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How To Talk With a Boston Accent (Not for the Faint of Haht)

The Boston accent has brought many an actor to grief, especially these days as films about the city just keep coming. George Clooney famously botched it in Perfect Storm, but not as badly as Kevin Costner did in 13 Days. Mark Wahlberg, who grew up in Southie, gets it down perfectly, of course. So does Matt Damon, even though he grew up across the river in the People’s Republic (Cambridge).

Back in the day, actors used to have to lose their Boston accents if they wanted work. Leonard Nimoy, who grew up in the West End, had a wicked bad one. He got rid of it before he won the part of Spawk from Stah Trek.

One reason actors have such a hard time with the Boston accent is its complexity. Dropping the ‘r’ is only part of it. You have to put it back in some places, sometimes where it doesn’t belong. And you also have to say ‘aw’ for ‘o’ or ‘ah’ (‘hawkey’ for ‘hockey’). But you only do that sometimes – knowing when is the key.

And then on top of the weeid (weird) pronunciation, you also have to master the slang that goes with the accent.

Bahston.

R-less Boston Accent

If you want to sound smaht, you’ll describe the ‘r-less’ Boston accent as ‘non-rhotic speech.’ You’ve no doubt heard the quintessential non-rhotic Boston phrase: ‘Pahk the cah in Hah-vahd yahd,’ right? And you pronounce all the vowels the way you say ‘ah’ at the dentist.

Or do you?

Good luck findin’ pahkin’ anywhere neeah Hah-vid Yahd.

Actually, Bostonians pronounce the ‘r’ when it comes before a vowel, though they do it softly. Listen carefully, and you’ll hear a Bostonian say, ‘pahk the cahr in Hah-vahd yahd.’ But if he had more than one vehicle, he would ‘pahk the cahs in Hah-vahd yahd.’

Plus, Bostonians talk fast, and they tend to mush their consonants together. So ‘Hah-vahd’ usually sounds more like ‘Hah-vid.’

And when you drop the ‘r,’ remember your voice goes up in pitch.

Got it?

Jordan’s Furniture, Boston Accent Style

There’s more than that to the way Bostonians deal with their ‘r’s. When the vowel is ‘er,’ you don’t drop the ‘r.’ So, “The Gahd’n went crazy when Larry Bird stole the ball.” Boston has at least two gahd’ns: Boston Garden and the Public Garden. Both are just ‘the gahd’n.’

Another signature sound of Boston speech: ‘or’ comes out as ‘aw.” So ‘Jordan’s Furniture’ sounds like ‘Jawdin’s Furnichah.’

For more than fawty (forty) years, Barry and Eliot Tatelman blanketed the airwaves with comical Jordan’s Furniture commercials. “We don’t sell those cheap sets that fall apaht,” they’d say. “You can tell when you open a dressa draw!”

Not only do they get the accent right, they even sold a chair once called the Boston Accent.

Jawdin’s Furnichah has an ImAX theatre in Reading. Really.

That Pesky O

As audiobook narrator Matt Haynes points out, Bostonians don’t substitute ‘aw’ for ‘o’ if preceded by an ‘s,’ ‘ng,’ ‘f,’ ‘l’ or ‘th.’

Boston Mayor Kevin White used to say ‘mother of God’ a lot. It came out ‘muh-thuhr aw Gawd.’

Or you might get ‘stawpped in Bahston by a statie for bangin’ a U-ey.’ (Translation: ‘stopped in Boston by a state policeman for making a U-turn.’)

The Intrusive R

Bostonians like to add ‘r’s’ at the end of words, like ‘Linder’ and ‘idear.’ Many people remember President Kennedy’s trouble with the Russians in ‘Cuber.’ But the Kennedys don’t really have a Boston accent. They have a Kennedy accent, a unique (some say pretentious) mix of the Transatlantic and Boston accents. So don’t mimic Mayor Quimby on the animated television series, The Simpsons, unless you’re making fun of a Kennedy.

You can listen to JFK pronounce “Jordan Marsh” in a Kennedy accent in this video here.

JFK delivers a speech in a Kennedy accent.

Boston politicians naturally have their own lingo. They raise campaign funds at a ‘time.’ They disclose damaging information about an opponent (‘oppo’) by ‘droppin’ a dime on’ or ‘diming out’ that person. Campaign volunteers ‘hold a sign’ for a candidate. It’s a good way to ‘get on the state’ (a sweet job, say at Massport) if your candidate wins.

In real Bostonspeak, the intrusive ‘r’ also shows up where ‘r’s’ don’t usually go — like before a vowel. So if you want to know where your muthah went, you might say, “Is Mar upstairs?” (Thanks to Matt Damon for that one!)

Or you might find yourself ‘soring wood’ or ‘making a withdroral from an ATM.’

Talk Fast and Drop Your Consonants

In the entire United States, only people in Oregon and Minnesota talk faster than Bostonians. So consonants often get left behind. “Why did you…?” equals “Whyja?” “Did you eat already?” becomes “Jeet orreddy?”

If the answer to “Jeet?” is no, you could go for chowda (chowder) or a spuckie (a sandwich, though that’s fading). Wash it all down with tawnic (tonic, also fading) or soder (soda), the proper names for carbonated soft drinks. Finish it off with a Hoodsie (ice cream cup). But ‘hoodsie’ also refers to a pretty teen-aged girl. She probably wears earrings in her PSDS (pierced ears).

