“Where Armstrong’s playing was bravura, regularly optimistic, and openly emotional, Beiderbecke’s conveyed a range of intellectual alternatives. Where Armstrong, at the head of an ensemble, played it hard, straight, and true, Beiderbecke, like a shadow boxer, invented his own way of phrasing “around the lead.” Where Armstrong’s superior strength delighted in the sheer power of what a cornet could produce, Beiderbecke’s cool approach invited rather than commanded you to listen.”   ~The Oxford Companion to Jazz~

Born in Nineteen-hundred-and-three, in Davenport, Iowa, he was the grandson of German immigrants. Leon Bismarck “Bix” Beiderbecke, now considered one of the two most influential figures in the early history of jazz. The other, of course, was the grandson of slaves, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, out of New Orleans.

Beiderbecke was shown how to play the piano at the age of two by his church organist mother and by the age of ten he was sneaking aboard riverboats to play their calliopes.  When his older brother came home from active duty in 1918 with a Victrola and an armload of early jazz records, Bix taught himself to pay cornet.

By the age of 20 he had joined the Midwestern Wolverines jazz ensemble, with whom he made his first records, prior joining the Detroit-based Victor Recording Orchestra with saxophonist Frankie “Tram” Trumbauer.  In 1926 “Bix” and “Tram” leapt at the chance to join the most prestigious dance orchestra anywhere, the New York based Paul Whiteman Orchestra.

Not long before, a crooner out of Tacoma, Washington named Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby had become one of Whiteman’s Rhythm Boys and in 1928 Beiderbecke played on four Number-One Records with Crosby featured on vocals. With scores of hindsight, those absorbing performances  featuring “Bix” ‘n “Bing” still have a popular following to this day.

Meanwhile, Louis Armstrong who was then based in Chicago was also making a name for himself, recording with Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Sidney Bechet and Fats Waller.  But racial integration was unheard of in the 1920s and when the Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra was in town Armstrong would sit in the blacks-only balcony of the Chicago Theater to listen to Beiderbecke.

“When Bix started to play, I would let those notes just float over me, and I thought I was in heaven,” he said.  The two had met years before, but now in their prime they each considered the other to be the best player out there.  In fact (as most jazz critics now agree) Armstrong, who played both cornet and trumpet, was the virtuoso greatly influenced by the blues. While Beiderbecke, who was largely self-taught on cornet is remembered for his “unusual purity of tone” and improvisation “that presaged a ‘cooler’ age.” His greatest influences were Impressionist composers, like Ravel and Debussy.

Although they never performed together on stage (unlike Crosby, who had memorable appearances with each), Armstrong once admitted to catching up with Beiderbecke after a performance and ushering him to a warehouse that had been intentionally left unlocked.  Once the coast was clear… “We blew and blew, all the way to dawn.”

Sadly the relentless touring and recording regimen, coupled with an unbridled consumption of booze that stretched back to his younger days of sneaking onto river boats, started to overtake Beiderbecke.  By 1929 he was showing up drunk for performances and beginning to miss his cues.

Paul Whiteman, who at 300 pounds  (according to a “New Yorker” profile) was “a man flabby, virile, quick, coarse, untidy and sleek, with a hard core of shrewdness in an envelope of sentimentalism,” instructed the horn player next to him to pencil in a note on the music score just before his solo that said “Wake up Bix.”

Still, by 1931 Bix Beiderbecke was dead at the age of twenty-eight. Louis Armstrong, who was two years his elder, would outlive him by 40 years.

But Bix’s story doesn’t quite end there. His early death soon became one of the original legends of jazz (…and of later popular music) and he was portrayed in print and on the silver screen as the romantic “Young Man with a Horn” dying as a martyr for the sake of his art.

Never mind the art; and even though it’s not “Bix ‘n Bing” today’s uplifting selection, recorded in 1929, at least features an instrumental by “Bix ‘n Tram.”  If it’s new to your listen intently. Perhaps you too will sense the….allure.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Saturday 13 October

I Like That

“Champagne don’t drive me crazy,” I suppose is a highly subjective statement but as a detached observer of Disco, that (cough) singularly individualistic, distinctively high-brow musical genre that was all the rage towards the end of the ‘70s, the follow-up line “Cocaine don’t make me lazy” is rather…axiomatic.

By the time the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in South America in the 16th Century, the native populations had been chewing the leaves of “Erythroxylum coca” for a thousand years.  Not only were these leaves nutritious, they contained highly stimulating alkaloids that provided them with extra energy.  At first the Spanish colonists declared the practice the “work of the Devil.”  But when they realized how much work the locals could get done (on their behalf) they taxed the leaf, which it was discovered could induce “great contentment” when mixed with tobacco.

By the 19^th Century a Corsican chemist named Angelo Mariani saw economic potential when he blended red Bordeaux wine with coca leaves and produced a “tonic” called cocawine. The beverage was especially popular among urbane American consumers… including those in Atlanta, Georgia.

But in 1885 when Fulton County (Atlanta is the county seat) enacted temperance legislation, John Stith Pemberton, an Atlanta druggist who had been marketing his own cocawine clamored to create a non-alcoholic coca drink.  The result, of course was Coca-Cola, the pause that refreshes, which was originally sold as a patent medicine.  In 1906, with the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act, the firmly established Coca-Cola Company began to use a cocaine-free coca leaf extract, although there remained plenty of refreshment through the caffeine found in kola nuts, the second half of that famous hyphenated name.

