Rolling Stone #111, October 10,1974 October 10,1974

PART 3.

Traveler Hears Mountain Music Where It's Sung

Renfro Valley, Ky.-- The Bluegra.s.s country is cold and brown in the winter. Night comes early and the horses are taken inside to sleep in heated barns. The farmers sit around pot bellied stoves and pa.s.s the time with a banjo and a jug and sometimes a bit of talk. Not many visitors in the winter. Not much to do, either.

Here in Rock Castle county the biggest event of the week is the Sat.u.r.day night show in a little spot on the map called Renfro Valley, a big barn and a recording studio on U. S. highway 25, about 50 miles south of Lexington.

Ten years ago they flocked to this place like pilgrims to the shrine-- not just from the nearby Bluegra.s.s towns, but from all over the nation. They came for the country music and the All-Day Sings and to get a look at the Old Kentucky Barn Dance they'd heard so often on their radios at home. It got so big that 15,000 people showed up one summer Sat.u.r.day night, and a national magazine sent down a team of cameras to record the scene for posterity.

Now perhaps 150 will show up. They come down from Berea and Crab Orchard, and Preachersville, and from places like Egypt and Shoulderblade across the mountains. Not many from out of state. Not even enough to justify using the barn, which is closed until spring, when the crowds will pick up again.

Only the locals show up in the winter. They come with guitars and ba.s.s fiddles and old songbooks, and they gather in the studio to do a radio show that you can still hear in some cities, but not in so many as you could a few years back. The show starts around 7 and winds up at 9:30 -- just about the time the hillbilly singers and the Bluegra.s.s banjo champs are warming up at Gerde's in New York's Greenwich Village.

Folks around here don't have much time for strangers. You ask what goes on at Renfro Valley and they shrug and say, "Not much." You want to find a restaurant after 8 p.m. and -- if you can find anybody to ask -- they'll direct you to Lexington, an hour's drive.

You have a thirst and they tell you, "This here's a dry county." Pause. "Yep, dry county." Another pause. "Maybe if you go up the road a piece to where you find a sort of restaurant, maybe somebody there can fix you up."

So if you want entertainment in these parts, you go to Renfro Valley and you go early. The studio is warm and the music is every bit as real as the people who sing it.

"Well, now, for all you folks out there in radioland, I want to say that we got a little gal visitin' with us this evenin'. Little Brenda Wallen, from up in Winchester, I believe. . ."

And little Brenda sings: "Beeyooteeful lies, beeyooteeful lies. . . each one a heartbreak. . . in perfect disguise. . ."

Then the Hibbard Brothers quartet, lean mountain faces and huge hands poking out of gabardine sleeves -- "O, what a time we will have up in heaven. . ."

A murmur of approval from the audience. A flashbulb pops near the back of the room. Things are picking up. The Farmer Sisters take their turn at the mike, with a rippling version of "You're the Reason."

A few cheers from the crowd, a quick burst of fiddle music from a man beside the piano, then somebody holds up a hand for silence. Time for the commercial.

"This here's a long one," says the announcer, glancing at a yellow script in his hand, "so let's do it all at once and get it over with." Snickers from the audience. Everybody grins as the commercial is read very earnestly into the mike that will carry it out to the Good Lord only knows where.

The announcer finishes and heaves a sigh of relief, also into the mike. Everybody laughs and the show goes on. Meanwhile, the Greenbriar Boys are tuning their instruments at Gerde's; in a few hours there will be a long, b.u.t.ton down line outside the hungry i in San Francisco, waiting to hear the latest hillbilly sensation.

It's 9:30 in Rock Castle county and the Old Kentucky Barn dance is over until next week. Only a few people remain in the studio. One of them is John Lair, a local boy and a onetime Chicago disk jockey who came back home to put Renfro Valley on the map. Red Foley got his start here. So did the c.o.o.n Creek Sisters, from a place back in the hills called Pinch 'Em Tight Holler.

Lair seems genuinely puzzled by the term, "Bluegra.s.s music." He thinks it's a misnomer.

