My 21-year-old theory about 'Pulp Fiction'

You know any of them old jokes? No, but I know an old theory.

It's all about Travolta, man!

I don't know why this popped into my head today, but I started thinking about a theory of mine concerning the movie Pulp Fiction. This was an idea I started toying with back when the movie was new in 1994, and it never got any further than some primitive, now-obsolete Usenet discussion groups. In those bygone days, I was probably frequenting alt.fan.tarantino or something similar. I think this idea of mine found some traction there, but it probably only amounted to a single stranger saying it was "kind of interesting." That was enough for me back then. Likes and RTs hadn't been invented, so we had to make due with what was available.

Anyway, my theory was that Pulp Fiction, at least the parts concerning the Vincent Vega character, was a movie-length tribute to the career of star John Travolta. It starts with the character's name. Vincent was also the name of Travolta's character on Welcome Back, Kotter. The "Vega" part was simply an acknowledgement that Travolta was a superstar. The actor became famous through television but never did another recurring role on a series after Kotter. That's why Vincent claims never to watch television. He knows he's not on it anymore, so what's the point? And his offhand question to Jules, "What's a pilot?" is a punning acknowledgement of Travolta's own well-known love of aviation. The actor is a certified pilot with five aircraft and a private runway.

Synonymous with disco.

Okay, now we get into more specific nods to iconic Travolta roles. Uma Thurman's Mia Wallace actually calls Vincent "cowboy" at one point, obviously bringing Urban Cowboy to mind. Also, when she's trying to lead Vincent to the intercom in her home, Mia says "disco" when he finds it, referring to the genre of music with which Travolta became synonymous after Saturday Night Fever. Having Vincent and Mia win a dance contest, meanwhile, is another obvious Fever parallel. A less-obvious one is when Vincent's partner, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson), decides to give up being a criminal, which he refers to simply as "the life." This is analogous to a sub-plot from Fever in which Travolta's character, Tony Manero, has a brother who is leaving the priesthood. And where does Jules live? Inglewood, CA, a near-perfect sound-alike for Travolta's own home town of Englewood, NJ.

Pulp Fiction references Grease a few times, too. Not only do Mia and Vincent visit the 1950s nostalgia-themed eatery Jack Rabbit Slim's, which he calls "a wax museum with a pulse," but Vincent also says that he'll be "a fucking grease spot" if Mia overdoses while in his care. And then there is Mr. Vega's antagonistic relationship with boxer Butch Coolidge. To say the least, Butch and Vincent get along poorly throughout the entire movie. This, I suggest, is an in-joke referring to the fact that Bruce Willis provided the voice of the baby in Travolta's Look Who's Talking from 1989.

Anyway, that's my theory, which is mine. There's not much more to it than what I've already described in the paragraphs above. I just wanted to record it here for posterity. Thank you for indulging me.

One Song at a Time: 'Sweet Sixteen' by Big Joe Turner

He lived up to his name: Big Joe Turner, the Boss of the Blues.

A good purchase.

The wonderful thing about greatest hits records is that you generally purchase 'em for the two or three songs you know really well, but they can point you in the direction of some other just-as-essential tracks you never would have known about otherwise. 

Case in point: Big Joe Turner's Greatest Hits. I purchased a copy of this compilation CD at a very decent (and probably long, long gone) used record store in Joliet, IL about twelve years ago. I'd just rewatched Clue and had "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" rattling and rolling around in my head that day, and the disc was only a couple of bucks. What the hey? That, my friends, was a good purchase. 

Big Joe Turner stands out from the other early pioneers of rock & roll. For one thing, he was about twenty years older than most of them. Born in 1911, he would have been in his forties by the time he became a national star, crooning for the kiddies. "The Boss of the Blues," they called him. He kept on performing until the 1980s, when he finally died at age 74 in 1985. (So weird to think he could have seen Back to the Future.) A thick-necked, broad-shouldered mountain of a man with a voice to match, Turner had been a bouncer in his younger days and looked like he could still whoop your ass between songs. 

He's the exact opposite of most of the male pop stars of the 2010s, who tend to be skinny, androgynous, "sensitive" white boys with high, thin, squeaky voices. I'm referring to the Biebers, Sheerans, Timberlakes, Smiths, Levines, and Styleses of the world. All those banty roosters put together wouldn't equal one Big Joe Turner.

 Anyway, one of Big Joe's less-remembered yet completely captivating hits is a slow blues lament from 1952 called "Sweet Sixteen." It was written by, of all people, recording industry super-mogul Ahmet Ertegun, who would go on to be (according to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame) "one of the most significant figures in the modern recording industry." Ahmet had co-founded Atlantic Records just five years previously. Frank Zappa named one of his kids after this dude, if that's any indication.

As I see it, there are three stars on "Sweet Sixteen": singer Big Joe Turner, songwriter Ahmet Ertegun (who is slyly credited as "Nugetre" on the label), and pianist and orchestra leader Vann "Piano Man" Walls (1918-1999). It is Walls we first hear on the record: a few pretty, sad, isolated chords which, to me, sound like the musical equivalent of gentle falling snowflakes. Then, he hits us with the powerful triplets we expect to hear from piano-based blues of this vintage, accompanied by mournful, sympathetic saxophones. 

After a few bars, Big Joe himself steps up to the microphone to tell us, as slowly as possible, about his failed relationship with an impressionable, restless younger woman: "When I first met you, baby/You were just sweet sixteen/You just left your home, baby/Sweetest thing I've ever seen." Later in the song, Joe lets us know his ex-paramour was a runaway. "Now," he says, "you're gonna run away from me, too." 

When I think about the couple in this song, I always think about the relationship between gangster Odell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) and naive young "country girl" Sheronda (LisaGay Hamilton) in Jackie Brown, except that the girl in this song seems to be a lot more impetuous and headstrong than the meek, misguided lass in the Tarantino film. The part of the song which really sticks with me, though, is when Big Joe Turner -- out of nowhere -- starts telling us about his family. "Well, my brother, he's in Korea/And my sister, down in New Orleans/Well, my mother's up in Heaven/Lord, what's gonna happen to me?"