In addition to the 1906 Food and Drug Act, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, the Jones-Miller Act of 1922 and the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 have made the mere possession of cocaine a Schedule II indictable offense with a penalty of up to five years in prison. Yet after marijuana it remains the second most popular recreational drug in America, which by far is the world’s largest consumer.

Just as it was back in the ‘70s when Henry Saint Claire Fredericks combined a popular blues standard, written by Porter Grainger (Bessie Smith’s accompanist) in 1922, with some sentiments that, among other things, echo Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You” (to wit, “I get no kick from champagne” and “Some, they may go for cocaine”).

Born in Harlem in 1942 and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, Fredericks adopted the name, Taj Mahal after it came to him in a dream about India.  Self-taught on guitar, banjo and harmonica, he has now been a recording artist for nearly 50 years, always maintaining the belief that the blues has nothing to do with despair.   “You can listen to my music from front to back,” he once said, “and you don’t ever hear me moaning and crying about how bad you done treated me.”

Having worked on a dairy farm in Palmer, Mass. as a teen, Taj Mahal is said to have developed a passion for farming that rivals that of music and regularly performs at Farm Aid concerts to this day.  Actually he claims to prefer outdoor performances, where people can dance, in general. That’s how we saw him (pre-Farm Aid), at a free concert outside of Boston City Hall, not long after he had first recorded this song on his 1976 album, “Satisfied ‘n Tickled Too”.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Friday 12 October

Nobody’s Business But My Own

 Champagne don’t drive me crazy

Cocaine don’t make me lazy

Ain’t nobody’s business but my own

Candy is dandy and liquor is quicker

You can drink all the liquor down in Costa Rica

Ain’t nobody’s business but my own

 You can ride a great big pink Cadillac to church on Sunday

You can hang around the house with your old lady on Monday

Ain’t nobody’s business but your own

Man, I don’t care what in the world that you do

As long as you do what you say you going to

Ain’t nobody’s business but your own

 Now, I know some of you cuties

You real fine cuties, you go stepping downtown

Just to hang around

Standing on the corner

So the fellows will stare and say

“Oh, ain’t she sweet?”

 Champagne don’t drive me crazy

Cocaine don’t make me lazy

Ain’t nobody’s business but my own

Candy is dandy and liquor is quicker

You can drink all the liquor down in Costa Rica

Ain’t nobody’s business but my own

You can walk downtown in your birthday suit

I can see you coming out of the Bank Of America with a whole lotta loot

Ain’t nobody’s business but your own

Now, you know that cocaine’s for horses now it ain’t for men

The doctors said it’ll kill me but they didn’t say when

Ain’t nobody’s business but your own

 Now, you know sometime I put on my straw hat

And my striped pants, my spats baby

You know I go trucking downtown

Standing on the corner so the fellas can stare and say

Hey man, ain’t you the brother in the ’57 mercury

With the turnpike skirts and the chrome reverse wheels

The white wall tires and lights running the skirts

Was painted lime green with reversible license plates

With windows that you can see out, can nobody see in

With four on the floor, 745 horsepower and a big stereo

Listening to Wolfman Jack say, “Ain’t this X C I B, baby”

 Champagne don’t drive me crazy

Cocaine don’t make me lazy

Ain’t nobody’s business but my own

Candy is dandy and liquor is quicker

You can drink all the liquor down in Costa Rica

Ain’t nobody’s business but your own, but my own

 Come on now let’s try it,

here we go, one, two, three

 Now, champagne don’t drive me crazy

Cocaine don’t make me lazy

Ain’t nobody’s business but my own

Sing it out

Candy is dandy and liquor is quicker

You can drink all the liquor down at Costa Rica

Ain’t nobody’s business but my own

 Once again

Champagne don’t drive me crazy

Cocaine don’t make me lazy

Ain’t nobody’s business but my own

Candy is dandy and liquor is quicker

You can drink all the liquor down in Costa Rica

Ain’t nobody’s business but my own

Let’s get all torch-y, shall we? Although New York-based folk singer Margaret “Peggy” Seeger had a legendary half-brother (folk singer, Pete Seeger) she had become very well-known in her own right in 1955, when at the age of 20 she and her brother Mike recorded the 94 track “American Folk Songs for Children” which remains the best-selling collection of children’s songs ever.

But as was the case with her half-brother’s group, The Weavers, the progressive-minded Seeger ended up on the entertainment industry blacklist in that era of McCarthy and, accompanied by her banjo, soon embarked on a protracted performance tour of Europe. While in London she met and fell in love with English folk-singer, songwriter, actor, playwright (and father of Kirsty MacColl) Ewan MacColl and it was after her return to the States that today’s selection was written.

Back in New York in 1957, Seeger needed a love song for a production she was working on and placed a transatlantic telephone call to MacColl back in London, who reportedly wrote “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in less than an hour and taught it to her over the phone that very same evening. Released as a single by the Kingston Trio in 1962, the song quickly became a folk/pop staple, covered by The Brothers Four; Peter, Paul and Mary; The Chad Mitchell Trio; Johnny Mathis, We Five, the Smothers Brothers and Engelbert Humperdinck among dozens of others.