When you buy b’daydas (the noble spud) at the Stah Mahket (Star Market), you probably need a carriage (shopping cart). Bring your pockabook (pocketbook). Same goes for the fahmisee (pharmacy) and the packie (liquor store).

‘Bubbler,’ for some reason, refers to ‘water fountain’ in both Boston and Wisconsin. Good luck finding one. And if you order a regular coffee from the Dunkies onna conna, you’ll get cream and sugar in it.

One on every conna.

Place Names per the Boston Accent

Medford, a city nawtha Bahston, is ‘MED-feh’ or ‘MEH-feh’ to someone who doesn’t live there. But to someone who does live there, it’s ‘MED-fid’ or ‘MEF-id.’ No one ever calls it Medford.

Many Massachusetts place names have consonants on paper but not in reality. So Worcester becomes Woostuh, Leicester Lestuh, Gloucester Glosstuh.

Bahston has a lot of neighborhoods you can get to on the T: the Nawth End, Southie, Dot or Dawchestah, JP (Jamaica Plain) and Rozzy (Roslindale). West Roxbury is generally just West Roxbury. Townies live in Charlestown, once the armored-car-robbery capital of the world.

If you happen to drive around Bahston, you might find yourself on an av – Dotav (Dorchester Avenue), Massav (Massachusetts Avenue) or Commav (Commonwealth Avenue).

A lot of people go down the Cape, maybe to P-town. The traffic on the expressway can back up for days (a long time), so you might have to take the breakdown lane (shoulder). But they got rid of the rotary (traffic circle) just before the Sagamore Bridge, and that helps a little bit.

[Ed note: Bostonians will give directions to lost Midwesterners with the extremely unhelpful, “Before you get to…” As in “Before you get to where the old K-Mart used to be.” Most directions also include the Dunkies onna conna (the ‘Dunkin’ Donuts on the corner’), also extremely unhelpful because there’s a Dunkies on every conna.]

Other Boston Accented Place Names

Before you get to the Cape (grr), you’ll hit the Irish Riviera, also known as the South Shore. Scituate (Sit-u-it) and Marshfield (Mahshfield) form the epicenter of the Irish Riviera, where some wealthy people live in Ka-chingham (Hingham) and Deluxebury (Duxbury). Not-so-wealthy Quincy has a z (Quinzy), though the sixth president’s name doesn’t.

Re-VEE-ah (Revere) lies just nawtha Boston and PEA-biddy (Peabody) lies nawtha Revere. You might hear someone say, “Dawn breaks over Marblehead,” a version of ‘duh’ that refers to the coastal town next to Salem.

‘Lynn, Lynn, City of sin, You never go out the way you came in,’ refers to the North Shore city with a reputation for vice and corruption. Back in the 1990s, one mayor tried to change the city’s image with a new name – Ocean Pahk. He failed. You still won’t go out the way you come in.

To get to Woostuh or anyplace westuh Boston, you take the MassPike. Accents start changing westuh Woostuh.

The MassPike

Spawts Teams

Bostonians embrace spawts (sports), with even more fervor than they embrace politics.

The Sawx (Red Sox) play at Fenway, where players hit homers over the Green Monster and past the Pesky Pole. Only Ted Williams could hit one into the Red Seat. The Big Dig (highway construction project) created a tunnel named after him, ‘The Ted.’

Don’t try to beat Tawm Brady heeah.

The Pats, or the Patsies, play in Foxboro, where Tom Brady once played as the Goat (greatest of all time). He might have gotten a tunnel too, if he hadn’t gone to Tamper Bay.

The B’s or the Broons (Bruins) and the Celtics play at the Gahden. Bawby Oah was the greatest Broon evah, but has yet to get a tunnel.

Four colleges play hawkey in the Beanpot tournament every year: Boston College, Boston University, Harvard and Northeastern. If you get a law degree from BC and went to BC and BC High, you’re a Triple Eagle. A graduate of both Harvard and Harvard Medical School is a 4-Her. To a kid from Somerville (or Slumerville), a Harvard student is a Bahney (Barney).

If you find all of this baffling, but you want to fit in as a Bostonian, there’s a simple remedy: Talk fast and hate the Yankees.

Want to know how to talk with a New Hampshire accent? Click here. For Rhode Island, click here, for Connecticut click here and for Maine, click here. And stay tuned for Vermont and Western Mass.

Images: Harvard Square and Harvard Yard By User:Chensiyuan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9954526; Jordan’s Furniture By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41771437; Boston By Riptor3000, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2839215; Dunkin’ Donuts by By Michael Rivera – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57287297. The MassPike By Nathan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23296975. This story was updated in 2023.

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Remembering the 1978 Blizzard

In Connecticut they called it ‘Storm Larry.’ But to anyone old enough to remember, the words ‘1978 blizzard’ conjure up some very snowy memories.

The 1978 blizzard started with snow during the morning of February 6. It didn’t stop for 33 hours, dumping two feet of snow on New England. Sometimes it fell as fast as four inches an hour. Parts of Boston’s South Shore and Woonsocket, R.I., got hit with the most: 54 inches.

Two feet of snow had already fallen in previous storms, causing the collapse of the Hartford Civic Center the month before.

A residential street after the 1978 blizzard in Woonsocket, R.I.

The 1978 blizzard killed about 100 people and injured about 4,500. In central and southern New England, the snowfall turned to ice at night, leaving everything covered with ice. The snow turned to rain on Cape Cod, but the wind wreaked plenty of havoc.