"It's plain old mountain music," he insists. "Same stuff they've been singing for more than a hundred years." He chuckles and shakes his head. "You go up to Lexington and call it Bluegra.s.s music and you'll have a fight on your hands."

Lair says goodnight and leaves to go home. Outside, the parking lot is almost empty. A visitor has two choices -- drive up to Lexington for something to eat and maybe a good fight, or hurry to the nearest motel.

A few miles up the road is a town called Nicholasville, where motel owners won't even answer the door after what they consider a decent hour. When I stopped a man on the street and asked him why this was, he said he was the chief of police and offered to rent me a bed in his house.

I went back to one of the motels, went into the office, turned on the light, picked a key off the desk and located a cabin by myself. The next morning it took me 20 minutes to find somebody to pay -- and then I was told I wouldn't be welcome there in the future because my car had a license plate from Louisville. They don't care much for city boys, specially when they're roamin' around late at night.

If you drive thru Kentucky and plan to spend the night, get your room early. And if you like a toddy before bedding down, remember that 86 of the 120 counties are bone dry until you make friends. Grog shops are few and far between, and a man without foresight will usually go to bed thirsty.

Winter mornings are bleak. Almost always you wake up to a gray sky and a good country breakfast: fried sausage or ham, fried eggs, fried potatoes, and a plate of biscuits with b.u.t.ter and apple jelly. Then, after a pot of coffee, you move on.

No matter which way you go you'll drive thru a lot of cold, barren country to get there. North, thru the heart of the Bluegra.s.s, west toward Louisville, east into the mountains, or south to Tennessee.

Not much speed on those narrow highways, plenty of time to look off across the white fences and wonder how the cows find anything to eat in the frozen fields. Time to listen to the sermons on the radio or the lonely thump of a shotgun somewhere back from the road.

Not much to hurry about in the Bluegra.s.s, specially in the winter when the trees are bare and the barns are white with frost and most folks are inside by the stove.

The Chicago Tribune, February 18, 1962 February 18, 1962.

A Footloose American in a Smugglers' Den

In Puerto Estrella, Colombia, there is little to do but talk. It is difficult to say just what the villagers are talking about, however, because they speak their own language -- a tongue called Guajiro, a bit like Arabic, which doesn't ring well in a white man's ear.

Usually they are talking about smuggling, because this tiny village with thatched roof huts and a total population of about 100 South American Indians is a very important port of entry. Not for humans, but for items like whisky and tobacco and jewelry. It is not possible for a man to get there by licensed carrier, because there are no immigration officials and no customs. There is no law at all, in fact, which is precisely why Puerto Estrella is such an important port.

It is far out at the northern tip of a dry and rocky peninsula called La Guajira, on which there are no roads and a great deal of overland truck traffic. The trucks carry contraband, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of it, bound for the interiors of Colombia and Venezuela. Most of it comes from Aruba, brought over at night on fast trawlers and put ash.o.r.e at Puerto Estrella for distribution down the peninsula on the trucks.

I arrived at dusk on a fishing sloop from Aruba. And since there is no harbor I was put ash.o.r.e in a tiny rowboat. Above us, on a sharp cliff, stood the entire population of the village, staring grimly and without much obvious hospitality at Puerto Estrella's first tourist in history.

In Aruba, the Guajiro Indians are described as "fierce and crazy and drunk all day on coconut whisky." Also in Aruba you will hear that the men wear "nothing but neckties, knotted just below the navel." That sort of information can make a man uneasy, and as I climbed the steep path, staggering under the weight of my luggage, I decided that at the first sign of unpleasantness I would begin handing out neckties like Santa Claus -- three fine paisleys to the most menacing of the bunch, then start ripping up shirts.

As I came over the brink of the cliff, a few children laughed, an old hag began screeching, and the men just stared. Here was a white man with 12 Yankee dollars in his pocket and more than $500 worth of camera gear slung over his shoulders, hauling a typewriter, grinning, sweating, no hope of speaking the language, no place to stay -- and somehow they were going to have to deal with me.