MacColl professedly considered each of these versions to be “travesties: bludgeoning, histrionic and lacking in grace.”  And when Elvis Presley recorded the song he claimed the resulting cover was “like Romeo at the bottom of the Post Office Tower (once the tallest building in London) singing up to Juliet.”  However, according to Peggy Seeger, who married and remained with MacColl until his death in 1989, there was at least one singer who he thought caught the right voice.

Born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, Roberta Flack, so excelled at classical piano as a young girl that she entered Howard University on a full music scholarship at the age of 15.   She later changed her major from piano to voice and after graduating at 19 taught junior high school in the Washington area for the next decade, while performing evenings at various DC nightspots until her “overnight” discovery when she was offered a record contract…after a three hour audition in which she played 42 songs.

Flack’s 1968 debut album, “First Take” was recorded in 10 hours and although she later had a minor hit with a cover of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” none of her recordings seemed to strike a successful chord until… In 1972 Clint Eastwood, who was making his directorial debut with “Play Misty for Me”, paid $2,000 to use Track Number Six from “First Take” for his film.

Suddenly Roberta Flack’s hastily recorded version of Ewan MaColl’s hastily written song was an enormous hit, spending six consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard Charts (it peaked at Number 14 in the UK) while pushing the four year-old record it came from to the top of the album charts.  By the time it won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1973, “First Take” had gone platinum and Roberta Flack was a star.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Wednesday 10 October 

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

 The first time ever I saw your face

I thought the sun rose in your eyes

And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave

To the dark and the end of the skies

 And the first time ever I kissed your mouth

I felt the earth move in my hand

Like the trembling heart of a captive bird

That was there at my command, my love

 And the first time ever I lay with you

I felt your heart so close to mine

And I knew our joy would fill the earth

And last, till the end of time, my love

 The first time ever I saw your face

Your face

Your face

   Your face…

“Above all else, performers need to be what I call ‘ferociously curious.’ Secondly, they need to watch their creativity land: to watch it arrive. It’s not enough to just create and throw it out there. You have to watch it land. When you do things that people like, do those things again. When you do things that they don’t like, don’t do ’em any more. This is not rocket science here.” – Professor Livingston Taylor,  Berklee College of Music

We’ve heard at least the beginning of this bio before…Born in Boston he grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where his father was a medical professor at UNC and his mother who had studied at the New England Conservatory of Music had once been an aspiring opera singer  … However, this time the focus isn’t on the second Taylor son, James, it’s on third son, Livingston, born in 1950.

Like his older brother and later his younger sister (Kate), Livingston suffered from severe depression as a teen and committed himself to McLean Psychiatric Hospital in Belmont, where much of his therapy centered around his guitar playing and singing.

After his release in the late ’60s, he remained in Boston and began to perform in local clubs and coffeehouses, while touring with the likes of Linda Ronstadt, Jimmy Buffett and Jethro Tull.  His eponymous debut album was released in 1970.

Those of us living in the Boston-area in the ’70s had the opportunity to see him perform on a regular basis, much as we do now as Livingston Taylor still maintains a concert schedule of over 80 anecdote-laden shows a year, while serving as a full professor at Berklee (since 1989).

With easy proficiency within a range of musical genres, including folk, gospel, pop, jazz and musical theatre, his courses on Stage Performance (I and II) are by all accounts among the most popular at the college, with some of his students given the opportunity to perform at his concerts.

Written in 1991, various versions of “Our Turn to Dance” have been included on a number of his studio and live performance albums.  Today’s selection was featured on the 1997 studio effort, “Ink”

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Tuesday 9 October

 Our Turn to Dance

 We are working everyday…

…This is good for you

Fine things will come your way…

Ah, this aching back is sore…

…This is no problem

Because you’re building character…

 Thank you please, no more character…

It’s our turn to dance

Our turn to sing

Our turn to turn the world around

To give the best of everything

 No looking back

This is our chance

Our turn to sing

Our turn to dance

I was 1-8-0 on 95 (!)

So much youth

So few brains

How am I still alive?

 Darkly praying to the light

The tingling begins

Believing in the gospel of the state that I was in

 It was our turn to dance

Our turn to sing

Our turn to turn the world around

To give the best of everything

 No looking back

This is our chance

Our turn to sing

Our turn to dance

 Magic is the moonlight

Look into my eyes

Look at all those golden moments passing by

Forget about your heavy heart

This is romance

This is what we’ve waited for…

…This is our chance

It’s our turn to dance

Our turn to sing

Our turn to turn the world around

To give the best of everything

 No looking back

This is our chance

Our turn to sing

Our turn to dance

“Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.”  ~ Christopher Columbus ~

Seeing as an indigenous population stretched all the way from the Bering Strait to Tierra del Fuego at the time of his arrival, and that civilization had been established here in this Western Hemisphere for at least 15,000 years, I’m not exactly about to gore a sacred cow when I say that Columbus did not discover America.

Nor was he the first European to have reached these waters in a big way. Norsemen had preceded him on an ongoing basis by nearly 400 years.  What’s more, Columbus would have been the first to agree that he didn’t discover America, although that’s because he always maintained that he had actually reached Asia.

That said, his were the voyages that opened up these new continents (north and south) to European expansion and all that followed. And so on this day we recognize a man who not only altered the course of American history, but human history as well.  Take for example the biological and ecological “Columbian Exchange” that would effectually transform European, American and African ways of life.