Wind speeds reached 79 mph at Logan Airport, 92 mph at Chatham Weather Station on Cape Cod, and unofficial reports said wind gusts exceeded 100 mph. From Provincetown to Eastern Maine, the northeasterly winds flooded the coast. Ten thousand people evacuated.

In Connecticut, 547 National Guardsmen cleared roads and returned people to their homes – if they still had homes. In Massachusetts, a massive effort to clear Logan’s runway allowed 200 troops from Ft. Bragg and Ft. Devens to manage the emergency response.

1978 Blizzard

The snow took New England by surprise. No one advised people to stay home. Weather forecasters knew something was coming, they just didn’t know what. Only CBS’s Harvey Leonard seemed to have a clue: “We are going to get hit hard.”

Boston City Hall

The sun and moon aligned to cause spring high tides that produced record floods. In Massachusetts, the flood destroyed 2,000 homes between Marblehead and Plymouth and damaged another 10,000. One flood tide ran into the next; with four successive flood tides, it seemed the tide never went out. The South Shore and Revere, Mass., took the hardest hits from the flood tides and towering waves.

When Mrs. Joseph Conley returned to her home in Scituate after the storm, the tide surge demolished everything but the toilet. She was lucky. A giant wave ripped five-year-old Amy Lanzikas from her mother’s arms while they were being rescued in a firefighters’ skiff. Amy and a Scituate neighbor, Edward Hart, drowned during the rescue attempt.

Some Snow Day

People left school and work early so they could get home, but the snow fell so fast that staying put would have been safer. Thousands of cars had to be abandoned on the highways. Snowdrifts trapped 3,000 cars and 500 trucks along eight miles of Rte. 128 alone. Fourteen people died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in their snowbound vehicles.

In New England’s cities, the 1978 blizzard stranded thousands more cars that took days to dig out. Connecticut Gov. Ella Grasso abandoned her car on the highway and walked to the Hartford Armory.

Women standing on top of a snowbank in Boston.

Boston Mayor Kevin White could only make his way home slowly from Palm Beach. He won little sympathy by complaining about the cold weather in Florida and that he ‘didn’t even swim in the pool.’

Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, on the other hand, was everywhere during the 1978 blizzard — in his cardigan sweater. He happened to be on a radio call-in show with David Brudnoy on the evening of February 6. He heard from Revere residents on the second-floor of their houses wondering whether they’d survive. As panic set in, Dukakis began to direct the emergency response on the Brudnoy show. “I am pleading with Winthrop Shore Drive residents to evacuate their homes!” he said, between calls from constituents complaining about discrimination enforcement and civil service exams.

Trapped

Many people ended up trapped in their workplaces, living off vending machine food during the 1978 blizzard. People slept in pews at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Needham, Mass., which sheltered 2,000.

In Dedham, Mass., 300 stranded motorists ate popcorn and watched movies at the Showcase Cinema just off the highway.

Hockey fans in Boston who came to watch the Beanpot college tournament got stranded at Boston Garden. For several days they ate hot dogs, slept in the bleachers and, as Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessey pointed out, used ‘combs and deodorant left behind by Terry O’Reilly and Wayne Cashman.’

National Guardsmen and Boston residents during the cleanup after the 1978 blizzard.

In Massachusetts, the flood tides and giant waves dragged Motif No. 1, Rockport’s famous fishing shack, into the harbor. The high tides wiped out the Outermost House on Cape Cod and submerged the Peter Stuyvesaant, a restored riverboat outside of Anthony’s Pier 4 in Boston. Motif No. 1 was restored, but the Peter Stuyvesant was not.

One of many homes damaged by the 1978 blizzard.

Disaster Area

The postal service couldn’t deliver the mail for the first time since the Great 1938 Hurricane. One letter carrier got stranded in Providence, so he slept on sacks at the post office for two nights. He had to field a phone call from a woman complaining she didn’t get her mail.

In Massachusetts, the MBTA actually performed well. On the Monday after the storm, the driving ban was still in effect. The MBTA carried 50 percent more riders than it did on an ordinary day. The load strained the equipment so that the MBTA had to curtail commuter rail service by 25 percent for two months.

In Montville, Conn., someone wrote a plea to the governor — ‘ELLA HELP’ — in the snow on a lake. Grasso saw the message from a helicopter. She then transmitted a communique through the National Weather Service asking anyone with a four-wheel-drive vehicle to volunteer. Many did. Grasso ordered all roads and highways closed to everything but emergency vehicles, and asked schools and businesses to shut down. So did Gov. Michael Dukakis in Massachusetts and Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy in Rhode Island.

President Carter declared Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut federal disaster areas.

Community

Many remember the storm fondly because it built a sense of community. In Cumberland, R.I., for example, it took 10 days to plow out the roads. People gave a neighbor money to go shopping. He hauled a sled two miles to the IGA and back with food. Cross-country skiers and snowmobilers evacuated people from cars stranded on I-95. Snowmobiles and sleds took people to hospitals.

In Hull, Mass., Lillian Willis and Joanne Fallon prepared meals in a local middle school for 1,400 people in 36-hour shifts over 10 days. On the fourth day, Willis’ shoes fell apart.

Cars stranded on Rte. 128 after the 1978 blizzard.

The storm suspended work and school, so people played in the snow. UConn students made Star Wars sculptures. Brown students jumped out of dorm windows into the snow and made an eight-foot-high snowball. But according to one report, 4 percent of the Brown students and employees needed medical attention during the 1978 blizzard. Peter Gosselin, 10, jumped off his porch roof into the deep snow, hit his head and died in a snowbank. He wasn’t found for three weeks.

