Vertigo One-hundred and fifty miles south of San Francisco, Partington Ridge, in the western Santa Lucia Mountains of California, sits 1,600-feet almost directly above the Pacific Ocean, ten miles south of the Big Sur Valley and just north of Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. The old trail up to Partington Ridge went “straight up the mountainside.” It was so precipitous some people experienced vertigo or acrophobia ascending the narrow, nearly vertical path. Dr. Jaime de Angulo made his first visit to Partington Ridge in 1915. “I must confess,” he remembered, “I got dizzy and had to get off my horse and lead him…”[1] Partington Ridge is named for John and Laura Partington, the first Anglo homesteaders who settled there in 1874. The Liberty Island Light Laura Stone Harmon (later Partington) was born in 1840, in the seaside hamlet of East Machais, Maine, 30 miles from the Canadian border and 3,500 miles from Big Sur.[2] On a small island at the mouth of Machais Bay stood the Libby Island Light, which guided ships safely in and out of the port, and its constancy was a reassuring presence in inclement weather. East Machais was then a small community of fisherman, agrarians, and lumbermen. Laura’s father, Hiriam Hill Harmon, was a farmer who had plenty of farmhands. Laura was the eighth of her mother’s 13 surviving children.[3] In late 1848, shortly before Laura’s ninth birthday, the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier began printing stories about the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill. The California Gold Rush captivated the minds of a generation of young Americans who dreaded the life of hard labor that their parents had endured. Laura’s 17-year-old brother Leonard Spaulding Harmon was among them. By the spring of 1849, the local newspapers were full of accounts of prospectors who’d struck it rich in the Golden State. One evening after supper, Leonard startled his parents with the news that he was leaving for California. As the months and years went by, Leonard sent letters home to his folks, postmarked in faraway San Francisco and filled with descriptions of the wonders of California. His mother would read them aloud to the family. They made a lasting impression on his little sister Laura. She dreamed of California. In May of 1860, at the age of 20, Laura Harmon married a Machais housepainter named Benjamin Franklin “Frank” Longfellow, a distant cousin of the famous American poet—and perhaps a distant relative of Laura’s as well; her great aunt Rebecca was a Longfellow.[4] The following year Laura gave birth to Frank’s child a few months before the Civil War began[5]. Frank joined the Union Army, Company C, 6th Maine Infantry. He was wounded in the April 1862 Siege of Yorktown and died of his injuries. He was 20 years old.[6] To escape the grief of her husband’s death, Laura focused her attention on her child, her one remaining connection to Frank. But the baby soon sickened and died. Laura was 23 years old. She’d buried her husband and her baby in rapid succession. The nation was now at war. In mourning and consumed with loneliness, she spent more and more time dreaming of California. One evening, she wrote a letter to her brother Leonard in San Francisco, informing him of her intention to visit the Golden State. Going to the West Travel during the Civil War was a particularly precarious undertaking. But Laura Harmon was undaunted, packing her things, selling all her furniture, and heading west in the summer of 1863. Her parents were dumbfounded. Before the transcontinental railroad opened in 1869, there were only four ways to get from Maine to San Francisco. Each necessitated months of strenuous travel. The first involved an unbelievably long and bumpy stagecoach ride. The second entailed a five or six-month journey in a spring wagon. The third involved a 15,000-mile, eight-month ocean voyage around Cape Horn, through the 40-foot waves of Drake’s Passage, between the southernmost tip of the South American continent and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica – still regarded as one of the most dangerous maritime passages on the planet. Laura Harmon chose the fourth option, sailing from New England to the east coast of Panama, where she boarded a train across the isthmus to the west coast. There, she waited for the arrival of a steamship bound for San Francisco.[7] Laura met John James Partington in San Francisco. He was nearly ten years her senior. Born in Buffalo New York in 1831, his parents were immigrants from England. Like so many teenagers in his generation, John Partington followed the Gold Rush west, sailing around the horn and landing in San Francisco in 1850.[8] Having “seen the elephant,” Partington found employment overseeing the drilling of exploratory oil wells in the Santa Cruz Mountains, fifty miles south of San Francisco. In March 1864, after a brief courtship, Laura and John were married. They settled in the seaside community of Santa Cruz, at the north end of Monterey Bay, 70 miles south of San Francisco. By 1873, they had five children.[9] Laura had lived her entire life in Downeast Maine where, from December through April, the temperature never rose above 38ºF. The mild California climate enchanted her. It never snowed or froze in Santa Cruz. It was 60ºF, even on New Year’s Day. She never looked back. Where the Mountains Hold Back the Sea Finding no oil in the Santa Cruz Mountains, John Partington decided to reconnoiter the steep and rugged Santa Lucia Mountains. He heard stories about the huge stands of timber and tanoak in the Big Sur country south of Monterey. In post-Civil War America, there were few places in the lower 48 as isolated, uninhabited, and as timber rich as Big Sur. Travelling on horseback over miles of sinuous trails, through shadowy canyons of ferns and redwood trees, and over steep ridges thousands of feet above the sea, Partington was intrigued. He quickly recognized the economic possibilities before him. There were thousands of acres old growth