While the New World would soon receive (as an example) horses, pigs, chickens, goats, oxen, cattle, donkeys, sheep, house cats, honey bees, coffee, sugarcane, apples, carrots, guns, the wheel (as a means of transportation) along with the common cold, influenza, malaria and smallpox that would wipe out nearly 90 percent of the native population, the Old World would receive potatoes, tomatoes, rubber, tobacco, corn, chocolate, turkeys, not to mention syphilis and a docile colony or two. And then there was the slave trade…

Not bad for a highly enterprising, slightly misguided Genoan who first went to sea at the age of ten and not only read everything he could about astronomy, history and geography, but leaned to speak Latin, Portuguese and Castilian.  Columbus (Anglicization for Colombo) was also adept at stepping in with an alternative solution.

When Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, over a thousand miles from Genoa, the long established Silk Road to China and India was no longer viable for the highly profitable spice, silk and opiate trades. While Portuguese navigators sought a route to Asia around Africa, Columbus and his mapmaker brother Bartholomew came up with a different plan…Go west across the “Ocean Sea”.

His inability to find any backers had little to do with the earth being flat (educated Westerners had understood a global concept since the 4^th Century BC).  Actually most European navigators understood something that Columbus never seemed to grasp, that the world is very big (while he believed the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan was about 2,300 miles it’s actually 12,200 miles) and that no 15^th Century ship could carry the food and water to make such a voyage.

However, having recently fought the pricey Granada War, Spain’s Catholic monarchs were desperate for a competitive trading edge and Ferdinand and Isabella elected to give Columbus’ proposal a shot. The fact that he was devoutly religious and vowed to do his best to convert any non-believers he encountered along the way also helped.

It was a risk that paid off.  He may have had his distances wrong but Christopher Columbus knew his trade winds and over the next decade his four voyages would provide Spain with an enormous (Atlantic) trade advantage for years to come.

Although patently not written with Columbus in mind, today’s selection by Tim DeLaughter rather nicely reflects Columbus’ determination (“reach for the sun”) in the face of adversity (“one more you’re nuts”).  DeLaughter is founder and lead-singer of the Dallas-based choral-symphonic-pop-rock group Polyphonic Spree. Featuring two dozen (!) musicians dressed in white choir robes, the band has moved from record label to record label and music festival to music festival since its start in 2000.

Columbus’ refusal to accept that the new world he had encountered was anything other than Asia is perhaps the main reason the two continents weren’t named for him…although the District of Columbia, two state capitals and at least one major river here in the US were, as were a Canadian province and a South American nation among many other such designations.  When you consider that the anniversary of his (not Amerigo Vespucci’s) arrival is observed (although not necessarily celebrated) annually throughout the Americas and Spain it’s clear that for better AND for worse, Columbus Day is a day to be remembered.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Columbus Day 2012 

Light & Day/Follow the Sun

 Light and day is more than you’ll say

Because all

My feelings are more

Than I can let by

Or not

More than you’ve got

Just follow the day

Follow the day and reach for the sun!

 You don’t see me flyin’ to the red

One more you’re done

Just follow the seasons and find the time

Reach for the bright side

You don’t see me flyin’ to the red

One more you’re nuts

Just follow the day

Follow the day and reach for the sun

 Just follow the day

Follow the day and reach for the sun!

You don’t see me flyin’ to the red

One more you’re nuts

Just follow the seasons and find the time

Reach for the bright side

You don’t see me flyin’ to the red

One more you’re nuts

Just follow the day

Follow the day and reach for the sun!

 Just follow the day

Follow the day and reach for the sun!

 Just follow the day

Follow the day and reach for the sun!

“Any good mixer of convivial habits considers he has a right to be called a Bohemian. But that is not a valid claim. There are two elements, at least, that are essential to Bohemianism. The first is devotion or addiction to one or more of the Seven Arts; the other is poverty. Other factors suggest themselves: for instance, I like to think of my Bohemians as young, as radical in their outlook on art and life; as unconventional, and, though this is debatable, as dwellers in a city large enough to have the somewhat cruel atmosphere of all great cities. – Bohemian Club Member George Sterling

After Oscar Wilde visited Sterling’s private gentleman’s Bohemian Club in 1882 he commented “I never saw so many well-dressed, well-fed, business-looking Bohemians in my life.”

Personally, going by Sterling’s definition I’m not sure if I would have even made it as a Bohemian’s-apprentice.  How about you?  Certainly offbeat callowness and insolvency in a big, cruel city once came naturally, but if devotion “to one or more of the Seven Arts” was also required, (except for some musician and mathematician friends) I’d be hard-pressed to name many eligible candidates from my entire (Baby Boom) generation.

Formally conceived in the 5^th Century as a basis for a medieval university education, and the distant precursor to a 20^th Century Liberal Arts curriculum, those Seven Arts were rigorously divided into the Trivium – including Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric, and the Quadrivium – including Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy, which included studies in Astrology that assuredly stretched well beyond Linda Goodman’s “Sun Signs”.

Conveniently sidestepping Mr. George Sterling we see that as a concept Bohemianism  originated in 19^th Century France, when writers and artists began to live en emass in the same low-rent neighborhoods inhabited by roving Romani (aka gypsies) who, it was believed, came from Bohemia, a land with Prague as it’s capital that would eventually be swallowed up by all that was to come. Soon the word “Bohemian” became an English colloquialism as well.

