San Rocco

In the summer of 1942 residents of New York City's Mott Street held a parade to honor their newly-inducted boys in uniform. For the date of this event they chose the feast day of a favorite saint, and the celebration of soldiers and saint blended nicely together.

The saint was Rocco, venerated for miraculous cures. His feast day, August 16, falls directly after one of the most important feasts of the liturgical year: the Feast of the Assumption, a celebration of the mother of Jesus. On those two days the faithful make petitions to the one for relief of distress and the other for return to good health.

His story is more legend than history. The son of an aristocrat, San Rocco vowed poverty, distributed his wealth among people who were destitute, and made a pilgrimage from his home in Montpelier, France, to holy places in Italy. On the way he succored many plague victims and became victim of that disease himself. He was expelled by officials of the town where he was ministering when stricken and dragged himself to a nearby wood where he made a rude shelter of boughs and leaves. In that place he was supplied with water by a spring which miraculously arose and with bread by a dog which also licked his plague wounds, healing them. When he had regained his health he turned toward home. On entering his home town dressed as a simple pilgrim he was thrown in jail as a vagrant and suspected spy. His family connection would easily have secured his release had he made it known, but he preferred anonymity and died on August 16, 1378, while still a prisoner.

At the last quarter of the nineteenth century when large numbers of Italian immigrants came to Mulberry and Mott Streets and surrounding blocks they brought with them the practice of celebrating San Rocco's feast day. The Irish, whom the Italians displaced, did not celebrate saints' days with street festivals and the leaders of New York's Roman Catholic churches tried to discourage these spontaneous demonstrations. In 1888 Michael Corrigan, the Archbishop of New York, banned the Italian faithful from holding any public religious procession or festa. Regardless, the new immigrants set up temporary private shrines in side streets and alleyways. Eventually the Holy See responded to requests for Italian clergy to augment or replace the largely Irish ones of the neighborhood. The New York hierarchy continued to condemn street festivals, but in 1889 the rector of the city's first "Italian" church, St. Joachim's, made an arrangement by which an independent organization could put on a festa for San Rocco and thereafter the celebration became a regular summer event.

At about this time Jacob Riis took these photos of a back-alley shrine to San Rocco.
 

The alley itself was Bandits' Roost which Riis also captured in this famous image.


Writing a decade later Riis said the shrine shown in his photographs was one of many erected on August 16th each year within the "darkest and shabbiest" of the back yards in the Italian neighborhoods. He said one of his few pleasing memories of an area he called "foul core of New York's slums," was seeing Bandits' Roost lighted up in honor of San Rocco:

An altar had been erected against the stable shed at the rear end of it and made gaudy with soiled ribbons, colored paper, and tallow dips stuck in broken bottle-necks. Across the passageway had been strung a row of beer-glasses, with two disabled schooners for a center-piece, as the best the Roost could afford. In sober truth, it was the most appropriate. It made a very a brave show, and, oddest of it all not a displeasing one. At all events, I thought so. Perhaps it was the discovery of something in the ambitions of the Bend that was not hopelessly of the gutter which did it.[1]

Riis does not mention a practice which a journalist reported a few years later: "Every one of the faithful who has an ache or a pain will buy from the liberal stores kept in the church a wax leg, or head, or arm, or hand, according to where his or her ailment is, and place it as an offering at San Rocco's shrine. Those who are sound of body and limb will offer decorated candles with their prayers and light them themselves at the shrine."[2] The reporter was wrong about the source of the effigies. They were called voti di cera (vows of wax) and were sold by street vendors. In 1906 a reporter told readers of these "hands, feet, legs, and heads, the latter with the flush of youth on their rounded cheeks, the other members painted with gaudy ribbons" that were sold by a street vendor at a make-shift stand.[3]

Marjory Collins' photos of the Mott Street parade on August 16, 1942, include this one of a shoemaker and his wife in front of his shop and, visible next door, are jumbled body parts in a dismantled sidewalk booth.

{I showed this photo in my previous blog post. It is "shoemaker and his wife in the Italian section on Mott Street" by Marjory Collins, FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.}

Detail of this photo.


The details which I show below come from photos of New York's San Rocco festa taken by Percy Loomis Sperr in 1933 and 1937. At left is a sidewalk booth open for business on Roosevelt St. and at right women carrying wax offerings. The doll signifies a wish for fertility and the head a wish to be free of headache or other head malady.