Cashing In

After the 1978 blizzard ended, entrepreneurs quickly capitalized on it. One company made a board game called the Great Blizzard Travel Game, which at one point you could buy for $59 on eBay. Others made T-shirts that said, “I Survived the Blizzard of 1978.” And “We Survived the Blizzard of ‘78” bumper stickers were as ubiquitous as Michael Dukakis’ cardigan sweater.

Dukakis actually had four or five cardigans. After the 1978 blizzard, people gave him a sweater when he appeared at a speaking event. He eventually gave 40 cardigans to the Goodwill. (Rhode Islanders, by the way, were treated to the sight of Gov. Joseph Garrihy in a flannel shirt.)

To see a video of the 1978 storm, click here. This story was updated in 2023.

Images: Boston City Hall By City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States – Snow near City Hall, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65429193; Boston during cleanup By City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States – Workers and residents during blizzard cleanup, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65420068. Women on top of snowbank, By City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States – Women on top of snow drift near City Hall, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65420027

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8 Surprising Facts About Martin Luther King Jr. in New England

Martin Luther King Jr. spent plenty of time in New England, and not just giving speeches about civil rights. He worked in Connecticut over the summers as a teenager, and he earned his Ph.D. and courted his wife in Boston.

Here are eight facts you may not know about Martin Luther King’s impact on the region and its people.

1. A phone call to his wife helped elect JFK.

On Oct. 26, 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy wanted to win his close race for president against Vice President Richard Nixon.

Martin Luther King, Jr., wanted to get out of a Georgia prison for protesting a segregated restaurant.

Kennedy called Georgia’s governor and asked him to try to free King. He also called Coretta Scott King to show his sympathy. The governor got Martin Luther King released, and word of Kennedy’s phone calls spread throughout the black community.

Many attributed Kennedy’s victory to those telephone calls.

Ironically, Martin Luther King had a better relationship with Richard Nixon than he did with Kennedy.

2. Boston was the 2nd home of Martin Luther King Jr.

He called Boston his “second home,” because he had lived in the South End as a graduate student at Boston University. He also courted Coretta Scott while she attended the New England Conservatory of Music.

Martin Luther King met his wife in Boston

3. He spent summers in Connecticut.

As a teenager, Martin Luther King Jr, spent two summers working in Simsbury, Conn.

In 1944, he worked in the tobacco fields to earn money for his tuition at Morehouse College. The school had an arrangement with Cullman Bros., which hired Morehouse students to work through harvest.

Young King (who then went by his birth name, Michael) found the experience liberating. He could worship with white people in church, eat in the same restaurants and sit in the same train car.

He returned three years later for another summer.

King with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and civil rights leaders, June 22, 1963.

4. He spoke at many New England colleges.

As a civil rights leader, Martin Luther King spoke at many New England colleges, including Bowdoin College, Francis College (now University of New England), Brown, Boston University, Harvard, Yale and the University of Rhode Island.

In 1964, Springfield College gave him an honorary degree. The FBI pressured the college’s president, Glenn A. Olds, to cancel the invitation to speak at the commencement. Olds held his ground even though it cost the college a potential $1 million contribution.

5. A gift to his widow disqualified a New Hampshire racehorse.

The New Hampshire thoroughbred Dancer’s Image won, then lost, the Kentucky Derby in 1968 because his owner supported the civil rights movement. Peter Fuller, who owned Dancer’s Image, said resentful white Southerners stripped him of his prize.

The horse had won the Derby on May 4, 1968, a month after King’s assassination in Memphis. Two days after King died, Fuller gave $62,000 won by Dancer’s Image to his widow.

Three days after Dancer’s Image won the Kentucky Derby, Fuller had to return his purse. The racetrack claimed the horse tested positive for a banned substance. Fuller maintained to his death they’d framed him because of his gift to Coretta Scott King.

Martin Luther King and his family arrive in Montgomery from Selma, March 1965

6. The KKK murdered a Boston minister after Selma.

A Boston Unitarian-Universalist minister, James Reeb, joined King’s second march in Selma, Ala., in 1965. The Ku Klux Klan beat him savagely that night, and he died two days later.

King held a news conference to denounce the “cowardly” attack.

Tens of thousands held vigils, and President Lyndon Johnson invoked his memory four days later when he sent the Voting Rights Act to Congress.

King during a 1964 news conference.

7. Martin Luther King Jr. found Jackie “something.”

King came to the White House to discuss civil rights with President John F. Kennedy.

The special assistant for civil Rights, Harris Wofford, escorted King to the family quarters, where Kennedy had asked to meet him. They entered a small elevator, but it went down instead of up.

When the elevator doors opened in the basement, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy – in blue jeans — got on. Wofford introduced them, and she said, “Oh, Dr. King, you would be so thrilled if you could just have been with me in the basement this morning. I found a chair right out of the Andrew Jackson period–a beautiful chair.”

King’s comment after she left: “Well, well—wasn’t that something.”

8. James Brown saved the day in Boston.

James Brown appeared in Boston just after King was assassinated.

After King’s murder, riots broke out in more than 100 U.S. cities. Boston remained relatively peaceful because of the legendary James Brown concert at Boston Garden the next day.

Boston Mayor Kevin White prevailed on Brown to let WGBH rebroadcast his performance. Throughout the show, between songs, the singer talked about Martin Luther King and urged the people to stay calm.