There was a conference, and then a small man stepped forward and made motions indicating that I should put my gear on an ancient truck which started with a crank. I was taken to an abandoned hospital, where I was given a sort of cell with a filthy mattress and broken windows to let in the air.

There is not much for the tourist in Puerto Estrella, no hotels, restaurants, or souvenirs. Nor is the food palatable. Three times a day I faced it -- leaves, maize, and severely salted goat meat, served up with muddy water.

The drinking was a problem too, but in a different way. At the crack of dawn on the day after my arrival I was awakened and taken before a jury of village bigwigs. Its purpose was to determine the meaning of my presence. These gentlemen had gathered in the only concrete-block house in town, and before them on the table was a cellophane-wrapped bottle of Scotch whisky.

After an hour or so of gestures, a few words of Spanish, and nervous demonstrations of my camera equipment, they seemed to feel a drinking bout was in order. The Scotch was opened, five jiggers were filled, and the ceremony began.

It continued all that day and all the next. They tossed it off straight in jiggers, solemnly at first and then with mounting abandon. Now and then one of them would fall asleep in a hammock, only to return a few hours later with new thirst and vigor. At the end of one bottle they would proudly produce another, each one beautifully wrapped in cellophane.

As it turned out, three things made my visit a success. One was my size and drinking capacity (it was fear -- a man traveling alone among reportedly savage Indians dares not get drunk); another was the fact that I never turned down a request for a family portrait (fear, again); and the third was my "lifelong acquaintance" with Jacqueline Kennedy, whom they regard as some sort of G.o.ddess.

With the exception of a few sophisticates and local bigwigs, most of the men wore the necktie -- a Guajiro version of the time-honored loin-cloth. The women, again with a few exceptions, wore dull and shapeless long black gowns.

A good many of the men also wore two and three hundred dollar wrist watches, a phenomenon explained by the strategic location of Puerto Estrella and the peculiar nature of its economy. It would not be fair to say that the Indians arbitrarily take a healthy cut of all the contraband that pa.s.ses through their village, but neither would it be wise to arrive and start asking pointed questions, especially since anyone arriving on his own is wholly dependent on the good will of the Indians to get him out again.

Trying to leave can turn a man's hair white. You are simply stuck until one of the Indians has to run some contraband down the peninsula to Maicao.

There is nothing to do but drink, and after 50 hours of it I began to lose hope. The end seemed to be nowhere in sight; and it is bad enough to drink Scotch all day in any climate, but to come to the tropics and start belting it down for three hours each morning before breakfast can bring on a general failure of health. In the mornings we had Scotch and arm wrestling; in the afternoons, Scotch and dominoes.

The break came at dusk on the third day, when the owner of a truck called the Power Wagon rose abruptly from the drinking table and said we would leave immediately. We had a last round, shook hands all around, and shoved off. The truck was fully loaded, and I rode in back with my gear and a young Indian girl.

The drive from Puerto Estrella to Maicao is 10 to 12 hours, depending on which rut you take, but it seems like 40 days on the rack. On top of the heinous discomfort, there is the distinct possibility of being attacked and shot up by either bandits or the law. As far as the Contrabandista Contrabandista is concerned, one is as bad as the other. is concerned, one is as bad as the other.

The smugglers travel armed but they put their faith in speed, punishing both truck and pa.s.sengers unmercifully as they roar through dry river beds and across long veldt-like plains oh a dirt track which no conventional car could ever navigate.

We rumbled into Maicao at three in the afternoon. They dropped me at the airport, where my luggage was thoroughly searched by a savage-looking gendarme before I was allowed on the plane for Barranquilla. An hour later, there was another search at the Barranquilla airport. When I asked why, they replied I was coming from an area called Guajira, known to be populated by killers and thieves and men given over to lives of crime and violence.

I had a feeling that n.o.body really believed I had been there. When I tried to talk about Guajira, people would smile sympathetically and change the subject. And then we would have another beer, because Scotch is so expensive in Barranquilla that only the rich can afford it.

