Ed Tracey Posts

While it has been supplanted by electronic keyboards the past three decades: the Hammond B-3 electro-mechanical organ changed popular music in the 20th Century. Its counterpart was the Leslie rotating speaker - which brought-out the sound of this instrument like no other. Yet, because the Leslie came from a rival manufacturer, what should have been a "beautiful friendship" became, instead ...... a corporate feud of the first magnitude.

Read full story

The music world can offer a fascinating look at times ...

FATHER-DAUGHTER? - musicians Edgar Winter and Lady Gaga.

   

Help get through the week by stopping in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - a collection of nearly seventy-five drawings from Renaissance Venice are at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City through September 23rd.

THIS COMING DECEMBER will mark the 150th anniversary of the day when Union general Ulysses S Grant ordered the expulsion of all Jews from the territory under his command in the South.

TIME MARCHES ON - for a long time, the Italian city of Naples prided itself on presenting only classic styles of pizza - but now, even Naples is seeing some of its restaurants offer 'ultra-pizzas' ... as has happened in other Italian cities.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is an Australian kitteh fortunate to be alive: discovered when a man brought his car in to the dealership to locate the origin of a strange noise - only to find this kitten trapped between the exhaust and the heat shield attached to the body.

SIGN of the APOCALYPSE - it seems Prince Charles has become adept at multi-tasking: earlier this month, he read the weather report for Scotland on the BBC, then he tried his luck as a disk jockey while on a trip to Canada.

ART NOTES - for those attending Netroots Nation and planning a side trip to Newport, Rhode Island: a dual exhibit of works by Norman Rockwell and the author Tom Wolfe is at the National Museum of American Illustration thru September 2nd.

   

TIME MARCHES ON - the biggest success story in the post-Iron Curtain eastern Europe has been Poland - who are about to host the European soccer championships - featuring national teams - next month, and for whom relationships with Germany (notoriously bad throughout history) have never been better.

FOR YEARS the Ivory Coast was western Africa's jewel, before a nasty civil war tore the country apart (along with its former president refusing for months to leave office after losing re-election). Now its new president Alassane Ouattara is struggling to make peace permanent, but has had some early successes.

PROGRAMMING NOTE - there will not be an Odds & Ends next week, as I'll be at Netroots Nation. If you plan to attend, I hope we get a chance to meet. Otherwise, will back back in two weeks.

EVEN WITH a new law set to go into effect this October - which will ease restrictions on pubs and small clubs with a crowd capacity below 200 - many small music venues in Britain are threatened with closure, including several where famous bands got their start.

THURSDAY's CHILD - is the 9-month-old Church the Cat - trapped in a tree for nearly a week (with an owl flying ominously overhead) before a tree-service bucket-loader serviceman was able to rescue her - who said that, unlike other rescues he's done: Church willingly moved towards the bucket, and then hopped right in.

IT SEEMS a PITY that it took the brutal murder of a gay man in the South American nation of Chile to enact an anti-discrimination law - but the relatively new president Sebastián Piñera has been much more gay-friendly than others in his post-Pinochet conservative party, giving activists more optimism than ever of seeing change.

POLITICAL NOTES - as the leader of a relatively new far-left party in France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon could have chosen to seek election as an MP to the Assemblée Nationale in one of the areas where his party scored highly in the first round of the presidential election. Instead, he chose to seek office directly against the leader of the xenophobic right-wing party leader Marine Le Pen in a June run-off election - and with the local chapter of the more moderate Socialist Party mired in allegations of corruption, he may stand a chance of winning.

SEPARATED at BIRTH - "Glee" star Lea Michele and Kim Kardashian.

   

TIME MARCHES ON - the biggest success story in the post-Iron Curtain eastern Europe has been Poland - who are about to host the European soccer championships - featuring national teams - next month, and for whom relationships with Germany (notoriously bad throughout history) have never been better.

CHEERS to two natives of India: Viswanathan Anand who has just successfully defended his World Chess Champion title, as well as the 16 year-old Shouryya Ray - now a student in Germany - who has solved a 300 year-old physics problem first proposed by Sir Isaac Newton.

FRIDAY's CHILD is the chosen emergency warning sign for the Internet Defense League - indicating that a threat to Internet freedom is now before Congress or elsewhere ... and so why not use an Internet staple as a warning sign? Same cat time, same cat channel.

.....and finally, for a song of the week ............... someone who is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and has written songs recorded by Wilson Pickett, Janis Joplin, George Benson and the Rolling Stones, and as a guitarist was an influence on Jimi Hendrix is Bobby Womack - yet is not as well-known in his own right as he ought to be (in no small part, believe it or not, due to his first marriage). Let's see if we can't remedy the situation.

Born in Cleveland in 1944, Bobby was the middle of five sons born to steelworker Friendly Womack and his wife Naomi, who formed a Gospel group known as the Womack Brothers - which met with the approval of his father, who sang in a Gospel choir in church. They opened in 1953 for the legendary traveling band The Soul Stirrers .... headed at that time by a young Sam Cooke who befriended Bobby Womack.

That proved fateful when Cooke formed his own SAR record label in California, and recruited the Womack Brothers: yet not (over the long run) as a Gospel group, but rather (as he had already done so) to transfer into secular music. In Friendly Womack's ears (as it was to many adult African-Americans of the time) that meant "the devil's music" and he threw them out of the house. Sam Cooke wired them $3,000 to buy a new car to drive to California, but Bobby had his heart set on a used $600 Cadillac - which broke down numerous times. But they made it finally: and Sam had them record in 1960 and 1961 as the Womack Brothers, with several songs indeed being Gospel music.

But Same convinced them not only to make the transition, but also to rename them as The Valentinos - which sounds (for all the world) like a doo-wop group. But their first single was a Top Ten hit on the 1962 R&B charts "Looking for a Love" - which resulted in them touring with James Brown. They had a second R&B hit in June, 1964 with It's All Over Now - which the Rolling Stones heard on the radio when they were in New York that month. Having co-written the tune, Bobby Womack was upset that a rock band wanted to record the song and even told Mick Jagger to get his own song ... but Sam Cooke saw the potential, persuading Bobby to let them record it. And when the Stones reached #1 in Britain with it and Bobby got his first royalty check .... he asked Sam Cooke "if they wanted to record any more of his songs?" (and he has remained friends with the Stones ever since, as you'll see).

But the shooting death in December, 1964 of Sam Cooke threatened the future of the Valentinos. In no small part because just three months later, Bobby Womack married Sam Cooke's widow Barbara - while the murder was still under investigation (it has yet to be solved) and even wearing one of Sam's suits (per Barbara's request).

In early 1965, this caused a major scandal in the R&B community, with Bobby forced to leave the Valentinos in favor of a solo career - which also flopped. He did find work as a session musician: first for Ray Charles, and particularly at the famed Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama, where he performed on classic soul recordings such as Aretha Franklin's album Lady Soul from early 1968. To his tasty guitar playing, Womack had also returned to songwriting, contributing two hit songs "I'm in Love" and "I'm a Midnight Mover" for Wilson Pickett.

It took until 1968 for Bobby Womack to revive his solo career (after the scandal had quieted) with "What Is This?" as his first charted single. And then - in yet another reinvention of himself - his first album had three imaginative cover songs: just listen to I Left My Heart in San Francisco as well as Fly Me to the Moon, not to mention California Dreaming  - the latter two even making the R&B charts. He continued to have success on the R&B charts over the next few years, with songs featuring an opening prologue on subjects such as love, and while he left sacred music for secular: he retained the ability not only to sing but to testify.

In the meantime, his songwriting continued to pay dividends: Trust Me was a song he not only wrote but performed on for Janis Joplin's posthumous album "Pearl". In 1971, the J. Geils Band had their first hit with Looking for a Love - which Bobby did not write but which he sang lead on the Valentinos' version nine years earlier (and had his own successful re-make of it in 1974, becoming his highest-rated single on the pop charts at #10). And Bobby showcased his guitar abilities in another forum: a duet album with the (equally eclectic) Hungarian jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó in which a song that Bobby wrote for Gabor - the instrumental Breezin' - was a hit for George Benson a few years later.

But the murder of his brother Harry in 1974 led him (along with other reasons) into substance abuse and - after another interesting foray, this time into country music - which failed commercially - he had a difficult time (as did many soul artists) in the disco era, and he laid low for the remainder of the decade.

He made a comeback in the 1980's with his album The Poet - which had a more stylish sound, including a version of "Just My Imagination" - and this became his highest-charting album of all. During the decade, he had several duets with Patti LaBelle, including "Love Has Finally Come at Last", a cover of Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll All be Free" and backed the Rolling Stones on their re-make of Harlem Shuffle in 1986. He recorded an album in 1989 reuniting him with his surviving Womack Brothers before taking a five-year absence.

He re-surfaced with the appropriately titled album Resurrection in 1994 (recorded on Ron Wood's record label) with guest stars such as Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart, Ronald Isley and Keith Richards. And in 1999 he fulfilled a promise he made to his late father Friendly Womack (who died in 1981) that he would record a Gospel album - which also had secular songs such as Bridge Over Troubled Water and a tribute to his mentor Sam Cooke with "Ease My Troubled Mind".

And he still performs, albeit on a slower pace. In 2007 he released his autobiography, then in 2010 he released a live album and last year he was nominated (along with Mos Def & Gorillaz) for a Grammy in "Best Short-Form Music Video". It was fitting that none other than Ron Wood introduced him upon his 2009 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - and even more fitting that the 2009 ceremonies took place in Cleveland itself - his hometown.

At age 68, the year 2012 is shaping up to be a good year for Bobby Womack. His first new studio album in twelve years - The Bravest Man in the Universe - is due to be released in a few weeks, with the title track actually dating back forty years ago. And just the other day: he underwent a successful colon cancer operation to remove (what turned out to be) a benign tumor. Not for nothing is he referred to as "one of soul music's great survivors".

Of all of his work, it is his composition If You Think You're Lonely Now from his 1981 album "The Poet" that is my favorite - and was included in the medley of songs he performed at his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. And below you can listen to it.

I want to dedicate this song

to all the lovers in the world tonight

and I expect that might be the whole world

because everybody needs something

or someone to love

Can I talk about this woman I have?

She's always complaining

about the things she ain't got

and the things her girlfriend's got

But I can't be in two places at one time

If you think you're lonely now

Wait until tonight, girl

I'll be long gone

Ain't it funny how tables turn

when things ain't going your way

when love walks out, pain walks in

You can't help to say

Read full story

The music world can offer a fascinating look at times ...

FATHER-DAUGHTER? - musicians Edgar Winter and Lady Gaga.

   

Help get through the week by stopping in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - a collection of nearly seventy-five drawings from Renaissance Venice are at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City through September 23rd.

THIS COMING DECEMBER will mark the 150th anniversary of the day when Union general Ulysses S Grant ordered the expulsion of all Jews from the territory under his command in the South.

TIME MARCHES ON - for a long time, the Italian city of Naples prided itself on presenting only classic styles of pizza - but now, even Naples is seeing some of its restaurants offer 'ultra-pizzas' ... as has happened in other Italian cities.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is an Australian kitteh fortunate to be alive: discovered when a man brought his car in to the dealership to locate the origin of a strange noise - only to find this kitten trapped between the exhaust and the heat shield attached to the body.

SIGN of the APOCALYPSE - it seems Prince Charles has become adept at multi-tasking: earlier this month, he read the weather report for Scotland on the BBC, then he tried his luck as a disk jockey while on a trip to Canada.

ART NOTES - for those attending Netroots Nation and planning a side trip to Newport, Rhode Island: a dual exhibit of works by Norman Rockwell and the author Tom Wolfe is at the National Museum of American Illustration thru September 2nd.

   

TIME MARCHES ON - the biggest success story in the post-Iron Curtain eastern Europe has been Poland - who are about to host the European soccer championships - featuring national teams - next month, and for whom relationships with Germany (notoriously bad throughout history) have never been better.

FOR YEARS the Ivory Coast was western Africa's jewel, before a nasty civil war tore the country apart (along with its former president refusing for months to leave office after losing re-election). Now its new president Alassane Ouattara is struggling to make peace permanent, but has had some early successes.

PROGRAMMING NOTE - there will not be an Odds & Ends next week, as I'll be at Netroots Nation. If you plan to attend, I hope we get a chance to meet. Otherwise, will back back in two weeks.

EVEN WITH a new law set to go into effect this October - which will ease restrictions on pubs and small clubs with a crowd capacity below 200 - many small music venues in Britain are threatened with closure, including several where famous bands got their start.

THURSDAY's CHILD - is the 9-month-old Church the Cat - trapped in a tree for nearly a week (with an owl flying ominously overhead) before a tree-service bucket-loader serviceman was able to rescue her - who said that, unlike other rescues he's done: Church willingly moved towards the bucket, and then hopped right in.

IT SEEMS a PITY that it took the brutal murder of a gay man in the South American nation of Chile to enact an anti-discrimination law - but the relatively new president Sebastián Piñera has been much more gay-friendly than others in his post-Pinochet conservative party, giving activists more optimism than ever of seeing change.

POLITICAL NOTES - as the leader of a relatively new far-left party in France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon could have chosen to seek election as an MP to the Assemblée Nationale in one of the areas where his party scored highly in the first round of the presidential election. Instead, he chose to seek office directly against the leader of the xenophobic right-wing party leader Marine Le Pen in a June run-off election - and with the local chapter of the more moderate Socialist Party mired in allegations of corruption, he may stand a chance of winning.

SEPARATED at BIRTH - "Glee" star Lea Michele and Kim Kardashian.

   

TIME MARCHES ON - the biggest success story in the post-Iron Curtain eastern Europe has been Poland - who are about to host the European soccer championships - featuring national teams - next month, and for whom relationships with Germany (notoriously bad throughout history) have never been better.

CHEERS to two natives of India: Viswanathan Anand who has just successfully defended his World Chess Champion title, as well as the 16 year-old Shouryya Ray - now a student in Germany - who has solved a 300 year-old physics problem first proposed by Sir Isaac Newton.

FRIDAY's CHILD is the chosen emergency warning sign for the Internet Defense League - indicating that a threat to Internet freedom is now before Congress or elsewhere ... and so why not use an Internet staple as a warning sign? Same cat time, same cat channel.

.....and finally, for a song of the week ............... someone who is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and has written songs recorded by Wilson Pickett, Janis Joplin, George Benson and the Rolling Stones, and as a guitarist was an influence on Jimi Hendrix is Bobby Womack - yet is not as well-known in his own right as he ought to be (in no small part, believe it or not, due to his first marriage). Let's see if we can't remedy the situation.

Born in Cleveland in 1944, Bobby was the middle of five sons born to steelworker Friendly Womack and his wife Naomi, who formed a Gospel group known as the Womack Brothers - which met with the approval of his father, who sang in a Gospel choir in church. They opened in 1953 for the legendary traveling band The Soul Stirrers .... headed at that time by a young Sam Cooke who befriended Bobby Womack.

That proved fateful when Cooke formed his own SAR record label in California, and recruited the Womack Brothers: yet not (over the long run) as a Gospel group, but rather (as he had already done so) to transfer into secular music. In Friendly Womack's ears (as it was to many adult African-Americans of the time) that meant "the devil's music" and he threw them out of the house. Sam Cooke wired them $3,000 to buy a new car to drive to California, but Bobby had his heart set on a used $600 Cadillac - which broke down numerous times. But they made it finally: and Sam had them record in 1960 and 1961 as the Womack Brothers, with several songs indeed being Gospel music.

But Same convinced them not only to make the transition, but also to rename them as The Valentinos - which sounds (for all the world) like a doo-wop group. But their first single was a Top Ten hit on the 1962 R&B charts "Looking for a Love" - which resulted in them touring with James Brown. They had a second R&B hit in June, 1964 with It's All Over Now - which the Rolling Stones heard on the radio when they were in New York that month. Having co-written the tune, Bobby Womack was upset that a rock band wanted to record the song and even told Mick Jagger to get his own song ... but Sam Cooke saw the potential, persuading Bobby to let them record it. And when the Stones reached #1 in Britain with it and Bobby got his first royalty check .... he asked Sam Cooke "if they wanted to record any more of his songs?" (and he has remained friends with the Stones ever since, as you'll see).

But the shooting death in December, 1964 of Sam Cooke threatened the future of the Valentinos. In no small part because just three months later, Bobby Womack married Sam Cooke's widow Barbara - while the murder was still under investigation (it has yet to be solved) and even wearing one of Sam's suits (per Barbara's request).