WGBH rebroadcast the show, over and over, and thousands of angry young people stayed home. The next day the local news media gave James Brown credit for keeping the peace.

This story about Martin Luther King Jr. was updated in 2023.

Image: King at a press conference By Marion S. Trikosko – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID ppmsc.01269.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17218777.

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The Kid Wrongly Blamed for the Cocoanut Grove Fire

Stanley Tomaszewski was a 16-year-old busboy working on the night of the Cocoanut Grove fire, Nov. 28, 1942, the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

More than 1,000 patrons jammed into the Boston nightclub. They included servicemen and their dates, suburbanites out for a night on the town, college football fans, couples celebrating anniversaries and a cowboy movie star and his entourage. It was the height of World War II, and everyone went to the Cocoanut Grove.

Smoke rises from the Cocoanut Grove fire. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

The Cocoanut Grove Fire

Matchbook from the Cocoanut Grove. Courtesy Boston Public Library.

In a packed basement lounge, a serviceman and his date sat next to a fake palm tree with a 7-1/2 watt light bulb sticking out from a laminated cocoanut husk. The soldier reached over and unscrewed the light bulb so he could kiss his date in the dark. The bartender noticed and told Tomaszewski to screw it back in.

Tomaszewski climbed a bar stool, but he couldn’t see much in the dark corner. He lit a match, held it in his right hand and screwed in the light bulb with his left. Then he climbed down from the bar stool, dropped the match on the floor and put it out with his foot.

It was 10:15 pm. Within eight minutes, nearly 500 people would be dead or about to die.

The Cocoanut Grove fire was the worst nightclub fire in U.S. history, killing five times as many people as The Station nightclub fire in West Warwick, R.I., 60 years later.

We may never know what caused the Cocoanut Grove fire. Some believe faulty wiring caused it. Some think it spread so quickly because of a mystery gas, perhaps a substitute for Freon, scarce because of the war. Many blamed Stanley Tomaszewski, who would go to his grave with the stigma as the busboy who started the Cocoanut Grove fire.

Stanley Tomaszewski

Stanley Tomaszewski’s teacher described him as ‘one of the swellest kids.’ He was tall, good-looking, an honor student at Roxbury Memorial High School for Boys and a starting football player. He worked nine-hour shifts at the Cocoanut Grove Friday and Saturday nights for $2.47 plus tips. The money went to help his sick mother and father, a janitor, and to pay for war bonds.

The building was a former complex of garages and warehouses. It had been converted to dining rooms, bars and lounges with a kitschy South Seas theme. The decor included fake palm trees, rattan and bamboo trim, leatherette sofas and blue satin canopies suspended from the ceilings.

The flimsy, flammable decorations disguised side exits. Other exits were bolted shut to prevent patrons from beating their checks. The Boston Fire Department authorized the club’s seating capacity at 460.

Boston mobster Charles ‘King’ Solomon owned the club from 1931-33. He had hired such marquee acts as Rudy Vallee, Sophie Tucker, Helen Morgan and Jimmy Durante.

But Solomon died in a gangland shooting in 1933, and his lawyer, Barney Welansky, took ownership.

Unlike Solomon, Welansky made a profit from the club. He slashed the entertainment budget and hired cheap underage employees. He also cut corners on construction with unlicensed electricians and un-fireproofed materials.

Respectable

Welansky turned the Cocoanut Grove into a respectable middle-class venue for anniversary parties and political fundraisers. On that weekend in 1942, Boston College football fans had planned on going to the club for a party. They thought they would celebrate a victory by the heavily favored Eagles over Jesuit rival Holy Cross.

But Holy Cross won in a rout, and some disappointed fans — including BC alumni Mayor Maurice Tobin — stayed away from the Cocoanut Grove that night.

Many others came. The cast of the Irving Berlin musical This Is The Army showed up for drinks. Buck Jones, a popular Western movie star, came with an entourage. He’d just appeared at a Boston Garden rally to urge kids to buy war stamps.

Aiding victims in the street. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

Aiding victims of the Cocoanut Grove fire in the street. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

The fire broke out shortly after Stanley Tomaszewski replaced the light bulb in the basement lounge. A gunner’s mate later said he saw a flame about the size of a dinner plate flash between the top of the palm tree and the blue satin canopy.

Inferno

Waiters first tried to douse the small flames with water, but the fire raced up the stairs and burst into a fireball on the central dance floor. Then with astonishing speed the yellow flames rolled through the air into the next bar and down a corridor. Then they ignited the main club room. Within five minutes, the entire building burst into an inferno.

The acrid, toxic smoke quickly overcame the people inside the club. Some died sitting in their seats holding their drinks. More people died from respiratory problems than from burns.

Goody Goodell, a singer in the basement lounge, survived by wetting a cloth napkin and breathing through it while she escaped. A sailor made it out after urinating in his handkerchief and holding it over his face.

Patrons raced for the main exit, a revolving door, but they couldn’t get through. A stack of bodies eight feet high clogged the door.

Taking a victim to an ambulance. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

Taking a victim of the Cocoanut Grove fire to an ambulance. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

The Victims

Thomas I. Gray, a Navy ensign on shore leave, was staying at the Statler. He later remembered how he and his shipmates had gone out on the town when they followed the sound of sirens.

They found abandoned cars outside of the Cocoanut Grove that prevented emergency vehicles from reaching the fire. Gray helped carry victims to ambulances.