{From photos in collections of the New York Public Library.}

Riis does mention, as do most other writers, the street illuminations of the San Rocco feast. These writers mention jelly jars, clear, green, and red, strung across the streets, each having a wick and a little oil. Writing of the festival in 1906 a reporter tells of "arches of red and green jelly glasses, suspended by wires and clotheslines from across the narrow canyons of streets, each glass with a wick floating in olive oil."[4] Writers also tell of immense illuminated shrines which, in time, joined the humble back yard ones that Riis describes. In 1907 one of the most extravagant was "a dazzling structure of white and blue and gold, rose to the height of the five-story tenement house back of it and had the form and elaborate ornamentation, in stucco, of a cathedral front."[5]

In the early 1970s the producers of Godfather II re-created this scene as it might have looked in the summer of 1919. Here are screen grabs showing the procession of the statue of San Rocco and the shrine to which it's being carried.


This screen grab shows the statue covered with the one- and five-dollar bills of people seeking the saint's intercession on their behalf, expressing gratitude for his aid, or making a general donation.


This article from the New York Times of August 17, 1902 is the earliest news account I could find. It mentions the exploding fireworks which were typical of the festival and which figure in Godfather II when Vito Corleone murders Don Fanucci.


The article also mentions the Society of San Rocco. Originally called the "Potenza Society" after the southern Italian province from which many of its members had come, this was the organization which had made a deal with the rector of St. Joachim's by which it was able to sponsor the first San Rocco festa in 1889. Founded with the contributions and service of local residents, the society survived a serious challenge from a competing organization in 1906 and continues to sponsor the feast to this day. (The challenge came from Church leaders who were hostile to the exuberant celebrations and, it was said, eager to receive the money of those seeking help from San Rocco.)

The Times article of 1902 also reveals the difficulty reporters had in pinning down details about San Rocco (or perhaps their aversion to some elementary fact checking). The reporter understood the saint to be "St. Rocco di Ruoti Dimos" which is not a title given the saint anywhere else. He says the saint is Neapolitan but there is no particular association of San Rocco with Naples. He names the provinces of Conserta and Baselicata by which he probably means Caserta and Basilicata. Potenza is not far from Conserta and is itself within the region of Basilicata. His account says wax figures were presented in gratitude for cures already accomplished while other accounts say they were presented in hope of being cured. In 1903 the Times carried another report on the festival and this time the reporter said he believed the effigies were offered in hope of cure but tells a distorted version of another part of the San Rocco story. He said he was told that saint is depicted with a dog because he once cured a mad one. This comes from the 1903 report:

So in the procession many people, presumably those afflicted or with afflicted friends, carry wax arms or legs, hands, feet or heads, or portions of the anatomy not usually exposed to view. Apparently no hint of the humor of the situation crosses their minds. They carry their waxen models gravely through the streets, and when they reach the church send them up to be piled around the altar.

There is a little place in Baxter Street which makes all these wax images for San Rocco's day. The figure of the saint, borne aloft at the head of the procession, has a dog at its feet. It seems the dog went mad and bit him once, and he cured the bite with some hair from the same dog, so the people in the procession will tell you.[6]

The earliest printed description of New York's San Rocco festival appeared in 1893 in an Italian-language novel by Bernardino Ciambelli. He inserted this scene, presumably to add some local color to his lurid plot of love and revenge:

San Rocco was being celebrated, and the Italians of Mulberry wanted to do things properly. Towards 11 A.M., the call of the trumpets was heard and in the distance flags and banners appeared. The crowd thronged the sidewalks to enjoy the parade in honor of San Rocco. A squad of policemen headed the procession, followed by the Conterno Band, and right after by a banner on which San Rocco was painted in oil, with his wound and his dog. Two flags, one Italian, and other American, flapped at the banner's sides, thus placing the saint under a double protection. Then came the members of the Società San Rocco, stern and proud in their blue dresses with golden buttons and stripes, as if the whole world belonged to them. In the buttonhole of their parade dresses, they had flowers, ribbons, and cockades. After another musical band, military society paraded, in the uniform of the military engineer corps, with the three colours flapping in the wind; and after it the congregations of the Carmine, of the Madonna Addolorata, and of other saints like San Cono, Sant'Antonio, etc. It was a gorgeous parade, something that really made a hit in a country such as this where parades of every race and form are the order of the day. The bands played, the crowds watched in awe and cheered, the windows, the street, the sidewalks were thronged with people.[7]

Many saints laid claim to the affections of New York's Italian immigrants. Riis ascribed the popularity of San Rocco partly to their sympathy with his death in a dungeon which resembled the dank subterranean dwellings of the truly destitute poor. Whether or not that is so, it's certain that living as they did in the unhealthy environment of the tenement district (which Riis graphically described) and lacking access to medical care, many Italians drew hope from San Rocco's reputation as miraculous healer. I suspect San Rocco also retained his hold on the affections of Italians as a result of affinities with St. Francis. Both saints led lives of poverty, devoted to helping impoverished victims of misfortune and both are remembered for interactions with animals. (In time, Rocco would become the patron saint of dogs.) It's also likely San Rocco's feast drew great crowds of enthusiasts because that day fell directly after the Feast of the Assumption with its celebrations of all things associated with the Blessed Mother. And, finally, the celebration probably would not have been so exuberant if it had taken place at some other time of year. I think the festive crowds of the San Rocco fest, its many processions, the lights and decorations, the bands and fireworks all owe something to the warm-weather date of the saint's death. In other words it's likely the Feast of San Rocco got some its popularity because it fell at a time when the airless summer heat of stifling tenements gave powerful encouragement for outdoor activity.