In early 1965, this caused a major scandal in the R&B community, with Bobby forced to leave the Valentinos in favor of a solo career - which also flopped. He did find work as a session musician: first for Ray Charles, and particularly at the famed Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama, where he performed on classic soul recordings such as Aretha Franklin's album Lady Soul from early 1968. To his tasty guitar playing, Womack had also returned to songwriting, contributing two hit songs "I'm in Love" and "I'm a Midnight Mover" for Wilson Pickett.

It took until 1968 for Bobby Womack to revive his solo career (after the scandal had quieted) with "What Is This?" as his first charted single. And then - in yet another reinvention of himself - his first album had three imaginative cover songs: just listen to I Left My Heart in San Francisco as well as Fly Me to the Moon, not to mention California Dreaming  - the latter two even making the R&B charts. He continued to have success on the R&B charts over the next few years, with songs featuring an opening prologue on subjects such as love, and while he left sacred music for secular: he retained the ability not only to sing but to testify.

In the meantime, his songwriting continued to pay dividends: Trust Me was a song he not only wrote but performed on for Janis Joplin's posthumous album "Pearl". In 1971, the J. Geils Band had their first hit with Looking for a Love - which Bobby did not write but which he sang lead on the Valentinos' version nine years earlier (and had his own successful re-make of it in 1974, becoming his highest-rated single on the pop charts at #10). And Bobby showcased his guitar abilities in another forum: a duet album with the (equally eclectic) Hungarian jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó in which a song that Bobby wrote for Gabor - the instrumental Breezin' - was a hit for George Benson a few years later.

But the murder of his brother Harry in 1974 led him (along with other reasons) into substance abuse and - after another interesting foray, this time into country music - which failed commercially - he had a difficult time (as did many soul artists) in the disco era, and he laid low for the remainder of the decade.

He made a comeback in the 1980's with his album The Poet - which had a more stylish sound, including a version of "Just My Imagination" - and this became his highest-charting album of all. During the decade, he had several duets with Patti LaBelle, including "Love Has Finally Come at Last", a cover of Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll All be Free" and backed the Rolling Stones on their re-make of Harlem Shuffle in 1986. He recorded an album in 1989 reuniting him with his surviving Womack Brothers before taking a five-year absence.

He re-surfaced with the appropriately titled album Resurrection in 1994 (recorded on Ron Wood's record label) with guest stars such as Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart, Ronald Isley and Keith Richards. And in 1999 he fulfilled a promise he made to his late father Friendly Womack (who died in 1981) that he would record a Gospel album - which also had secular songs such as Bridge Over Troubled Water and a tribute to his mentor Sam Cooke with "Ease My Troubled Mind".

And he still performs, albeit on a slower pace. In 2007 he released his autobiography, then in 2010 he released a live album and last year he was nominated (along with Mos Def & Gorillaz) for a Grammy in "Best Short-Form Music Video". It was fitting that none other than Ron Wood introduced him upon his 2009 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - and even more fitting that the 2009 ceremonies took place in Cleveland itself - his hometown.

At age 68, the year 2012 is shaping up to be a good year for Bobby Womack. His first new studio album in twelve years - The Bravest Man in the Universe - is due to be released in a few weeks, with the title track actually dating back forty years ago. And just the other day: he underwent a successful colon cancer operation to remove (what turned out to be) a benign tumor. Not for nothing is he referred to as "one of soul music's great survivors".

Of all of his work, it is his composition If You Think You're Lonely Now from his 1981 album "The Poet" that is my favorite - and was included in the medley of songs he performed at his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. And below you can listen to it.

I want to dedicate this song

to all the lovers in the world tonight

and I expect that might be the whole world

because everybody needs something

or someone to love

Can I talk about this woman I have?

She's always complaining

about the things she ain't got

and the things her girlfriend's got

But I can't be in two places at one time

If you think you're lonely now

Wait until tonight, girl

I'll be long gone

Ain't it funny how tables turn

when things ain't going your way

when love walks out, pain walks in

You can't help to say

Read full story

The music world can offer a fascinating look at times ...

FATHER-DAUGHTER? - musicians Edgar Winter and Lady Gaga.

   

Help get through the week by stopping in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - a collection of nearly seventy-five drawings from Renaissance Venice are at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City through September 23rd.

THIS COMING DECEMBER will mark the 150th anniversary of the day when Union general Ulysses S Grant ordered the expulsion of all Jews from the territory under his command in the South.

TIME MARCHES ON - for a long time, the Italian city of Naples prided itself on presenting only classic styles of pizza - but now, even Naples is seeing some of its restaurants offer 'ultra-pizzas' ... as has happened in other Italian cities.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is an Australian kitteh fortunate to be alive: discovered when a man brought his car in to the dealership to locate the origin of a strange noise - only to find this kitten trapped between the exhaust and the heat shield attached to the body.

SIGN of the APOCALYPSE - it seems Prince Charles has become adept at multi-tasking: earlier this month, he read the weather report for Scotland on the BBC, then he tried his luck as a disk jockey while on a trip to Canada.

ART NOTES - for those attending Netroots Nation and planning a side trip to Newport, Rhode Island: a dual exhibit of works by Norman Rockwell and the author Tom Wolfe is at the National Museum of American Illustration thru September 2nd.

   

FOR YEARS the Ivory Coast was western Africa's jewel, before a nasty civil war tore the country apart (along with its former president refusing for months to leave office after losing re-election). Now its new president Alassane Ouattara is struggling to make peace permanent, but has had some early successes.

PROGRAMMING NOTE - there will not be an Odds & Ends next week, as I'll be at Netroots Nation. If you plan to attend, I hope we get a chance to meet. Otherwise, will back back in two weeks.

EVEN WITH a new law set to go into effect this October - which will ease restrictions on pubs and small clubs with a crowd capacity below 200 - many small music venues in Britain are threatened with closure, including several where famous bands got their start.

THURSDAY's CHILD - is the 9-month-old Church the Cat - trapped in a tree for nearly a week (with an owl flying ominously overhead) before a tree-service bucket-loader serviceman was able to rescue her - who said that, unlike other rescues he's done: Church willingly moved towards the bucket, and then hopped right in.

IT SEEMS a PITY that it took the brutal murder of a gay man in the South American nation of Chile to enact an anti-discrimination law - but the relatively new president Sebastián Piñera has been much more gay-friendly than others in his post-Pinochet conservative party, giving activists more optimism than ever of seeing change.

POLITICAL NOTES - as the leader of a relatively new far-left party in France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon could have chosen to seek election as an MP to the Assemblée Nationale in one of the areas where his party scored highly in the first round of the presidential election. Instead, he chose to seek office directly against the leader of the xenophobic right-wing party leader Marine Le Pen in a June run-off election - and with the local chapter of the more moderate Socialist Party mired in allegations of corruption, he may stand a chance of winning.

SEPARATED at BIRTH - "Glee" star Lea Michele and Kim Kardashian.

   

TIME MARCHES ON - the biggest success story in the post-Iron Curtain eastern Europe has been Poland - who are about to host the European soccer championships - featuring national teams - next month, and for whom relationships with Germany (notoriously bad throughout history) have never been better.

CHEERS to two natives of India: Viswanathan Anand who has just successfully defended his World Chess Champion title, as well as the 16 year-old Shouryya Ray - now a student in Germany - who has solved a 300 year-old physics problem first proposed by Sir Isaac Newton.

FRIDAY's CHILD is the chosen emergency warning sign for the Internet Defense League - indicating that a threat to Internet freedom is now before Congress or elsewhere ... and so why not use an Internet staple as a warning sign? Same cat time, same cat channel.

.....and finally, for a song of the week ............... someone who is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and has written songs recorded by Wilson Pickett, Janis Joplin, George Benson and the Rolling Stones, and as a guitarist was an influence on Jimi Hendrix is Bobby Womack - yet is not as well-known in his own right as he ought to be (in no small part, believe it or not, due to his first marriage). Let's see if we can't remedy the situation.

Born in Cleveland in 1944, Bobby was the middle of five sons born to steelworker Friendly Womack and his wife Naomi, who formed a Gospel group known as the Womack Brothers - which met with the approval of his father, who sang in a Gospel choir in church. They opened in 1953 for the legendary traveling band The Soul Stirrers .... headed at that time by a young Sam Cooke who befriended Bobby Womack.

That proved fateful when Cooke formed his own SAR record label in California, and recruited the Womack Brothers: yet not (over the long run) as a Gospel group, but rather (as he had already done so) to transfer into secular music. In Friendly Womack's ears (as it was to many adult African-Americans of the time) that meant "the devil's music" and he threw them out of the house. Sam Cooke wired them $3,000 to buy a new car to drive to California, but Bobby had his heart set on a used $600 Cadillac - which broke down numerous times. But they made it finally: and Sam had them record in 1960 and 1961 as the Womack Brothers, with several songs indeed being Gospel music.

But Same convinced them not only to make the transition, but also to rename them as The Valentinos - which sounds (for all the world) like a doo-wop group. But their first single was a Top Ten hit on the 1962 R&B charts "Looking for a Love" - which resulted in them touring with James Brown. They had a second R&B hit in June, 1964 with It's All Over Now - which the Rolling Stones heard on the radio when they were in New York that month. Having co-written the tune, Bobby Womack was upset that a rock band wanted to record the song and even told Mick Jagger to get his own song ... but Sam Cooke saw the potential, persuading Bobby to let them record it. And when the Stones reached #1 in Britain with it and Bobby got his first royalty check .... he asked Sam Cooke "if they wanted to record any more of his songs?" (and he has remained friends with the Stones ever since, as you'll see).

But the shooting death in December, 1964 of Sam Cooke threatened the future of the Valentinos. In no small part because just three months later, Bobby Womack married Sam Cooke's widow Barbara - while the murder was still under investigation (it has yet to be solved) and even wearing one of Sam's suits (per Barbara's request).

In early 1965, this caused a major scandal in the R&B community, with Bobby forced to leave the Valentinos in favor of a solo career - which also flopped. He did find work as a session musician: first for Ray Charles, and particularly at the famed Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama, where he performed on classic soul recordings such as Aretha Franklin's album Lady Soul from early 1968. To his tasty guitar playing, Womack had also returned to songwriting, contributing two hit songs "I'm in Love" and "I'm a Midnight Mover" for Wilson Pickett.

It took until 1968 for Bobby Womack to revive his solo career (after the scandal had quieted) with "What Is This?" as his first charted single. And then - in yet another reinvention of himself - his first album had three imaginative cover songs: just listen to I Left My Heart in San Francisco as well as Fly Me to the Moon, not to mention California Dreaming  - the latter two even making the R&B charts. He continued to have success on the R&B charts over the next few years, with songs featuring an opening prologue on subjects such as love, and while he left sacred music for secular: he retained the ability not only to sing but to testify.

In the meantime, his songwriting continued to pay dividends: Trust Me was a song he not only wrote but performed on for Janis Joplin's posthumous album "Pearl". In 1971, the J. Geils Band had their first hit with Looking for a Love - which Bobby did not write but which he sang lead on the Valentinos' version nine years earlier (and had his own successful re-make of it in 1974, becoming his highest-rated single on the pop charts at #10). And Bobby showcased his guitar abilities in another forum: a duet album with the (equally eclectic) Hungarian jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó in which a song that Bobby wrote for Gabor - the instrumental Breezin' - was a hit for George Benson a few years later.

But the murder of his brother Harry in 1974 led him (along with other reasons) into substance abuse and - after another interesting foray, this time into country music - which failed commercially - he had a difficult time (as did many soul artists) in the disco era, and he laid low for the remainder of the decade.

He made a comeback in the 1980's with his album The Poet - which had a more stylish sound, including a version of "Just My Imagination" - and this became his highest-charting album of all. During the decade, he had several duets with Patti LaBelle, including "Love Has Finally Come at Last", a cover of Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll All be Free" and backed the Rolling Stones on their re-make of Harlem Shuffle in 1986. He recorded an album in 1989 reuniting him with his surviving Womack Brothers before taking a five-year absence.

He re-surfaced with the appropriately titled album Resurrection in 1994 (recorded on Ron Wood's record label) with guest stars such as Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart, Ronald Isley and Keith Richards. And in 1999 he fulfilled a promise he made to his late father Friendly Womack (who died in 1981) that he would record a Gospel album - which also had secular songs such as Bridge Over Troubled Water and a tribute to his mentor Sam Cooke with "Ease My Troubled Mind".

And he still performs, albeit on a slower pace. In 2007 he released his autobiography, then in 2010 he released a live album and last year he was nominated (along with Mos Def & Gorillaz) for a Grammy in "Best Short-Form Music Video". It was fitting that none other than Ron Wood introduced him upon his 2009 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - and even more fitting that the 2009 ceremonies took place in Cleveland itself - his hometown.

At age 68, the year 2012 is shaping up to be a good year for Bobby Womack. His first new studio album in twelve years - The Bravest Man in the Universe - is due to be released in a few weeks, with the title track actually dating back forty years ago. And just the other day: he underwent a successful colon cancer operation to remove (what turned out to be) a benign tumor. Not for nothing is he referred to as "one of soul music's great survivors".

Of all of his work, it is his composition If You Think You're Lonely Now from his 1981 album "The Poet" that is my favorite - and was included in the medley of songs he performed at his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. And below you can listen to it.

I want to dedicate this song

to all the lovers in the world tonight

and I expect that might be the whole world

because everybody needs something

or someone to love

Can I talk about this woman I have?

She's always complaining

about the things she ain't got

and the things her girlfriend's got

But I can't be in two places at one time

If you think you're lonely now

Wait until tonight, girl

I'll be long gone

Ain't it funny how tables turn

when things ain't going your way

when love walks out, pain walks in

You can't help to say

Read full story

Now I've seen everything ........

DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman ......

    .... and General Robert E. Lee - leader of the Confederate Armies.

Help keep this crazy train rolling, by stopping in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - the largest-ever career retrospective of the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein - with 160 works, including never-before-seen paintings, drawings and sculpture - will be at the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois to September 3rd.

STAGE NOTES - Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens makes his Broadway debut this autumn, as a suspected fortune hunter opposite The Help's Jessica Chastain.

TUESDAY's CHILD is Asia the Cat - a Utah kitteh who escaped the first time she got outside, but was located a month later.

TWO WEEKS AGO yours truly noted the quick start that the new Malawian president Joyce Banda made in firing the head of the police (blamed for the deaths of 20 peaceful protestors) and forming a government with members of all the main opposition parties. Well, she's raised the ante now: promising to abolish that country's anti-gay statutes - against the grain from other African nations.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is named Brown Cat - a New Zealand kitteh who clung for dear life to the top of a car for over a mile, before another motorist told the driver of Brown Cat's presence.

BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME to the Swiss swimmer Ernst Bromeis: who had to abandon his attempt to be the first documented person to swim the 750-mile length of the Rhine River - from Toma Lake in Switzerland to the Netherlands port city of Hoek van Holland - 1/3 of the way through, due to icy conditions (which one wonders might have been solved by trying this in late summer).

ART NOTES - the sole East Coast presentation of the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibit Maharaja: The Splendors of India's Great Kings is at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond through August 19th.

TWO YEARS AGO the town of Palisades Park, New Jersey erected a statue commemorating the more than 200,000 Korean comfort women - believed to have been forced into sexual slavery by Imperial Japanese soldiers during WW-II and before - and the town has rejected requests to remove the statue by Japan's consul-general in New York (whose government disputes the historical claims).

THIS COMING SATURDAY will feature the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest from Azerbaijan - and while most of the contestants are twenty-somethings, Britain's entry is the 76 year-old Engelbert Humperdinck - who believes that his song "Love Will Set You Free" gives him as good a chance as any other contestant (have a listen at this link and judge for yourself).

THURSDAY's CHILD is Booker T the Cat - one of those in a University of Georgia study equipped with a 'cat-cam' to see what they do.

IN AN ESSAY about the University of Nebraska assistant football coach Ron Brown - who has testified against city ordinances prohibiting discrimination against gays - the sportswriter Charlie Pierce believes that Brown represents the waning days of such opinions in sport, not the future.

BUSINESS NOTES - the firm that manufactures Swiss Army knives says they have never laid-off a worker for financial reasons - for example, when sales went down by 30% in the wake of the post-9/11 aircraft ban on carrying Swiss Army knives, the Victorinox company simply leased workers to other companies (while continuing to pay their wages).

DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - Australian film star Geoffrey Rush and the English author Ian Fleming (the creator of the James Bond series).

   

POLITICAL NOTES - two years ago the voters of Calgary (the queen city of the province of Alberta) elected Canada's first Muslim mayor, Naheed Nenshi - the son of Tanzanian immigrants. And he tells a BBC reporter that trust and dialogue is what makes his city tick.

FRIDAY's CHILD is Girly the Cat - an eighteen year-old kitteh with kidney disease, a not-uncommon occurrence in older cats.

.... and finally, for a song of the week .................................. even though he had a relatively minor performance on this past weekend's Saturday Night Live .... Jeff Beck serves as a reminder (besides his own fabulous career) of another band he was a member of.

If they did nothing else, the 1960's English rock band The Yardbirds presented to the world three interstellar guitarists (Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page)  - who are each in Rolling Stone's Top 100 Guitarists list (in the top fifteen, in fact).

But with such hits as Heart Full of Soul, For Your Love, Evil Hearted You, The Train Kept 'a Rollin ... and with their pioneering sound of the 1960's (evolving from straight blues into weaving feedback, Gregorian chant and minor chords into rock and roll) ........ and looking at the bands (Renaissance, Led Zeppelin, Cream, the Jeff Beck Group) that they helped to spawn .... well, they did much, much more.

They began as the Metropolis Blues Band in 1962, then renaming themselves after the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker's nickname. Featuring Keith Relf on vocals, Chris Dreja on rhythm guitar, Paul Samwell-Smith on bass and Jim McCarty on drums (a few art students among them) - yet the lead guitarist's role was a revolving door for the band's duration in the 1960's. Anthony (Top) Topham (at only age 16) was pressured to leave by his family; Relf then brought in his classmate .... Eric Clapton.

The band achieved success; replacing the Rolling Stones as the house band of west London's Crawdaddy Club in September 1963 - which brought them to the attention of Giorgio Gomelsky its impresario. Stretching out their improvisations (which they called "rave-ups") helped make their live shows much in demand, showcasing their blues and R&B chops. Their first recordings in 1965, though, were poor sellers.

Their decision to record slightly more pop-oriented songs written by tunesmith Graham Gouldman - later of the band 10cc - helped them reach #2 in Britain (and #6 in the US) with "For Your Love". Gouldman also wrote subsequent chart hits "Heart Full of Soul" and "Evil Hearted You", helping to establish their sound.

But it also helped persuade Clapton to quit: partly since he was a blues purist in those days (which urge he satisfied by then joining John Mayall's Bluesbreakers) and also because he saw the others as unserious: when he saw Paul Samwell-Smith - whom he looked down - holding a Bob Dylan record, he just knew this Dylan guy couldn't be any good (Clapton only later recanting when he listened to "Blonde on Blonde").  

Clapton recommended a local guitarist as his replacement, but a young Jimmy Page had a good life as a top session musician and declined. And so he recommended Tridents guitarist Jeff Beck instead. (Yes, that sentence bowls me over, too).

Beck's tenure lasted only eighteen months, but he helped expand the group into feedback, fuzz tones and psychedelia. By this time, the band had begun to write their own songs, and Beck helped drive their sound on Shapes of Things and "Over, Under, Sideways Down".

In June of 1966, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith left to become a producer (for Cat Stevens, Jethro Tull and Carly Simon) and - rather than recruit another bassist - group members once again offered a spot in the band to Jimmy Page. By that time, Page had become eager to become a touring musician and so rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja became the band's bassist to open a spot for Page. The Beck-Page axis didn't last long; recording notably Happenings Ten Years Ago before Beck's departure in late 1966 (due, in part, to nervous exhaustion). It proved to be the band's high-water mark.

Although still a talented band (especially their live shows) they began recording inferior material, promoted by their new pop-oriented manager Mickie Most - a single with two Continental written lightweight tunes called "Paff Bum" and "Questa Volta" is detested by Yardbirds devotees.

The end came in 1968, when Keith Relf and Jim McCarty wanted to move into a more acoustic/melodic direction, while Jimmy Page wanted to rock even harder. Their final concert came on July 7th, 1968.

The group members followed their dreams: Relf and McCarty formed the first line-up of the band Renaissance while Dreja stayed with Page briefly, as they formed a "New Yardbirds" band. But Dreja decided to leave performing to become a photographer, and the musicians that Page recruited evolved into ... Led Zeppelin. Dreja took the photo on Zeppelin's first album cover, and interestingly the "New Yardbirds" Led Zeppelin played its last concert on July 7th, 1980 - twelve years to the day of the final Yardbirds concert.    

Fast forward twenty-four years after the end of the band in 1968: The Yardbirds were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 ....... and two original members (Jim McCarty and Chris Dreja) decided to re-start the band (with some new members).

They released an excellent album Birdland in 2003 (consisting of 1/2 re-workings of old favorites and 1/2 new material) with several guest spots (including Jeff Beck on "My Blind Life") - a thirty-five year hiatus that was worth waiting for. And in 2007 a live album recorded at B.B. King's in New York garnered some excellent reviews.

Chris Dreja (age 66; bottom of old photo and far-right in second photo) and Jim McCarty (age 68; far-right first photo and fourth-from-the-left in recent photo) perform with the band to this day, and they concluded a US/Canada tour just recently.

   

The final track on the 2003 album, An Original Man is my favorite - even more than the re-makes of the old classics - and is dedicated to a former band member who never got the chance to re-join the band: lead singer Keith Relf (top-center in first photo) who died in a tragic home accident in 1976 at the age of only 33.

And below you can listen to it.

A man I knew died too young

And in the end, his song unsung

He touched my life, he touched my soul

And given time: he'd reach his goal

An original man

that I knew

An original man

Right through!

Time gives and takes away

Everybody has their day

Yet even now, I see your face

You never left without a trace

An original man

that I knew

An original man

Right through!

Read full story

Now I've seen everything ........

DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman ......

    .... and General Robert E. Lee - leader of the Confederate Armies.

Help keep this crazy train rolling, by stopping in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - the largest-ever career retrospective of the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein - with 160 works, including never-before-seen paintings, drawings and sculpture - will be at the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois to September 3rd.

STAGE NOTES - Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens makes his Broadway debut this autumn, as a suspected fortune hunter opposite The Help's Jessica Chastain.

TUESDAY's CHILD is Asia the Cat - a Utah kitteh who escaped the first time she got outside, but was located a month later.

TWO WEEKS AGO yours truly noted the quick start that the new Malawian president Joyce Banda made in firing the head of the police (blamed for the deaths of 20 peaceful protestors) and forming a government with members of all the main opposition parties. Well, she's raised the ante now: promising to abolish that country's anti-gay statutes - against the grain from other African nations.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is named Brown Cat - a New Zealand kitteh who clung for dear life to the top of a car for over a mile, before another motorist told the driver of Brown Cat's presence.

BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME to the Swiss swimmer Ernst Bromeis: who had to abandon his attempt to be the first documented person to swim the 750-mile length of the Rhine River - from Toma Lake in Switzerland to the Netherlands port city of Hoek van Holland - 1/3 of the way through, due to icy conditions (which one wonders might have been solved by trying this in late summer).

ART NOTES - the sole East Coast presentation of the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibit Maharaja: The Splendors of India's Great Kings is at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond through August 19th.

TWO YEARS AGO the town of Palisades Park, New Jersey erected a statue commemorating the more than 200,000 Korean comfort women - believed to have been forced into sexual slavery by Imperial Japanese soldiers during WW-II and before - and the town has rejected requests to remove the statue by Japan's consul-general in New York (whose government disputes the historical claims).

THIS COMING SATURDAY will feature the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest from Azerbaijan - and while most of the contestants are twenty-somethings, Britain's entry is the 76 year-old Engelbert Humperdinck - who believes that his song "Love Will Set You Free" gives him as good a chance as any other contestant (have a listen at this link and judge for yourself).

THURSDAY's CHILD is Booker T the Cat - one of those in a University of Georgia study equipped with a 'cat-cam' to see what they do.

IN AN ESSAY about the University of Nebraska assistant football coach Ron Brown - who has testified against city ordinances prohibiting discrimination against gays - the sportswriter Charlie Pierce believes that Brown represents the waning days of such opinions in sport, not the future.

BUSINESS NOTES - the firm that manufactures Swiss Army knives says they have never laid-off a worker for financial reasons - for example, when sales went down by 30% in the wake of the post-9/11 aircraft ban on carrying Swiss Army knives, the Victorinox company simply leased workers to other companies (while continuing to pay their wages).

DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - Australian film star Geoffrey Rush and the English author Ian Fleming (the creator of the James Bond series).

   

POLITICAL NOTES - two years ago the voters of Calgary (the queen city of the province of Alberta) elected Canada's first Muslim mayor, Naheed Nenshi - the son of Tanzanian immigrants. And he tells a BBC reporter that trust and dialogue is what makes his city tick.

FRIDAY's CHILD is Girly the Cat - an eighteen year-old kitteh with kidney disease, a not-uncommon occurrence in older cats.

.... and finally, for a song of the week .................................. even though he had a relatively minor performance on this past weekend's Saturday Night Live .... Jeff Beck serves as a reminder (besides his own fabulous career) of another band he was a member of.

If they did nothing else, the 1960's English rock band The Yardbirds presented to the world three interstellar guitarists (Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page)  - who are each in Rolling Stone's Top 100 Guitarists list (in the top fifteen, in fact).

But with such hits as Heart Full of Soul, For Your Love, Evil Hearted You, The Train Kept 'a Rollin ... and with their pioneering sound of the 1960's (evolving from straight blues into weaving feedback, Gregorian chant and minor chords into rock and roll) ........ and looking at the bands (Renaissance, Led Zeppelin, Cream, the Jeff Beck Group) that they helped to spawn .... well, they did much, much more.

They began as the Metropolis Blues Band in 1962, then renaming themselves after the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker's nickname. Featuring Keith Relf on vocals, Chris Dreja on rhythm guitar, Paul Samwell-Smith on bass and Jim McCarty on drums (a few art students among them) - yet the lead guitarist's role was a revolving door for the band's duration in the 1960's. Anthony (Top) Topham (at only age 16) was pressured to leave by his family; Relf then brought in his classmate .... Eric Clapton.

The band achieved success; replacing the Rolling Stones as the house band of west London's Crawdaddy Club in September 1963 - which brought them to the attention of Giorgio Gomelsky its impresario. Stretching out their improvisations (which they called "rave-ups") helped make their live shows much in demand, showcasing their blues and R&B chops. Their first recordings in 1965, though, were poor sellers.

Their decision to record slightly more pop-oriented songs written by tunesmith Graham Gouldman - later of the band 10cc - helped them reach #2 in Britain (and #6 in the US) with "For Your Love". Gouldman also wrote subsequent chart hits "Heart Full of Soul" and "Evil Hearted You", helping to establish their sound.

But it also helped persuade Clapton to quit: partly since he was a blues purist in those days (which urge he satisfied by then joining John Mayall's Bluesbreakers) and also because he saw the others as unserious: when he saw Paul Samwell-Smith - whom he looked down - holding a Bob Dylan record, he just knew this Dylan guy couldn't be any good (Clapton only later recanting when he listened to "Blonde on Blonde").  

Clapton recommended a local guitarist as his replacement, but a young Jimmy Page had a good life as a top session musician and declined. And so he recommended Tridents guitarist Jeff Beck instead. (Yes, that sentence bowls me over, too).

Beck's tenure lasted only eighteen months, but he helped expand the group into feedback, fuzz tones and psychedelia. By this time, the band had begun to write their own songs, and Beck helped drive their sound on Shapes of Things and "Over, Under, Sideways Down".

In June of 1966, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith left to become a producer (for Cat Stevens, Jethro Tull and Carly Simon) and - rather than recruit another bassist - group members once again offered a spot in the band to Jimmy Page. By that time, Page had become eager to become a touring musician and so rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja became the band's bassist to open a spot for Page. The Beck-Page axis didn't last long; recording notably Happenings Ten Years Ago before Beck's departure in late 1966 (due, in part, to nervous exhaustion). It proved to be the band's high-water mark.

Although still a talented band (especially their live shows) they began recording inferior material, promoted by their new pop-oriented manager Mickie Most - a single with two Continental written lightweight tunes called "Paff Bum" and "Questa Volta" is detested by Yardbirds devotees.

The end came in 1968, when Keith Relf and Jim McCarty wanted to move into a more acoustic/melodic direction, while Jimmy Page wanted to rock even harder. Their final concert came on July 7th, 1968.

The group members followed their dreams: Relf and McCarty formed the first line-up of the band Renaissance while Dreja stayed with Page briefly, as they formed a "New Yardbirds" band. But Dreja decided to leave performing to become a photographer, and the musicians that Page recruited evolved into ... Led Zeppelin. Dreja took the photo on Zeppelin's first album cover, and interestingly the "New Yardbirds" Led Zeppelin played its last concert on July 7th, 1980 - twelve years to the day of the final Yardbirds concert.    

Fast forward twenty-four years after the end of the band in 1968: The Yardbirds were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 ....... and two original members (Jim McCarty and Chris Dreja) decided to re-start the band (with some new members).

They released an excellent album Birdland in 2003 (consisting of 1/2 re-workings of old favorites and 1/2 new material) with several guest spots (including Jeff Beck on "My Blind Life") - a thirty-five year hiatus that was worth waiting for. And in 2007 a live album recorded at B.B. King's in New York garnered some excellent reviews.

Chris Dreja (age 66; bottom of old photo and far-right in second photo) and Jim McCarty (age 68; far-right first photo and fourth-from-the-left in recent photo) perform with the band to this day, and they concluded a US/Canada tour just recently.

   

The final track on the 2003 album, An Original Man is my favorite - even more than the re-makes of the old classics - and is dedicated to a former band member who never got the chance to re-join the band: lead singer Keith Relf (top-center in first photo) who died in a tragic home accident in 1976 at the age of only 33.

And below you can listen to it.

A man I knew died too young

And in the end, his song unsung

He touched my life, he touched my soul

And given time: he'd reach his goal

An original man

that I knew

An original man

Right through!

Time gives and takes away

Everybody has their day

Yet even now, I see your face

You never left without a trace

An original man

that I knew

An original man

Right through!

Read full story

Now I've seen everything ........

DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman ......

    .... and General Robert E. Lee - leader of the Confederate Armies.

Help keep this crazy train rolling, by stopping in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - the largest-ever career retrospective of the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein - with 160 works, including never-before-seen paintings, drawings and sculpture - will be at the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois to September 3rd.

STAGE NOTES - Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens makes his Broadway debut this autumn, as a suspected fortune hunter opposite The Help's Jessica Chastain.

TUESDAY's CHILD is Asia the Cat - a Utah kitteh who escaped the first time she got outside, but was located a month later.

TWO WEEKS AGO yours truly noted the quick start that the new Malawian president Joyce Banda made in firing the head of the police (blamed for the deaths of 20 peaceful protestors) and forming a government with members of all the main opposition parties. Well, she's raised the ante now: promising to abolish that country's anti-gay statutes - against the grain from other African nations.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is named Brown Cat - a New Zealand kitteh who clung for dear life to the top of a car for over a mile, before another motorist told the driver of Brown Cat's presence.

BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME to the Swiss swimmer Ernst Bromeis: who had to abandon his attempt to be the first documented person to swim the 750-mile length of the Rhine River - from Toma Lake in Switzerland to the Netherlands port city of Hoek van Holland - 1/3 of the way through, due to icy conditions (which one wonders might have been solved by trying this in late summer).

ART NOTES - the sole East Coast presentation of the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibit Maharaja: The Splendors of India's Great Kings is at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond through August 19th.

TWO YEARS AGO the town of Palisades Park, New Jersey erected a statue commemorating the more than 200,000 Korean comfort women - believed to have been forced into sexual slavery by Imperial Japanese soldiers during WW-II and before - and the town has rejected requests to remove the statue by Japan's consul-general in New York (whose government disputes the historical claims).

THIS COMING SATURDAY will feature the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest from Azerbaijan - and while most of the contestants are twenty-somethings, Britain's entry is the 76 year-old Engelbert Humperdinck - who believes that his song "Love Will Set You Free" gives him as good a chance as any other contestant (have a listen at this link and judge for yourself).

THURSDAY's CHILD is Booker T the Cat - one of those in a University of Georgia study equipped with a 'cat-cam' to see what they do.