M.C. Ted Brooks (1915-1997), the grandfather of rap music made the first rap music video, “Noah,” in 1946. Although millions have viewed the video on YouTube, very little has been written about Brooks’ life and career. The obscure short film of “Noah,” featuring the gospel jubilee vocal group the Jubalaires  is part of the Prelinger Archives, an eclectic collection of films relating to “U.S. cultural history, the evolution of the American landscape, everyday life and social history.” Founded in 1982, the archives contain over 60,000 “ephemeral” films—all the movies we never saw—commercials, educationals, industrials, amateur movies, art films, shorts, and “soundies.” Their website explains, “Typically, ephemeral films were produced to fulfill specific purposes at specific times, and many exist today only by chance or accident.” Finally, these obscure and largely forgotten films in this extensive collection are seeing the light of day after languishing in the vaults for decades.“ In the days before television, half a century before MTV, the earliest music videos were called “soundies.” These short, two or three-minute black-and-white 16mm or 35mm films starred popular (and not so popular) entertainers who lip-synched to audio playback of their recordings. Today, soundies provide opportunities to see now-forgotten performers in their prime. In some instances, the soundie is the only surviving film clip of a given artist’s work. In the 1940s, soundies were viewed ­on coin-operated motion picture jukeboxes found in saloons and hotel lobbies in the days before television. Since many of these machines were placed in African American communities, a lot of soundies featured Black entertainers performing pop songs, blues, jazz, and religious music. Jubilee is an entertaining genre of African American gospel quartet singing, characterized by its upbeat tempo, lyrical expressions of joyfulness, syncopated timing, modern close harmony, and vocal acrobatics not usually found in conventional “flatfooted” black spirituals. Although practically forgotten in our time, the gospel jubilee vocal group the Jubalaires of Jacksonville, Florida, made dozens of recordings and were heard on thousands of live radio broadcasts. They appeared in Hollywood movies and as guests on prime-time television. They performed live before for hundreds of thousands of fans. The Jubalaires gospel jubilee quartet’s soundie “Noah” was produced and directed by William Forest Crouch (1904-1968), a white man married to a Black woman, who produced more than eighty soundies for the Soundies Distributing Corporation of America in Chicago, between 1941-1948. In”Noah”, we see four young, clean cut Black men, with their permed hair slicked back, immaculately dressed in matching double-breasted pin-stripe suits, fashionable at the time, replete with folded pocket handkerchiefs, and matching silk neckties. They stand before a crudely sketched backdrop, like something out of a cartoon for children, depicting Noah’s Ark of legend. Accompanied by Bill Lee Johnson’s driving guitar, the quartet launches into a syncopated up-tempo jubilee gospel number. Tenor John “Shorty” Jennings sings serenely for few lines while the other three singers chant rhythmically behind him. In the online comments on the YouTube video, someone has written of the diminutive John Jennings, “That short dude seems to be the most honest guy on Earth.” Then the group’s 30-year-old baritone Theodore “Ted” Brooks steps forward to begin his sermon. Brooks is not a tall man, just 5′ 6″ and about 150 pounds, but his presence is large. He has a pencil-thin moustache and the elegant long fingeres of a concert pianist. Unsmiling and serious as a heart attack, we can see the wide gap between his top two front teeth, one of which is capped in gold, and there’s a small scar visible just to the left of the corner of his mouth, giving him the “gangsta” countenance of a modern-day rapper. Brooks’ syncopated fire and brimstone sermon is unmistakably rap music to any twenty-first century listener. He fiercely half talks/half sings syncopated rhyming couplets, percussively chopping up the rhythm with shifting dynamics and emphatic hand gestures. His confident presentation is utterly compelling; you can hardly take your eyes off the guy. Alas, it’s over all too soon—but one cannot help but watch the video again, so thrilling is the performance. Mesmerized, I have viewed this video more than fifty times. As of this writing, the