The festa of the Assumption and of San Rocco were more inclusive than most. During those two days all members of the community — poor and modestly well off, lay and religious, male and female, old and young — mingled more or less freely with a relatively high degree of spontaneous high spirits. Such happy mingling might not be remarkable in the second half of the twentieth century, but I'm pretty sure it was uncommon in 1907 when a Times reporter (with typical mild condescension) described religious societies parading under brilliant arches of oil lights in glass cups and processions where shrines were carried on the shoulders of twenty men, adding: "Before, around, and behind them marched thousands of children, each carrying lighted candles. Even women with both arms holding babies managed to drag through the street and hold lighted candles in front of them. These were the Italians of the south of Italy."[8]

The San Rocco feast is also traditionally free of clerical mediation. Masses are said and blessings invoked, but the organization, leadership, and participation is generally outside the church hierarchy. San Rocco was not himself a member of the clergy and did not perform his services to the poor and the sick in conjunction with any religious organization. The Society of San Rocco in New York has always been free of church sponsorship. By arrangement, the San Rocco statue is kept in a church (first St. Joachim's, now St. Joseph's), but does not belong to the church. San Rocco's performance of miracles as an independent believer is very likely to be yet another source of the popularity he achieved among immigrant Italians. And it is also a probable source of the communal spirit which was one of the festa's defining characteristics.

San Rocco is usually shown baring his leg to show a plague wound along with a dog holding a loaf of bread in its mouth. The image at left below depicts the statue of New York's Società di San Rocco, which, as you can see, is formally called the Confraternita di S. Rocco, founded by the citizens from Potenza (It.) in New York, 1889.[9] The image at right shows this statue in procession in the late 1920s.

{At left: statue of San Rocco in St. Joseph's Church, New York. The image can be found on a number of web sites. At right: the same statue in procession in the late 1920s, detail of a photo in collections of the San Rocco Society.}

One last thought. There are San Rocco parishes in Italy and throughout the world where Italians have settled. The best known is probably the one in Venice which sits next to the famous Scuola Grande di San Rocco. The church is home to these two paintings by Tintoretto. The first shows San Rocco in Prison Visited by an Angel.

{San Rocco in prigione visitato da un angelo, 1567, Oil on canvas, 300 x 670 cm, Chiesa di San Rocco a Venezia}

The second shows San Rocco in a sick ward effecting a miraculous cure:

{San Rocco risana gli appestati, 1549, 300 x 671 sm, Chiesa di San Rocco a Venezia}

Detail of this painting:


The Scuola Grande di San Rocco contains only one painting of San Rocco. It shows his apotheosis.[10]

{San Rocco in Gloria, 1564, oil on canvas, 240 x 360 cm, ceiling decoration in the Sala dell'Albergo, Scuola Grande}

Of the many San Rocco (and St. Roch) parishes in the United States, one, now closed, is located among the slate quarries of south-central Pennsylvania. It's significant because the Italian immigrants of that community include many members of the in-law side of my family. At least some of these family members affectionately called the church "St. Rock."

{St Roch Parish (West Bangor), founded 1937, 141 Verona Avenue, Pen Argyl, PA, A Closed Parish of The Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown PA }

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Notes:

General note: All images in this blog post are reproduced under fair use provisions of copyright law or they are in the public domain.

[1] Jacob A. Riis, "Feast-Days in Little Italy,", The Century Magazine, August 1899.

[2] Peaceful San Rocco Day; Capulets and Montagues of Crooked Streets Reconciled. Candle-Bearers and Flower Girls of Rival Societies Meet in Procession Without Clash — Wax Legs and Arms For Sale, According to Custom — Shrines of Many Colors. Evening Post, August 16, 1907

[3] The San Rocco Society web page says the voti di cera are brought to church in gratitude for San Rocco's healing powers, but all the early sources say the people who purchased them and made offerings of them were afflicted or were acting on behalf of people who were afflicted with a disease or other medical condition. Source of quote: A Religious Festa; Statues of San Rocco Covered with Money Carried Through Streets. New York Daily Tribune, August 17, 1906

[4] A Religious Festa; Statues of San Rocco Covered with Money Carried Through Streets. New York Daily Tribune, August 17, 1906