…there were people trapped inside. You could hear them and you could see them. Once in a while one of them would work his way out and they were laying in the street, some of them. And the ones that did get out, their shirts were torn off their backs, their backs were bloody from where people had clawed them and just like wild animals in there.

Gray remembered the Shore Patrol and Army MPs who showed up long after the fire burned out. They moved the crowds back from the firefighters, police and Army and Navy rescue workers.

Within 12 minutes the fire killed hundreds, and 181 victims were taken to Massachusetts General and Boston City hospitals.

Buck Jones died in the hospital. Four brothers from the town of Wilmington, Mass., all died in the Cocoanut Grove fire, and the town put up a statue of them on the green.

Also dead: Bunny Leslie, a cigarette girl and half-sister to movie star Lillian Roth; 15-year-old Eleanor Chiampa, treated to a night out by her Army lieutenant brother; headwaiter Frank Balzarini; musical director Bernie Fazioli; cashier Catherine Swett, who loyally refused to abandon the cash box; and Joe Trafanglia, the classmate of Stanley Tomaszewski who had gotten him the job.

Stanley Tomaszewski at a public hearing about the fire. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Stanley Tomaszewski at a public hearing about the Cocoanut Grove fire. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Fingerpointing

Public hearings into the cause of the Cocoanut Grove fire started late the next day. Stanley Tomaszewski walked into a police station and volunteered to talk about his role in the fire.

On Monday, he took the stand. He said he didn’t think he started the fire. Asked again, he said he thought the fire started in the palm tree.

But did his match cause the Cocoanut Grove fire, or did defective wiring in the tree cause it? And regardless of what started the fire, why did it spread so fast and why was it so toxic?

Over the years, people came up with various theories over the years. Methyl chloride, a substitute for Freon, explained some, but not all, of the fire’s mysteries. Perhaps the leatherette sofas gave off toxic fumes.

The official report didn’t reach a conclusion about the cause of the fire. Furthermore, it said, Stanley Tomaszewski did not start the fire. But Boston Herald headlines on Monday announced, ‘Bus Boy Fixing Light with Match Set Fire.’

For months, Tomaszewski stayed at the Kenmore Hotel under police guard for his own safety.

Barney Welansky. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Welansky

On the night of the Cocoanut Grove fire, club owner Barney Welansky was recovering from a heart attack at Massachusetts General Hospital. Described as a 45-year-old portly martinet, he had bragged he didn’t have to obey the building code because of his connections to Boston Mayor Tobin.

A jury convicted Welansky of manslaughter and sentenced him to 12-15 years in prison.

Tobin narrowly escaped indictment. Instead, he won election as governor. Tobin pardoned Welansky after he spent four years in prison. Welansky died nine weeks later of cancer, but said he wished he’d died in the fire.

The Cocoanut Grove after the fire. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

After the Cocoanut Grove fire. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

Aftermath

Stanley Tomaszewski graduated from Boston College and worked as a federal auditor until he retired. He married and had three children. His wife, Betty, said he was a very decent man.

In 1972, Tomaszewski told a Boston Globe reporter that he prayed for the souls of the innocents who died every day. He also said he often visited their graves in Massachusetts.

Tomaszewski subsequently told another reporter 21 years later that he wished people would let sleeping dogs lie.

I’ve suffered enough–spit on, called every name in the book and threatened. Phone calls in the middle of the night. It hasn’t been easy…I don’t have a sense of guilt, because it wasn’t my fault. If I felt guilty I wouldn’t be talking to you, my name would not be on the doorbell and in the telephone book. I never backed away.

Stanley Tomaszewski died Oct. 20, 1994, at 68.

Greed

Stephanie Schorow, in The Cocoanut Grove Fire, reached a conclusion about the major cause of death: greed. She wrote,

Whether the match or methyl chloride caused the fire, no matter whether strange gasses were released by the furnishings or by a mysterious chemical, the major causes of death in the Grove were the locked doors, inadequate exits, and crowded conditions. Whatever the initial spark, greed and thoughtlessness were the real killers.

If you enjoyed this story, you may also want to read about the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944 here. To read firsthand accounts of the Cocoanut Grove fire from survivors, click here. For digitized documents from the fire click here. To see the Boston Public Library’s collection of photographs from the Cocoanut Grove fire, click here.

With thanks to Fire in the Grove by John C . Esposito. All black-and-white photos from the Leslie Jones Collection, Boston Public Library. This story about the Cocoanut Grove fire was updated in 2022.

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A Star Is Born in Boston: Jon Landau Shows Bruce Springsteen the Future

Bruce Springsteen was about to get dropped by his record company when Jon Landau, a 27-year-old music critic for Boston’s Real Paper, wrote a column that launched both their careers.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in 1977.

Springsteen’s first two albums had flopped commercially. He also couldn’t quite get the sound he heard in his head onto vinyl. In the spring of 1974 his band was touring college auditoriums and small theaters to support his second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.

Boston was a paradise for rock ‘n roll fans in the 1970s. The city’s many colleges provided a ready audience for groups like the Cars, The J. Geils Band and the Modern Lovers. Aerosmith seemed to perform at every frat party, high school and country club in Greater Boston. In far off Toledo, Ohio, Tom Scholz listened to rock ‘n roll on Boston’s WBZ radio. He then went to MIT and named his band after the town.

So perhaps it was inevitable that Springsteen’s career would get its biggest lift in the town where the mayor once bailed out the Rolling Stones.