IN AN ESSAY about the University of Nebraska assistant football coach Ron Brown - who has testified against city ordinances prohibiting discrimination against gays - the sportswriter Charlie Pierce believes that Brown represents the waning days of such opinions in sport, not the future.

BUSINESS NOTES - the firm that manufactures Swiss Army knives says they have never laid-off a worker for financial reasons - for example, when sales went down by 30% in the wake of the post-9/11 aircraft ban on carrying Swiss Army knives, the Victorinox company simply leased workers to other companies (while continuing to pay their wages).

DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - Australian film star Geoffrey Rush and the English author Ian Fleming (the creator of the James Bond series).

   

POLITICAL NOTES - two years ago the voters of Calgary (the queen city of the province of Alberta) elected Canada's first Muslim mayor, Naheed Nenshi - the son of Tanzanian immigrants. And he tells a BBC reporter that trust and dialogue is what makes his city tick.

FRIDAY's CHILD is Girly the Cat - an eighteen year-old kitteh with kidney disease, a not-uncommon occurrence in older cats.

.... and finally, for a song of the week .................................. even though he had a relatively minor performance on this past weekend's Saturday Night Live .... Jeff Beck serves as a reminder (besides his own fabulous career) of another band he was a member of.

If they did nothing else, the 1960's English rock band The Yardbirds presented to the world three interstellar guitarists (Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page)  - who are each in Rolling Stone's Top 100 Guitarists list (in the top fifteen, in fact).

But with such hits as Heart Full of Soul, For Your Love, Evil Hearted You, The Train Kept 'a Rollin ... and with their pioneering sound of the 1960's (evolving from straight blues into weaving feedback, Gregorian chant and minor chords into rock and roll) ........ and looking at the bands (Renaissance, Led Zeppelin, Cream, the Jeff Beck Group) that they helped to spawn .... well, they did much, much more.

They began as the Metropolis Blues Band in 1962, then renaming themselves after the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker's nickname. Featuring Keith Relf on vocals, Chris Dreja on rhythm guitar, Paul Samwell-Smith on bass and Jim McCarty on drums (a few art students among them) - yet the lead guitarist's role was a revolving door for the band's duration in the 1960's. Anthony (Top) Topham (at only age 16) was pressured to leave by his family; Relf then brought in his classmate .... Eric Clapton.

The band achieved success; replacing the Rolling Stones as the house band of west London's Crawdaddy Club in September 1963 - which brought them to the attention of Giorgio Gomelsky its impresario. Stretching out their improvisations (which they called "rave-ups") helped make their live shows much in demand, showcasing their blues and R&B chops. Their first recordings in 1965, though, were poor sellers.

Their decision to record slightly more pop-oriented songs written by tunesmith Graham Gouldman - later of the band 10cc - helped them reach #2 in Britain (and #6 in the US) with "For Your Love". Gouldman also wrote subsequent chart hits "Heart Full of Soul" and "Evil Hearted You", helping to establish their sound.

But it also helped persuade Clapton to quit: partly since he was a blues purist in those days (which urge he satisfied by then joining John Mayall's Bluesbreakers) and also because he saw the others as unserious: when he saw Paul Samwell-Smith - whom he looked down - holding a Bob Dylan record, he just knew this Dylan guy couldn't be any good (Clapton only later recanting when he listened to "Blonde on Blonde").  

Clapton recommended a local guitarist as his replacement, but a young Jimmy Page had a good life as a top session musician and declined. And so he recommended Tridents guitarist Jeff Beck instead. (Yes, that sentence bowls me over, too).

Beck's tenure lasted only eighteen months, but he helped expand the group into feedback, fuzz tones and psychedelia. By this time, the band had begun to write their own songs, and Beck helped drive their sound on Shapes of Things and "Over, Under, Sideways Down".

In June of 1966, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith left to become a producer (for Cat Stevens, Jethro Tull and Carly Simon) and - rather than recruit another bassist - group members once again offered a spot in the band to Jimmy Page. By that time, Page had become eager to become a touring musician and so rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja became the band's bassist to open a spot for Page. The Beck-Page axis didn't last long; recording notably Happenings Ten Years Ago before Beck's departure in late 1966 (due, in part, to nervous exhaustion). It proved to be the band's high-water mark.

Although still a talented band (especially their live shows) they began recording inferior material, promoted by their new pop-oriented manager Mickie Most - a single with two Continental written lightweight tunes called "Paff Bum" and "Questa Volta" is detested by Yardbirds devotees.

The end came in 1968, when Keith Relf and Jim McCarty wanted to move into a more acoustic/melodic direction, while Jimmy Page wanted to rock even harder. Their final concert came on July 7th, 1968.

The group members followed their dreams: Relf and McCarty formed the first line-up of the band Renaissance while Dreja stayed with Page briefly, as they formed a "New Yardbirds" band. But Dreja decided to leave performing to become a photographer, and the musicians that Page recruited evolved into ... Led Zeppelin. Dreja took the photo on Zeppelin's first album cover, and interestingly the "New Yardbirds" Led Zeppelin played its last concert on July 7th, 1980 - twelve years to the day of the final Yardbirds concert.    

Fast forward twenty-four years after the end of the band in 1968: The Yardbirds were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 ....... and two original members (Jim McCarty and Chris Dreja) decided to re-start the band (with some new members).

They released an excellent album Birdland in 2003 (consisting of 1/2 re-workings of old favorites and 1/2 new material) with several guest spots (including Jeff Beck on "My Blind Life") - a thirty-five year hiatus that was worth waiting for. And in 2007 a live album recorded at B.B. King's in New York garnered some excellent reviews.

Chris Dreja (age 66; bottom of old photo and far-right in second photo) and Jim McCarty (age 68; far-right first photo and fourth-from-the-left in recent photo) perform with the band to this day, and they concluded a US/Canada tour just recently.

   

The final track on the 2003 album, An Original Man is my favorite - even more than the re-makes of the old classics - and is dedicated to a former band member who never got the chance to re-join the band: lead singer Keith Relf (top-center in first photo) who died in a tragic home accident in 1976 at the age of only 33.

And below you can listen to it.

A man I knew died too young

And in the end, his song unsung

He touched my life, he touched my soul

And given time: he'd reach his goal

An original man

that I knew

An original man

Right through!

Time gives and takes away

Everybody has their day

Yet even now, I see your face

You never left without a trace

An original man

that I knew

An original man

Right through!

Read full story

The newsroom and film editing studio has never been closer .....

OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS? - film star George Clooney and CNN Washington correspondent Jim Acosta.

   

Yikes ..... well, help keep the crazee at bay, and stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - works by the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei are at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. through February of 2013.

I HAD NEVER HEARD of the trilogy of erotica by the British author EL James entitled Fifty Shades of Grey - and that may have continued indefinitely. However, the drive to ban the book at several libraries (particularly in the South) has been successful in some cities and towns .... and even more successful in publicizing the book. For example: Florida's library system of Brevard County has removed the book from its shelves ..... but 50 miles away in Volusia County there were more than 200 reservations (for the Volusia system's 15 paper copies of the book) and more than 100 for the electronic version. "I have not received a single complaint," said the director of the Volusia County libraries.

FILM NOTES - a film is planned about the (now defunct) New York punk rock club CBGB - with Alan Rickman in the lead role as club owner Hilly Kristal.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Bubbles the Cat - who was found along with another cat (in a hiding place) after a Texas building fire.

THIS COMING SATURDAY will be the inter-European soccer championship game for 2012 - matching the Chelsea team from London, England (nicknamed The Blues) vs. Germany's Bayern Munich team. And this match will be shown live on free TV: on the Fox broadcast channel (where The Simpsons program runs) beginning at 2:45 in the afternoon Eastern time, 11:45 AM Pacific time.  

THEATER NOTES - plans for new Broadway musicals about the lives of silent film star Charlie Chaplin and country singer Loretta Lynn have been unveiled (with Zooey Deschanel to portray Loretta Lynn).

SEPARATED at BIRTH - two country musicians: Arkansas native Larry Donn and the soon-to-be-retired Glen Campbell - completing his farewell tour.

   

FILM NOTES - the children's character Paddington Bear is to being brought to the big screen by David Heyman (the producer of the Harry Potter film series).

ART NOTES - the exhibit Phantom Limb: Approaches to Painting Today will be at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Illinois to October 21st.

THIS COMING SATURDAY the graduation speaker at St. Mary's College in California will be alumnus Tom Meschery - an NBA player from 1961-1971 with an interesting past. He can be considered the first Russian NBA star (as the son of Russian czarist parents, who fled during the 1917 revolution to China) as well as the first Chinese-born player (in Manchuria, 1938) as well as the first to have been in a concentration camp (run by the Japanese) before his family was able to emigrate to the US after WW-II. He is a retired high school English teacher, who has now released his third volume of poetry.

THURSDAY's CHILD is Nick the Cat - a new spokescat for Sheba cat food, whose co-star is the (now) former "Desperate Housewives" star Eva Longoria.

TRAVEL NOTES - while trains using magnetic levitation propulsion - or Maglevs in common parlance - have so far not fulfilled their promise (with lines existing only in Asia) rapidly gridlocked roads and air travel hampered by delays, security and environmental concerns has governments willing to take a second look.

LEST YOU THINK that Italy is only known for wine and spirits, its beer industry has grown tremendously: with not only national light lagers such as Peroni or Moretti, but increasingly craft beers of all styles.

FRIDAY's CHILDREN are part of five cats at Austria's first Cat Café - in Vienna, which boasts more than 300 years of cafe culture - owned by a Japanese national.

......and finally, for a song of the week ............... years ago a friend asked who wrote the song When You Wish Upon a Star - assuming it was a staff writer for the Disney company. Without the search tools we have today, it took awhile to learn that the music was composed by Leigh Harline, who was indeed a staff writer for the film company ... as was the lyricist Ned Washington - albeit for only a short while.

    But over time, when I kept seeing Ned Washington's name come up as the lyricist for many songs you could hear in nightclubs and piano bars - to this day, even - well, it's worth a look at one of Tin Pan Alley's most prolific writers ... whose name seems unjustly lost to history, more than thirty-five years after his death as someone whose work appeared on stage, films and even television later in his career.

    Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1901, he was the only one of six children not to receive music lessons - perhaps, as has been speculated, because he didn't need them? He began his entertainment career as an MC on the vaudeville circuit, which led to him becoming an agent for certain entertainers, which led to his writing material for their acts ... and especially song lyrics. One of the songs he helped write was chosen for a 1928 Broadway revue, Singing in the Bathtub  (although, heaven help me, I think of Bugs Bunny singing this song). He was hired by Warner Brothers and wrote for a number of Broadway shows over the next five years.

    But it was when he received a contract in 1934 (at the age of thirty-three) from MGM to come to Hollywood that his career took off. Later he wrote for Disney (as previously noted) and also for Paramount Pictures. What made him particularly attractive to the studios was his ability to write lyrics for any number of composers - and these included Victor Young, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy McHugh, Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin and Bronislau Kaper.

    Beyond his songs, the films he worked on is quite impressive: for Disney, it was the film Dumbo as well as Pinocchio  - for which "When You Wish Upon a Star" won him the first of his two shared Academy Awards. For the other studios, the list includes "For Whom the Bell Tolls", "The Unforgiven", "No, No Nanette", "Little Johnny Jones", "The Greatest Show on Earth", "Gulliver's Travels" and High Noon - the title track of which was his other Academy Award winner (and a hit later for Frankie Laine).

    Some other film (and TV) songs you may recognize: A Town Without Pity (which was later a hit for Gene Pitney), "Gunfight at the OK Corral" and the theme to Rawhide - which became another hit for Frankie Laine - all of which were written with Dimitri Tiomkin as his composer.

    But many more of his lyrics appeared in films that - even if the film was forgettable - the songs that survived became an integral part of the Great American Songbook, which you can hear today. A partial list (along with the composer of the music) must include My Foolish Heart as well as Stella by Starlight and I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You (w/Victor Young), The Nearness of You (w/Hoagy Carmichael) and I'm Getting Sentimental Over You (w/George Bassman).

   Ned Washington wrote well into the 1960's and died just before Christmas, 1976 at the age of 75. Besides his two Academy Awards (and he was nominated for nine others) When You Wish Upon a Star also received a Grammy Hall of Fame award and is a sort of Disney theme song. Tellingly, his work has been used in contemporary films such as "Fred Claus", "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", "The Black Book" and "Shrek". And best of all, four years before his death: Ned Washington (first and third photos below) was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame for his life's work.

 

   Of all of his songs, I particularly like the title track to the 1947 film On Green Dolphin Street with music composed by Bronislau Kaper. And while it has been recorded by many performers (especially since Miles Davis made it famous) when it's sung by Carmen McRae it's special - and below you can listen to it.

Lover, one lovely day,

Love came, planning to stay

Green Dolphin Street supplied the setting

The setting for nights beyond forgetting

And through these moments apart

Memories live in my heart

When I recall the love I found on

I could kiss the ground on

Green Dolphin Street

Read full story

The newsroom and film editing studio has never been closer .....

OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS? - film star George Clooney and CNN Washington correspondent Jim Acosta.

   

Yikes ..... well, help keep the crazee at bay, and stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - works by the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei are at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. through February of 2013.

I HAD NEVER HEARD of the trilogy of erotica by the British author EL James entitled Fifty Shades of Grey - and that may have continued indefinitely. However, the drive to ban the book at several libraries (particularly in the South) has been successful in some cities and towns .... and even more successful in publicizing the book. For example: Florida's library system of Brevard County has removed the book from its shelves ..... but 50 miles away in Volusia County there were more than 200 reservations (for the Volusia system's 15 paper copies of the book) and more than 100 for the electronic version. "I have not received a single complaint," said the director of the Volusia County libraries.

FILM NOTES - a film is planned about the (now defunct) New York punk rock club CBGB - with Alan Rickman in the lead role as club owner Hilly Kristal.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Bubbles the Cat - who was found along with another cat (in a hiding place) after a Texas building fire.

THIS COMING SATURDAY will be the inter-European soccer championship game for 2012 - matching the Chelsea team from London, England (nicknamed The Blues) vs. Germany's Bayern Munich team. And this match will be shown live on free TV: on the Fox broadcast channel (where The Simpsons program runs) beginning at 2:45 in the afternoon Eastern time, 11:45 AM Pacific time.  

THEATER NOTES - plans for new Broadway musicals about the lives of silent film star Charlie Chaplin and country singer Loretta Lynn have been unveiled (with Zooey Deschanel to portray Loretta Lynn).

SEPARATED at BIRTH - two country musicians: Arkansas native Larry Donn and the soon-to-be-retired Glen Campbell - completing his farewell tour.

   

FILM NOTES - the children's character Paddington Bear is to being brought to the big screen by David Heyman (the producer of the Harry Potter film series).

ART NOTES - the exhibit Phantom Limb: Approaches to Painting Today will be at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Illinois to October 21st.

THIS COMING SATURDAY the graduation speaker at St. Mary's College in California will be alumnus Tom Meschery - an NBA player from 1961-1971 with an interesting past. He can be considered the first Russian NBA star (as the son of Russian czarist parents, who fled during the 1917 revolution to China) as well as the first Chinese-born player (in Manchuria, 1938) as well as the first to have been in a concentration camp (run by the Japanese) before his family was able to emigrate to the US after WW-II. He is a retired high school English teacher, who has now released his third volume of poetry.

THURSDAY's CHILD is Nick the Cat - a new spokescat for Sheba cat food, whose co-star is the (now) former "Desperate Housewives" star Eva Longoria.

TRAVEL NOTES - while trains using magnetic levitation propulsion - or Maglevs in common parlance - have so far not fulfilled their promise (with lines existing only in Asia) rapidly gridlocked roads and air travel hampered by delays, security and environmental concerns has governments willing to take a second look.

LEST YOU THINK that Italy is only known for wine and spirits, its beer industry has grown tremendously: with not only national light lagers such as Peroni or Moretti, but increasingly craft beers of all styles.

FRIDAY's CHILDREN are part of five cats at Austria's first Cat Café - in Vienna, which boasts more than 300 years of cafe culture - owned by a Japanese national.

......and finally, for a song of the week ............... years ago a friend asked who wrote the song When You Wish Upon a Star - assuming it was a staff writer for the Disney company. Without the search tools we have today, it took awhile to learn that the music was composed by Leigh Harline, who was indeed a staff writer for the film company ... as was the lyricist Ned Washington - albeit for only a short while.