[5] Peaceful San Rocco Day; Capulets and Montagues of Crooked Streets Reconciled. Candle-Bearers and Flower Girls of Rival Societies Meet in Procession Without Clash — Wax Legs and Arms For Sale, According to Custom — Shrines of Many Colors. Evening Post, August 16, 1907

[6] Quaint Italian Customs of Summer Festal Days; With Music, Gifts and Feasting the Denizens of Little Italy Pay Their Devotions to the Saints -- Curious Phases of the Celebrations. July 12, 1903

[7] The book is I Misteri di Mulberry Stritto by Bernardino Ciambelli, (New York, Frugone and Baletto, 1893). This passage was translated by Mario Maffi

[8] THOUSANDS OF ITALIANS IN ILLUMINATED PARADE; Night Procession Celebrates Feast of the Assumption. HONORS SAINT ROCC0 TO-DAY Great Shrines Carried on Men's Shoulders Through Streets. New York Times, August 16, 1906

[9] The web site of the San Rocco Society of Potenza (New York), says this about the statue:

The original statue of St. Rocco pictured above, was made in Italy and shipped to New York in the summer of 1889 and carried in the first annual Feast of St. Rocco on August 16,1889 on Roosevelt Street.

The statue was kept in a special chapel in St. Joachim's Church on Roosevelt Street. When St. Joachim's was demolished, the statue was taken to St. Joseph's Church, 5 Monroe Street, where it remains enshrined to this day.

The original statue is of magnificent artistic quality, made of Italian papier mache'. It weighs with it's base over 100 lbs.

As the statue aged, Angela Carnevale the Treasurer of the St. Rocco Society and then it's acting President and sole organizer decided to purchase the new statue, fearing the original priceless statue might be damaged while carrying it in the procession.

For the last 25 years or so a duplicate statue has been used for the Feast and Procession.

The original statue was "rented" by Francis Ford Coppola and used in the filming of "The Godfather II" during it's Festa di San Rocco scene. Only members of the Society were allowed to carry the statue in the film. The statue is the oldest Italian American religious society statue in New York.

The original statue can be seen at the rear left of the Church of St. Joseph, 5 Monroe Street, New York, New York. The "Feast" statue is stored during the year and brought out and placed on the main alter under a special canopy for the week prior to the Feast.

[10] This painting, "the glorification of St. Roch" or "assumption of San Rocco into heaven" was the first work of art commissioned for the Scuola. It's pride of place is the central position on the ceiling of the meeting chamber of the directors. One of these concillors had insisted that Tintoretto not be given the commission and he circumvented this prohibition by donating the painting and this led, eventually, to commissions to paint the many other works in the building. See Tintoretto on the web site of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

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Some sources:

Italian Festivals on the National Italian American Foundation web site

The Saint Rocco Society of Potenza home page of the New York San Rocco Society

The Feast of St. Rocco 121 Years Young, history page on web site of the New York San Rocco Society

Celebration of the Madonna Di Pierno Feast by Tom Frascella August 21, 2011 on the web site of the San Felese Society of New Jersey

Jacob A. Riis, "Feast-Days in Little Italy," THE CENTURY MAGAZINE, August 1899

Rocco di Montpellier in Wikipedia (Italian)

Saint Roch in Wikipedia (English)

LIFE Magazine (Vol. 3, No. 10, September 6, 1937) a feature on the San Rocco festa in New York City

The story of Saint Rocco the patron saint of pestilence on sanrocco.org

Photographs and Lantern-Slide Lectures of Jacob Riis at xroads.virginia.edu

JACOB A. RIIS, REFORMER, DEAD; Social Worker Who Was Roosevelt's "Ideal American" Succumbs to Heart Disease. CLEARED MULBERRY BEND Made a Name and a Career as a Police Reporter -- Author of Several Books. New York Times, May 27, 1914.

St. Roch on the catholic.org web site

St. Roch on the newadvent.org web site

Friends of Saint Roch, Montpellier, France

Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto Mannerist Artist Italian 1518 - 1594

historical facts regarding the life of Saint Roch on the Scuola Grande San Rocco web site

Michael Corrigan in Wikipedia

St. Joachim's Church in Wikipedia

We Must Not Fail Them

In 1942 OWI photographer Marjory Collins worked her way around Manhattan recording the ways of the city's inhabitants in wartime. OWI stands for Office of War Information. Roy Stryker, the leader of its photographic unit, was charged to show the strength of Americans' resolve to defeat foreign aggression. In line with this objective Collins produced upbeat images of women in the workforce, children collecting scrap metal, administrators of newly-formed daycare facilities, and recruits headed out to training camps. She also shot scenes that depict patterns of American life that remained the same despite the massive restructuring brought on by the world war: teens in school, young people at public swimming pools, and adults relaxing in bars and restaurants.