In England it was used to describe the anti-establishment, non-traditional aggregation of actors, writers, artists and musicians then burgeoning in every major European city.  In the States there had been a surge of actual Bohemian (as opposed to Romani) immigrants and for various reasons a number of them turned out to be talented, avant-garde journalists.  Predictably the term evolved into a tag-title for newspaper writers, particularly those who were known to be carefree and lighthearted.

By the end of the 19^th Century both usages had pretty much melded into a generalized term for those with artistic or intellectual inclinations, who lived rather rootless, unconventional lifestyles.  Sometimes entire Bohemian communities arose when like-minded free-spirits gathered in such neighborhoods as Montmartre and Montparnasse in Paris; Fitzrovia, Chelsea and Soho in London; Greenwich Village in New York; and (close in proximity but light years apart from George Sterling and his Bohemian Club) San Francisco’s North Beach Neighborhood…

All of which goes a long way in introducing this selection from what was originally a ska band from Dallas in the early ‘80s.  With clear Bohemian intimations, New Bohemians (or “New Bos”) had taken on a more “alternative folk rock sound” by the time their singular lead singer joined the group in 1985 and the record label changed their name to Edie Brickell & New Bohemians.

The Dallas-born Brickell would eventually make her recording debut with the band on the 1988 album, “Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars” which included this somewhat Bohemian affirmation.  But in keeping with rubberbands and (previous posting’s) rubber balls, she would subsequently be in the middle of performing the album’s lead single “What I Am” on Saturday Night Live when she looked up and noticed Paul Simon standing near the cameraman.

“He made me mess the song up when I looked at him,” Brickell later said about her future husband, with whom she has had four children, adding “We can show the kids the tape and say, ‘Look, that’s when we first laid eyes on each other.’’”

  LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Friday 5 October

Circle

 Me, I’m a part of your circle of friends

And we notice you don’t come around

Me, I think it all depends

On you touching ground with us

But I quit, I give up

Nothing’s good enough for anybody else

It seems

And I quit, I give up

Nothing’s good enough for anybody else

It seems

 And being alone

Is the best way to be

When I’m by myself it’s

The best way to be

When I’m all alone it’s

The best way to be

When I’m by myself

Nobody else can say goodbye

 Everything is temporary anyway

When the streets are wet

The colors slip into the sky

But I don’t know why that means you and I are

that means you and….

I quit, I give up

Nothin’s good enough for anybody else it seems

But I quit. I give up

Nothing’s good enough for anybody else it seems

 And being alone

Is the best way to be

When I’m by myself it’s

The best way to be

When I’m all alone it’s

The best way to be

When I’m by myself

Nobody else can say…

 Me, I’m a part of your circle of friends

And we notice you don’t come around.

Halalalalalala

Certainly one of the hallmarks of “nailing” a major acting role is that the audience is left with the impression that nobody else could have played that part. For example, there’s Lynn Rachel Redgrave as Georgina “Georgy” Parkin in the 1966 film, “Georgy Girl”

Born in Marylebone in 1943 – the daughter of actors Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, and the sister of actors Vanessa Redgrave and Corin Redgrave, and the aunt of actors Joely Richardson, Jemma Redgrave, Natasha Richardson and Carlo Nero – Lynn Redgrave was the granddaughter of Roy Redgrave, a popular actor of the stage and silent silver screen and Margaret Scudamore, a woman who in the early half of the 20^th Century had chosen the challenging, unpredictable career of… stage and film acting.

Although she lost out to Elizabeth Taylor (who was also pretty good at nailing the occasional role and won that year’s Oscar for her portrayal as Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”), Lynn Redgrave was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress. And although it inexplicably lost out to the song “Born Free” (from the film, “Born Free”), “Georgy Girl” also received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, for its song, “Georgy Girl”.

Written by Tom Springfield (who with his famous sister, Dusty had formed The Springfields of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” fame ) with lyrics by Jim Dale (best known in the UK for his ongoing appearances in the “Carry On” film series) there were at least three versions of the song.

Shown here is the first – in one of the most pleasing opening sequences on film (and proof positive that all that thespian heredity was naturally dominant in Lynn Redgrave’s genes) – as well as the second, for the rather more cynical closing sequence.

The third and best known version of the song reached Number 3 on the UK Chart and hit Number 2 in the U.S., making it the Seekers (remember them?) highest charting single.  Originally featured on the group’s 1966 LP “Come the Day”  (which as some may recall, was the very record that included the Seeker’s version of the Paul Simon/Bruce Woodley song, “Red Rubber Ball”), as a result of single’s upbeat success the album was artlessly renamed “Georgy Girl” for the American marketplace, presumably to ensure that at least in this country we can’t be accused of “always window-shopping, but never stopping to buy.”

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Thursday 4 October 

Georgy Girl

 Hey there, Georgy girl

Swingin’ down the street so fancy-free

Nobody you meet could ever see

The loneliness there

Inside you

 Hey there, Georgy girl

Why do all the boys just pass you by?

Could it be you just don’t try

Or is it the clothes you wear?

