Martin Blank

john wesley harding which contIained this song was released on December 27, 1967, so it couldn't have been written in 1968

didn' LBJ and JFK have a furious row that morning about moving Yarborough and Connally back to their oringal seating;. Y with JFK and C with LBJ

i'll leave you with this for those who are interested. i think it's very good. One Flew Over the Cuckoo.odt

Kesey considered it a much harder read than cuckoo but no reason not to read it. A big book and very worthwhile. Faulknerkan in its dealings with time amd perspective as he was in his experienes with LSD. With lee remick and Henry Fonda

Here's Kesey on the assassination as it happened and affected him: The Loss of Innocence Ken Kesey I was back in New York with my wife and family for the opening of "Cuckoo's Nest" on Broadway. I had just finished my second novel and I wasn't working on anything else; I was waiting for whatever came up to come up. After the opening, my wife and family flew back, and I drove back with this friend of mine, George Walker, and another guy that we sprung from the nuthouse. And we were about half a day out of New York, headed west and eating peyote. It makes the driving interesting, especially the late fall in that northern part of America. We were in Pennsylvania when the news began to come in over the radio that the president had been shot. And I never paid much attention to politics,but as we drove, and the news came in over that car radio, and we stopped in at service stations and Howard Johnaon's and llittle fast food places across the United States, a really profound thing happened to all of us. We liked the feeling of the country and the look of the country and the look of the people. It was like a light was shining and everything else was foggy. As we drove farther across, the weather began to get worse, and the information was coming in steadily all the time. At first he was wounded, and they wouldn't say whether he was dead, and then you hear about Officer Tippet being killed, and then you hear about Oswald, and by that time we were in Michigan. So all the way across the United States, we're involved in this, all these characters like old radio-fiction characters in my mind. We pulled into Jackson Hole, Wyo., as it was sort of finally coming to its end. It was blizzarding, and during that afternoon, the road finally was just too snowy to go on anymore. We pulled up and stopped at a closed-down station, a big red, white and blue Chevron. Three days on peyote and national grief, and looking up in the sky in this blizzard coming down, and then this red, white and blue Chevron, and I thought, "This is no accident. This is something very, very special and deep." As we drove farther across, the weather began to get worse, and the information was coming in steadily all the time. At first he was wounded, and they wouldn't say whether he was dead, and then you hear about Officer Tippet being killed, and then you hear about Oswald, and by that time we were in Michigan. So all the way across the United States, we're involved in this, all these characters like old radio-fiction characters in my mind. We pulled into Jackson Hole, Wyo. as it was sort of finally coming to its end. It was blizzarding, and during that afternoon, the road finally was just too snowy to go on anymore. We pulled up and stopped at a closed-down station, a big red, white and blue Chevron. Three days on peyote and national grief, and looking up in the sky in this blizzard coming down, and then this red, white and blue Chevron, and I thought, "This is no accident. This is something very, very special and deep." And I began to cry, not so much for the president as for something American that was innocent and bright-eyed and capable. And it's not been the same since; we lost the last person I can think of that we could believe in. I remember when they finally said the president was dead, George Walker said, "The son of a bitch has killed him." He didn't say some son of a bitch, he said the son of a bitch. We thought we didn't have him. The European nations had him, the Muslim crazies had him, but the United States? No, we were above that. And this was a real loss of that opinion of ourselves as an innocent, wonderful, above-board nation. It was a loss of our feeling of invulnerability — that you could walk across the nation and be all right, nobody is going to hurt you. That next spring, we packed up to do the same thing, just drive across the country in a bus. It spun off of this feeling of seeing the landscape of the American people in this new way. I think the whole hippie movement, this love-every- body feeling for each other, was born of that feeling. It was born of the death. When God wants to really wake up a nation, he has to use somebody that counts. When God wants to get your attention, he always has to use blood.

there's probably some Ken Nordine in there somewhere too.