Jon Landau

Jon Landau had been born in suburban Boston and spent much of his time at Brandeis in the ‘60s listening to rock ‘n roll records. In 1965 and 1966 he played in a band called the Jellyroll that never made it. Landau blamed himself; he was too much of a perfectionist to work with others.

Realizing he’d never play rock ‘n roll, he became a critic for alternative newspapers, including Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy and The Real Paper. He once wrote:

I flipped for the Animals’ two-hour show at Rindge Tech; the Rolling Stones, not just at Boston Garden, where they did the best half hour rock’n’roll set I had ever seen, but at Lynn Football Stadium, where they started a riot; Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels overcoming the worst of performing conditions at Walpole Skating Rink; and the Beatles at Suffolk Down…

Landau had also parlayed a friendship with Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records to produce a few records. The MC5’s Back in the USA flopped, and he failed at producing J Geils’ debut album.

By 1974, rock ‘n roll bored Landau. He only liked Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder – and Bruce Springsteen.

The two had met in April that year outside Charlie’s Place, a Cambridge bar where the band played. Then on May 9, 1974, Springsteen played two separate shows opening for Bonnie Raitt at the Harvard Square Theatre.

Born to Run

Springsteen announced his band as The E Street Band for the first time ever. They played I Sold My Heart to the Junkman during the first set, and closed the second with a frenzied version of Twist and Shout. During the second set, Springsteen unveiled Born to Run.

Landau attended the second set, and it blew him away.

Jon Landau wrote for the Real Paper, one of Boston’s alternative weekly newspapers.

In the May 22, 1974 issue of The Real Paper, Jon Landau wrote a column about the concert. It became one of the most famous pieces of rock criticism ever. Novelist Nick Hornby called the column ‘influential, exciting, career-changing, and subsequently much derided and parodied article.’

Jon Landau had written:

I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time.

Springsteen’s record company built a campaign for Springsteen’s breakthrough album, Born to Run, around that quote. More importantly, Springsteen asked Landau’s advice about getting the wall of sound he wanted on the album.

Jon Landau knew enough about record production to advise Springsteen to switch studios. He helped Springsteen so much on Born to Run that he received a credit as co-producer.

Born to Run – which includes Thunder Road, Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, Jungleland and, of course, Born to Run — is considered one of the greatest rock ‘n roll albums ever.

No Thank You

Jon Landau went on to become Springsteen’s manager and to produce his records until 1992. At Springsteen’s induction into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, he acknowledged Jon Landau:

We were worlds colliding. His creative ability as a producer, an editor, speechwriter earlier this evening, his ability to see through to the heart of matters both professional and personal, and the love that he’s given me has altered my life forever. What I hope to give to my fans with my music — a greater sense of themselves, and greater freedom — he with his talents and his abilities has done that for me. There’s no ‘thank you’ tonight that’s gonna do the job, and it’s a debt that I can’t repay, and one that I treasure owing.

You can hear a tape of the May 9, 1974 concert here.

This story about Jon Landau was updated in 2023.

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The Other Boston Tea Party, The Hippest Club in Town

Boston and Cambridge were centers of the Sixties counterculture, and from 1967-70 the other Boston Tea Party was the epicenter of the center.

It was a run-down 19^th-century house of worship in Boston’s South End that had been showing underground films in the 1960s. In 1967, a Kansas City lawyer and a hippie MIT graduate scraped together a few thousand dollars to stage rock concerts on weekends.

The Boston Tea Party in 2019. Photo courtesy Google maps.

For $3 or $3.50, you could see acts like the Grateful Dead, The Byrds, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Cream, Fleetwood Mac, The Allman Brothers Band, Joe Cocker, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, Taj Mahal, Ten Years After and Sly and the Family Stone. The Who commanded a premium of $4.50 for their Tommy concert. Unknowns Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, later of the Rolling Stones, played as part of Jeff Beck.

Jonathan Richman played there with his proto-punk band, the Modern Lovers. He remembers how fun the crowd was:

Wall-to-wall hippies, bikers, Harvard students, Northeastern students, fashion models, professors, drug dealers, art teachers, groupies, MIT students, photographers, local thugs, local disc jockeys, skinny-bohemian-artist girls, visiting dignitaries from the New York art scene, and the royalty of the Boston music set — the local singers and guitar-players in their mod suits strolling around with their beautiful girlfriends.

Kansas City Lawyer

People called the other Boston Tea Party ‘a psychedelic ballroom,’ ‘a cathedral of the hippie era,’ ‘the hippest club in Boston’ and ‘everybody’s cup of tea.’

It opened on Jan. 20, 1967, with a capacity of 400. Local record stores and designated shoe stores sold tickets. A Boston group, The Lost, played the first concert. Other local bands included The Hallucinations, The Beacon Street Union, The Bagatelle, Ill Wind and The Cloud. A sign behind the stage said ‘Praise Ye The Lord,’ and psychedelic light shows accompanied the concerts.

Ray Riepen was The Boston Tea Party’s unlikely owner. A chain-smoking lawyer from Kansas City, he had moved to Cambridge to earn a master’s degree at Harvard School of Law. Riepen kept his hair short, wore three-piece suits and drove a Mercedes.

He got involved with The Boston Tea Party when the manager of the underground film series wanted to stage rock ‘n roll dance parties on weekends. Riepen and the hippie MIT graduate, David Hahn, put together $3,000 and organized the concerts. Riepen later bought out Hahn.