Jubalaires two and a half minute soundie of “Noah” has garnered well over 6.7 million views as well as more than 10,000 comments since it was first posted to YouTube in 2008. Though it was filmed nearly eighty years ago, many of the YouTube comments refer to it as the “first rap record.” There are, in fact, a number of examples of earlier recordings of gospel jubilee quartets singing a hip, syncopated rap-like narrative, that predate the Jubalaires’ “Noah”—most notably those made by Willie “Bill” Thomas Johnson (1913-1980), the lead singer, narrator, guitarist, and songwriter of the influential and long-lived Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet—later the Golden Gate Quartet—who are known to fans as “the Gates.” In 1947, Johnson would leave The Gates and join Ted Brooks and the Jubalaires. The Gates, who began recording in the 1930s, brought a rhythmic blues beat and jazz rhythms to conventual gospel standards—what Willie Johnson called “vocal percussion.” According to Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, “The Gates were able to maintain rhythmic propulsion without recourse to repeating words or echoing phrases; the ‘movement’ was sustained by the suggestion of a chant, and the steady beat of the bass singer Orlandus Wilson.” In fact, the Jubalaires arrangement of “Noah” is closely based on Willie T. Johnson’s vocal arrangement of the same song recorded by the Gates on December 14, 1939 (Bluebird B-7962), six years earlier. The Gates were a great influence upon Ted Brooks and his fellow Jubalaires, as well as practically every other gospel group in America at that time. Although the Jubalaires 1946 recording of “Noah” is not the earliest example of what is now recognized as rap music, it’s certainly one of the best. But if you listen closely, you can also hear the influence of jazz, country blues, southern sacred music, and fire and brimstone southern preachers in the

To the west of the southern tip of Greenland, in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of the eastern Canadian Arctic’s Nunavut territory, is an inlet of the North Atlantic Ocean that extends into southeastern Baffin Island, called Frobisher Bay. It is named for the English explorer and privateer, Sir Martin Frobisher (1535-1594). In June of 1576, the 40-year-old Frobisher mounted an expedition to discover the fabled Northwest Passage and thereby a shorter route to China. On Kodlunarn Island, near the frigid bay that bears his name, Frobisher came upon a sparkling black rock that contained brassy yellow crystals. Although he didn’t find the Northwest Passage, Frobisher wasn’t disappointed, for he believed he’d discovered the “mother lode.” He took the black stone back to England and had his investors examine it carefully. This convinced them that Frobisher had indeed discovered gold in the “New World,” and they quickly raised the capital to finance his second voyage. In July of 1577, Admiral Frobisher returned to Hall’s Island in Qikiqtaaluk and established the first European mining operation in Canada. His men loaded 200 tons of ore onto the ships and sailed back to England. Word of Frobisher’s remarkable accomplishments reached Queen Elizabeth I, who wanted to invest in the North American gold mine. Her magnanimity helped make his third voyage possible. In June of 1578, Frobisher left England with 15 ships and 400 men. But this was no voyage of discovery: this was a for-profit mining expedition. After weeks of backbreaking work on Hall’s Island, they’d stocked the holds of their vessels with an abundance of the sparkling black rock. Frobisher sailed his fleet across the Atlantic and delivered the 1,400-ton cargo of ore to the foundry in Dartford, England. But the smelters had bad news – after many failed attempts, they discovered that they could not refine gold from the ore because it turned out to be common iron pyrite – it was “fool’s gold.” Frobisher was crestfallen. This major faux pas not only tarnished his reputation, but it also bankrupted him, as well as most of his investors, a few of whom were forced into debtor’s prison. In the end, the worthless sparkling black ore was used to pave the streets of London ­– a detail has become entrenched in English folklore. Sir Richard “Dick” Whittington (1354–1423), a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer, was a successful merchant who appointed Lord Mayor of London in 1397, 1406, and 1419. A traditional rhyme survives in the English oral tradition:   Turn again, Whittington, Once Lord Mayor of London! Turn again, Whittington, Twice Lord Mayor of London! Turn again, Whittington, Thrice Lord Mayor of London! Fictionalized versions of Whittington’s biography have been immortalized in five centuries of theatrical plays, pantomimes, and storybooks that tell the folktale of “Dick Whittington and his Cat.” The earliest written reference to his legend is a theatrical registry notice dated 1604-1605. In The Adventures of Sir Richard Whittington, published in 1730, young Dick travels to London because he had heard that the streets of the city were “paved with gold.” On Friday, August 20, 1576, during his first voyage to Kodlunarn Island, Admiral Frobisher dispatched five British sailors from the 25-ton barque Gabriel anchored in