Determined to show "pictures of life as it is," Collins did not limit herself to this one-sided point of view but used her camera to reveal somewhat more diversity in American life. Her photographs capture not just the confident and optimistic can-do citizens shown in the glossy magazines but also what a fellow OWI photographer disparagingly called "the seamy side of life." Subjects included relief clients, Bowery bums and members of struggling minorities. In one of her photo shoots she documented the difficulties faced by a war-widow who struggled to make ends meet and care for her young family. She also showed the daily lives of hyphenated Americans: Chinese-, Turkish-, and Italian-American residents, and, unlike the news reporters of the time, she did not present the inhabitants of immigrant communities as curiosities, but as ordinary people.

The photographs are good. Her technique was excellent and she chose subjects well. She also had fine eye for design and light values, and knew how to make good use of the 6x6 cm. frame which her twin-lens reflex camera gave her.

In the first half of 1942, as a brand new OWI staffer, she was given assignments in and around Washington, DC. In November she spent a week in a small town in Pennsylvania Dutch country. The summer and fall found her in New York City. During this time she took pictures of Chinese Americans in Manhattan and Brooklyn and Jewish merchants in the Lower East Side. She did a set on the customers in a hairdresser's salon. She showed crowds at Radio City Music hall, pin setters at a bowling alley, and patrons of O'Reilly's Bar on Third Avenue in the Fifties. She showed centers for recruiting soldiers and promoting the sale of war bonds. In September she did a lengthy shoot in the building where the New York Times was written and published (about which I've previously written). There are also a few shots of a workers' bookshop which served as Communist Party headquarters.

In mid-August she photographed a parade on Mott Street to celebrate Italian American servicemen. I've selected some of the photos from this occasion. They all can be found in the FSA/OWI collections of LC's Prints and Photos Division. As always, click image to view full size.

The parade is unlike the ones we're used to with clear separation between observers and participants. It has the spontaneity of a summer street festival. Marchers are dressed casually with few attempts at formal uniforms and the leader, dressed as Uncle Sam, is accompanied by some guys in shirt sleeves. Collins was one level above the street when she took this photo, probably on the fire escape. It's interesting that she didn't ask the person next to her to step back in order to clear the camera's view. I suspect she liked having the two out-of-focus foreground elements.

{Caption: Parade of Italian-Americans on Mott Street at a flag raising ceremony in honor of neighborhood boys in the United States Army}

Detail showing the band.


Here you see young people carrying the flag (more of a banner). They're following the band. People are throwing money onto the fabric.

{Caption: Italian-Americans of Mott Street raising a flag in honor of neighborhood boys in the United States Army.}

Now that they've passed by the parked cars you can see more of the banner. Despite its subject it's not really militaristic but has a religious theme — a priest blessing young soldiers whom we know will be going off to fight. The focus is very local. There's no evidence that the event is part of a national campaign. It appears to be of as well as by the two blocks of Mott Street where it takes place.

{Caption: Flag raising ceremony in the rain in honor of Mott Street boys in the United States Army}

Collins was in 274 Mott St. Now she's crossed to 279, on the west side of the street, to get this next shot. The parade has passed down the block and is by the back of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. The church faces Mulberry at Prince and is at the bottom of the parade's route.


In the photo just below the viewer sees the banner's patriotic message. Banners such as this were called flags of honor. As here, they'd be hung over a street, attached to buildings on either side. Street banners were also used to announce municipal events, show support for political candidates, and advertise major shows and festivals. There's a political example from the 1930s here and a municipal one here.


These photos show people watching the raising of the banner.




This one shows that a rain shower has recently passed. You can also see members of a band who are about to play. The couple in the foreground have a quiet dignity.


Collins took another photo of this couple, identifying them as a shoemaker and his wife. It's clear that they're in the doorway to his shop.


Collins' photos tend to have the lens at a child's eye level, as here, because that's the height at which an adult holds a twin-lens reflex camera. It interests me that the shirt of the man at right has a zipper closure. In 1942 zippers were not nearly as ubiquitous as they are now and I suspect they were very rarely seen on a man's shirt.


This detail of hands and face are not the main subject but they make a nice photographic study.



This honor guard seems to have been the only formally military element in the parade and, in keeping with the spirit of the day, its discipline isn't up to parade-ground standards.

{Caption: Italian-American Legionnaries marching in a parade on Mott Street, at the Feast of San Rocco (August 16) which ended in a flag raising ceremony in honor of the boys of the neighborhood who were in the United States Army}

Here you can see the band that was gathering in the background of an earlier photo. They call themselves the "Brooklyn Dodgers" and from the looks of them I'd say they took their name not from the baseball team but from the original sense of the word dodger: cunning, devious, untrustworthy, or, as Dickens had it, artful. It's also possible they took their name from the same source as did the baseball team. Wikipedia says the Brooklyn Dodgers were originally the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers, trolley dodger being a slang name for people from Brooklyn.

