added her soprano harmony and played guitar and autoharp. They reached their peak at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, where even a massive thunderstorm could not keep the crowds from dancing to their music, all in various forms of undress.

Shortly after the Newport Festival Fariña completed his novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, which was published by Random House. In just four years Fariña became a recording artist and a published author with a cabin in Big Sur, and was touring the folk scene with his beautiful young wife, Mimi. Fariña was a contemporary of Bob Dylan, who was living just down the road with Mimi’s sister, Joan.

As with most brilliant souls Fariña had his demons as well. One of them took hold of him on April 30 1966. Shortly after signing books at the Thunderbird Bookstore in Carmel Valley, he jumped on the back of a Harley motorcycle driven by his friend Willie Hinds. Somewhere on Carmel Valley Road Hinds lost control of the bike, and Fariña died instantly while the driver survived. Fariña hadn’t lived to see thirty.

He took the dulcimer out of the Appalachians and made it accessible to city kids like me. To anyone over forty who plays the dulcimer, Richard Fariña has earned patriarchal status. The publisher of my first book was not interested in my Fariña idea, nor was any other music publisher in New York. Being the eager fan that I was I decided to publish the book myself. In order to do so I had to license the rights from Warner Brothers. I can still remember the man at WB smirking the entire time we discussed, or rather he dictated the terms to me. He asked me a number of times why I didn’t want to license someone like Joni Mitchell or Neil Young as it would be the same price. “No,” I would reply, “I’ll pay the 12.5 percent per book for the music of Richard Fariña since I have a handle on the dulcimer world.”

“Suit yourself, kid,” he replied as I signed off on the deal and handed over $750 in advance. I then borrowed $1,000 from my folks and threw in $2,000 from my cab-driving career. I had an artist friend (Jude Brae) from Vancouver do all the illustrations, which were based on Fariña’s liner notes from his recordings.

After having the music engraved, Sally and I took all the music and illustrations over to Faculty Press in Brooklyn. They were an old New York socialist printer who printed Sing Out, The Pete Seeger Banjo Book, and a number of other political journals. The staff at Faculty Press appreciated the fact that we were putting out a book on Richard and Mimi’s music and treated us like kindred spirits. They never charged us for all the prepress work they did. I’m sure it was due to the fact that so many of the songs in the book were political. I printed up 5,000 copies and quickly became aware of how little I knew about book distribution. I soon realized that most dulcimer players were not interested in Fariña. When I left New York City I loaded up all the books and took them back to Canada. Two years latter I loaded them up again for my migration to Santa Cruz.

Shortly after moving to Santa Cruz I made an appointment with Mimi Fariña and drove up to Mill Valley to present her with a copy of the book. As she scanned through the work, I noticed she stopped on the page that had an illustration of a woman in a cabin in Big Sur cooking on an old wood stove. As this image was based on Richard’s liner notes I realized it was she.

Mimi stared at the picture for minute and I could tell she was moved by it. She thanked me for producing the book but told me it was really all his music. “I was nineteen when we recorded these albums, it seems like a different life ago,” she said as we shook hands before I left her office.

By 1997 I still had over 3,000 of my inspired creation living under my bed and in various closets around my home. Then a few small miracles happened.

Shorty after hearing a Richard and Mimi recording of “Reno Nevada,” Douglass Cooke (yet another Brooklyn native) created a Mimi & Richard Fariña web page and a book on his life. Positively Fourth Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña by David Hajdu was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In December 2009, I sold my last copy.

We were both from Brooklyn, and we ended up in the same area of California playing the dulcimer. We also both broke down in Winnemucca, Nevada. What better zealot is there than I to digitally give to the world some of the classic arrangements of Richard Fariña, which will include “Another Country,” “Bold Marauder,” “One Way Ticket,” “Tuileries,” “A Swallow Song,” “Chrysanthemum,” “Raven Girl,” and “Joy Round My Brain”?

This book is available on my Square Site for $4.95 (digital only). The same price it was when we first produced the work in 1973.