    But over time, when I kept seeing Ned Washington's name come up as the lyricist for many songs you could hear in nightclubs and piano bars - to this day, even - well, it's worth a look at one of Tin Pan Alley's most prolific writers ... whose name seems unjustly lost to history, more than thirty-five years after his death as someone whose work appeared on stage, films and even television later in his career.

    Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1901, he was the only one of six children not to receive music lessons - perhaps, as has been speculated, because he didn't need them? He began his entertainment career as an MC on the vaudeville circuit, which led to him becoming an agent for certain entertainers, which led to his writing material for their acts ... and especially song lyrics. One of the songs he helped write was chosen for a 1928 Broadway revue, Singing in the Bathtub  (although, heaven help me, I think of Bugs Bunny singing this song). He was hired by Warner Brothers and wrote for a number of Broadway shows over the next five years.

    But it was when he received a contract in 1934 (at the age of thirty-three) from MGM to come to Hollywood that his career took off. Later he wrote for Disney (as previously noted) and also for Paramount Pictures. What made him particularly attractive to the studios was his ability to write lyrics for any number of composers - and these included Victor Young, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy McHugh, Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin and Bronislau Kaper.

    Beyond his songs, the films he worked on is quite impressive: for Disney, it was the film Dumbo as well as Pinocchio  - for which "When You Wish Upon a Star" won him the first of his two shared Academy Awards. For the other studios, the list includes "For Whom the Bell Tolls", "The Unforgiven", "No, No Nanette", "Little Johnny Jones", "The Greatest Show on Earth", "Gulliver's Travels" and High Noon - the title track of which was his other Academy Award winner (and a hit later for Frankie Laine).

    Some other film (and TV) songs you may recognize: A Town Without Pity (which was later a hit for Gene Pitney), "Gunfight at the OK Corral" and the theme to Rawhide - which became another hit for Frankie Laine - all of which were written with Dimitri Tiomkin as his composer.

    But many more of his lyrics appeared in films that - even if the film was forgettable - the songs that survived became an integral part of the Great American Songbook, which you can hear today. A partial list (along with the composer of the music) must include My Foolish Heart as well as Stella by Starlight and I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You (w/Victor Young), The Nearness of You (w/Hoagy Carmichael) and I'm Getting Sentimental Over You (w/George Bassman).

   Ned Washington wrote well into the 1960's and died just before Christmas, 1976 at the age of 75. Besides his two Academy Awards (and he was nominated for nine others) When You Wish Upon a Star also received a Grammy Hall of Fame award and is a sort of Disney theme song. Tellingly, his work has been used in contemporary films such as "Fred Claus", "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", "The Black Book" and "Shrek". And best of all, four years before his death: Ned Washington (first and third photos below) was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame for his life's work.

 

   Of all of his songs, I particularly like the title track to the 1947 film On Green Dolphin Street with music composed by Bronislau Kaper. And while it has been recorded by many performers (especially since Miles Davis made it famous) when it's sung by Carmen McRae it's special - and below you can listen to it.

Lover, one lovely day,

Love came, planning to stay

Green Dolphin Street supplied the setting

The setting for nights beyond forgetting

And through these moments apart

Memories live in my heart

When I recall the love I found on

I could kiss the ground on

Green Dolphin Street

Read full story

Don't look to television to save you from the crazee .....

MOTHER-DAUGHTER? - TV stars Markie Post (from "Night Court", "Hearts Afire") and Nancy O'Dell ("Entertainment Tonight").

   

For the time being: why not stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - a survey of African-American art in an exhibit highlighting the Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond is at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. through September.

END of an ERA - the conservative provocateur David Horowitz - who rode to fame by transforming himself from the Far Left into a Far Right firebrand one always saw on TV - now feels abandoned by his former allies on the right.

EACH YEAR the Polar Music Awards of Sweden honor both a popular as well as a classical musician. This year's honorees: Paul Simon .... and Yo-Yo Ma.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Tiger the Cat - an English kitteh who had to be extricated from being stuck in ... a two-inch gap between brick garage walls.

CHEERS to the new Wales Coast Path - an 870 mile hiking trail along the entire coastline of mainland Wales, earning an In Praise Of editorial in The Guardian.

INCREDIBLE as it sounds, the brother of Nazi Germany's air force chief Hermann Göring actually helped Jews, prisoners and resistance movement figures during WW-II, with his famous name able to shield him. But it became a curse after the war, as he died in obscurity in 1966.

ART NOTES - a relatively new museum showcasing the paintings, drawings and prints of the Ab-Ex artist Clyfford Still in Denver, Colorado: is opening the second section of its inaugural exhibition through September 30th.

IN a PROFILE of Olivia Newton-John - the singer indicates that she didn't know for many years that her father worked for Britain's spy agency. "My father never spoke of his time in MI5. He wasn't allowed to, so his life was a mystery to us. He left us some tapes for after he died explaining his life, but I've not listened to them yet because it makes me feel too sad".

YOU MIGHT NOT EXPECT to see snowboards in San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile - part of the world's driest desert. Yet sandboarding - akin to snowboarding in fresh powder without having to wear heavy winter gear - is very popular on dunes stretching nearly 400 feet.

THURSDAY's CHILD is Maloos the Cat  - surviving a journey from Iran to San Francisco after being found covered in mud and gasoline in the streets of Tehran.

LAST MONTH when the strongman president of the African nation of Malawi died, his successor was the daughter of a musician in a police brass band. But now Malawi's first female president Joyce Banda - and only the second in Africa after Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf - has gotten off to a blazing start: firing the federal police chief (blamed for the deaths of 20 anti-government demonstrators) as well as the head of the state broadcasting company and has appointed a government that includes representatives of all the main opposition parties.

FILM NOTES - the first film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards - entitled Wings and also the only silent film to win Best Picture before "The Artist" - has been fully restored ahead of a limited release to the public.

OLDER-YOUNGER SISTERS? - TV stars Claire Danes ("My So-Called Life", "Homeland") and Heather Morris ("Glee").

 

...... and finally, for a song of the week.................... there are some musicians whose musical style is hard to pin down, and others who have written songs for legions of musicians from different styles. Someone who combines both is John Hiatt whose songwriting was his main claim-to-fame for a while, but who has (over the past twenty years) established himself as a performer in his own right.

The Indianapolis native had a stressful early life - at age nine seeing his much-older brother commit suicide, his father dying two years later and helping to steal a Ford Thunderbird with friends (for which they were caught, yet not prosecuted). Music was his one outlet, with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and the Stones his heroes. He moved to Nashville at age eighteen in 1970 (when the city was changing rapidly) and while trying to break in as a performer had a day-job as songwriter for Tree Publishing.

And he had some early success: with a recording contract and songs covered by country performers (such as Conway Twitty and Tracy Nelson) - but in addition Three Dog Night had a hit with Sure as I'm Sitting Here in 1974. His own performing began to shift from country-rock towards the new wave sound of Elvis Costello and Graham Parker during the late 1970's, but he lost his recording contract as well as his songwriting gig, anyway.

Signed by MCA in 1979, he had some notable success in the Netherlands (to this day, he cites that nation for sustaining him during the lean times) and slowly began to make critics lists (albeit without large record sales). He released Riding With the King - the title track of which Eric Clapton and B.B. King made famous over two decades later - and Roseanne Cash had hits with "It Hasn't Happened Yet" and "The Way We Make a Broken Heart". Yet his personal life started going downhill, due to a bout with alcoholism as well as his second wife committing suicide in 1985 (so difficult for someone who had already lost a brother that way) and he took time off for rehabilitation, a new marriage and a chance to regroup on the A&M label.

His 1986 album Bring the Family (with Ry Cooder on guitar, Nick Lowe on bass and Jim Keltner on drums) reflected a more roots music sound. And Have a Little Faith in Me became a hit for others (such as Joe Cocker, Mandy Moore and Delbert McClinton). The album garnered his best reviews to-date and sales began to climb.

It was not until his next album Slow Turning (produced by Glyn Johns) that he had his breakthrough; "Tennessee Plates" later appeared in the film "Thelma and Louise". John Hiatt then became a touring success for the first time. On Bonnie Raitt's own breakthrough 1989 album "Nick of Time", she featured a spirited version of Hiatt's "Thing Called Love".

In 1992, Hiatt reunited with Cooder, Keltner and Lowe as a supergroup under the name Little Village (after a a Sonny Boy Williamson song) but lasted only one album before it broke up.

He returned with his own band and has recorded a number of successful albums since, with "Perfectly Good Guitar" and "Walk On" among his best sellers. In 2000 he was named Songwriter/Artist of the year at the Nashville Music Awards and has had eleven Grammy nominations (although has yet to win one). In 2008, Hiatt was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and was honored by the Americana Music Association with a Lifetime Achievement in Songwriting Award.

His most recent album Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns was released just this past August, with songs such as Damn this Town as well as When New York Had Her Heart Broken - (as you might imagine, about 9-11) - as its strong points.

The list of performers who have performed John Hiatt songs is not only long but amazingly diverse; reflecting his own sound and cross-category appeal. In addition to the artists already mentioned, here are some more: Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, Paula Abdul, Jimmy Buffett, Iggy Pop, Buddy Guy, Emmylou Harris, Jewel, Joan Baez, Aaron Neville, Bon Jovi, Earl Thomas Conley, Flaco Jimenez, Ronnie Milsap, Jeff Healey, Chaka Khan and Keith Urban. Something tells me that (partial) list ... is not yet finished.

John Hiatt begins a European tour in June before opening a US tour in Annapolis, Maryland on August 14th .. and which includes a show in Bloomington, Indiana on August 20th .... celebrating his 60th birthday near his place of birth.

My favorite song of his was the title track of Slow Turning (fair-use extract below) which was his highest-selling single (reaching #8 in 1987) and featured original Eagles member Bernie Leadon on banjo. He even managed to slip in the name of one of his early heroes (from the Rolling Stones) at the same time. And below you can listen to it.

Now I'm in my car

I've turned the radio down

And I'm yelling at the kids in the back

'cause they're banging like Charlie Watts

You think you've come so far

In this one-horse-town

Then she's laughing that crazy laugh

'cause you haven't left the parking lot

Time is short and here's the damn thing about it:

You're gonna die, gonna die for sure

You can learn to life with love or without it

But there ain't no cure

It's been a slow turning

From the inside out

A slow turning

But you come about

Slow learning

But you learn to sway

A slow turning

Not fade away

Read full story

Don't look to television to save you from the crazee .....

MOTHER-DAUGHTER? - TV stars Markie Post (from "Night Court", "Hearts Afire") and Nancy O'Dell ("Entertainment Tonight").

   

For the time being: why not stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - a survey of African-American art in an exhibit highlighting the Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond is at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. through September.

END of an ERA - the conservative provocateur David Horowitz - who rode to fame by transforming himself from the Far Left into a Far Right firebrand one always saw on TV - now feels abandoned by his former allies on the right.

EACH YEAR the Polar Music Awards of Sweden honor both a popular as well as a classical musician. This year's honorees: Paul Simon .... and Yo-Yo Ma.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Tiger the Cat - an English kitteh who had to be extricated from being stuck in ... a two-inch gap between brick garage walls.

CHEERS to the new Wales Coast Path - an 870 mile hiking trail along the entire coastline of mainland Wales, earning an In Praise Of editorial in The Guardian.

INCREDIBLE as it sounds, the brother of Nazi Germany's air force chief Hermann Göring actually helped Jews, prisoners and resistance movement figures during WW-II, with his famous name able to shield him. But it became a curse after the war, as he died in obscurity in 1966.

ART NOTES - a relatively new museum showcasing the paintings, drawings and prints of the Ab-Ex artist Clyfford Still in Denver, Colorado: is opening the second section of its inaugural exhibition through September 30th.

IN a PROFILE of Olivia Newton-John - the singer indicates that she didn't know for many years that her father worked for Britain's spy agency. "My father never spoke of his time in MI5. He wasn't allowed to, so his life was a mystery to us. He left us some tapes for after he died explaining his life, but I've not listened to them yet because it makes me feel too sad".

YOU MIGHT NOT EXPECT to see snowboards in San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile - part of the world's driest desert. Yet sandboarding - akin to snowboarding in fresh powder without having to wear heavy winter gear - is very popular on dunes stretching nearly 400 feet.

THURSDAY's CHILD is Maloos the Cat  - surviving a journey from Iran to San Francisco after being found covered in mud and gasoline in the streets of Tehran.

LAST MONTH when the strongman president of the African nation of Malawi died, his successor was the daughter of a musician in a police brass band. But now Malawi's first female president Joyce Banda - and only the second in Africa after Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf - has gotten off to a blazing start: firing the federal police chief (blamed for the deaths of 20 anti-government demonstrators) as well as the head of the state broadcasting company and has appointed a government that includes representatives of all the main opposition parties.

FILM NOTES - the first film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards - entitled Wings and also the only silent film to win Best Picture before "The Artist" - has been fully restored ahead of a limited release to the public.

OLDER-YOUNGER SISTERS? - TV stars Claire Danes ("My So-Called Life", "Homeland") and Heather Morris ("Glee").

 

...... and finally, for a song of the week.................... there are some musicians whose musical style is hard to pin down, and others who have written songs for legions of musicians from different styles. Someone who combines both is John Hiatt whose songwriting was his main claim-to-fame for a while, but who has (over the past twenty years) established himself as a performer in his own right.

The Indianapolis native had a stressful early life - at age nine seeing his much-older brother commit suicide, his father dying two years later and helping to steal a Ford Thunderbird with friends (for which they were caught, yet not prosecuted). Music was his one outlet, with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and the Stones his heroes. He moved to Nashville at age eighteen in 1970 (when the city was changing rapidly) and while trying to break in as a performer had a day-job as songwriter for Tree Publishing.

And he had some early success: with a recording contract and songs covered by country performers (such as Conway Twitty and Tracy Nelson) - but in addition Three Dog Night had a hit with Sure as I'm Sitting Here in 1974. His own performing began to shift from country-rock towards the new wave sound of Elvis Costello and Graham Parker during the late 1970's, but he lost his recording contract as well as his songwriting gig, anyway.

Signed by MCA in 1979, he had some notable success in the Netherlands (to this day, he cites that nation for sustaining him during the lean times) and slowly began to make critics lists (albeit without large record sales). He released Riding With the King - the title track of which Eric Clapton and B.B. King made famous over two decades later - and Roseanne Cash had hits with "It Hasn't Happened Yet" and "The Way We Make a Broken Heart". Yet his personal life started going downhill, due to a bout with alcoholism as well as his second wife committing suicide in 1985 (so difficult for someone who had already lost a brother that way) and he took time off for rehabilitation, a new marriage and a chance to regroup on the A&M label.

His 1986 album Bring the Family (with Ry Cooder on guitar, Nick Lowe on bass and Jim Keltner on drums) reflected a more roots music sound. And Have a Little Faith in Me became a hit for others (such as Joe Cocker, Mandy Moore and Delbert McClinton). The album garnered his best reviews to-date and sales began to climb.

It was not until his next album Slow Turning (produced by Glyn Johns) that he had his breakthrough; "Tennessee Plates" later appeared in the film "Thelma and Louise". John Hiatt then became a touring success for the first time. On Bonnie Raitt's own breakthrough 1989 album "Nick of Time", she featured a spirited version of Hiatt's "Thing Called Love".

In 1992, Hiatt reunited with Cooder, Keltner and Lowe as a supergroup under the name Little Village (after a a Sonny Boy Williamson song) but lasted only one album before it broke up.

He returned with his own band and has recorded a number of successful albums since, with "Perfectly Good Guitar" and "Walk On" among his best sellers. In 2000 he was named Songwriter/Artist of the year at the Nashville Music Awards and has had eleven Grammy nominations (although has yet to win one). In 2008, Hiatt was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and was honored by the Americana Music Association with a Lifetime Achievement in Songwriting Award.

His most recent album Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns was released just this past August, with songs such as Damn this Town as well as When New York Had Her Heart Broken - (as you might imagine, about 9-11) - as its strong points.

The list of performers who have performed John Hiatt songs is not only long but amazingly diverse; reflecting his own sound and cross-category appeal. In addition to the artists already mentioned, here are some more: Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, Paula Abdul, Jimmy Buffett, Iggy Pop, Buddy Guy, Emmylou Harris, Jewel, Joan Baez, Aaron Neville, Bon Jovi, Earl Thomas Conley, Flaco Jimenez, Ronnie Milsap, Jeff Healey, Chaka Khan and Keith Urban. Something tells me that (partial) list ... is not yet finished.

