THE UNTOLD STORY

To purchase a copy of MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY, now in paperback—or to read a chapter for free—visit www.seanhowe.com •••••• "EPIC" —The New York Times "DEFINITIVE" — Wall Street Journal "A WILD-RIDE ACCOUNT" —The Hollywood Reporter "INDISPENSABLE" —LA Times "ESSENTIAL" —The Daily Beast "PRICELESS" —Booklist "REVELATORY" —The Miami Herald "GRIPPING" —Rolling Stone" "SCINTILLATING" —Publishers Weekly

[seanhowe]

I finally have a new book coming out! And with a glorious cover by the great Bill Sienkiewicz! AGENTS OF CHAOS: THOMAS KING FORÇADE, HIGH TIMES, AND THE PARANOID END OF THE 1970s is the (almost unbelievable) story of Tom Forcade—political radical, marijuana smuggler, champion of journalist rights, and founder of High Times. You can read more about it—and pre-order, if you like—here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/sean-howe/agents-of-chaos/9780306923913/?lens=hachette-books

[seanhowe]

(Photo: Jim Shooter, age 14.) In the summer of 1965, Jim Shooter wrote a Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes story on spec, and gave it to his mother to send to DC. A mail correspondence followed, and within a matter of months, Shooter got a call from Mort Weisinger, the same “malevolent toad” who only a few months earlier had scared Roy Thomas away to Marvel. Weisinger invited him to meet at the DC offices. Shooter, by now fourteen, was accompanied by his mother.

He got the regular gig, and just in time. “My father had a beat-up old car and the engine died,” he said. “That first check bought a rebuilt engine for his car so he didn’t have to walk to work anymore.”

For four years, Shooter worked for Weisinger on various iterations of the Superman mythos—Superboy, Supergirl, etc.—not only writing scripts, but providing cover designs as well. He also won the good graces of artists Gil Kane and Wally Wood by providing stick-figure layouts for each page. But as high school wore on, the allure of the money began to wear off—it never seemed to be enough for his family anyway. What mattered now was the accolades.

Unfortunately, praise was limited to the occasional article in the Pittsburgh newspaper or segment on the local TV news. “My father probably said four or five words to me the whole time I was growing up,” said Shooter. “One of the greatest men to ever walk the earth … but not at connecting with people. He made no comment whatsoever.” And Weisinger didn’t just withhold praise—he cruelly berated his teenage employee, calling from New York every Thursday night, following the weekly Batman television broadcast, with a litany of complaints: It’s not on time. It’s over the page limit. How the hell can we get a cover out of this? Why can’t you write like you used to? He referred to Shooter as his “charity case.” “He caused a kind of pathological fear of telephones in me,” Shooter once told an interviewer. “I felt more and more inadequate … and my last chance to be a kid was slipping by.”

Holding down an adult job—and, at six feet seven inches, now towering above his classmates—scarcely anything about him, save a serious case of acne, marked him as a teenager. He tried to fit it all in, to “get good grades so I could nail down a scholarship, and have a little fun, like football games, dances, parties and stuff. But it was too much, and it all suffered.” He missed sixty days of his senior year of high school, his grades fell, and his productivity for Weisinger decreased.

He managed an NYU scholarship anyway. In 1969, shortly before he was due to fly to New York, he had a falling-out with Weisinger. So he decided to cold-call his inspiration, Stan Lee, from a pay phone at the airport. Amazingly, he talked his way into a job interview, and then an offer. But the only thing available was a full-time assistant position. Marvel’s environment was shockingly different from the jacket-and-tie, insurance-company vibe of DC. It seemed like it might be … fun. 

He gave up the scholarship.

(From Marvel Comics: The Untold Story)(Photograph via Jim Shooter’s website)

[seanhowe]

From the June 6, 1948 issue of BOHEMIA: pioneering Cuban animator Mirtha Portuondo, at work on EL HIJO DE LA CIENCIA "Mirtha Portuondo, la primera cubana que ha dibujado el celuloide para los cartones animados, es opticalista como sus companeros sobre la perspectiva de la naciente industria nacional. observese la mesa de animacion discenada y construida por los pioneros de esta tecnica en Cuba."