 You’re always window-shopping

But never stopping to buy

So, shed those dowdy feathers and fly

A little bit

 Hey there, Georgy girl

There’s another Georgy deep inside

Bring out all the love you hide

And, oh, what a change there’d be

The world would see

A new Georgy girl

 Hey there, Georgy girl

Dreamin’ of the someone you could be

Life is a reality

You can’t always run away

 Don’t be so scared of changing

And rearranging yourself

It’s time for jumping down from the shelf

A little bit

Hey there, Georgy girl

There’s another Georgy deep inside

Bring out all the love you hide

And, oh, what a change there’d be

The world would see

A new Georgy girl

 (Hey there, Georgy girl)

Wake up, Georgy girl

(Hey there, Georgy girl)

Come on, Georgy girl

(Hey there, Georgy girl)

Wake up, Georgy girl

 #######

Hey there, Georgy girl

Pretty as a picture — told you so

Can it be the Georgy we all know?

Or somebody new?

(I wonder!)

 Hey there, Georgy girl

Hurrying away to celebrate

Got yourself a man but wait!

There’s somebody else for you

Who needs a perfect lover

When you’re a mother at heart?

Isn’t that all you wanted right from the start?

(Well didn’t you?)

 Hey there, Georgy girl

Now that you’re no longer on the shelf

Better try to smile and tell yourself

That you got your way

(You’ve made it!)

 Hey there, Georgy girl

Now you’ve got a future planned for you

Though it’s not a dream come true

At least he’s a millionaire

So don’t despair!

You’re rich, Georgy Girl!

You’re rich, Georgy Girl!

You’re rich, Georgy Girl!

According to Rosanne Cash it’s a song “…about the transformative power of love and that’s what it has always meant to me.”  While Cash’s legendary father and his celebrated second wife surely nodded their heads in unison, as one might expect her head-shaking mother had a different tale to tell about “Ring of Fire.”

Born in 1932 and christened J. R. Cash because his parents couldn’t think of anything else, at the age of 18 the young Arkansawyer (native of Arkansas) went to enlist in the U.S. Air Force. Required to come up with an actual given name, the one he provided will forever be imprinted in the footnotes of Cold War (!) history.

Spending most of the following year in San Antonio to complete his basic and technical training, it wasn’t until the end of his stint in Texas that he met and fell hard for young Vivian Liberto at a local roller skating rink and had barely enough time for a few lovesick spins before deployment to Landsberg, Germany.

Assigned to the Air Force’s Security Service as a Radio Intercept Operator for Soviet transmissions, it was as Airman John R. Cash* that the future legend in black received his Cold War asterisk, when on March 5, 1953 he became the first American to learn of Joseph Stalin’s death after deciphering the Russian Morse code.

Within weeks of his honorable discharge, Cash married Liberto. And the 10,000 pages of love letters that had been exchanged during their long distance 1951-54 courtship would eventually prove a boon to the aggrieved first wife when it formed the basis of her late-life autobiography, “I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny”.

The tell-all featured other observations as well of course, including the actual origin (and meaning) of today’s selection, which remained at Number One on the Country Charts for seven weeks in 1963 and would prove to be the biggest hit of Johnny Cash’s career…

“To this day, it confounds me to hear the elaborate details June told of writing that song for Johnny,” Liberto wrote.  “She didn’t write that song any more than I did. The truth is, Johnny wrote that song, while pilled up and drunk.”

With lyrics that ostensibly describe the agonies that can come with falling in love, Carter, who was going through that very experience at the time, claimed to have seen the phrase “Love is like a burning ring of fire,” underlined in one of her uncle’s books of Elizabethan poetry and sought the help of singer Merle Kilgore to help round it out.

Adversely, the embittered ex remained steadfast in her assertion that Cash gave Carter the co-writer status because “she needs the money,” and that the lyrics actually allude to “…a certain private female body part….All those years of her claiming she wrote it herself, and she probably never knew what the song was really about.”

The truth? Who knows, and with each passing season, who cares?  Originally recorded by June’s sister Anita as “(Love’s) Ring of Fire” it was featured as a “pick hit” in Billboard magazine.  But then Cash claimed to have a dream involving “Mexican horns” and told his future sister-in-law, “I’ll give you about five or six more months, and if you don’t hit with it, I’m gonna record it the way I feel it.”

  “…BOOM – CHICKA – BOOM…”

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Wednesday 3 October

Ring of Fire

 Love Is A Burning Thing

And It Makes A Fiery Ring

Bound By Wild Desire

I Fell Into A Ring Of Fire

I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire

I Went Down, Down, Down

And The Flames Went Higher

 And It Burns, Burns, Burns

The Ring Of Fire

The Ring Of Fire

 The Taste Of Love Is Sweet

When Hearts Like Ours Meet

I Fell For You Like A Child

Oh, But The Fire Went Wild

I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire

I Went Down, Down, Down

And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns

The Ring Of Fire

The Ring Of Fire

 Love Is A Burning Thing

And It Makes A Fiery Ring

Bound By Wild Desire

I Fell Into A Ring Of Fire

 I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire

I Went Down (down), Down (down), Down (down)

And The Flames Went Higher Higher Higher

 I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire

I Went Down (down), Down (down), Down (down)

And The Flames Went Higher Higher Higher

And It Burns……..

Head north from Baltimore on I-83 and take the last exit before you hit the Pennsylvania border.  Then travel east for a spell, over a grassy hill and down a dale. Turn north, then east again, and after the topography turns from meadow to woodland, you’ll come to a short beam bridge.