{Caption: Dancing and music on Mott Street, at a flag raising ceremony in honor of neighborhood boys in the United States Army}

The is a detail of the previous photo.




Taken only a few minutes apart, these two photos show residents at 274 Mott St.

{This building is directly opposite at 274 Mott St.}

Here are detail images of people viewing the parade from the fire escapes and windows.




One can imagine Collins wishing she had a telephoto lens so as to take close up shots of people observing from their windows. Or so it seems from this shot taken from street level.


After the parade Collins took photos of residents in an espresso shop and on the sidewalk.

{Caption: Italian-American cafe espresso shop on MacDougal Street where coffee and soft drinks are sold. The coffee machine cost one thousand dollars}

{Caption: Italian-Americans on MacDougal Street relaxing on Sunday}

In November 1942 Collins was in Lititz, Pennsylvania, and while there she took this photo of her reflection. In it you can see her camera. It's clearly a twin-lens reflex, probably a Rolleiflex. The photo shows the upper lens as bright and the lower one dark because the upper is transmitting light that is reflected from the bright sky above (it is the view lens). The lower lens is dark because it receives light but (unless the back of the camera is removed) does not transmit it.

{Lititz, Pennsylvania. Self-portrait at a public sale, November 1942}

The lower lens of Collins' has a lens hood like the one in this photo of this Rollei from 1933.

{Standard Rolleiflex Model 6RF, 1933; source: flickr}

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Some sources:

United States Office of War Information

Women Photographers of the FSA and OWI: Marjory Collins

Photographs by Marjory Collins, 1944, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute on Facebook

Collins, Marjory, 1912-1985. Papers of Marjory Collins, 1904-1985: A Finding Aid

Marjory Collins in Wikipedia

Marjory Collins (1912-1985), a Biographical Essay on the Library of Congress web site

Marjory Collins (1912-1985), Introduction on the Library of Congress web site

photographs of the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection on the Library of Congress web site

Women Photojournalists Prints & Photographs Division Holdings on the Library of Congress web site

Il viaggio di Marjory Collins in Sicilia. Sabato 31 marzo 2012. Ricordare Palermo. Palermo e la Sicilia durante il fascismo e la seconda guerra mondiale. Presenta una ricca galleria fotografica, sullo sbarco degli Alleati in Sicilia del 10 luglio 1943. (This article says that in July 1943 Collins was using a Rolleiflex twin lens camera.)

St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in Wikipedia

St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on NYC-Archtecture.com

History of Woodside, Queens (New York)

I received an email from Kindle saying the blog has at least one Kindle follower and would I please put up a new post (or they'd drop me). It's true I've been otherwise occupied. A few months ago Deniz Hughes of Denizblog suggested I do an article on the history of Woodside, Queens, for Wikipedia. I said I'd try. On and off since then I worked up a somewhat longer draft than I originally expected. I loaded the piece a couple of weeks ago and so far: (1) no one's sniped at it, (2) one helpful soul has made a useful addition. Here's the link: History of Woodside, Queens.

Despite its length there was quite a bit that I left out of the article. I'm thinking I'll find some time to make a post or two out of the research that didn't seem to fit in the Wikipedia format.

I have previously had something to say about this image from the article (here) --

Listening to music, 1965

Doing some year-end reordering of attic storage we came across a wayward album, an LP by Tracy Nelson with whom I was friends back in 1965. Within a day or so a family member mentioned that he had begun listening to Bill Evans, specifically his album, Everybody Digs Bill Evans. Another friend, Elspeth Leacock, gave me that album in 1965 and it's found with the rest of my old LPs in our basement. The two reminded me of yet a third friend and musician, Rodney Moag, who played in a bar I frequented in 1965. He hadn't cut an LP at that time and I didn't know about the 45 he'd made that year.

Back in 1965 Rod was the most versatile of the three. He did vocals and wrote many of the songs he sang accompanying himself on the mandolin. And he was also proficient on guitar, dobro, violin, and viola. The group he led was called the Front Porch Back Steppers. I don't recall any others in that group but they probably included Charlie Taylor on bass and keyboard and maybe Don Gale on banjo.

This video was made 45 years after I met Rod but it gives some idea of the music I heard him play: Rod Moag at Forest Grove

(Rod performing at the Forest Grove Music Show, Chandler, Texas, on December 19, 2009; YouTube video uploaded by Alvin Murphy on Jan 16, 2012.)

