Ian Whitwham in The Guardian

I caught up with another old friend yesterday, the day that he had published another wonderful article in The Guardian (6 March, 2010):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/06/ian-whitwham-country-living

He has a unique style of humorous writing, and he never ceases to amuse me.

The article is called "Going wild in the country, Ian Whitwham has retired to the seaside-and it's heavenly"

For any of you who have retired- or simply moved- to Corfu, and who have wondered whether you have been accepted by the locals (or whether you feel 100% at home), here's a piece of writing that describes the feelings of a slightly bemused inner-city Londoner who's recently moved to a small village on the Dorset coast. I've attached a photo of a Londoner faced with a rather large plate of seafood.

I've know Ian since 1963. He starred in the film I made in 1964 ("Ebb", the one for which John Lee Hooker recorded the soundtrack).

Rock on, Ian! At least nobody has called you a "grockle". We're waiting for the novel.

Greece wounds...

I'm in the UK for a while.

The first day back in the country I had lunch with the owner-editors of two county magazines, Wiltshire Life and Dorset Life. We met at the Haunch of Venison in Salisbury. A good way to get the low-down on this part of the world.

Already missing Corfu! What is it about Corfu that, as soon as you leave it, you miss it, and start feeling the pain of separation, as if from a loved one (whatever their faults!)?

We all know Seferis' line about Greece wounding him, wherever he travelled. Corfu does that too, once it's managed to sink its claws into you.

"Wherever I travel, Greece wounds me" (G. Seferis, In the Manner of G.S.)

You can't shake it off. That's the Corfu blues.

We all know about the effects of drinking the water from the spring of Kardaki (Mavilis writes about it in an old poem; you would be unwise to drink from it these days). I drank it in the years when it wasn't polluted. So there's no hope of escape, or of a return to the homeland.

"Kai opoios xenos ekei to heili vrechei, sta gonika tou plia de tha yirisei”. (Lorenzos Mavilis: ”Kardaki").

Can you identify the places in the photos?

From the Archives: George Seferis Lecture

This was a tribute to George Seferis, held at the Mediterranean Museum in Stockholm on the occasion of the Fortieth Anniversary of the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Seferis.

My lecture on this occasion ("Diplomacy and Poetry, Friendship and War") can be read on my website. The Swedish poet and Academician, Professor Kjell Espmark (Chairman of the Committee for the Nobel Prize for Literature), read the Swedish translations of Seferis' poems. He is pictured above with Dr. Rea Ann-Margaret (Margarita) Mellberg, Cultural Counsellor at the Greek Embassy, Stockholm.

The fine book, " The Photographs of George Seferis" was published by the Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece, Athens, 2000. Seferis's photographs were on exhibition in the Museum.

From the Archives: October 1989

Poetry reading at a bookshop in Prague, a month before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the Velvet Revolution. Exciting days.

To the Czechs


Cyril and Methodius,

Wycliffe and Payne,

Gave you so much,

But all in vain.


It wasn't in vain...

From the Archives: Izzy Young's Folklore Centre

Izzy Young, The Conscience of the Folk Revival (new book, 2013)

It was a great kick back in 2004 when I performed (sang blues, read poems and showed some films) at Izzy Young's Folklore Centre in Stockholm.

Izzy is an inspiring, enthusiastic guy, hugely knowledgeable about all forms of folk music. He's a living legend. You only have to read Bob Dylan's "Chronicles" to understand why.

Izzy's original Folklore Centre was in Greenwich Village, New York (110 MacDougal Street): "To him, folk music glittered like a mound of gold. It did for me, too." Dylan writes a lot about Izzy in the first chapter of his autobiography. He even wrote "Talkin' Folklore Centre Blues" for Izzy. I performed a version of it that night, as a tribute to Izzy, but I changed the words so that they referred to his Stockholm Folklore Centrum. I also referred to the first concert that Dylan ever gave (at Carnegie Chapter Hall, November 4, 1961), which was organised by Izzy Young.

I have to say I was more than a little nervous that night in Stockholm. Along with Sun Studios in Memphis, Izzy Young's Folklore Centre (Greenwich Village/Stockholm) is one of the Meccas of modern music. Thanks again, Izzy! See www.izzy.young.com

The Greek King of Rock 'n' Roll: Johnny Otis

Since I'm about to fly off to the UK, my mind is turning to the Greek Diaspora, and to some of the individuals who deserve to be recognised more widely in Greece and perhaps to be portrayed on postage stamps.

Johnny Otis is one of the legends of rhythm and blues and early rock 'n' roll.

He was born John Veliotes (28 December, 1921), in northern California, to Greek immigrants.

I spoke to him on the phone on 26 May, 1998, as I was planning to devote a radio programme to his wonderful music.

Johnny first began recording in the mid 1940s, and he's worked with jazz greats like Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Ben Webster, Lionel Hampton and Lester Young, as well as with R 'n' B giants like Big Mama Thornton, Little Esther Phillips, Margie Evans, SugarPie Desanto, T-Bone Walker, Mel Walker, Big Joe Turner, Illinois Jacquet, Big Jay McNeely and Wyonie Harris.

One of his most famous records, which he wrote, is "Willie and the Hand Jive". He played drums on Big Mama Thornton's recording of "Hound Dog". He co-wrote "Roll with Me Henry" with Etta James, whom he discovered. The Johnny Otis Show had fifteen Top 40 Rhythm 'n' Blues hits between 1950 and 1952.

In John's book, "Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue", published in 1993 (University Press of New England), George Lipsitz writes in the introduction:

"Born in 1921, Otis grew up in a Greek immigrant family that ran a grocery store in an ethnically mixed but mostly black neighbourhood in Berkeley, California."

Johnny Veliotes was captured by black culture. When I spoke to him in 1998, he was keen to talk about the parallels between the themes of Greek rebetika songs and African-American blues songs. Although he'd forgotten most of the Greek he'd learned as a child, and had never been to Greece, he said that he could still cook "a mean avgolemono"- Greek soul food.

It's high time that the Ionian University Music Department (the Jazz Department) honoured him and invited over to the Summer Festival. And a postage stamp would be in order!

So one more time for "Willie and the Hand Jive", "Ma, He's Making Eyes at Me" and all his other great rock hits and blues numbers. Take a look at his website:

www.johnnyotisworld.com