John Hiatt begins a European tour in June before opening a US tour in Annapolis, Maryland on August 14th .. and which includes a show in Bloomington, Indiana on August 20th .... celebrating his 60th birthday near his place of birth.

My favorite song of his was the title track of Slow Turning (fair-use extract below) which was his highest-selling single (reaching #8 in 1987) and featured original Eagles member Bernie Leadon on banjo. He even managed to slip in the name of one of his early heroes (from the Rolling Stones) at the same time. And below you can listen to it.

Now I'm in my car

I've turned the radio down

And I'm yelling at the kids in the back

'cause they're banging like Charlie Watts

You think you've come so far

In this one-horse-town

Then she's laughing that crazy laugh

'cause you haven't left the parking lot

Time is short and here's the damn thing about it:

You're gonna die, gonna die for sure

You can learn to life with love or without it

But there ain't no cure

It's been a slow turning

From the inside out

A slow turning

But you come about

Slow learning

But you learn to sway

A slow turning

Not fade away

Read full story

Don't look to television to save you from the crazee .....

MOTHER-DAUGHTER? - TV stars Markie Post (from "Night Court", "Hearts Afire") and Nancy O'Dell ("Entertainment Tonight").

   

For the time being: why not stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - a survey of African-American art in an exhibit highlighting the Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond is at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. through September.

END of an ERA - the conservative provocateur David Horowitz - who rode to fame by transforming himself from the Far Left into a Far Right firebrand one always saw on TV - now feels abandoned by his former allies on the right.

EACH YEAR the Polar Music Awards of Sweden honor both a popular as well as a classical musician. This year's honorees: Paul Simon .... and Yo-Yo Ma.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Tiger the Cat - an English kitteh who had to be extricated from being stuck in ... a two-inch gap between brick garage walls.

CHEERS to the new Wales Coast Path - an 870 mile hiking trail along the entire coastline of mainland Wales, earning an In Praise Of editorial in The Guardian.

INCREDIBLE as it sounds, the brother of Nazi Germany's air force chief Hermann Göring actually helped Jews, prisoners and resistance movement figures during WW-II, with his famous name able to shield him. But it became a curse after the war, as he died in obscurity in 1966.

ART NOTES - a relatively new museum showcasing the paintings, drawings and prints of the Ab-Ex artist Clyfford Still in Denver, Colorado: is opening the second section of its inaugural exhibition through September 30th.

IN a PROFILE of Olivia Newton-John - the singer indicates that she didn't know for many years that her father worked for Britain's spy agency. "My father never spoke of his time in MI5. He wasn't allowed to, so his life was a mystery to us. He left us some tapes for after he died explaining his life, but I've not listened to them yet because it makes me feel too sad".

YOU MIGHT NOT EXPECT to see snowboards in San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile - part of the world's driest desert. Yet sandboarding - akin to snowboarding in fresh powder without having to wear heavy winter gear - is very popular on dunes stretching nearly 400 feet.

THURSDAY's CHILD is Maloos the Cat  - surviving a journey from Iran to San Francisco after being found covered in mud and gasoline in the streets of Tehran.

LAST MONTH when the strongman president of the African nation of Malawi died, his successor was the daughter of a musician in a police brass band. But now Malawi's first female president Joyce Banda - and only the second in Africa after Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf - has gotten off to a blazing start: firing the federal police chief (blamed for the deaths of 20 anti-government demonstrators) as well as the head of the state broadcasting company and has appointed a government that includes representatives of all the main opposition parties.

FILM NOTES - the first film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards - entitled Wings and also the only silent film to win Best Picture before "The Artist" - has been fully restored ahead of a limited release to the public.

OLDER-YOUNGER SISTERS? - TV stars Claire Danes ("My So-Called Life", "Homeland") and Heather Morris ("Glee").

 

...... and finally, for a song of the week.................... there are some musicians whose musical style is hard to pin down, and others who have written songs for legions of musicians from different styles. Someone who combines both is John Hiatt whose songwriting was his main claim-to-fame for a while, but who has (over the past twenty years) established himself as a performer in his own right.

The Indianapolis native had a stressful early life - at age nine seeing his much-older brother commit suicide, his father dying two years later and helping to steal a Ford Thunderbird with friends (for which they were caught, yet not prosecuted). Music was his one outlet, with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and the Stones his heroes. He moved to Nashville at age eighteen in 1970 (when the city was changing rapidly) and while trying to break in as a performer had a day-job as songwriter for Tree Publishing.

And he had some early success: with a recording contract and songs covered by country performers (such as Conway Twitty and Tracy Nelson) - but in addition Three Dog Night had a hit with Sure as I'm Sitting Here in 1974. His own performing began to shift from country-rock towards the new wave sound of Elvis Costello and Graham Parker during the late 1970's, but he lost his recording contract as well as his songwriting gig, anyway.

Signed by MCA in 1979, he had some notable success in the Netherlands (to this day, he cites that nation for sustaining him during the lean times) and slowly began to make critics lists (albeit without large record sales). He released Riding With the King - the title track of which Eric Clapton and B.B. King made famous over two decades later - and Roseanne Cash had hits with "It Hasn't Happened Yet" and "The Way We Make a Broken Heart". Yet his personal life started going downhill, due to a bout with alcoholism as well as his second wife committing suicide in 1985 (so difficult for someone who had already lost a brother that way) and he took time off for rehabilitation, a new marriage and a chance to regroup on the A&M label.

His 1986 album Bring the Family (with Ry Cooder on guitar, Nick Lowe on bass and Jim Keltner on drums) reflected a more roots music sound. And Have a Little Faith in Me became a hit for others (such as Joe Cocker, Mandy Moore and Delbert McClinton). The album garnered his best reviews to-date and sales began to climb.

It was not until his next album Slow Turning (produced by Glyn Johns) that he had his breakthrough; "Tennessee Plates" later appeared in the film "Thelma and Louise". John Hiatt then became a touring success for the first time. On Bonnie Raitt's own breakthrough 1989 album "Nick of Time", she featured a spirited version of Hiatt's "Thing Called Love".

In 1992, Hiatt reunited with Cooder, Keltner and Lowe as a supergroup under the name Little Village (after a a Sonny Boy Williamson song) but lasted only one album before it broke up.

He returned with his own band and has recorded a number of successful albums since, with "Perfectly Good Guitar" and "Walk On" among his best sellers. In 2000 he was named Songwriter/Artist of the year at the Nashville Music Awards and has had eleven Grammy nominations (although has yet to win one). In 2008, Hiatt was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and was honored by the Americana Music Association with a Lifetime Achievement in Songwriting Award.

His most recent album Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns was released just this past August, with songs such as Damn this Town as well as When New York Had Her Heart Broken - (as you might imagine, about 9-11) - as its strong points.

The list of performers who have performed John Hiatt songs is not only long but amazingly diverse; reflecting his own sound and cross-category appeal. In addition to the artists already mentioned, here are some more: Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, Paula Abdul, Jimmy Buffett, Iggy Pop, Buddy Guy, Emmylou Harris, Jewel, Joan Baez, Aaron Neville, Bon Jovi, Earl Thomas Conley, Flaco Jimenez, Ronnie Milsap, Jeff Healey, Chaka Khan and Keith Urban. Something tells me that (partial) list ... is not yet finished.

John Hiatt begins a European tour in June before opening a US tour in Annapolis, Maryland on August 14th .. and which includes a show in Bloomington, Indiana on August 20th .... celebrating his 60th birthday near his place of birth.

My favorite song of his was the title track of Slow Turning (fair-use extract below) which was his highest-selling single (reaching #8 in 1987) and featured original Eagles member Bernie Leadon on banjo. He even managed to slip in the name of one of his early heroes (from the Rolling Stones) at the same time. And below you can listen to it.

Now I'm in my car

I've turned the radio down

And I'm yelling at the kids in the back

'cause they're banging like Charlie Watts

You think you've come so far

In this one-horse-town

Then she's laughing that crazy laugh

'cause you haven't left the parking lot

Time is short and here's the damn thing about it:

You're gonna die, gonna die for sure

You can learn to life with love or without it

But there ain't no cure

It's been a slow turning

From the inside out

A slow turning

But you come about

Slow learning

But you learn to sway

A slow turning

Not fade away

Read full story

You might imagine that reality TV is (in actuality) some form of escapism. Not so fast ...

SEPARATED at BIRTH - retired philosophy professor David Ray Griffin (now a leading "Truther" conspiracy figure) and "Project Runway" star Tim Gunn.

   

As Heidi Klum might say, "You .... are out". But before you go: why not stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....  
ART NOTES - a photography exhibit by photographer Tom Gundelfinger O'Neal - of 1960's-70's rock and blues musicians/album covers - is on display at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. through May 4th.

FILM NOTES - in the just-concluded, inaugural Sundance London film festival: founder Robert Redford hailed the premier of an environmental documentary from Prince Charles entitled "Harmony: A New Way of Looking At Our World".

MUSIC NOTES - a memorable 1971 National Press Club concert by trumpeter Louis Armstrong - recorded just a few months before his death - is being re-released widely after a very limited original pressing.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Piper the Cat - adopted by pilots at a small Illinois airfield a dozen years ago when she arrived and proved adept at keeping mice away. Recently, she went missing ..... and was found a month later ... in Panama, where they had sent a plane.

LATER THIS MONTH some rare footage of a Beatles concert lost for 48 years - filmed at the Washington Coliseum in 1964, the band's first full US gig - will be screened as part of a 92-minute documentary in New York (this coming Sunday) before going into wide distribution.

MOTHER-DAUGHTER? - Bloomberg News reporter Margaret Carlson and Jackie Gingrich Cushman (Newt's daughter).

   

FOR THE PAST TWENTY YEARS the Frenchwoman Françoise Mouly has been the art director of the New Yorker; helping to choose the cover design along with editor David Remnick. Now, a new book entitled Blown Covers showcases the designs that didn't make the front page.

ART NOTES - an exhibition on loan from the Malba Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina- including works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera - are at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas through August 5th.

OF ALL THE stories one reads about bureaucracy in Russia: a correspondent for The Guardian tells how .... dry cleaning reaches an absurdly low point.

MUSIC NOTES - click this link to view a cavalcade of photographs of pop stars when they were in high school.

THURSDAY's CHILD is a Florida kitteh discovered on a telephone pole with .... a Doritos bag on its head. When firefighters attempted to rescue the kitteh, it fell to the ground ... and just dashed off into the distance.

SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER the memories of the survivors of the devastation inflicted upon the Basque town of Guernica are still fresh.

ART NOTES #2 - a watercolor not seen for nearly sixty years painted by Paul Cézanne - part of a Card Player series - was sold at auction for $19 million.

FRIDAY's CHILD is Paris the Cat - adopted three years ago by an Illinois woman, who has since become an animal welfare volunteer.

......and finally, for a song of the week ............... with the death of Abby Lincoln, my favorite living jazz performer is the tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders .... and yes, like many others I was originally drawn to him as one of the last links to the iconic John Coltrane. But while he can raise-the-roof playing avant-garde music like his mentor did in his final years (and over the years, he features many Coltrane favorites in his set-list) - Sanders carved out his own path in the late 60's and can play quite tastefully, in any setting.

He was born Ferrell Sanders in 1940, the son of two music teachers in Little Rock, Arkansas. As a teenager, he played as a house musician for travelling blues musicians, such as Bobby "Blue" Bland and Junior Parker, and one still hears that sound in his playing today. He moved to Oakland, California after high school and was known by his nickname Little Rock - and was a future role model to a part-time tenor saxophonist from Hope, Arkansas. Sanders gained experience in the Bay Area clubs before making his way to New York in 1961 to break into the larger jazz world.

He struggled mightily, often sleeping in the streets and pawning his horn, before meeting up with the avant-garde player Sun Ra - also from the South via Alabama (although he claimed to be actually from Saturn). And he is one of two people reputed to have named Ferrell Sanders as Pharoah: in Sun Ra's case deliberately, and for the poet Amiri Baraka (the former LeRoi Jones) due to mishearing his real name.  

In either case, performing with Sun Ra was his big break, and when he formed his own band in 1963, someone who took notice was John Coltrane. Although he was never made a formal member of Coltrane's last band from 1964 (until his death in 1967) Pharoah Sanders became a frequent sideman. The 60's were the heyday of avant-garde, and Sanders continued it after the death of Coltrane.

His magnum opus was the 1969 album Karma - featuring an epic-length (32 minutes) song The Creator Has a Master Plan - a song later covered by King Crimson - and which featured Leon Thomas on vocals. Thomas had been a vocalist for Count Basie, and in 1973 even toured with Carlos Santana. On this track, he sings in a sweet voice .... until he breaks into near-yodeling umbo weti, which is an acquired taste. Either way, Pharoah Sanders was now a cult figure in jazz, as this album (improbably) became an FM classic.

He continued in that vein for a time in the 1970's, before veering into Quiet Storm style R&B with Love Will Find a Way in 1978 (around the height of the disco era). That was a brief interlude, but many of his earlier blues and soul-jazz influences returned, and his music today is quite diverse (having seen him several years ago at the Montreal Jazz festival).

As mentioned, he often features the music of John Coltrane (both Coltrane's originals as well as standards he performed). Especially beginning in the mid-80's and continuing into the 90's, a series of albums featuring ballads were well-received by critics. He could still let loose: this gentle yet often searing version of the John Coltrane slow blues Equinox was a request I made of a local DJ in the 90's, and at its conclusion simply said, "Wow". In 1987, he appeared on a tribute album to John Coltrane led by Trane's pianist McCoy Tyner - and Pharoah Sanders shared in the 1988 Grammy Award for jazz instrumental album.

Pharoah Sanders will turn age 72 this coming October, and is still an active player. Perhaps the best description of his place in avant-garde jazz came from a third tenor saxophonist practitioner, Albert Ayler - "Trane was the Father...Pharoah was the son...I am the Holy Ghost".

         

So many of his songs to recommend .... let's start with Light at the Edge of the World - a 1971 film (based upon the Jules Verne novel) with music by the Italian composer Piero Piccioni - one of Italy's first jazz composers. This eloquent performance by Pharoah Sanders is one that I hope is played at my funeral.

Next .... well, I gotta feature The Creator Has a Master Plan - his magnum opus. The original recording is of epic length (32 minutes) and this video is just part one: it begins with dissonance, followed by that hypnotic riff (at the 2:00 minute mark) followed by Leon Thomas' vocals (at the 7:45 mark) which cascades into his ... yodeling (an acquired taste to be sure). Starting at the 2:00 mark (and going up to the end at 11 minutes) is all anyone needs to hear.

Lastly, here is a bouncy, vocal performance from him, with the song Save Our Children - collectively, these three tunes paint a nice portrait of the man.

Save our children

Dead or dying

Love our mothers

love our fathers

Now's the moment

for salvation

All we need

is inspiration

Read full story

Been to the movies lately? If so, you might have asked yourself ....

DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - President Coriolanus Snow (from the film "Hunger Games" as portrayed by Donald Sutherland) and Karl Marx, the author of "The Communist Manifesto" and "Das Kapital".

   

Maybe, maybe not .... but either way: why not stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - an exhibition of paintings curated by the singer Marianne Faithfull - to go along with a photography exhibit chronicling her (frequently) turbulent life - will be at the Tate Museum in Liverpool, England through September 2nd.

LITERARY NOTES - two new fantasy books for children are to be written by the poet Michael Tolkien - the eldest grandson of the The Hobbit author JRR Tolkien - and Gerald Dickens (the great-great grandson of Charles) will narrate the audiobook versions.

DEBAUCHERY CENTRAL -  a former Dutch pastor has opened an online sex shop for Christians - in the hope of improving their private lives and helping them to embrace sexuality.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Zola the Cat - who watches over Iliad Books in North Hollywood, California. She had been kept (in her youth) in a small cage, where neglect and infection caused her to lose one eye and several teeth ... but today Zola is an affectionate and friendly cat.

IT'S BEEN A TOUGH YEAR for the Carnival Cruise Lines: first there was the wreck of the Costa Concordia (skippered by Francesco Schettino who is now under house arrest) then a different vessel, the Costa Allegra caught fire while at seas and has to be scrapped - leading to the retirement of the Costa Group head. Now comes word that the crew of the Carnival cruise ship Star Princess ignored pleas from three passengers that a small boat they spotted was in distress - with two of the three boat's passengers dying of dehydration and heat stroke.