Rod is much more than a versatile musician. He's a linguist with a specialty in languages of the Indian sub-continent. When I knew him he was studying for his Master's in Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin. This photo shows him at a Peace Corps training program where he gave instruction in speaking Malayalam, the language of the Indian state of Kerala.

{Rodney Moag-Director of India 20A Malayalam Language Instruction, Photos from Peace Corps training held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee August 31 - November 22, 1965}

Rod's blindness seems more an attribute than a liability. It certainly hasn't been an obstacle in his careers as professor and musician. When I knew him in Madison he moved easily around campus and downtown, using his foldable "elephant thermometer" as much to warn people that he was sightless as to navigate his way. He told me he liked to run foot races and that he could "watch" tv, not just listen to the audio component. He'd pepper his conversation with visual idioms such as "see you later" and "I saw him (or her) the other day."

I'd often sit with Rod's wife, Rachel, at Glenn & Ann's, the bar where the backsteppers played. She told me about Rod's ability to cook, clean, and manage his life so independently that there seemed little difference between him and her sighted friends. She did say, however, that she was taken back the first time she visited his apartment during the evening. When she saw all the lights were out, she thought maybe Rod had forgotten their date and almost left without knocking. But he'd heard her approach and called out a welcome. After that, he said he tried to remember to put a light on when he thought it might be dark outside.

I remember driving Rod and Rachel to Minneapolis one weekend. She was many months pregnant and the two of them thought it best that she not drive that long way. They owned a VW Beetle which fitted us well enough but without a whole lot of room to spare. I can't recall the purpose of the trip. Possibly to attend an event at the Guthrie Theater, possibly to visit her parents, probably both.

An internet search turns up this clipping announcing Rod and Rachel's engagement.

{Moag-Foley engagement, Wyoming Reporter, Thurs, Feb 6, 1964}

If Rod is the most versatile of my three musicians of 1965, Tracy Nelson is the best singer. When young, both she and Rod used radio programs as their source of inspiration. In his case it was country and bluegrass music coming out of Nashville and vicinity. In hers it was blues coming from the clubs of Chicago's South Side. Both of them nurtured their talents somewhat against the grain — he as a kid from upstate New York with a bent for the music of Appalachia and she as a kid from central Wisconsin with a talent for singing Black urban blues. She was an undergraduate in the School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin when he was there studying for his Master's in Indian Studies.

They share a love for music that has deep roots in regional traditions, a kind of historical authenticity. For Rod this manifests as a love for old time country/bluegrass and Texas swing. Tracy's passion is two-fold: first for the music which grew from African-American field hollars and guitar blues and expressed itself in urban ghettos of burgeoning industrial cities, and second for the same Appalachian sound which Rod admires. In an interview Tracy once revealed how unsuited she felt herself to be in the Hait-Ashbury atmosphere of the early 1970s. She felt uncomfortable with the culture of drugs, hip spiritualism, and pounding rock rhythms and at that time she moved from San Francisco to Nashville, left her blues rock band and made a country album.

This is how she looked at the time I met her.

{Tracy Nelson, ca. 1965 from simplybek on Tumblr }

In 1964 she was able to make her first album courtesy of Sam Charters who arranged a recording session with Prestige. I came to know her at about that time. My flatmate had met her — I forget how — and after they'd started seeing one another she'd drop by and sometimes to sing but mostly just to share some beers and talk. My flatmate played stride piano, picked up from listening to radio broadcasts from his childhood home in Kansas. When Tracy put together the group that was to back her at the Prestige recording date she included him as pianist.

The recording is Deep Are the Roots. Released in 1965, it contained songs from the blues greats of the 1920s and '30s, including Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.


You can hear four 30-second teasers from that record in a sampler put out by Prestige called The Bluesville Years, Vol. 7: Blues Blue, Blues White. The teasers show that Tracy's voice was powerful then but not as strong as it would become later in her professional career. They display the harmonica playing of her friend Charlie Musselwhite and the piano of my flatmate.

Tracy sang at a place called The Pub in Madison, but I don't recall going there to see her perform.

There are quite a few videos of Tracy on YouTube. One features a song she wrote in 1968. It's from The Lonesome Pine Specials of 1987 (The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts): Tracy Nelson - Down So Low. Another comes from the 22nd Annual Simi Valley Cajun & Blues Music Festival on Memorial Day Weekend, 2011: One More Mile (Muddy Waters) - Mannish Boys Revue with Tracy Nelson - Live in Simi Valley.