Frobisher Bay, to go ashore in wooden rowboat. He instructed them to stay away from the Natives, who had already proved themselves to be formidable warriors. Unfortunately, the sailors did not heed his warning and were captured by the local Inuit; very likely to gain possession of their well-built hardwood English dinghy and oars. The all-too-brief Arctic summer was nearing its end and soon sea ice would choke the bay. After five days of waiting for the missing sailors to return, Frobisher threw in the towel and set sail for England, short-handed. Michael Lok, a prominent investor in the expedition, wrote that Frobisher presumed the five sailors had been apprehended by the Inuit and “judged they were taken and kept by force. The Canadian archaeologist and historian Robert McGhee has written about sailors long confined aboard a diminutive sixteenth-century sailing vessel: “Perhaps we should try to imagine the motives of the five sailors, young men who for ten weeks had endured the cramped quarters of a cold, wet, pitching ship. They had lived on bad food and worse beer, and had slept huddled together on the hard deck of a tiny forecastle. They had been subject to the discipline of a captain famous for his temper and impetuous actions. For the past few days they had come to be acquainted with the most extraordinary people they had ever met, smiling strangers who brought them fresh fish … dressed in warm furs, were eager to trade furs and ivory objects that could easily be sold for a profit at home in England, and introduced the sailors to their shy, tattooed, and charming wives and daughters. An invitation to come ashore and further their acquaintance, as well as to walk freely on the dry tundra and drink clean water from a stream, may have been too enticing to resist.” Nearly 300 years later, in 1860, an Arctic enthusiast from Cincinnati, Ohio, named Charles Francis Hall (1821-1871), sailed to Baffin Island, in the eastern Canadian Arctic, aboard the George Henry, a New London, Connecticut, three-masted whaler, commanded by Captain Sidney Tobias Buddington (1823-1888). Hall hoped to discover the fate of the lost Franklin Expedition – two enormous, state-of-the-art, fully-outfitted, screw-propellor, steam-powered ships with 129 men and officers, that left England in 1845 in search of the Northwest Passage and were never heard from again. The lateness of the season forced George Henry to “winter over” at Baffin Island, as solid sea ice surrounded their ship, and it was soon the vessel was as immobilized as an almond in a bar of chocolate. Like the other Indigenous peoples of North America, the Inuit had no written language. Through an interpreter, the local Inuit elders on Baffin Island told Hall about Frobisher’s mining exploits on Kodlunarn Island in the 1570s, which they

A few decades ago, I flew to Sitka, Alaska, to perform for the kids at Blatchley Middle School. After I’d finished playing for all the students, while I was chatting with the principal and several of the teachers, a teenage boy walked into the room. He couldn’t have been more than 14. I could tell that there was something different about him. It was not evident in his manner or his walk, but rather in the apparent anxiety the teachers displayed in his presence. Having gigged at thousands of schools in 48 states, I quickly understood that this boy was what administrators call a “difficult student.” Uninhibited, the boy strode right over to me pointing to the guitar in my hands. He was all business. “Can you play ‘Smoke on the Water?’” he asked matter of factly. Having pretty well completely missed rock and roll as a genre, I was sorry I couldn’t fulfill his request. I smiled and told him, “No, I can’t.” And without thinking I handed him the guitar. “Can you?” I asked. Glancing sideways, I suddenly noticed the genuine terror in the eyes of the teachers as they stood by in nervous tableau. I immediately realized I had done the very thing that they wished I had not. The principal was biting his lip. Nobody moved or dared say a word. It was clear that they all feared the boy would smash the guitar against one of the wooden desks. The young man fumbled with his left hang, trying to find his fingering. Then he enthusiastically played a nearly flawless rendition of “Smoke on the Water.” I was amazed. But not as amazed as the teachers. He knew the lick by heart and by the time he finished his solo, the tension in the room was so thick, you could cut it with a knife. The boy looked down at my guitar and spun it in his hands. One of the teachers winced, preparing for the worst. Nobody breathed. Then the boy handed the instrument back to me and said, “Nice axe,” and walked out of the room. The teachers and principal shook their heads in disbelief. Once they’d caught their breath, they regaled me with stories of the many times the boy had acted out physically or destroyed something. Though I can’t remember the boy’s name, I’ve never forgotten him. He’s about 30 years old now and probably has kids of his own. That experience left me fearless. After every concert, I’d invite kids to come up and try my instruments just so they can see what it feels like to hold and play them. The seed of all song Lies in the hearts of children Waiting to be born.