Interview on “Ode To Jimmy:” Dr. Eric Karlstrom with Andrew Carrington Hitchcock (11/18/2017)
“Ode to Jimmy” (The Recorded Song)
Ode to Jimmy: The Backstory (Musical-Narration)
The CIA As Organized Crime (Musical-Narration)
Ode to Jimmy: Summary of Interview on ACH Show
In today’s show originally broadcast on November 18, 2017, EuroFolkRadio’s Andrew Carrington Hitchcock interviews Dr. Eric Karlstrom to discuss the background to his 2003 song, “Ode To Jimmy.”
We discussed: the PSYOP of the 1960’s hippy movement; how by 1970 one third of the American soldiers in Vietnam were hooked on heroin; Eric’s experiences growing up in 1950’s America; how the CIA regards everyone as either cannon fodder or a lab rat; the strange tale of Jim Morrison and his father Admiral George Stephen Morrison; Admiral Morrison’s role in the fake Gulf of Tonkin incident, which resulted in the Vietnam War; the MK Ultra Program; how America restarted Afghanistan’s opium production one year after the Taliban had stopped it and why; Mike Ruppert’s research into 9/11; and many other topics.
Eric T. Karlstrom Introductory Background: Like a lot of my friends who grew up in Arlington, Virginia, I began playing guitar in about 1963 or 1964. Jimmy Isenburg was a childhood friend and, as I see it now, one of the thousands and millions of victims of the 1960’s cultural chaos that was contrived and imposed on America by Britain’s Tavistock Institute, the Frankfurt School, and the CIA (See “White Out: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press” by Cockburn and St. Clair). When the folk craze hit in the early 1960s, Jimmy and I formed little folk groups together, along with our friends, Ames Arnold and David DeHuff. Basically, we taught each other how to sing and play guitar along the way. Then, in the span of five years, from 1964 to 1969, America slid into (contrived) cultural chaos.
Tracking right along with pop culture, Jimmy “graduated” from singing folk songs to singing lead in a rock band. His new heroes were Jimmy Hendrix and Mick Jagger. He threw himself completely into the rock life style and died of a heroin overdose in 1969 at the age of 20. Jimmy was an extremely talented and creative guy. And he was witty and funny! So, of all the songs I’ve written, “Ode to Jimmy” was the most difficult to write. It took me decades to even begin to understand what happened to our culture and nation during the 60’s! And I was a university professor! And how do you write a song about such a tragedy? I suppose Jimmy was just “collateral damage,” like my cousin, Lt. Sigfred Karlstrom, who was killed in Vietnam by a “stray bullet” (or “friendly fire,” they say) and so many thousands, perhaps millions, of others….
According to L. Fletcher Prouty, former liaison officer between the CIA and the U.S. military, the CIA gained control of America in the 1950’s and by the 1960’s, it was far along to controlling the entire world control (“The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies In Control of the United States and the World,” 2008). Since that time, the nation, and to a considerable extent the world, have been ruled by the “cryptocracy” (“rule by secrecy”). And according to Douglas Valentine, the CIA has always regarded their fellow Americans “as either cannon fodder or lab rats” (See: “The CIA As Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World,” 2017).
For the U.S. government to have had a hand in destroying a young life such as Jimmy’s is unconscionable, unconstitutional, and unspeakable. But then these same elements within our government played major roles in killing JFK, RFK, and MLK in the 1960’s and went on to exterminate 3,000 innocents on 9/11/2001. So all of this MUST be spoken now… in order to try to fix it before it is too late.
See: My Song Responses to the CIA/Tavistock’s War on America in the 1960s
Recording and lyrics of “Ode to Jimmy”:
Ode to Jimmy* (by Eric Karlstrom, July, 2004)
Well, Jimmy was a tall and a skinny, funny-lookin’ kid
He and I was best friends in the 2nd grade
We was always cuttin’ up and givin’ our teacher fits
But he was in that purple reader all the way*
By the time that we grew up to high school age
He’d read most of Steinbeck and was writing poetry
And he was playing’ on the football team
And pickin’ folk songs with Ames and Dave and me
Then one summer day my family moved out west
I had to say goodbye to all my childhood friends
But a few years later I set out to hitchhiking
From Flagstaff back to Arlington
There I found Jimmy lookin’ all pale and weak and drawn
He was singing’ lead now in a rock and roll band
And I watched him stick a needle in his arm
Like his hero, that other Jimmy, was doing’ then
Then I spent a few days at my aunt and uncle’s house
Re-visiting my second family
Seemed they were all health and busy and livin’ well
He was high up in the CIA
A little bit later I heard that Jimmy died
OD’ed on the bathroom floor
The word was that he’d really tried
To clean up and straighten out once more
Well, those crazy times never made much sense to me
The war, the drugs, and all the casualties
It’s only lookin’ back now that finally I begin to see
Things were not at all the way that they were said to be
It was war for drugs and drugs for war
It was all big profits for those Wall Street Banks
It was CIA agents dealin’ heroin
To our soldiers in Vietnam
It was stuffin’ white powder from Laos into body bags
They could hide 50 lbs inside each man
That’s how they shipped the stuff back to America
And how it ended up in Jimmy’s veins
Now I wonder if the ones who shipped those drugs
Ever had to spend a day in jail
Or if those Wall Street war lords
Ever lost a night of sleep or missed a meal
But it seems the justice system here is broken now
And it’s the criminals that rule
But I reckon they’ll still have to face a higher law
And a judge that can’t be bought or fooled
And gazing now into these mysteries
How our lives are wagered, sold, and spent
But as these years go drifting by
I sometimes miss my childhood friend
Well, Jimmy was a tall and a skinny funny-lookin’ kid
He and I was best friends in the 2nd grade
We was always cuttin’ up and givin’ our teacher fits
But he was in that purple reader all the way.**
*This song is recorded on my “Reflections” CD and is available at www.erickarlstrom.com
**In elementary school at that time, students were assigned different colored reading materials, ranging from least to most advanced student abilities. Purple was the most advanced level.