Just after you cross it, and just before the pavement ends, you’ll see a dirt road to your right.  It will lead you up an incline to the handcrafted cabin overlooking nine wooded acres, with that same creek winding through the back.

More or less these were the directions we were given after answering a Harford County, Maryland property-rental ad.  We’d recently transferred to the area and, after years of living in various cities, thought it time to try a little something different.

Oh, it was rustic, but in a contemporary way. There were two bedrooms, the Master being a suite atop a set of spiral stairs, featuring floor to ceiling windows (still…no need for shades or curtains here). There were two full bathrooms, a living room with a stone fireplace and an up-to-date country kitchen. Better still there was a screened-in deck and then a second deck overlooking the stream (with its own swimming hole).

I envisioned a big office bash at some point and asked, “I don’t suppose we’d be disturbing any neighbors if we had a party?”

The owner, who had moved to a bigger house nearby, laughed and responded,  “You can yell as loud as you want, nobody’ll hear you.”

That’s all I wanted to know, although Linda standing next to me with our five-month-old son, hadn’t quite found that to be one of the stronger selling points. We lived in that cabin, just a mile south of the Mason-Dixon Line (“Southerners by a mile”), for a little over a year.  But the day I signed that lease was precisely the start of a successful northbound lobbying campaign for my stay-at-home “New England mom” and our Canadian-born New England son …who had yet to lay eyes on our storied region.

Every weekday at 07:30 I would blithely navigate the hinterland to the Interstate, and turn south through an equestrian-centric countryside that became especially stunning in the cool Maryland fall.  But while I was on a blazingly eventful career path, the same can’t be said for my uber-accomplished wife, who would spend her days baby-on-hip, strolling ‘round the nearest grocery store (in York, PA), with a stop at the library, followed perhaps by coffee at a popular local establishment universally known for its (Pennsylvania Dutch) scrapple.

By 08:00 I’d reach my Baltimore County destination of Hunt Valley, where my “Executive Plaza” office building was just off the highway at the corner of McCormick Street, named for one Willoughby M. McCormick of Baltimore, who in 1889 at the age of 25 began a door-to-door business selling root beer, fruit syrup and flavoring extracts.

In time he managed to add spices to his wares, a decision so successful that by the early 1970s McCormick & Company (long-since run by Willoughby’s nephew, Charles) was impelled to re-establish itself in Hunt Valley with a 35,000 sq. ft. headquarters, manufacturing and warehousing facility, later to include the Old Bay Seasoning used in every crab house up and down the Chesapeake.

To this day I can’t tell you how they process their spices. But I can say that certain days feature the processing of cinnamon and from the near side of Sparks, to the north, to the far sides of Cockeysville, Lutherville and Timonium to the south, everyone knows that it’s…a…cinnamon day.

Timonium is the birthplace to another “hard-core New Englander” (in 1951), Cheryl Wheeler, who first performed in Baltimore and Washington, DC area clubs before making the move to Rhode Island in 1976.  That’s where she was discovered by Jonathan Edwards, who soon asked her to tour with him, and she has been based in New England ever since.

Although Wheeler has released several albums she is especially known for her live performances that include topical (serious/comic) monologues.  It is said that at least half of the songs she performs in concert are never recorded and eventually fade from her list.  Fortunately there are others such as this one, serving as keen inspiration for New Englanders who even from afar, can relish the very thought of this very special time…

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Tuesday 2 October

…When Fall Comes to New England

When fall comes to New England

The sun slants in so fine

And the air’s so clear

You can almost hear the grapes grow on the vine

The nights are sharp with starlight

And the days are cool and clean

And in the blue sky overhead

The northern geese fly south instead

And leaves are Irish Setter red

When fall comes to New England

When Fall comes to New England

And the wind blows off the sea

Swallows fly in a perfect sky

And the world was meant to be

When the acorns line the walkways

Then winter can’t be far

From yellow leaves a blue jay calls

Grandmothers walk out in their shawls

And chipmunks run the old stonewalls

When fall comes to New England

The frost is on the pumpkin

The squash is off the vine

And winter warnings race across the sky

The squirrels are on to something

And they’re working overtime

The foxes blink and stare and so do I

‘Cause when fall comes to New England

Oh I can’t turn away

From fading light on flying wings

And late good-byes a robin sings

And then another thousand things

When fall comes to New England

When fall comes to New England

Today (September 30th) is my brother, Dicky’s 65^th birthday, and ‘though he won’t be making it to the party, I’ll be raising a glass in his honor.

One of the lesser-recognized advantages to being a younger sibling in a large family is the large swatch of popular culture you become exposed to and can assume as your own.  The 15-year age difference between my older and younger brothers covered a multitude of fads through the years. So after his first brain operation in early 2005, when Dicky drolly referenced Spike Jones’ 1959 song, “Teenage Brain Surgeon” I instantly imagined it (sung by Thurl “Tony the Tiger” Ravenscroft) and envisioned the album cover with Spike and friends hovering over the Frankenstein Monster … one of the cherished parts of our family’s hi-fidelity collection.

Although the experimental procedure was a success (“the entire recovery room was ebullient,” Dicky later observed), Glioblastoma multiforme, or “Glio” as they call it in the brain surgery biz, results in a notoriously aggressive tumor that even when whittled away by computerized-laser surgery, and bombarded by radiation and chemotherapy, has a hydra-like way of bursting back.  This he knew. When adjoined to a Stage 4 diagnosis he also knew that every monkeyshine counted.