[seanhowe]

Melvin Van Peebles on the cover of Intellectual Digest, August 1972

[seanhowe]

Charlie Smalls, photographed by Martha Swope, circa 1974, via NYPL I've been a fan of Charlie Smalls ever since first seeing John Cassavetes' FACES, which includes his great "Never Felt Like This Before." The amount of information about him out there before his work on THE WIZ is thin: backed Harry Belafonte and Hugh Maskela (check out his piano on "Felicade"); appeared on the Monkees tv show; recorded one single under the group name C. Smalls & Co. With a little further digging I've found that the group included vocalists Nancy Whalley King and John Richardson, plus session legends Jim Keltner on drums and Wilton Felder on bass. According to an article in the November 2, 1968, Michigan Chronicle, the Queens-born Smalls attended PS1, then Music & Art and Juilliard, and then played in the 379th Air Force band. ("I wasn't very good on the M-1," so they let me play glockenspiel full-time.") In the mid-60s, he played regularly at Steve Paul's club, The Scene, which was also a hotbed for early jazz-rock experiments.

[seanhowe]

Exterior of the Losers Club on La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles. From Flareup (1969). John Cassavetes had previously filmed the interior of the club for Faces (1968).

[seanhowe]

Autumn 1967: In their book The Espionage Establishment, David Wise and Thomas B. Ross reveal Tracy Barnes’ Domestic Operations Division of the CIA, which, “by 1964,” operated from fifth floor of new office building at 1750 Pennsylvania Avenue. Its cover was the fictional “US Army Element, Joint Planning Activity, Joint Operations Group.”

[seanhowe]

THE THREE FACES OF CHICO (Warner Brothers, WS 1344) 1959

Chico Hamilton (d), Eric Dolphy (alto sax, bass clarinet, fl), Nate Gershman (cello), Dennis Budimir (g), Wyatt Ruther (b), plus Paul Horn (as), Buddy Collette (ts), Bill Green (bar) & String section.

Los Angeles, February-August, 1959.

Notes by Chico Hamilton

We've called this new album "The Three Faces of Chico" because I play three roles in it. I guess this set may surprise some people. and it even may annoy others. But I hope there's something of real interest in it for every jazz fan.

First of all, I guess I'm best known as a drummer. And that is one of the roles I play here. There are three tracks that are unaccompanied drum solos—Trinkets, Happy Little Dance, and No Speak No English, Man. On each of these I haven't tried to prove anything. but have tried to inject a little humor into some listeners' thoughts.

In regard to these drums tracks. I can only say that it's diffient for a drummer to play anything different than any other average drummer; although each drummer does have his own individual styling. I used the standard equipment I have with me whenever the Quintet takes the stand: two cymbals, sock cymbal, snare drum, tom toms, and bass drum. I didn't use tympani because I'm not a tympanist ... and I just don't carry them around. Instead, I work with sticks. mallets, and brushes to obtain different sound textures.

On Trinkets. for example. I worked eyclusively with brushes. It's a welcome change of sound. For Happy Little Dance, I used mallets throughout. And this one could be danced to, if you dig folk dancing. For No Speak No English, Man. which is a sort of wild thing, I worked with sticks, and played a lot on the rims. I wanted to get a sound like Indian drummers talking to each other.

We did these solos in one take each. I didn' work from a score but laid the sequences out in my mind before we started the tape rolling.

The second face I wear on this set is that of a singer. Now, this is a new thing for me on records, although I've done some singing on the floor with my group, mostly Foggy Day, because that was the one song I knew all the way through.

But having worked with such singers as Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, and Billy Eckstine, I felt I could do it. Actually, what I'm really interested in is phrasing. That's the most effective thing for a singer. That, and good material. I figured that if I was going to sing something, I'd better sing something everyone knows, so they could recognize the tune, if not the melody.