She sings both blues and country in snippets played during this interview on the American Routes program (radio station WWNO, Aug. 4, 2010). This interview, which includes an excellent and succinct overview of Tracy's career, brings out a side of her music I hadn't known about. After blues and country, she turned to R&B for a while. Some of the songs she sang at this time were covers of ones by Irma Thomas and Tracy worked with Irma at least once. You can hear her with Marcia Ball doing backup vocals on this video:


Tracy showed a more popular country style in a segment of the Prairie Home Companion show of June 16, 2001: Got A New Truck - Tracy Nelson and Band, Live from the Orpheum Theater in Memphis. Before the show Tracy participated in an interview that's available here: Tracy Nelson: Living Well, June 12, 2001, by Russ Ringsak.

This image shows Tracy's first country album (and the one that turned up in our attic).

{Mother Earth (feat. Tracy Nelson) - Tracy Nelson Country - 1969}

A few days ago, on the occasion of Tracy's birthday, a favorite blogger of mine — Bent Sorensen — linked to two of her songs, one from the earliest country album and the other from her San Francisco band, Mother Earth: (1) Tracy Nelson: I Fall To Pieces - from Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country, 1969 and (2) Mother Earth: Mother Earth (Memphis Slim) - from Living With the Animals, 1968. Of the former Bent says Tracy's version is better than Patsy Cline’s original and of the latter he says Tracy is "one of the most underrated female singers of all time." He also points out that the latter feature "Makel Blumfeld" on lead guitar, that man being the great Mike Bloomfield. It also features Barry Goldberg on keyboards.

If Rod Moag and Tracy Nelson have much in common, neither, so far as I know, has any connection with Bill Evans. His place in this blog post is really about the act of another 1965 U of W friend, Elspeth Leacock, who (as I say) put Everybody Digs Bill Evans in my hands. She gave it to me after I'd admitted that I enjoyed Miles Davis's Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain, but did not really have much else in the way of jazz likes. Or much knowledge. I certainly didn't know that Bill Evans played on the former and didn't notice there was no piano on the latter. I've always been grateful to Elspeth for introducing me to his music. I've collected his recordings ever since and they've given me pleasure for close on fifty years.

I can't recall how I came to know Elspeth but suspect we met via mutual friends Carole Deutch and Phil Buss. Phil was another Madison musician. He played and sang at the 609 Club and Nitty Gritty and he had a shop where he made high quality guitars. I recall a time when he took me out for some target practice using rifles and a pistol that he owned. Carole was a friend of his. In the late '60s she married a fellow history grad student who would later become Chairman of the Board at John Wiley & Sons.

This shows Carole in the Bernal Heights district of San Francisco in the early 1970s.

{source: San Francisco's Bernal Heights (Bernal History Project, Carl Nolte, Arcadia Publishing, 2007)}

Here is a guitar Phil made for his younger sister.

{P Buss, luthier, Fretted String Instrument Shop, Madison, Wisconsin. Made in 1964 for Mary Lynn Buss, image source: Vintage Instrument Dating}

Someone with the handle hansgy1 has put Everybody Digs Bill Evans on YouTube. I'd link to it, but I'm not sure hansgy1 obtained rights before uploading.

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Side notes:

1. Searching Phil brings up reminiscences from friends of his. One mentions some of the musicians who also played the Madison clubs in the mid-1960s, including Marshall Brickman, Danny Kalb, Eric Weissberg, and Paul Prestopino. I think they are all still performing; Phil died young: 15 June 1988, at the age of 49.

Here's the text of one reminiscence of Phil:

Nitty Gritty bar: Re: Marsh Shapiro, RIP

Post by snoqueen » Wed Dec 26, 2012 3:59 pm
His original Nitty Gritty was the greatest place downtown. I can picture sitting in there on a Sunday night in about 1974 listening to Phil Buss play "In The Pines" with pinball games jingling in the background. One time Phil had a bunch of friends sitting in and they jammed on Folsom Prison. It was one of those performances that lifted the roof off the building and I still get chills remembering how it just would not stop. You could tell when Marsh was happy -- he'd jump up on one of the picnic tables. He did on that night.

The Gritty hosted an amazing lineup of bands. I think the State Historical Society has a definitive collection of street posters from the era -- the beginning of "postering" -- and if someone was interested they could assemble a nice little Gritty retrospective in Marsh's memory.

Thanks to Marsh Shapiro for a fine little bar and some good times -- and that's a nice legacy.

2. The web page that contains the photo of Rod doing Peace Corps language training also includes a photo of trainees drinking beer, Blatz beer.


In 1965 a 6-pack of that beer cost maybe $0.99 at the local supermarket (and if you saved your Green Stamps you might get it for less). Though that seems cheap, I didn't always have the cash to buy it. A pocket calendar I kept then contains the statement "flat broke" in the box for September 15, 1965. (In fact 99 cents was probably a fair price for that beer in current terms; using the CPI inflator shows that a 1965 dollar is now worth more than $7.00.)