Correspondence #38: Charley Plymell
The sweet smell of success?
We have given some much-deserved attention to the poet Charley Plymell of late, with our valued contributor Jonah Raskin reviewing the latest anthology of his work and also interviewing the man about his life, his relationships with other leading figures of the Beat Generation and the musical themes that have enriched his days.
By way of a follow-up, Plymell dropped Rock and the Beat Generation a few more lines framing his own thoughts, with particular reference to the perfume bottles utilised as eye-catching promotional devices for his book Benzedrine Highway.
Take it away, sir…
Email, July 7th, 2024
My biographer questioned the perfume graphics. They are the great work of Miriam [Linna] at Norton Records/Kicks Books, one of my publishers. Her genius has been the history of race; R&B; rock’n’roll; records. Her discovery of Bloodshot Bill got my poems sung to Rockabilly. I have ordered hard to find records from her for decades.
She said one time that my book, Benzedrine Highway was one of the few books to spawn perfumes. She has some great labels. The one of mine that needs explication in these stupid times is the Billy the Kid & Custer collage of mine. Today's connotation would be negative with image of kid with machine gun beside the Flat Iron Building in NYC. It is a fact that Billy the Kid was from Hell's Kitchen district in NYC. His mother took him to Wichita, my home town before he went wrong.
I probably found the image of the kid with Tommy Gun in a 1930s Look magazine or something like it. He is holding a ‘Tommy gun’ or a ‘Machine gun’ which was a full automatic used by Pretty Boy Floyd, Dillinger, and other gangsters of the Depression Era.
It was quickly outlawed because they had outgunned the law. Had we followed that decision instead of going ignorant and letting youth buy the automatic guns of today used for mass shootings, we would have been intelligent. The image connotation has backfired (no pun intended).
As far as Custer , he was a stupid fuck from Upstate NY who lost the famous battle with Indians. My son & I visited a fort in Kansas where he had been & learned he couldn't do much of anything, and indeed, accidentally shot his horse in the leg while showing off. That's the back story of my images on perfume bottles. I think Miriam did the one for ‘Apocalypse Rose’.
I was going to make a label using ‘Galloping Sluts’ that Claude Pelieu called the girls who rode horses to their cafe here in Cherry Valley. That would have caused a real problem today. Only a Frenchman can say things like that in these parts.
Charley Plymell
See also: ‘Interview #25: Charley Plymell’, July 6th, 2024; ‘Book review #25: Over the Stage of Kansas’, June 18th, 2024