I used a reed section because I wanted to bring back the old Jimmie Lunceford sound with reeds. It's not often you hear a reed section playing ensemble choruses. Gerry Wiggins arranged The Best Things in Life Are Free, and John Anderson scored the other vocal sides: She's Funny That Way, Where or When and I Don't Know Why.

There's not much more to say about my singing, except that I hope you like it.

The third face I wear is that of the leader of the Quintet. My group consists of Wyatt Ruther on bass. Eric Dolphy on flute and reeds. Dennis Budimer on guitar, and Nathan Gershman on cello. Quite frankly, of all the Quintets I've had in the past, I think this one is the swingingest.

On these tracks, you hear a little different Quintet than what you've been used to. The Quintet is four years old and we've been constantly trying to broaden its range. Some may resent the hard swing we're going after, but one thing for sure: in the future we're going to try to please everyone's musical appetite with regard to the Quintet. Music and sounds don't stand still; you have to progress with the people. We play some hard swingers, but in our own intimate way. They're different than the average because of our instrumentation. Our old audiences, we feel, are still satisfied because we play numbers out of our o!d book. Then there are a lot of new people who are following us, and these hard swingers seem to be what they get excited about.

The only way to really broaden the range of the Quintet is by hiring new writers to write for it. In this set, we're introducing three. More Than You Know was arranged by Herb Pilhoffer, a pianist originally from Germany and now located in Minneapolis I think he captures the mood of the song and the Quintet very well Miss Movement is Eric Dolphy's first attempt at writing for the Quintet. Being an exciting player, he'd write an exciting kind of jazz tune. Kenny Dorham is a wonderful trumpet player and he's also a wonderful writer. Newport News is his first chart for our book. It's typical of the inventive, fine arrangements that I'm always grateful to have come my way. Without these, Chico would have no face at all, let alone three!

[seanhowe]

Tanganyika: Modern Afro-American Jazz

Featuring Buddy Collette (reeds), John Anderson (trumpet), Gerald Wiggins (piano), Jim Hall (guitar), Curtis Counce (bass), Chico Hamilton (drums) 

October 11, 1956, Capitol Records Studios, Hollywood, CA

[seanhowe]

Reader's Digest depiction of Alberto Sicilia Falcon, 1978

[seanhowe]

Newsday reporters John Cummings and Ernest Volkman, circa 1977. Cummings (1931-2016) covered things like the Bay of Pigs, the JFK assassination, Selma, the CIA, the Mafia, Barry Seal—you know, the usual. He witnessed Jack Ruby's shooting of Oswald; he was a contributor to Naked Came the Stranger; he was the first to interview Capt. Jeffery MacDonald.

Cummings and Volkman earned the ire of Newsday editors for writing an article for Penthouse, in which they alleged that Henry Kissinger was waging a secret war in Jamaica.

[seanhowe]

Last, desperate gasp of True magazine, which folded within months. The publisher later bought Sassy, in 1995. "One word describes the new TRUE magazine: macho (ma’ ché) n. [L. masculus, MASCULINE] a strong, virile man. adj. masculine, virile, adventurous, etc. The honest-to-God American MAN deserves a magazine sans naked cuties, Dr. Spock philosophies, foppish, gutless “unisex” pap, and platform shoes. It's time for a refreshing change. The pendulum is swinging. Between the covers of Petersen’s TRUE exists a masculine Teddy Roosevelt world. A hardy slice of adventure, challenge, action, competition, controversy. Including informative features that bring the American man and American values back from the shadows. Back from the sterile couches of pedantic psychiatrists. Back from behind the frivolous skirts of libbers."

[seanhowe]

The Los Angeles Times reviews Love at the Whisky, 1966.

[seanhowe]

[seanhowe]

CBC Times, November 23, 1958.

[seanhowe]

"We’re joined by author Sean Howe to talk about his new book, Agents of Chaos, about Tom Forcade, the Yippies, the Zippies, the feds, and the fakes." This was a ton of fun!

[grooveland]