Soon after The Boston Tea Party opened, Riepen approached the management of a struggling classical music FM station and persuaded them to let him run it as an underground rock station. He assembled a group of hippie DJs who promoted The Boston Tea Party concerts.

Alternative Media

He hired as one of his DJs a singer named Peter Wolf, who also fronted The Hallucination and later The J. Geils Band.

Alternative newspapers such as Boston After Dark and the Avatar also promoted the concerts.

The concert hall’s manager, Steve Nelson, used to walk into the offices of Boston After Dark, take over a workspace, open a briefcase full of graphic layout tools and make up ads on the spot. His successor, Bob Driscoll, later created a Boston Tea Party look, spare with plenty of white space. Those posters are now highly collectible. (To see Boston Tea Party posters in chronological order, click here.)

The Velvets

By the spring of 1967, The Boston Tea Party booked bands from out of town. Jon Landau, then a music critic and later Bruce Springsteen’s manager, called the Tea Party ‘consistently well-run.’ He said out-of-town groups liked it because of the professional treatment they received.

On May 26, 1967, the Velvet Underground played The Boston Tea Party, the first of many times. The band was one of the most influential in rock history. Andy Warhol managed them as the house band for his Factory, but for several years they used The Boston Tea Party as their home base. In late 1968, Lou Reed said onstage, “This is our favorite place to play in the whole country.”

That first concert launched the Velvets career as a touring band. The German singer Nico showed up late for it, toward the end of the show, and Reed wouldn’t let her on stage.

A photograph of the Velvet Underground on the back cover of the White Light/White Heat album shows them under The Boston Tea Party marquee and the letters ‘ARTY.’ (To hear the Jan. 10, 1969 Velvet Underground show, click here.)

Drugs and Rock ‘N Roll

Led Zeppelin played The Boston Tea Party on their first US tour in January 1969. “They only had an hour’s worth of material, but the crowd wouldn’t let them stop, so they just kept jamming,” said Nelson. Critics considered that gig key to the transformation of the band’s performance style to long sets with extended solos.

Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler saw a Led Zeppelin show at The Boston Tea Party in 1969. He called it one of two concerts in which he ‘just sat with my mouth open.’ (To hear a Led Zeppelin concert at The Boston Tea Party, click here.)

In July ‘69 the club relocated to 15 Landsdowne Street, a space that held 1900 people. The Grateful Dead played there on New Year’s Eve 1969, but not before trying to get everyone high on LSD. They spiked the drinks in the soda machine and injected it into a sealed bottle of Mateus. The Dead managed to victimize manager Don Law and the security guards.

Soda Pop Raid

Boston politicians and law enforcement officers did not love the racially mixed crowd of longhaired rock ‘n roll fans. One night while The Cloud was playing, the house lights went on and dozens of Boston police officers swarmed into the hall looking for drugs. They were led by Boston Licensing Commissioner Albert P. ‘Dapper’ O’Neil, who brought with him a Boston Herald-Traveler reporter hoping for a story.

The police didn’t find any drugs, but arrested the management for an expired license to sell soft drinks. Ray Repien appeared in court and put on a country lawyer routine for the judge. Manager Steve Nelson remembers him saying, “No your honor, we don’t approve of drugs, shucks, all we’re doing at the Tea Party is giving the kids something to do.”

The Herald-Traveler’s headline was not what Dapper O’Neil hoped for: “Soda Pop Raid Fizzles.”

Wild Times

Stage manager Stanley Kastner had to hold the piano so it wouldn’t collapse while Little Richard danced on it. While the audience gave him a 45-minute ovation, Kastner said Little Richard went backstage to get paid in cash. He took a gun out of a metal briefcase, counted the bills and left while the audience was still applauding.

B.B. King played to his first white audience in Boston there. So did Muddy Waters.

It’s a well-known story that James Brown calmed Boston after Martin Luther King’s assassination by letting WGBH-TV carry his Boston Garden performance live. Less well-known is the blues concert Muddy Waters gave at The Boston Tea Party the night King was killed. “Muddy sang the bluest blues I’ve ever heard, more of a wake really than a concert,“ remembered Nelson.

Historic Marker

The Boston Tea Party closed for good in December 1970, a victim of the rock ‘n roll popularity it helped to create. Bands were commanding more money for larger venues.

The 40^th anniversary of the other Boston Tea Party was celebrated on Jan. 24, 2007, with a gathering of 100 Boston music people. The Bostonian Society unveiled a small marker next to the 7-Eleven that occupies the ground floor. The rest of the building is now condominiums.

The Velvet Underground pictured in front of The Boston Tea Party

Nelson recalled how The Boston Tea Party acolytes managed to persuade the staid historical society to agree to the marker.

The building, built in 1872, once functioned as a Unitarian church. For some never-explained reason one of the windows was shaped like a Star of David. The meeting house was built on land donated by a rich Bostonian, John Gardner, whose son married Isabelle Stewart. It was dedicated to the memory of Theodore Parker, the Unitarian minister, abolitionist and early supporter of women’s rights.

Said Nelson,

…the kind of people who hung out at the Tea Party in the Sixties were for civil rights and women’s rights and against the Vietnam War, so Theodore Parker’s spirit was very much alive at the Tea Party. What karma!

With thanks to the Music Museum of New England and Berkshire Fine Arts. This story about the other Boston Tea Party was updated in 2023.

Images: Boston Tea Party building courtesy Google Maps, image capture 2019. Mick Fleetwood By W.W.Thaler – H. Weber, Hildesheim – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13409500.

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