National Observer, August 6, 1962 August 6, 1962.

Why Anti-Gringo Winds Often Blow South of the Border

One of my most vivid memories of South America is that of a man with a golf club -- a five-iron, if memory serves -- driving golf b.a.l.l.s off a penthouse terrace in Cali, Colombia. He was a tall Britisher, and had what the British call "a stylish pot" instead of a waitsline. Beside him on a small patio table was a long gin-and-tonic, which he refilled from time to time at the nearby bar.

He had a good swing, and each of his shots carried low and long out over the city. Where they fell, neither he nor I nor anyone else on the terrace that day had the vaguest idea. The penthouse, however, was in a residential section on the edge of the Rio Cali, which runs through the middle of town. Somewhere below us, in the narrow streets that are lined by the white adobe blockhouses of the urban peasantry, a strange hail was rattling on the roofs -- golf b.a.l.l.s, "old practice duds," so the Britisher told me, that were "hardly worth driving away."

In the weeks that followed, when I became more aware of the att.i.tude a good many Colombians have towards that nation's Anglo-Saxon population, I was glad n.o.body had traced the source of those well-hit mashies. Colombians, along with their Venezulean neighbors, may well be the most violent people on the continent, and a mixture of insult and injury does not rank high as a national dish.

It is doubtful that the same man would drive golf b.a.l.l.s off a rooftop apartment in the middle of London. But is not really surprising to see it done in South America. There, where the distance between the rich and the poor is so very great, and where Anglo-Saxons are automatically among the elite, the concept of n.o.blesse oblige is subject to odd interpretations.

The att.i.tude, however, does not go unnoticed; the natives consider it bad form indeed for a foreigner to stand on a rooftop and drive golf b.a.l.l.s into their midst. Perhaps they lack sporting blood, or maybe a sense of humor, but the fact is that they resent it, and it is easy to see why they might go to the polls at the next opportunity and vote for the man who promises to rid the nation of "arrogant gringo imperialists."

Whether the candidate in question is a fool, a thief, a Communist, or even all three does not matter much when emotions run high -- and few elections south of the Rio Grande are won on the basis of anything but blatant appeals to popular emotion.

The North American presence in South America is one of the most emotional political questions on the continent. In most countries, especially Argentina and Chile, there is a considerable European presence as well. But with recent history as it is, when the winds of anti-gringo opinion begin to blow, they blow due north, toward the United States, which to the Latin American is more easily identifiable with capitalism and imperialism than any other country in the world.

With this in mind, a traveler in South America gets one shock after another at the stance generally taken by his fellow gringos -- and sometimes a worse shock at the stance he takes himself. One young American put it this way: "I came down here a real gung-ho liberal, I wanted to get close to these people and help them -- but in six months I turned into a hardnose conservative. These people don't know what I'm talking about, they won't help themselves, and all they want is my money. All I want to do now is get out."

It is a sad fact that living for any length of time in a Latin American country has a tendency to do this to many Americans. To avoid it takes tremendous adaptability, idealism, and faith in the common future.

Take the example of a young man named John, a representative in a Latin American country for an international relief organization. His work consists mainly in distributing surplus food to the poor. He works hard, often going out on field trips, for three or four days of rough driving, bad food, primitive living, and dysentery.

But the people he has to work with bother him. He can't understand why the princ.i.p.al of a back-country school would steal food earmarked for the pupils and sell it to speculators. He can't understand why his warehouse -- lying in the middle of a district where food is distributed regularly -- is constantly being looted by the very people who were standing in line the week before to get their regular share.

He broods on these things and wonders if he is really accomplishing anything, or just being taken for a sucker. Then, one day when he is in a particularly bad mood over some new evidence of callousness or corruption, he hears below his window the shouting of a mob. A man is standing on the steps of a fountain, shouting hoa.r.s.ely about "the rights of the people" and what should be done to secure them. And the crowd happily roars an answer -- "down with the capitalist swine!"

