I guess thematically, this song belongs to the Jets and Giants:
My introduction to Harlem Nocturne came during the Eighties. When Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer was knuckle balling his way into our living rooms. As played by Shakespearean Actor Stacy Keach, Hammer was a Palooka-punching wiseacre who never met a cigarette he didn't smoke half way or a broad he didn't ogle all the way full frontally.
Even though today's sexuality permits full frontal nudity and an expansive anthropological survey of homo sapien technigues, modalities, and gender identities, the sexual machismo of Mike Hammer, tame to the point of naivete by comparison, would probably get cancelled.
Yet Mike's staccato opening punches, his consonant cocophony, and his old one-two, made him plain to understand. If you were ugly, obese, and six-five with male-pattern baldness and a RICO rap sheet, he was gonna punch ya. Like Lon Chaney Junior was gonna punch Broderick Crawford back in the day when they would lock themselves in a room and punch each other silly. Well, I think that was in rehearsal for their big fight in North to the Klondike. Which was a picture shot before The Wolf Man but came out after The Wolf Man.
But Mike Hammer owed not a little to The Three Stooges. The Stooges themselves have been semi-cancelled. People are not sure whether they are normalizing abuse or not. The physical wit they displayed, though, was the matrix from which Keach's Hammer thought his way through his bouts with the big uglies, making little concussive narratives out of the rythyms of breaking jaws, frying faces, and buttered neckties.
What would the Mike Hammer Katas look like? A dance number from Guys and Dolls?
Mickey Spillane was a sportswriter's writer. As was Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. They were seedy and dirty and the clothes hadn't been washed so the blood stains from fistfights of the last six months were still around and they tended to drink heavy at Key West watching Ernest Hemingway's boxing matches against drunken bums.
Today's sportswriters could use a little of that Jazz Age Sauce. These, the Spillanes and Chandlers, are kind of the ancients. If you want more modern versions of Jazz Age Lingo, Walter Mosley is good. Though some are even trying to cancel him.
And the Hogs and Riggo were straight out of Jazz Age Palookaville. The Eighties and the Twenties were in love with each other. Reagan admired Calvin Coolidge. Modern Swing started taking over Classic Swing. You could watch the Giants versus Skins videotape, top it off with some Mike Hammer, and let Harlem Nocturne tease you into sleep with dreams of dominant females in deep down blouses.
Too bad it has all been cancelled.
Everything but Jazz. My thinking is, they won't be able to cancel Jazz.