sorry about the poet and thanks to who fixed it. The headline should read: Ken Kesey and style in Murder Most Foul If anyone can fix it

sorry about that. “What did she say he was doing out there on the railroad tracks? Counting?” “The ties,” Blondboy answers. “Counting the ties between Puerto Sancto and the next village. Thirty miles away. Counting the railroad ties. They got him doped up and dared him and he did it, didn’t he, hee hee?” “Houlihan,” says Blackbeard’s voice, gentler. “The great Houlihan. Done in by downers and a dare.” Blackbeard sounded honestly grieved, and Deboree found himself suddenly liking him. "I can’t believe it . . .” “Don’t let it bother you, bro. He was fried, you know? Gangrened. But c’mere and check this. I bet this makes you take that wienie outta your mouth . . .” Deboree tries to lift his eyes open, but the tunnel is twining too fast. Let it close, he tells himself happily. Who’s afraid of the dark now? Houlihan wasn’t merely making noise—he was counting. He didn’t lose it. We didn’t lose it. We were all counting. The dark space about him is suddenly filled with faces, winking off and on. Deboree watches them twinkle, feeling warm and befriended, equally fond of all the countenances, those close, those far, those known, those never met, those dead, those never dead. Hello faces. Come back. Come on back all of you even LBJ with your Texas cheeks eroded by compromises come back. Khrushchev, fearless beyond peasant ignorance, healthy beside Eisenhower, come back both of you. James Dean all picked apart and Tab Hunter all put together, Michael Rennie in your silver suit the day the earth stood still for peace, come back all of you. Now go away and leave me. Now come back. Come back Vaughn Monroe, Ethel Waters, Krazy Kat, Lou Costello, Harpo Marx, Adlai Stevenson, Ernest Hemingway, Herbert Hoover, Harry Belafonte, Timothy Leary, Ron Boise, Jerry Lee Lewis, Lee Harvey Oswald, Chou En-lai, Ludwig Erhard, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Mandy Rice-Davies, General Curtis LeMay and Gordon Cooper, John O’Hara and Liz Taylor, Estes Kefauver and Governor Scranton, The Invisible Man and The Lonely Crowd, The True Believer and The Emerging Nations, the Hungarian Freedom Fighters, Elsa Maxwell, Dinah Washington, Jean Cocteau, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Jimmy Hatlo, Aldous Huxley, Edith Piaf, Zasu Pitts, Seymour Glass, Big Daddy Nord, Grandma Whittier, Grandpa Deboree, Pretty Boy Floyd, Big Boy Williams, Boyo Behan, Mickey Rooney, Mickey Mantle, Mickey McGee, Mickey Mouse, come back, go away, come on back. That summer sweet Frisco with flowers in your hair come back. Now go away. Cleaver, come back. Abbie, come back. And you that never left come back anew, Joan Baez, Bob Kaufmann, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gordon Lish, Gordon Fraser, Gregory Corso, Ira Sandperl, Fritz Peris, swine pearls and even you black bus Charlie Manson asshole come back afresh you know now go away now come back. We are being summoned. We get a reprieve, not just rebop. He wasn’t just riffing; he was counting. Appear and testify. Young Cassius Clay. Young Mailer. Young Miller. Young Jack Kerouac before you fractured your football career at Columbia and popped your hernia in Esquire. Young Sandy without your credit card bare. Young Devlin. Young Dylan. Young Lennon. Young lovers wherever you are. Come back and remember and go away and come back. Attendance mandatory but not required.

The last part of Ken Kesey's short story about the death of Neal Cassady. (Dean Moriarty in On the Road and Houlihan in the story. Kesey is Deboree Devlin.) The story is entitled The Day After Superman Died and appeared in Esquire in 1982, It concerns Derboree learning about Houlihan's death in Mexcico and his reaction. I think Murder Most Foul is closer to Kesey's piece in style and intent than American Pie or We Didn't Start the Fire. Here's the excerpt (longish)

The song could be about (seems to fit) Dylan's and Edie Sedgwick's relationship. she was a poor little rich girl who glommed onto andy warhol and his factory

Some say it's the Beatles. you also can see elephants in the trees even without chemical help.

The song is "oxford town." oxford mississippi that is. it was released May 27, 1963 on the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and so couldn't have been addressing JFK's killing ]

I think the day was picked because of his tour schedule more than anything else. she also was pregnant with her and bob 's first child. She had a daughter i believe with her first husband