Our man, standing at his window, suddenly loses his temper and shakes his fist. Abajo del pueblos! Abajo del pueblos! he yells. Meaning, "Down with the people." Then he quickly ducks back inside. he yells. Meaning, "Down with the people." Then he quickly ducks back inside.

But the Latin family next door, standing at their window, hears the gringo abusing the crowd. Word gets around, and several days later our man is insulted as he walks to the corner cantina cantina for a pack of for a pack of cigarillos. cigarillos. He speaks good Spanish, and curses back, not understanding why his neighbors are no longer friendly. But it makes him even more bitter, and once the tide starts running in that direction, it is hard to reverse. He speaks good Spanish, and curses back, not understanding why his neighbors are no longer friendly. But it makes him even more bitter, and once the tide starts running in that direction, it is hard to reverse.

One day a new American appears in town, a trainee for one of the United States banks that have branches in South America. Our man John meets him at the Anglo-American Club and, in the course of conversation, tells him what to expect from the nationals -- "a bunch of rotten ingrates, stupid and corrupt to the last man."

The newcomer hears other gringos say the same kind of thing. At night, in his new and unfamiliar apartment, he begins to think the neighbors are making noise on purpose, to wear on his nerves. Soon he is as bitter as most of the others.

When the inevitable bank strike comes along -- as it does at regular intervals in most Latin American countries -- our newcomer takes the advice of an older gringo employee and shows up at work with a pistol, which he puts on his desk like a paperweight to show the employees he means business.

The reaction of the nationals hardly needs to be cataloged. Our trainee is chalked up as one more bit of two-legged evidence that gringos are vicious fools. The net result -- as far as both John and the young banker are concerned -- is a grievous setback for the hope that North and South America will come to understand each other, and thus avoid a split-up that would wreck the Western Hemisphere.

The young American in a Latin American country faces other hazards. For one thing, he has to contend with the American colony that blooms in every city of any size.

Americans living in Latin American countries are often more sn.o.bbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn't. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie. The same man -- often no more than 30 years old -- might have been living in a prefabricated tract house in the States, but in Rio he will live on Copacabana beach with two maids, servants' quarters, and a balcony overlooking the sea.

Some people say that the American is fouling his own image in South America -- that instead of being a showpiece for "democracy," he not only tends to ape the wealthy, antidemocratic Latins, but sometimes beats them at their own game. Suddenly finding himself among the elite, the nervous American is determined to hold his own -- and, unlike the genuine aristocrat who never doubts his own worth, the newcomer to status seeks to prove it at every turn.

Others, though, repeat the old, familiar, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." In South America, so the thinking goes, the lower cla.s.ses have no grasp of equality and take informality for weakness. So the only alternative is to make them respect you. "I know it's silly to shout at the maid every time she makes a mistake," said one American housewife in Brazil. "But she's lazy and I want her to know I'm watching her. With these people, it's either discipline or anarchy."

Another problem that plagues the gringo is drink. Because he never really feels at home in a foreign language; because his income is usually embarra.s.singly large by local standards; because he worries continually about being cheated whenever he buys anything; because he never gets over the feeling that most upper-cla.s.s Latins consider him a b.o.o.b from a country where even the b.o.o.bs are rich; and because he can never understand why people don't seem to like him for what he is -- just a good guy who feels a bit out of place among these strange surroundings and customs -- because of all these tensions and many more of the same kind, he tends to drink far more than he does at home.

"To relax" is the usual excuse, but sometimes there is almost no choice. In Rio, for instance, the evening traffic jams are so bad that getting from the business district out to Copacabana -- where "everybody" lives -- is almost impossible between the hours of 5 and 8. One of the first things a new arrival is told is: "If you can't get out of town by five, forget about it and settle down to serious drinking until eight." This hiatus in the day is termed "the drinking hour."

With many people, the "drinking hour" soon becomes a necessary habit. Sometimes it leads to disaster. Often an American will arrive home broke and bleary-eyed at 3 or 4 in the morning, still lugging his briefcase and cursing the long-gone traffic.

