Jazz Farm: A Novel

Jazz Farm

Jazz Farm    By

    Barry Bronson

“To get the best band, go to K-Y.  That meant the best band was in Lexington, Kentucky, at the federal narcotics hospital.”

Dizzy Gillespie, To Be or Not . . . to Bop

Introduction

Mind games indeed.

On Feb. 19, 1966, CIA Director Richard Helms appeared before Congress and told them the CIA would never conduct drug experiments on non-volunteer Americans. But according to a Helms memo obtained under the Freedom of Information Act dated December 17, 1963, Helms explained his approval of just that type of experiment. Such programs were far more than mind games.   

"Most of our difficulty stems from the fact that the individuals subjected to testing must be unwitting... In the circumstances of potential operational use of this technique, it is virtually certain that the target will be unwitting. Any testing program which does not attempt to approximate this real situation will result in a false sense of accomplishment and readiness...

“It goes without saying that whatever testing arrangement we adopt must afford maximum safeguards for the protection of the Agency's role in this activity. . .”

“In considering possible alternatives to our present arrangement with the Bureau of Narcotics, we have considered contact with... police departments and prisons or prison hospitals. …While I share your uneasiness for any program which intrudes on an individual's private and legal prerogatives, I believe it is necessary that the Agency maintain a central role in this activity, keep current on enemy capabilities in the manipulation of human behavior, and maintain an offensive capability.”

Under the code name MK-ULTRA, patient-addicts at the Federal Narcotics Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, were given increasing doses of LSD. In some cases this went on for as long as 75 consecutive days. For men and women whose creative fire could not be extinguished by addiction or imprisonment the irony of implanting potentially explosive charges in the psyche and then studying the non-musical output echoed the twisted experiments in pre-war Germany. But there was no Nuremburg for the croaks who tinkered with powerful hallucinogens and no eventual homeland for the abused class. There was just a halfhearted apology. That the music kept coming from most of the human lab rats was a testament to their talent, their survival instincts and their comrades in incarceration. 

CHAPTER 1 School 

Tom Barnes’ favorite year was 1965. Junior year at Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky. He came to the “oldest college west of the Alleghenies” from Pittsburgh a few years earlier, why, he wasn’t sure. But Barnes got lucky, fell into a good and rowdy fraternity, made friends for life and got the kind of liberal arts education that could have made him money on quiz shows for the next 50 years. But in 1965 Tom Barnes was concerned with one thing really and that was arranging parties for the brothers. Pi Kappa Alpha Social chairman was a sacred calling. You see, he couldn’t be frat president because he pissed off the Pikes’ racist faction by expressing support for Freedom Riders, Dr. King and pledging Negroes into the Sacred Order. But Barnes had a car, could haggle with bands, find halls and buy kegs and that endeared him to all his brothers.

Lexington was a college town then and now. It was dominated, of course, by the University of Kentucky. Between UK and Keeneland Race Course, there were no other sporting events to attend. If you wanted to hear good music, and Barnes did, there were UK concerts and parities (lots of Motown and Beach Music) just south of downtown and there were jazz and blues at clubs in the “darker” areas downtown and to the near-North. There were very few record stores but the best one was Barney Miller’s on Main Street. They sold hi-fi and stereos and TVs but they had all the latest records, too. Barnes got to know a guy who worked the records section but I forget his name. He was a small, thin, chain-smoking middle-aged white man who knew every style of music, every artist. He knew about “race music” and most of all, he knew about jazz. Looking back, had Barnes known what he knows now, maybe he would have gotten to know him better. That’s because, as he learned later, his expert had been a heroin addict “resident” of the Federal Narcotics Hospital on Leestown Road outside the Lexington city limits. It was this hospital that was to become central to Tom Barnes’ favorite year. “Narco,” or the “Narc Farm” or “The Farm” put a musical edge onto the college town and brought in a hip element that endured for decades. But for those whose addiction sapped both talent and will, Narco was best forgotten or only referred to occasionally as a stop along the jazz journey hundreds of musicians took.