Early life Charley Douglass Plymell was born in
Finney County, Kansas during the worst dust storms of that time. He was born in a converted chicken coop near
Holcomb. His grandfather, Charley Plymell, was deeded a homestead in
Apache Palo lands by
President Grover Cleveland. The stage line began in Plymell, a few miles south of
Garden City where now stands the Plymell Union Church and Pierceville-Plymell Elementary School. Like many, his face was covered by wet rags as his mother went out to shoot jackrabbits and gather cacti for meals. His father and mother were later divorced, and his father bought a home for Charles and his sisters so they could attend school in
Wichita while his father traveled. In Wichita in the 1950s Plymell dropped out of his first year at
Wichita North High School, lied about his age, traveled the western states in a new car his father bought him, working on pipelines, dams, factories and riding bareback broncs and Brahma bulls in rodeos. Returning to Wichita he became a hipster, taking
peyote,
marijuana, and
benzedrine, the drugs of the day. He listened to jazz, R&B, and “
Race music” across the tracks in Wichita. He worked at factories and took courses at
Wichita State University.
Allen Ginsberg credited him with creating the "Wichita Vortex." Plymell's Vortex in his own words does not relate to Ginsberg's "
Wichita Vortex Sutra" but took place west of Wichita near the center of the U.S. at Space Needle Crossing in the Chalk Pyramids. His Vortex is spiritual/mythical and based on when he heard the Voice of the Game Lord, which he later authenticated through his mentor and influence,
Loren Eiseley. His other influences included
Hart Crane,
Ezra Pound, Robert Ronnie Branaman (1933–2024), and
Samuel Coleridge. He did not meet
the Beats until 1963 when associated with Ginsberg,
Neal Cassady, and
William S. Burroughs. His Vortex is written about in his Tent Shaker Vortex Voice. Before that he considered himself a hipster and outsider.
Career Plymell moved to a quiet Russian neighborhood in 1962 at the corner of
Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. After the neighborhood filled with hippies and was taken over, Plymell moved to a famous flat, 1403 Gough Street. It was there at Plymell's LSD party that the Beats met the Hippies. Promptly Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady moved in with him where Plymell played
Bob Dylan to Ginsberg for the first time. It was during that time Plymell made two films that were shown at the
Ann Arbor Film Festival and his collages, which opened at the "Batman Gallery" where fellow Wichitans Bob Branaman and
Bruce Conner had shown. Plymell's show sold out except for a few pieces that ended up in Australia. Billy "Batman" Jahrmarkt gave Plymell his classic 1951 MGTD. His work
Robert Ronnie Branaman, published in 1964, is credited with being an early example of
underground comix. Recently Plymell's book
Benzedrine Highway was published by
Norton Records/Kicks Books. He has been writing poems used as songs by Andrea Schroeder (Berlin);
Mike Watt &
Sam Dook (U.K.) They recently featured one of his songs on their
CUZ tour. He has also written songs for Clubberlanggang, and is working on a book with his poems for
Neal Cassady and Bob Branaman put to
rockabilly by
Bloodshot Bill of Norton Records. Plymell holds an M.A. Degree in Arts and Sciences from
Johns Hopkins University. In 1967, Plymell created
The Last Times, a tabloid
underground newspaper published in
San Francisco. It lasted only two issues, but included work by
William Burroughs,
Claude Pelieu,
Allen Ginsberg, and
Charles Bukowski.
The Last Times featured
William Burroughs' text
Day the Records Went Up,
Claude Pelieu's
Do It Yourself & Dig It,
Allen Ginsberg's poem "Television Was A Baby Crawling Toward that Deathchamber", and a
Charles Bukowski column.
The Last Times #1 and 2 also contained articles by French avant-gardist
Jean-Jacques Lebel and
Man Suicided by Society by
Antonin Artaud, translated by Mary Beach, Plymell's mother-in-law. Issue #1 also contains the first Plymell printed work of
R. Crumb that Plymell had "lifted" from the second issue of
Yarrowstalks (a Philadelphia-based underground newspaper). Plymell subsequently earned a bit of immortality in the underground press by publishing only the first printing of
Robert Crumb's
Zap Comix #1, which
Don Donahue took over from Plymell when he purchased his Multilith 1250
printing press soon after. == Notes ==