Because of things like the drinking hour and other, purely local, situations, a man returning to the States after a stay in Latin America is often struck dumb by the question, "What can we do about that place?"

He has no idea, because he has never had time enough to relax and give it much thought. His concern has been survival. Objectivity is one of the first casualties of "culture shock" -- a term for the malady that appears when a North American, with his heritage of Puritan pragmatism, suddenly finds himself in a world with different traditions and a different outlook on life.

It is an odd feeling to return from a year in South America and read a book by some expense-account politician who toured the continent in six weeks and spoke only with presidents, cabinet ministers, and other "leading figures" like himself. The problems and the issues suddenly become quite clear -- as they never were when you were right there in the midst of them.

Now, looking back on that man with the golf club, it is easy to see him as a fool and a beast. But I recall quite well how normal it seemed at the time, and how surprised I would have been if any of the dozen people on the terrace had jumped up to protest.

National Observer, August 19, 1963 August 19, 1963 Democracy Dies in Peru, but Few Seem to Mourn Its Pa.s.sing The "death of democracy" has not left much of a vacuum in Peru. It was more like the death of somebody's old uncle, whose name had been familiar in the household for many years, but who died, where he had always lived, in some far-off town the family never quite got around to visiting -- although they had always meant to, or at least that's what they said.

If there is one profound reality in Peruvian politics it is the fact that this country has absolutely no democratic tradition, and any attempt to introduce one is going to meet violent opposition. The people who need democracy don't even know what the word means; the people who know what it means don't need it and they don't mind saying so. If the Alliance for Progress requires that democracy in Peru become a fact instead of just a pleasant word, then the Alliance is in for rough sledding too.

This is the basis of the current "misunderstanding" between Washington and Lima. If the Peruvian people were as concerned about democracy as is President Kennedy, this country would right now be in the throes of a violent civil war. What happened in Lima on July 18 was more than enough to touch off armed conflict in many countries of the world, but democracy has never been a reality in Peru, and for that reason it goes largely unmourned; especially in Lima, which voted heavily for the return of an ex-dictator.

On July 24, the un-elected government of Peru issued a Decree-Law, a.s.suming all executive and legislative powers, and the third largest country in South America pa.s.sed officially into the hands of the military. The second largest, Argentina, had provided an easy-to-follow example some five months before. Next on the list, according to current speculation in Washington and other Hemisphere capitals, will be Venezuela -- and what might be precipitated by Brazil's congressional elections in October is anybody's guess.

It requires little guesswork, however, to see what this trend means for the Alliance for Progress, and also for the future of democracy in South America. The outlook is dreary at best, and as the pressure from Washington mounts the reaction will mount just as fast. Peru was a good example.

Even so, after all these months of tension, all this talk and campaigning, all the s.p.a.ce devoted in newspapers to the Peruvian elections, a visitor to Lima arrives with a feeling that there is bound to be some evidence that the whole thing was a bust -- that it was all a put-up job, because the Armed Forces did exactly what they said they were going to do all along.

When the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) won the recent elections, the military called it a "fraud," took over the government, annulled what was undeniably the most honest and least fraudulent election in Peru's history, and installed a four-man junta that is a military dictatorship no matter which way you look at it.

Yet life goes on in Lima as if nothing had happened. The evening streets are full of pretty girls and slick-haired men in business suits, the opulent shops that flank the trolleys on Avenida Peirola are full of silver and alpaca and the soft rustle of money changing hands, and the all night cantinas still sound as if their frenzied pisco pisco-swilling patrons had abandoned all hope of ever seeing another dawn.

This is Lima, democracy or no democracy, dictators or no dictators. The city is full of people, in fact, who say that what happened is precisely nothing at all. They point out that the people in power now are those who have always been in power and that those faces on the outside, looking in, are the same faces that have been there for as long as anyone in Peru can remember. It is foolish, they say, to talk about the Junta "seizing the reins," because the Junta is nothing more than a dress-uniform version of the same power bloc that has held the reins for centuries.