SEPARATED at BIRTH? ... my dear readers, more than a few people suggested to yours truly that my doppelganger (using German deliberately) is Florian Schneider - the co-founder of the band Kraftwerk. Were they right?

   

UNIVERSITY GRADUATES from Portugal and Spain - known as the Indignado Generation - who are unable to find work at home ... are increasingly finding opportunities in Africa and South America.

ART NOTES - late works by Claude Monet -  depicting iconic motifs from his garden in Giverny - are at the Cincinnati, Ohio Art Museum through May 13th.

PREPARATIONS ARE UNDERWAY to mark the 100th anniversary this June of the birth of Alan Turing - the British mathematician who was a computer pioneer and a master decoder during WW-II .... yet whose conviction for being gay (leading to his suicide) has yet to win a pardon from the UK government.

NEXT MONTH groundbreaking drawings of the human body by Leonardo da Vinci are to go on public display for the first time at Buckingham Palace.

THURSDAY's CHILD is Corky the Cat - a North Dakota kitteh born with a rare congenital birth defect - where his legs were backwards and overlapping - but is now recovering nicely from corrective surgery.

AT AGE SIXTY-EIGHT the rock star Johnny Hallyday - considered the 'French Elvis' - will perform at the Royal Albert Hall, his first concert ever in Britain.

SIGN of the APOCALYPSE - police arrested a man after a citizen notified them that a jewel thief had been seen on a street in Stuttgart, Germany  .... only to learn he was an actor who had recently portrayed the wanted criminal on a very popular TV crime-busting program.

FRIDAY's CHILD is Suki the Cat - a Canadian kitteh who went missing nine months ago in Montreal, but was located .... at a PetSmart store in Ottawa.

......and finally, for a song of the week ............... I'd like to both reprise (and update) a profile I did a few years back qbout the careers of John Lomax and his son Alan - two musicologists who worked for the Library of Congress (bearing one of their tape recorders) during the 1930's-1940's and who were responsible for bringing the music of Leadbelly and many other musicians from the rural South to prominence (and in his later years, Alan Lomax did so for non-American music as well). Few figures deserve greater credit for the preservation of America's folk music traditions.

Mississippi native John Lomax grew up in Texas before 1900 and while a dutiful student loved transcribing cowboy songs. His professors at the University of Texas dissuaded him from that, and he became the school's registrar after graduation. He went for his master's at Harvard in 1906 and - this time - received encouragement from the faculty.

He returned to UT to teach English and in 1910 published Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads with a foreword from none other than .... President Theodore Roosevelt. But Lomax lost his job in 1917 as a result of a feud between state and university politics, and he relocated to Chicago, spending several years in the banking profession.

It wasn't until 1933 (after the death of his wife) that his sons convinced him to resume his musicology interest, and he (along with Alan) began an association with the Library of Congress (based on John's sterling academic credentials). They met up with Huddie 'Leadbelly' Ledbetter in Louisiana's notorious Angola Prison but - on the acclaim to the recordings they made - tried to convince the governor to commute Leadbelly's sentence. One reason why John Lomax sought out prisoners was his belief that those isolated from recent musical trends would be more likely to have preserved pure folk songs. John Lomax also oversaw recordings by Spanish speakers along the Rio Grande and French-speaking Acadians in Louisiana.

John Lomax would sometimes in his narrations exhibit some patronizing tones towards African-Americans . But as one reviewer notes: for a white Southerner in the 1930's, his use of the prevailing vernacular had to be expected, while his wanting to preserve works by black performers (especially inmates) was remarkable.

John Lomax published several books and received many honors before his death in January, 1948 at age 79. Leadbelly performed at the University of Texas as a tribute. And just this month: John Lomax's first recording of prison songs is being re-released, with some of his own commentary on it.  

   

His son Alan Lomax was born in Austin, Texas in 1915 and worked with his father for seven years. When John curtailed his workload after passing age 70 in 1940, Alan continued and expanded their fieldwork. He also recorded known performers in jazz (Jelly Roll Morton) and after WW-II he sat down with Memphis Slim, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Big Bill Broonzy and recorded their recollections. After hosting several radio programs, he relocated to England in 1950.

Alan Lomax documented traditional British folksongs for much of the decade (as well as recordings in Spain and Italy). Upon his return Stateside he befriended musicians from bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell to Woodie Guthrie before turning to the West Indies, with English, Spanish and French recordings as a result. As technologies increased in the 1970's, he began videotaping performers and turned more to lecturing, writing and helping to collect their old recordings for preservation digitally. Here is what showed up in the FBI file about him:

"Neighborhood investigation shows him to be a very peculiar individual in that he is only interested in folklore music, being very temperamental and ornery. .... He has no sense of money values, handling his own and Government property in a neglectful manner, and paying practically no attention to his personal appearance. ... He has a tendency to neglect his work over a period of time and then just before a deadline he produces excellent results".

Alan Lomax continued his work (Rounder Records issued a 100-CD series showcasing Lomax's most legendary field recordings) until his death nearly ten years ago (July, 2002) at the age of 87. In 2000 he was named as a Library of Congress Living Legend recipient.

And just recently, thousands of the songs and interviews he recorded are available for free online - many for the first time.

Finally, Brian Eno - in liner notes to the 1997 Alan Lomax Collection Sampler on Rounder - believes that Alan Lomax help paved the way for the acceptance of "world music".

   

While this father-son team is no longer of this earth, they do have some descendents in the music business (albeit in a more conventional manner). John Lomax III (below left) - the grandson of John and the nephew of Alan - helped launch the careers of Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, and the late blues guitarist Rocky Hill (brother of ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill). And his own son John Nova Lomax (below right) is an award-winning journalist, with music profiles in particular. Sounds like these two are upholding a family tradition quite well.

   

As a thirteen year-old, I recall listening to a friend's copy of the second album by Grand Funk Railroad and was intrigued (even at that age) by the writer's credits for a song about prison life. It was the only song not written by the band, and Inside Looking Out listed four names as co-writers. I recognized "E. Burdon" as Eric Burdon (then in the band "War") and some years later I learned that "B. Chandler" was Bryan (Chas) Chandler - his bandmate in The Animals from a few years earlier. It turned out that the Grand Funk version was a cover of a 1966 Animals tune (though it was done in a much heavier, slower tone).

It was not until years later that I learned that The Animals performed a traditional prison song Rosie - which is how the Animals referred to it live - until they wrote new lyrics for their 1966 studio recording (at which point they changed the title to "Inside Looking Out").

Oh, and the other two writer's credits? Since it was unclear who originally wrote "Rosie" (and would have been in the public domain by then, anyway) - possibly as a tribute: The Animals first listed "J(ohn) Lomax" and "A(lan) Lomax" as co-writers.

At this link is Grand Funk's version, and below is The Animals' less well-known version.

Sitting here lonely like a

broken man

Spend my time doing the

best I can

Walls and bars they surround me

But I don't want your sympathy

I just need your tender loving

To keep me cool in this burning oven

When my time is up, be my reason

Like Adam's work on God's green earth

Read full story

I know there is a "look" that many TV hosts have ..... one prime example was the now-deceased Dick Clark ..... but this one ....

SEPARATED at BIRTH - TV hosts Clayton Morris (on "Fox & Friends Weekend") and Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert.

   

Well, I echo President Obama's thoughts on Dick Clark ... for everyone else, why not stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - nearly eighty original drawings by Margret and H. A. Rey - in an exhibition entitled Curious George Saves the Day - is at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson through July 22nd.

WITH THE OPENING of the mass murder trial of right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik - who gave a Fascist-like arm salute on his first day in court - xenophobic, anti-immigrant parties in Scandinavia distanced themselves from Breivik yet are largely unchanged, with the exception of Norway's Progress Party - which after some examination has made some changes to its rhetoric.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Boots The Cat - an Illinois kitteh slated for euthanasia as specified in a 76 year-old woman's will, concerned there would not be a safe home for Boots (whom she raised after rescuing him from an abusive situation).

However, given that Georgia Lee Dvorak left her entire $1.3 million estate to animal charities: a judge granted the trustee's request to allow them to conduct a proper search for Boots to be placed in a home, instead.

FIRST IT WAS my old pal Silvio Berlusconi departing the Italian right-wing political stage, and now Umberto Bossi - the long-time leader of Italy's anti-immigrant, separatist Northern League - was forced to resign as party leader after taxpayer money supplied to the party ... was spent on his family.

DEBAUCHERY CENTRAL - a women-oriented, eco-friendly sex shop in Berlin, Germany - seeking to lure customers away from big name stores (which they believe sell poor quality, potentially hazardous sex toys) - now offers organic, vegan sex aids, such as organic lubricants and silicon vibrators.

SEPARATED at BIRTH - TV stars Alison Sweeney ("Days of our Lives", "The Biggest Loser") and Kristen Johnston ("3rd Rock from the Sun").

   

AN EXTRADITION HEARING is being sought by the Ecuadorean government against the brothers Roberto and William Isaias - who have lived in the US since 2000 - both of whom were convicted in absentia of falsifying their Filanbanco's financial statements, leading to a 1990s financial meltdown that cost Ecuadorian taxpayers more than $8 billion.

ART NOTES - a showcase of recent acquisitions by area artists entitled Lure of the Local is at the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Museum of Art through May 13th.

STRANGE AS IT MAY SEEM it was fifty years ago that a newly-independent nation of Ghana founded sub-Saharan Africa's first flight school for girls - with the help of Hanna Reitsch, Hitler's own private test pilot.

WITH THE ELECTION once again of Vladimir Putin the Kremlin will seek to purge Russia's internet of 'western' influences, especially those guiding liberals and gay rights activists.

THURSDAY's CHILD is Horace the Cat - an English kitteh who went missing for nearly three weeks before managing to limp home with two broken legs, yet after two operations is recuperating well.

SWISS CITIZENS LIVING ABROAD - and especially in the US - have passed a unanimous resolution calling on Swiss banks not to discriminate against its citizens living in foreign countries.

A HEARING WILL TAKE PLACE in the Senate of the nation of Nigeria - after charges that foreign airlines (particularly British Airways and Virgin Atlantic) have colluded with Nigeria aviation authorities to preserve discriminatory internal airfares for Nigerians.

FRIDAY's CHILD is Rufus the Cat - an English kitteh who has been missing for nine weeks, leading Chris Hirst to conduct an Internet search for a pet detective .... for which he was so impressed by the numerous testimonials made to one of them that he sent an e-mail ... all the way to Seattle, Washington ... and has been pleased by the advice Kat Albrecht has given him.

......and finally, for a song of the week ............... for a time, I thought that Jimi Hendrix had the most new recordings released after his death, and he may still be. But someone who has also had far more recordings released in death than in life is Eva Cassidy - whom I first learned of via a front-page story on the Wall Street Journal, recounting her following in Europe. And if her name is not familiar to you .... well, let's rectify that situation.

The Maryland native was born in 1963, the daughter of an American schoolteacher who met his horticulturalist wife Barbara Krätzer in her native Bad Kreuznach, Germany. Eva took to music at an early age (idolizing Buffy St. Marie) and played in a family band as well as various groups across the Washington, D.C. metro area. She studied art for a time after high school, but worked at a nursery while she sang back-up for various friends' groups in the area.

It was as a twenty-three year-old in 1986 that she first began recording back-up tracks for a friend's band, and her talent was immediately recognized by producer Chris Biondo - who became her boyfriend for a time, and her biggest booster always. He eventually convinced her to join a band and perform in the region, while he worked to secure her a recording contract.

Although most people recognized the qualities of her voice, Eva Cassidy had two quirks that worked against her becoming a star: (a) she was painfully shy, not only in-person but also on-stage (which affected her ability to find steady work), and (b) her material covered such a wide-range of sound (i.e., blues, soul, jazz, rock, pop, R&B), etc.) that record companies of the day shied away from someone they would have to work hard at marketing.

In 1992, producer Biondo finally found the perfect match for Eva Cassidy - a "go-go" soul/funk performer in the D.C. area who had wanted to branch out into more sophisticated jazz and blues. Chuck Brown was a showman who offered Eva Cassidy a chance to avoid the limelight with ease, and who played the sorts of R&B she wanted to add to her repertoire. The two released the album The Other Side in which, uncharacteristically, they sang mostly ballads and standards. In 1993 a malignant mole (resulting from melanoma) was removed from Eva Cassidy's back, yet she did not follow-up on the doctor's recommendations.

The famed Blue Note jazz label was headed then (and, up until 2010) by the former Columbia president Bruce Lundvall - who in 1994 offered Eva the chance to record with the jazz-pop band Pieces of a Dream - which was not a satisfying experience. Lundvall, though, was an astute judge of talent and was willing to offer Cassidy a solo contract - which she balked at when it was clear Lundvall wanted a jazz album, for which she was unwilling to restrict her material to.

All that was left was for Biondo and Cassidy to make their own album - which they did at the famed Washington club Blues Alley in January, 1996. But it was the only solo album to be released in her lifetime: as she developed a pain in her hips which - by the time it was discovered to be the melanoma returning with a vengeance - was too late to treat.

Eva Cassidy gave a stirring farewell performance - concluding with What a Wonderful World - before she died in November of 1996 at only age thirty-three. In 1998, the family allowed a release of the album Songbird - a compilation of the various recordings she had made in the preceding years, all of which garnered much praise ...... locally ..... yet she died in relative obscurity.

Her rise to fame came two years later in the year 2000 - when the BBC Radio 2 popular morning disk jockey Terry Wogan played her version of Over the Rainbow - truly her most famous performance. The response was immediate: with Britain's "Top of the Pops" show airing that amateur video (of Cassidy singing at Blues Alley) which became their most-requested video ever.

In May, 2001, ABC's "Nightline" had this extended profile (narrated by Dave Marash below) which summarizes Eva Cassidy's career quite nicely - along with a remorseful Bruce Lundvall on not signing her (although in fairness, many other record company people didn't even give her a chance the way he did).

And since then, the legend of Eva Cassidy has only grown, with several posthumous releases - including last year's Simply Eva - that are beginning to rival that of Jimi Hendrix. Her songs have been used on TV and film ("Judging Amy", "Love, Actually", "Smallville" and "Maid in Manhattan"), used by several figure skaters during their routines (Michelle Kwan, Kristie Yamaguchi and others), she has been mentioned by name in songs (by Chris de Burgh and Mary Chapin Carpenter) and her former bandmate Chuck Brown dedicated an album to her. The British-Georgian singer Katie Melua - citing Cassidy as one of her idols - arranged to record a duet with Eva Cassidy on "What a Wonderful World", with all proceeds going to the Red Cross.

A book entitled Songbird was published in 2003, and a long-rumored biopic - to be produced by Robert Redford's daughter Amy - is still a possibility. Either way: it's a sure thing you haven't heard the last from Eva Cassidy.

   

One thing I most admire about Eva Cassidy was her willingness to take on songs that moved her, even when they were so identified with another singer they were risky to perform. That was obviously the case with Judy Garland and "Over the Rainbow", Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" and Aretha Franklin's "Natural Woman".

Here, she does considerable justice to the Fairport Convention song Who Knows Where the Time Goes? written by the English singer Sandy Denny - who died young (at only age thirty-one, albeit from much different circumstances) and did not achieve legendary status until a few years later .... as Eva Cassidy did.

Across the evening sky all the birds are leaving

But then you know it was time for them to go

By the winter fire I will still be dreaming

I do not count the time

Sad deserted shore your fickle friends are leaving

But then you know it was time for them to go

But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving

I do not count the time

For who knows where the time goes?

Who knows where the time goes?

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Bye, bye Rick .....

SEPARATED at BIRTH - former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum ...

  ... and TV star Bob Saget ("Full House" and "America's Funniest Home Videos").

Why not stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - the German avant-garde electronic music group Kraftwerk has begun performing for eight consecutive evenings (each devoted to one of the group's albums) ...

...to accompany their extensive visual material  - now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City through Tuesday of next week.

SEVERAL CABLE TV NETWORKS are slated to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to them by Tax Masters - the company claiming it would help you resolve your tax issues .....

... until it filed for bankruptcy following a massive $200M fraud settlement.

THE SEARCH IS ON for a missing hero ... as Chloe the Cat awoke a sleeping man from a building fire in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan ... and who hopefully is just missing, rather than consumed by the flames.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Misty Mouse the Cat - a California kitteh who wound up locked in the house next door for 18 days without food - fortunately, discovered by workers and is now back home.

AFTER TWENTY YEARS plans for a 35-mile rail link under the Alps - four miles longer than the Channel tunnel and linking Turin, Italy to Lyons, France - may be ready to begin.

DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - the role of the late Steve Jobs - at least in one of two competing biopics forthcoming about the late founder of Apple Computer - is to be portrayed by ... TV star Ashton Kutcher.

       

LAST YEAR IT WAS the German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg who had to resign from office - and now the president of Hungary, Pál Schmitt has also resigned .... after being stripped of his PhD when his thesis was determined to have been largely plagiarized.

ART NOTES - an exhibition of small-scale portraits (or miniatures) from history are at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri through July 29th.

IN A PROFILE of the European film star Chiara Mastroianni - the daughter of Catherine Deneuve and the late Marcello Mastroianni - she is happy to talk about her mother and father but admits, "I only saw my parents together ... on screen."

ART NOTES #2 - a painting newly authenticated as a work by Rembrandt - known as 'The Old Rabbi', last exhibited in 1950 and which had hung ever since in a private room - has gone on public display in Britain.

THURSDAY's CHILD is Clementine the Cat - part of the Cuddly Catz program for inmates at the Larch Corrections Center in Washington state.

IT WAS A RELIEF to the citizens of Senegal that its two-term president - barred by the constitution (which he himself wrote) from seeking another term - was thwarted by voters from becoming a president-for-life .... and thus preserving Senegal's title as Africa's oldest democracy.

CHEERS to figures released this week showing that Sweden gives more development aid in relation to gross national income than any other country.

FRIDAY's CHILD is Sessa the Cat - who rules-the-roost at the Philadelphia Rare Books and Manuscripts Company.

......and finally, for a song of the week ............... if you asked a hip-hop fan, a jazz buff, a rocker and a classical music devotee to come up with a musician they all could respect: one performer they could agree on is Herbie Hancock because he could fit so comfortably in those genres (and others). Still at heart a modern jazz pianist, and now after fifty years in the music business probably has another trick or two awaiting for us all.

The Chicago native was a child prodigy, performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1951 at the age of eleven. And he actually began his studies at Iowa's prestigious Grinnell College as a major in music ... actually as an electrical engineering major, before switching to music. He joined Donald Byrd's band in 1961 and was offered a solo contract by Blue Note Records. His first album in 1962 yielded the song Watermelon Man - that Mongo Santamaria covered and made into a classic. The next year, Miles Davis asked him to join his band, and remained with him for five years (One of Davis's "classic quintets").

All the while, Hancock continued recording solo albums; with his 1965 album Maiden Voyage seen as his classic. Listening to the title track at this link is my favorite song for a rainy day - and it features the late Freddie Hubbard on trumpet.

Miles Davis encouraged him to try the Fender Rhodes electric piano, which spawned his subsequent interest in electronic keyboards (along with his engineering background). After venturing out on his own in 1968, Hancock furthered explored the emerging versions of electronics, along with composing for Bill Cosby's "Fat Albert" TV show (with the tune "Tell Me a Bedtime Story" becoming a hit for Quincy Jones).

It was his 1973 breakthrough album Head Hunters that made him well-known to the general public. Mixing the emerging funk/soul sound with jazz, it included the song Chameleon that had an additional rock-like riff as its melody.

Miles Davis had issued his own album "On the Corner" album with the same musical blend, but wrote later that 'Head Hunters' was "the album I should have released". Indeed, I saw the two men's bands on a double-bill in 1975 ... with Miles Davis opening for Hancock, which (temporarily) strained their relationship.

But to show that he hadn't forgotten his roots: Hancock formed an off-and-on band called VSOP which reunited Hancock with his old Miles Davis Quintet bandmates (Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams) with Freddie Hubbard in the trumpet spot. Its classic modern jazz  sound helped pave the way for traditionalists such as Wynton Marsalis who were working their way into the limelight.

In 1983, Hancock scored a crossover hit on MTV with the funk song Rockit that introduced him to a younger generation. Since then, Hancock has been all around the field of music. His film scores include Norman Jewison's "A Soldier's Story", Richard Pryor's "JoJo Dancer", Eddie Murphy's "Harlem Nights" and "Round Midnight" - in which he also acted, and won an Oscar for the score.

In 1998 he released the album Gershwin's World - on the 100th anniversary of his birth - in which he backed soprano Kathleen Battle on "Prelude in C# Minor".

He has also recorded with popular musicians too numerous to mention: in 2005, Herbie Hancock recorded an album entitled Possibilities with musicians including Sting, Annie Lennox, Stevie Wonder, John Mayer, Christina Aguilera and Paul Simon. In 2008, his tribute album to Joni Mitchell River: the Joni Letters became only the second jazz album to win the Grammy Album of the Year award. His most recent album was 2010's Imagine Project - featuring not only that John Lennon classic, but also the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows", Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a Changin'" and Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come".

I had a chance to see him perform in 2010 (35 years after the last time) and he had a wide range of musical stylists featured on-stage (such as the African guitarist Lionel Loueke) that played all of Hancock's classics (albeit more funky) plus songs from this album - and the man seemed as energetic as ever, coming out with a keyboard around his neck to play "Chameleon" for an encore.  

Herbie Hancock has won a total of fourteen Grammys, was elected to the Downbeat Magazine Hall of Fame in 2005, is quite active in Democratic politics and since being named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador last July has established International Jazz Day to be held on April 30 of every year. All of which he will undoubtedly mention in his upcoming memoirs to be published in 2014.

In the meantime, Herbie Hancock turns age 72 .... ummm ..... TODAY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!. And begins a tour with a show in West Palm Beach on May 3rd.  

One song appearing on the "Imagine Project" album (and performed on tour) was Space Captain - written by the singer Matthew Moore who was in the choir backing-up Joe Cocker who sang this tune on his break-out 1970 Mad Dogs and Englishmen album. Here, the husband-and-wife team of Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi are among the featured performers with Herbie - and below you can hear it.

Once I was traveling across the sky

This lovely planet caught my eye

And being curious: I flew close by

Now I'm caught here until I die

I lost my memory of where I've been

We all forgot that we could fly

Someday we'll all change into peaceful men

And we'll return into the sky

Until we die

Learning to live together

Learning to live together

Learning to live together

'Till we die

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Even cable news gets a case of the doppelgangers ....

Reader suggested BROTHER-SISTER? - film star Corey Feldman and TV pundit A.B. Stoddard - as well as a reporter for "The Hill".

   

As always, why not stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    
ART NOTES - the first exhibition to explore the early career of the pop artist Keith Haring is at the Brooklyn, NY Museum to July 8th.

REBEL TROOPS have seized the northern part of the western African nation of Mali - including the historic city of Timbuktu - but the country's neighbors are imposing an economic blockade to force its military leaders to step down.

A CLEAN SWEEP took place at this year's Razzie Awards - which spotlights the year's worst films - as Adam Sandler's movie Jack and Jill  picked up a record 10 prizes, including worst picture ... and even Al Pacino (who played himself) won the worst supporting actor award.

WEDNESDAY's CHILD is J.J. the Cat - a pootie nursing two kittens at an Arkansas shelter ... and a 2-week-old raccoon, whom the shelter had trouble caring for ..... but J.J. didn't.

IN WHAT MUST SURELY be rather upsetting to our friends at Planet Starboard, Jane Fonda will have a cameo role in the forthcoming film "The Butler" (based on a story by Washington Post reporter Wil Haygood) portraying .... Nancy Reagan.

ART NOTES - the first museum retrospective of the photographer Herb Ritts is at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California through August 26th.

WEEKDAY MORNINGS I pass by the front of Dartmouth College's medical center on the way to my (relatively) new job, and it will be interesting to see if they construct new signage to reflect the school's new name, now that it has been named after Theodor 'Ted' Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss ... whom I consider the true pediatrician of my youth.

A CENTURY after the fateful return from the South Pole led to the death of the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his crew, their diet is being examined as part of the reason for their demise.

THURSDAY's CHILD is Tamba the Cat - an English kitteh feared lost five weeks ago ... but who survived after being trapped for five weeks in a summerhouse subsisting only on the condensation from the windows.

FIFTEEN NEWLY-RELEASED LETTERS are to go on display at the JFK Library in Boston that were written by Ernest Hemingway - distressed over having to put down Uncle Willie the Cat after he suffered two broken legs in a road accident.

FOOD NOTES - the long, three-course lunch historically enjoyed by many employees in France has dwindled quite a bit, with many short lunch hours necessitating sandwiches (albeit high-quality, made-to-order ones).

SEPARATED at BIRTH - two noted jazz musicians: drummer Peter Erskine (of "Weather Report" fame) and Eddie Palmieri - the Grammy-winning pianist.

   

FOR HIS 80th BIRTHDAY the artist Sir Peter Blake has a re-interpretation of his most famous work, the album cover for the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper - and at this link - an interactive feature identifies such British celebrities as Twiggy, Elvis Costello, JK Rowling, Helen Mirren, Amy Winehouse, Damien Hirst ..... and even the famous Monty Python foot.

FRIDAY's CHILD is Vito Vincent the Cat - a kitteh just waiting for that big break in Hollywood.

......and finally, for a song of the week ............... a singer not frequently seen in the US these days  (although she did a guest spot on American Idol a few years back) but certainly active in her native Britain is the Scotswoman born as Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie, and legally known today as Lulu Kennedy-Cairns ........... but you probably know her as just Lulu - who has a nearly forty-eight year career in both singing, TV hosting, acting, modeling .... whatever it is, she's done it.

Born in 1948, the Glasgow native had her first hit (a cover of Shout) that reached #7 in the UK charts while not quite age 16. As an 18 year-old, she toured Europe with The Hollies and recorded two German-language songs. She signed with the famous UK producer Mickie Most for three years, which she described as often unpleasant - still, all seven singles he produced made the charts and she praised him after his death in 2003.

She became an international star by not only acting in the 1967 film To Sir With Love but also singing the title track that reached #1 in the US. In 1969, her song Boom Bang-a-Bang was involved in a four-way tie for first place in the Eurovision Song Contest (a pan-European contest watched across the Continent) just after she married BeeGee Maurice Gibb (a marriage that lasted only four years).

All along, she hosted a TV show (under different titles) in Britain from 1968-1975 (including a famous Jimi Hendrix appearance in 1969) and she recorded a 1970 album New Routes in Muscle Shoals with Duane Allman on guitar (her version of "Dusty in Memphis"). For much of the 1970's she appeared in stage performances, but found time to record the title track to The Man with the Golden Gun Bond film as well as recording two David Bowie tunes.

Since then, she has continued to record, host radio and TV programs, act as a model (she did say she gave up using Botox in 2008), judging talent contests, some acting .... she doesn't seem to let up having turned age 63 last year, becoming a grandmother in the process.  

In 2002, she performed with Jeff Beck on the PBS Blues music series hosted by Martin Scorsese: appearing on Mike Figgis's Red, White & Blues - doing a great job on songs like "Drown In My Own Tears". Her autobiography I Don't Want To Fight was published in 2002, and her book on beauty for grown-ups came out in 2010. In 2009, Lulu was one of a number of Scottish celebrities featured in the advertising campaign for Homecoming Scotland - a year-long event to encourage people around the world with Scottish heritage to return to Scotland.

And for someone who had been a noted Conservative Party supporter in the early 1980's: she became a big fan of Barack Obama after his election, commenting on not only his books but after hearing his mini-rendition of Al Green now says, "I want to record an album with him".

It might do well to hear one of those 2002 duets with Jeff Beck to hear how she sings today: Cry Me a River was written by composer Arthur Hamilton, a high school classmate of Julie London (who made the tune famous in 1956). And below you can hear a different side of Lulu (from what you're used to hearing) sing it.

Now you say you're lonely

You cry the whole night through

Well, you can cry me a river

I cried a river over you

You nearly drove me

Out of my head

While you never shed a tear

Remember... I remember all that you said

Told me love was too plebeian

Told me you were through with me

And now you say you love me

Well, just to prove you do

Come on and cry me a river

Cry me a river

I cried a river over you

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A look at the guitarist Link Wray - with 1/2 Shawnee ancestry - who is a pivotal figure in rock-n-roll and still influential six years after his death.
If you try to draw a line from the first bluesman who cranked up his guitar amp to create a distorted sound .... all the way to the Hendrix/Page/Townshend rock guitarists .... that line must pass thru Link Wray who - if he never recorded another song than Rumble fifty years ago - would have a place in music history. And while he never scaled those heights again: he had a career worth noting.

Frederick Lincoln Wray (who had part Shawnee ancestry) was born in Dunn, North Carolina in 1929, with his family eventually settling in Maryland. Link served in the Korean War where he suffered from tuberculosis (eventually losing a lung). He concentrated on his guitar work and formed Lucky Wray and the Palomino Ranch Hands, a western-swing band in the mid-1950's.

This later evolved into the Ray Men when they became the house band on a Washington, D.C. TV show. Backing others (such as Fats Domino and Ricky Nelson) they became a more instrumental band (as Link's vocal abilities were limited due to the loss of that lung).

Then while backing-up The Diamonds in 1958, Link Wray improvised a 12-bar blues instrumental titled "Oddball" which had a distorted sound when Wray poked holes in his amplifier's speakers (much as Ike Turner's dropped-and-damaged amp delivered a sound on Rocket 88 he came to believe was advantageous). It was an audience hit, yet Cadence Records producer Archie Bleyer was unimpressed.

But his daughter loved it, telling Bleyer it reminded her of the rumble scenes in "West Side Story" and the song was renamed Rumble - which, while primitive: doesn't sound dated over fifty years later, and guitarists from Jimmy Page to Bob Dylan to Jimi Hendrix all cited the song as an influence. The Who's Pete Townshend went further: stating in liner notes (for a 1970 Link Wray album) that, but for that tune: "I would never have picked up a guitar". Some radio stations banned it (as 'encouraging teen violence') .. which only increased record sales.

Link and the Ray Men followed it up over the next few years with "Rawhide" and "Jack the Ripper" but then settled into an on-again-off-again remainder of his career. One reason is that record companies thought that - if they could dress him up and not be a juvenile delinquent poster child - he'd sell more records. Yet Link Wray was not cut out for playing "Claire de Lune"(!) as he did in 1960, and eventually Swan Records gave him room to stretch out. There were also periods of retirement, as well.

I recall him teaming up with rockabilly singer Robert Gordon throughout the 1970's and he eventually married and relocated to Denmark, as his audience as a solo performer increasingly shifted across the Atlantic. One band-member for a time in the 1980's was Anton Fig, who later joined Paul Shaffer's "Late Show" band. His last album was Barbed Wire from 2000 and his music was featured on such films as "Pulp Fiction", "Breathless" and John Waters' "Pink Flamingos".

Link Wray died in Copenhagen, Denmark in November, 2005 at the age of 76. Former Maryland Governor Erlich declared January 15, 2006 as Link Wray Day, and he was voted #45 on the Greatest Guitarists of All Time by Rolling Stone.

Wray has also been inducted into two Halls of Fame: those for Native American Music ... and for Rockabilly after his death. Rhino has a compilation album of note, and as long as guitarists want a sound that is anything-but-clean: the music of Link Wray will have a place.

   

If you haven't had a listen to Rumble in some time: then below you can see why this song made his career.

For a song with lyrics and even vocals by Link Wray: here is his 1979 version of Bob Dylan's It's All Over Now, Baby Blue - which below you can listen to.

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last

But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast

Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,

Crying like a fire in the sun

Look out the saints are comin' through

And it's all over now, Baby Blue

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense

Take what you have gathered from coincidence

The empty-handed painter from your streets

Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets

This sky, too, is folding under you

And it's all over now, Baby Blue

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With the impending canonization of Kateri Tekakwitha - the 17-century Mohawk woman who tended to the sick and elderly will be celebrated as a saint in the Catholic Church.

But where does she hail from? Follow the dispute after the jump ....
In a discussion that almost reminds one of when a baseball player (who played for multiple teams) is elected to the Hall of Fame - but then disagreements arise over which cap he should wear - where this woman hails from has a multiple-choice:

a)  An American (as she was born in New York)

b)  A Canadian (as she migrated to modern-day Québec with a Jesuit mission, and is buried there).

c)  A European, because "The Jesuits were the ones that worked with her, and if you wanted to go that way: they would be taking her back to France".  Or .....

d)  Given that she died in 1680 at age 24, then simply this: "When she walked this Earth, there was no border. We recognize her as we recognize ourselves, as North American Indians," said Ronald Boyer, 73, deacon of St. Francis Xavier Church in Kahnawake, Québec.

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