Judy Henske is My New Favorite Person

Holy fucking crap.

As I am an obsessive researcher of things, and as I grew up with a very hip mother who totally schooled me on all things related to the 60's and 70's, especially things related to music and Woody Allen, I cannot believe that somehow, I had never heard of Judy Henske before today.

I am absolutely freaking out.

Ok, so I was googling around, trying to figure out which big band singer it was that sang this really amazing version I once heard of "My Melancholy Baby" and I see something in my results that says something about "Judy Henske, Queen of The Beatniks." Huh. How have I never heard of this woman, I wonder- you know, because I did totally go through that phase in 7th grade where I wanted to be a beatnik, and because despite the fact that I grew up and realized that I didn't actually like Jack Kerouac as much as I liked walking around with a copy of "On The Road" and looking cooler and smarter than the jerks at my school... I tend to enjoy a lot of music that was popular amongst the beats at that time, such as Odetta.

SO. I look her up. And holy crap. Holy crap. She is the best ever. Listen!





In addition to having pretty much one of the most kick ass voices I've ever heard, Judy is 6 feet tall, and was the inspiration (partly!) for the Annie Hall. At least in the way that Annie Hall was a singer and from Chippewa Falls. Apparently, Judy opened for Woody on some tour (she also used to open for Lenny Bruce), and they dated, and also one time they spent an entire day trying to move pages of the dictionary with their minds. She was in a movie called "Hootenanny Hoot" with Johnny Cash. She did not want to be a "dulcimer girl" or a "sparkly dress singer" and she wanted drums. She says hilarious things before all of her songs, and she used to stamp her foot so hard while singing that they had to put welcome mats on the floor by her to prevent the wood from chipping. She lived on a sloop! The reason Jack Nitzche, the Rolling Stones producer, christened her the "Queen of The Beatniks" was because you couldn't actually put a label on whatever it was that she was doing.

You must hear all of these things! She's supposed to be "folk" I suppose, but she sounds more like some amazing combination of like, blues and rock and punk and showtunes all at the same time.

There are only two pages of YouTube videos for her, but I suggest you listen to everything that's there, and also maybe download some stuff on ITunes, because it is in fact there. I do not understand how she is not the most famous person in the whole world. How is it possible for someone to be that entirely awesome to be someone I haven't heard of, when I so love things that are awesome? Why is there so little information on her! Why! She writes awesome, bad ass songs about bears eating people for godsakes! She's friends with Frank Zappa! And she was also on The Judy Garland Show!

Anyway. This is Judy Henske. She is ridiculously amazing and without question, my new favorite person ever.

The Thing About Jezebel (The Movie, Not The Website... Or he Person)

As a child, my love of Bette Davis sometimes verged on the histrionic and obsessive. I'm probably the only kid who grew up in the 80's who partially took up smoking in order to be more like her. I suppose there are worse people an 8 year old could aspire to be like, like Miley Cyrus or whatever -- Bette was tough, she was glamorous, and she was fearless.

One of the first Bette Davis movies I ever saw was Jezebel, for which she won an Academy Award in 1938. I assumed, upon seeing it, that I would understand it better as an adult, because at the time- though I was thrilled by it, as I was by anything Bette Davis did- I did not so much get what the hell was going on. As it turns out, I was wrong.

(Spoiler Alert! But again, probably for something you'll never get around to seeing.)

So, in the movie, Bette -- every bit as much a Yankee as I am -- plays a Southern Belle named Julie, and she's got this boyfriend, Henry Fonda, who is being kind of a douche to her. In order to get him back for said douchey-ness, she wears a red dress to a dance.

Antebellum Southerners must just have had some weird red-dress-phobia or something, because I think she looks lovely. The same thing happened in Gone With The Wind when Scarlett made out with Ashley in the basement and Rhett made her go to a party in a red dress so everyone would see her for the giant awful whore that she was... or something. I didn't actually get that either. I should probably state that I also don't quite understand the Bible thing where they hate Jezebel because she wears make-up. To this day, there are religious women going around with full-faces of makeup and men who are married to them, being all "Yeah, that one Bible lady was definitely the worst for having worn make-up! It is very bad that she did that!" People are weird.

So anyway, Bette Davis shows up at the dance with Henry Fonda and, predictably, everyone freaks the fuck out. But seriously -- these are people in the freaking antebellum South- do they really have room to talk? Or to be offended by anything? I mean, these are people who owned human beings as slaves. It's like Jefferey Dahmer walking off in a huff because someone used the wrong fork.

At the dance, Henry Fonda continues to be a douche and despite the fact that Bette is all "Oh shit, maybe this was a bad idea, maybe I'll just go home and change," he decides to teach her a lesson and make her parade around in the red dress and dance and such, because red-dress-wearing harlots must be appropriately humiliated. Ew. Henry Fonda is pretty much the worst boyfriend ever.

Afterwards, the whole town shuns Bette Davis for the red dress incident and Henry Fonda dumps her and moves to NY. She pines for him the whole time, and at no point does the film indicate that he might be overreacting just a little bit, or that he might be a little bit of a jerk. In fact, he's sort of portrayed as a stand-up guy, which I totally don't get. The old South was basically Opposite Land.

Then one day he comes back, and Bette Davis is all "Oh my god, I am so unbelievably sorry for having worn the wrong dress! I've changed my ways! I'm sorry!"- which makes me feel embarrassed for her, because really, how can wearing the wrong dress to a stupid party be that big of an offense for anyone that they should have to beg for forgiveness? But Henry Fonda is like, "Oh, sorry Bette Davis, too little, too late. I have a new wife and she isn't a red dress wearing hussy like you are." He introduces the girl and she's pretty lame and uninteresting. No big surprise, really.

At some point Bette gets all "Well, screw you, Henry Fonda" and asks one of her suitors to challenge him to a duel, and somehow he ends up fighting Henry Fonda's brother instead, and then the suitor dies in the duel. Then people really hate Bette Davis, because she used her magical red dress wearing lady bewitchin' magic to make him do it. And yeah, that part was pretty shitty, but I think people had duels pretty much all the time back then, and it's not like she held a gun to anyone's head or anything.

Then there's an outbreak of yellow fever, even though that was actually a thing that happened way later than when this movie was taking place, and Henry Fonda gets it, and he has to go to the special island for people with yellow fever. For whatever reason-- even though at no point do we ever see Henry Fonda being anything but a jerk to her-- Bette Davis is still insanely in love with him. I guess we're supposed to assume that he was actually amazingly great before the red dress incident? Because she loves him so much, she volunteers to go out to the special camp and take care of him, as a means of atoning for her red-dress-wearing, duel-forcing ways. His wife tries to act for a second like she wants to go, but you know she doesn't, because she's kind of a wimp, really, and is afraid of all the scary poor people that will be over there on Yellow Fever Island. That is pretty much the end, and it is probably safe to assume they both die.

The moral of the story is that people in the Old South were way the hell fucked up, and that Bette Davis was punk rock. I think.