Chronicles - Bob Dylan [100]
He was a bit of a film critic, too. While other intellectual types might be discussing poetic differences between T. S. Eliot and e. e. cummings, Pankake would come up with arguments about why John Wayne was a better cowboy in Rio Bravo then he was in Legend of the Lost. He expounded on directors like Howard Hawks or John Ford, that they get Wayne when other directors don’t. Maybe Pankake was right, maybe not. It wasn’t that big a deal. Actually, as far as Wayne goes, I’d meet the Duke in the mid-’60s. He was the big male movie star at the time and was filming a war movie about Pearl Harbor, In Harm’s Way, over in Hawaii. A girl I used to know in Minneapolis, Bonnie Beecher, had become an actress and was playing a supporting role. Me and my band, The Hawks, had stopped through there on our way to Australia and she invited me down to the set, a naval battleship. She introduced me to the Duke, who was in full military uniform, an army of people surrounding him. I watched him film a scene and then Bonnie brought me over to meet him. “I hear you’re a folksinger,” he said and I nodded. “Sing something,” he said. I took out my guitar and sang “Buffalo Skinners” and he smiled, looked at Burgess Meredith who was sitting in a canvas chair, then he looked back at me and said, “I like that. Left that drover’s bones to bleach, heh?” “Yup.” He asked me if I knew “Blood on the Saddle.” I did know “Blood on the Saddle,” a little bit of it, anyway, but I knew “High Noon” better. I thought about singing it and maybe if I was standing there with Gary Cooper, I would have. But Wayne wasn’t Gary Cooper. I don’t know if he would have liked that song. The Duke was a massive figure. He looked like a heavy piece of hauled lumber, and it didn’t seem like any man could stand shoulder to shoulder with him. Not anybody in the movies, anyway. I thought of asking him why some of his cowboy films were better than others, but it would have been crazy to do that. Or maybe it wouldn’t have been…I don’t know. In any case, I never would have dreamed that I’d be standing there on a battleship, somewhere in the Pacific singing for the great cowboy John Wayne, while back in Minneapolis face-to-face with Jon Pankake…
“You’re trying hard, but you’ll never turn into Woody Guthrie,” Pankake says to me as if he’s looking down from some high hill, like something has violated his instincts. It was no fun being around Pankake. He made me nervous. He breathed fire through his nose. “You better think of something else. You’re doing it for nothing. Jack Elliott’s already been where you are and gone. Ever heard of him?” No, I’d never heard of Jack Elliott. When Pankake said his name, it was the first time I’d heard it. “Never heard of him, no. What does he sound like?” John said that he’d play me his records and that I was in for a surprise.
Pankake lived in an apartment above McCosh’s bookstore, a place that specialized in eclectic old books, ancient texts, philosophical political pamphlets from the 1800s on up. It was a neighborhood hangout for intellectuals and Beat types, on the main floor of an old Victorian house only a few blocks away. I went there with Pankake and saw it was true that he had all the incredible records, ones you never saw and wouldn’t know where to get. For someone who didn’t sing and play, it was amazing that he had so many. The record he took out and played for me first was Jack Takes the Floor on the Topic label out of London — an imported record, a very obscure one. There were probably only about ten of these discs in the whole U.S.A., or maybe Pankake had the only one in the country. I didn’t know. If Pankake hadn’t played it for me most likely I would have never heard it. The record started to spin and Jack’s voice blasted into the room. “San Francisco Bay Blues,” “Ol’ Riley” and “Bed Bug Blues” go by in a flash. Damn, I’m thinking, this guy is really great. He sounds just