GerE Lrc ,M Libitwm & lazzletter PO Box 240, Ojai CA 93024-0240 etu2008 vd..25 I,{a 10 Anslinger was close to the Dupont family who were Pennies in a Stream opposed to the growing of hemp for the good reasons that all sorts of things can be made from it, including fabrics, in the chemical In the movies of my youth, women came in two kinds, good plastics, food, and fuels. The Duponts were was said that and bad, Madonna and Whore. The former were played by the tusiness. Anslinger lasted until1972, when it Kennedy' likes of Joan Leslie, Ann Rutherford, Gail Russell, and Janet he resigned. He had in fact been fired by Fresident "coincidences" that Blair. the latter by Lynn Bari, Nina Foch, and their wicked ilk. It is just another of those inconvenient Young mothers produced their progeny without Kennedy and Connally were shot together. preliminary protrusion and when the wife had to tell the The songs of the time reinforced the idea of Innocence Pearl Bailey was husbafrd that she was, in the ancient euphemism, in a family and Experience. Singers too were typecast. Anita O'Day was way, she could not say so directly. She would say something suggestive; Ella Fitzgerald was Innocent. Niessen was allusive, and the poor sap who had got her that way, would outright bad, as she was in real life; Gertrude what for reply, wide-eyed, "You mean, you're . uh, you mean we're naughty, singing I Wanna Get Married, containing in pajama going to . ?" In obedience to the movies' morality code, of the period was a pretty racy 1ine, "I wanna sleep her the time, husbands and wives wore pajamas or nightgowns tqps." Doris Day was Innocent, longing to make Les Brown' and occupied twin beds, although every kid in the world knew Sentimental Journey, written by her boss. had voices that his parents shared a bed. so who was protected and from what Doretta Morrow and Polly Bergen too that if one moral con-uption is questionable" The word "pregnant" was conveyed a virginal purity, although it was known musicals, you neverheard in movies, and the 1953 film The Moon Is Blue walked in the dim light backstage at one of her Alfred was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency because had to be careful not to stumble over Morrow and o'seduce," of it contained the words "virgin," and "mistress." Drake. But the most conspicuous personification of Producer Otto Preminger released the picture without the seal Innocence was Margaret Whiting, who had a voice and of approval of the Motion Picture Production Code by which unaffected sweetness, naive purity, lovely enunciation, protegdes the Catholic church had exercised a tyrannical censorship of beautiful pitch. She was one of Johnny Mercet's also the movies since it was instituted in 1934. at his newly founded Capitol Records. She was gifted Peoria- That was three years before Harry Anslinger, the newly daughter of Richard Whiting, the versatile and appointed head of the nascent Federal Bqreau of Narcotics born composer of Tilt We Meet Again, Japanese Sandman. Along made possession of marijuana a criminal offense, thereby Sleepytime Gal, Ain't We Got Fun, Horses, Breezing Future Just ruining the lives of millions of Americans imprisoned because with the Breeze. She's Funny That Way, My the Good Ship Lollipop' of it, and costing the American taxpayers untold billions in the Passed, You're an Old Smoothie, On lockup and support of their victims. In 1959, the stripper Guilty,Roses in the Rain, When Did You Leave Heaven, and Words and Juanita Slusher, stage-named Candy Barr, was sentenced in two with fine Mercer's lyrics, Too Marvelousfor her native Texas to fifteen years in prison for possession of a the sardonic Hooray for Hollywood. sing was very small amount of marijuana. She served three of it in a The first song I ever heard Margaret Whiting woman's prison until Governor John Connally pardoned her. Moonlight in Vermont. It sepmed a very strange song to me, zs strange song' Much of the disinformation still bedeviling the land was notable for a deep stillness, and in fact it a generated by Anslinger who said, among other things, "Reefer Margaret recorded it in 1943. partly makes darkies think they're as good as white men," and When I moved from Toronto to Montreal -that from "Marijuana is taken . by musicians. And I'm not speaking because I wanted to learn French I discovered - south into the about good musicians, b:ut the jazz type." Mount Royal and Westmount, you could look October 2008 Green Mountains of Vermont. Vermont in fact means Green moonlight in Vermont 5 Mount, or if you