As some of you may know, I come from Casey, a small town in East Central Illinois. Get on Route 40 and head east 19 miles and you wind up in Marshall, the county seat. While Marshall isn't known for a whole lot today, back in the 1950s it was quite famous in literary circles as the home of the Handy Writers' Colony. A woman from nearby Robinson, Lowney Handy, had a husband in the oil business, an unhappy marriage and a lot of time on her hands so she began to fancy herself as a mentor to writers, and one of the first would-be writers she took under her wing was another guy from Robinson, James Jones. He had joined the Army in '39, wound up in Hawaii, fought in the Pacific, got wounded at Guadalcanal (for which he was awarded the Purple Heart), was sent back home, got depressed, fell into the bottle, went AWOL, etc. -- just your typical writer's life. Anyway, he wanted to take a crack at writing and someone had introduced Handy to him so in the fall of '43 the two began working together. He'd write, she'd edit. He'd re-write. She'd edit some more. The process continued until Jones churned out "From Here to Eternity." It was a big hit. Got made into a big movie. Won the National Book Award in '52.
So taking some of the money he made of the book, Jones and Handy (she had money, too) set up the Handy Writers' Colony. Handy had some peculiar concepts for how one should learn to be a writer. She'd take in students (at first, they lived in tents in a cow pasture, but later, barracks were built) and the students would spend their mornings copying, by hand, the Great Works of Literature. Handy believed that if you did enough of this copying, the greatness would seep into you by osmosis. Then again, maybe it isn't so bizarre; most of us songwriters start out by singing covers, so maybe it's the same sort of thing. Anyway, the students got up at 5:30 a.m., did their copying, did chores in the afternoon and wrote in the evening. They were in bed by 8 p.m. No booze was allowed. They were also prohibited from talking to each other or outsiders about their writing. The only person they could talk about their writing to was Handy.
Jones spent time working there on books such as "The Thin Red Line" and "Some Came Running." Once a month, he and some of the other writers would climb into a car and drive 11 miles to the east to Terre Haute, where they'd hit the bars and whorehouses.
While cruising through the Vigo County (Indiana) library website online, I found a fascinating series of transcripts of oral histories done by the Vigo County Historical Society. People interviewed prominent figures in Terre Haute about their experiences, then the recordings were transcribed. Among the people interviewed was a "madam" who ran one of the houses of ill-repute (Terre Haute was notorious for its Red Light District, on Cherry Street) and she spoke about knowing Jones. She said Jones came over frequently, usually just to drink and play poker. She said he wasn't always a "bed customer" (her words) so I figured I should get that into the song, hence the chorus.
Anyway, quite a few writers spent time in the colony and many wound up getting published. Although there was quite a bit of talk that Jones and Handy were lovers, Jones wound up marrying a woman in Haiti in 1957, and the woman and Handy didn't get along; allegedly, Jones and his wife decided to leave after Handy tried to stab the woman over some dispute. Jones lived in Paris for a time, and is buried in New York.
The colony limped along until Handy died in 1964. There's little physical evidence left of its existence in Marshall, although the local library has a lot of stuff on the colony.
Another note about the song's chorus.... In the course of my research, I found that Jones liked to use a Voss typewriter, so I threw that in, even though 99.9 percent of the listening public will have no earthly idea what I'm talking about. So I asked myself, "What would John Prine or Greg Brown do?" and I came to the conclusion that Prine would probably use the word "typewriter" and Brown would probably be specific and use the make of the machine, Voss. Since the next phrase says he would "type a little more" I figured listeners would put 2 and 2 together and hopefully come up with 4. Then I thought, "Did the guy who wrote 'Louie, Louie' sweat over lyrics like this?" Probably not....
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The Private World of James Jones (1967) (Part 1 of 3)by DigitalManOfAction1,409 views
Wow, great story telling, Mr. H! With the rhythm of your guitar and the ringing of your strings it's easy to envision ol' J.J. at his Voss paying for those words "like a dogface paid for ground." Simply great! Hey, is there a story/song about that picture peeking over your right shoulder? - Mark
manriq47 2 years ago
Thanks for the kind words, Mark (and everyone else, too...) As for the picture -- as it happens, that's a picture of Jones and Lowney Handy standing outside Jones' house in Robinson. Or at least I think it was in Robinson. Might've been Marshall. I found the photo online a couple of years back and printed it out 'cause I thought it looked cool. I didn't even think about it being there when I filmed the tune....
dhanners23 2 years ago