want to translate it into Italian, Monteverdi. The state always seemed romantic to me, partly no doubt due Some versions employ a codetta: to that song and Walter Benton's under-rated long autobiographical poem This Is My Beloved, which contains a You and I and reference to the state. moonlight in Vermonl. But I didn't realize for many years what gave the song its the unusual quality of stillness. It is completely pastoral. But But I doubt that it was in the original. And I doubt that It's more to the point is the form. The lyrics are, except for the word in parentheses (they) was in the original. release, haiku, a Japanese poetic form seventeen syllables grammatically clumsy and also unnecessary. doubtless long, divided into three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. People who have never lived in bitter winters (Well, that's in English. The subject is much more complex in don't understand "telegraph cables sing down the highway," wires on tall poles on Japanese.) the single theramin tone sung by the make that sound. A haiku verse contains no verb. sub-zero nights. I don't know why they All our teaching and all our tradition in the western And I'm not sure I want to: knowing would take the mystery languages conditions us to accept that a sentence contains a out of it. pitch, as I walked along noun or pronoun, a verb, and maybe another noun or pronoun But I remember that eerie high among black barns and the direct object in the case of the transitive verb. The verb country roads in brilliant moonlight elms' And on some -is an action. Something is happening, acting upon itself or fence posts and the lacy fans of leafless gossamer green veils, something else. There is motion. But since the haiku form nights, I would see, like shimmering sometimes contains no verb, nothinghappens. The images are just there, the aurora borealis, usually to the north but suspended for your contemplation. And the form thus creates covering the entire sky. Quite creepy. was living in New a profound stillness, related to all sorts ofJapanese esthetic I discovered the haiku fotm when I verses, several each day, traditions, such as the sand garden and the tea ceremony. York, and for a time I wrote such the sonnet. I have been unable to find sheet music of the song, and the along with another historical exercise discipline, various printed lyrics, versions by Sinatra and others, are not Both of them build your choPs. to the song: the in accord with each other, due to the unhappy habit of singers There is anotherbit of felicitous ingenuity into the iast of learning songs from records, not the published music, way the melodic line and lyric pass seamlessly that, as in The Folks Who thereby reproducing whatever errors have already been made eight bars. Jerome Kern used to do release on I Hear Music, and passing them along. This has happened on a number of Live on the Hill and the end of the B7 to a C chord. my songs, and such errors, once started, roll on forever. But with its startling modulation from came out in 1943. it was this, as for as I can deduce, is the lyric and the haiku form: After Moontight in Vermont bruited about that it was written by two rank amateurs named never wrote another Pennies in a stream 5 John Blackburn and Karl Suessdorfwho in fact educated men, and Blackburn for falling leaves, a sycamore 7 song. Both were the United States, and moonlight in Vermont 5 years-Suessdorf ran a puppet theater that traveled composed a number of instrumental pieces. among others, Benny Carter. They were Icy finge.r waves 5 working with, ski trails on (or down) a mountainside certainly sophisticated enough to experiment with haiku. snowlight in Vermont 5 Johnny Mercer, head of the upstart Capitol records label, chose the song for Margaret Whiting' He'd first heard her Telegraph cables sing at the home of her parents, and he was writing songs (they) sing down the highu,ay and follow each bend in the with her father, Richard Whiting. road. Margaret told me: to People who meet in this romantic setting "Johnny always saw every songwriter. He listened all are so hypnotized by the lovelY every song. Because he wanted to pick the things for of his artists individually. ev'ning summer breeze 5 Margaret said he told her: warbling of a meadowlark 7 "You sing like a trumpet. And there's a gteat trumpet October 2008 player, Billy Butterfield. I want you to do this record iogether.' I did My ldea.l and lhithout Love. We used Les Jack and Margarct Brown's band. They were at the Palladium. I sang the two first met Margaret.