Born in 1911 in Long Beach, California, Lindley Armstrong Jones was all about monkeyshines.  His father was a railroad agent with the Southern Pacific and early on he acquired the nickname, Spike due to a scrawny physique that resembled a railroad spike. Having procured his first drum kit at the age of 11, he was taught to play kitchen implements as musical instruments by a railroad restaurant chef.

After countless gigs with theater pit orchestras, Jones had become a highly accomplished percussionist and managed to parlay an appearance with the Victor Young (studio) orchestra into a series of radio engagements, including those hosted by Burns and Allen, Al Jolson and Bing Crosby.  As a matter of fact he was percussionist on Crosby’s original recording of “White Christmas” in 1941.

But soon after forming his band, the City Slickers (perennially on-tour as the Musical Depreciation Revue), the name Spike Jones had become synonymous with musical zaniness and satire.   Although a two year strike by the American Federation of Musicians prevented him from releasing commercial recordings until well into 1944.  He was able to make records for radio broadcasts and for “Soundies”.

Soundies were basically music videos (on film) that could be viewed on coin-operated “film jukeboxes” found in bars, nightclubs, arcades and malt shops.  Today’s 1942 selection, “Clink! Clink! Another Drink” featuring a vocal by Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety and Sylvester, as well as Barney Rubble) is just such an example.

“Clang, clang, who cares a dang? What’s the difference when you’re on a spree?” could just as well have been a theme song for that madcap final stretch, at least my apportionment of it.  Although we hadn’t always been close, sometimes going years without seeing or talking to each other, by the time Dicky got sick I was living in the next town and my work schedule was such that I could serve as a driver for many of his medical appointments.

With the invariable (sometimes maddening) slippery-slope delays that meant that I truly had to plan around my driving days.  It also meant that there was lots of time to catch-up and just-plain-visit.

My brother reveled in in the arcane, whether talking about a particular shade of blue (cerulean for example), or the pronunciation of a little used word (like adumbrate), or girl’s softball strategies (he had two sons and no daughters, but had played in the Army and by golly he was going to pass on that knowledge, so he became a coach).

Although it didn’t start out that way, ours ended up a multi-faith family (six kids, six faiths) and of course Dicky had much to convey about the debate raging amongst “his” Conference of Catholic Bishops over proposed textual changes to the Nicene Creed (I could only point out that “my” UUA’s slightly less nuanced debates generally concern such broader topics as: whether or not there is a God).

But my brother was an attorney and the one topic that was guaranteed to illuminate even the dankest of waiting rooms was “The Law” in all its impenetrable vagaries. I can only affirm that in my observation he wasn’t proven wrong in his assessment of the then-new Chief Justice John Roberts when he simply opined, “Stare decisis, bro.”

“Starry Decisis?”

“He’ll be fine, we’re talking Legal Studies 101, ‘Stare decisis et non quieta movere,’ which clearly is Latin for ‘stand by decisions and don’t disturb the undisturbed.’

If we timed it right and the appointments didn’t overrun by too many hours there would be time for some lunch, and if I didn’t have any meetings scheduled or wasn’t under a deadline I would join him in a drink or two when we got there, always toasting with the happy acknowledgement…“Because we can.”

That’s when the conversations would really get interesting. I venture to say that anyone brought up in an old New England family is sure to be privy to the occasional skeleton in the closet.  I knew I was privy to a few and was exceedingly pleased when he wasn’t aware of them.  But then he escorted a few of his own to the table and it was if all those little skeletons began to cha’ cha’ cha’ in a little Danse Macabre around the dishes. Terrible circumstances, breathtaking insightfulness.

I note this date now and remember the cherished observations, the confessed regrets and especially the advice.  Trust me, Dicky was remarkably adept at mounting that big brotherly pedestal for every living second that I knew him.

I especially remember one particular long-cut through the western suburbs of Boston.  I had collected Dicky from his chemo appointment at the Dana Farber Institute (never easy to pick out a bald, middle-age man in that lobby) and he was hankering for some Minestrone soup. So we agreed on a place we both knew.  Although I had easily driven this route one hundred times, he was adamant that he knew a better way.

“Take that right.”

I tried to argue but he put on his stentorian tone, like he was arguing in court (did I mention that he never lost a case?).  “Take that right!”

I did. We traveled for a couple of miles.  I’d never been down this road and finally turned to my well-medicated brother.  “What now?”

He looked around, shrugged.  “I don’t know where we are.”

“But you insisted that we take this route.”

He shrugged again, “What do you expect when you take directions from someone with Stage 4 Glioblastoma, who has undergone three brain surgeries?”

“Clink, Clink, because we can,” my brother.  Here’s to that courage, sangfroid and sense of humor to the end…  Okay, and to those pink elephants too.  

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Saturday 29 September

Clink! Clink! Another Drink

 Clink, clink, another drink

Plenty in the cellar when it’s gone

Drink, drink, the glasses clink

Making tinkly music till the dawn is breaking

 Clang, clang, who cares a dang?

What’s the difference when you’re on a spree?

Over the teeth, behind the gums

Look out stomach here she comes

Hi! Have another drink on me

 Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle

Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle

 Trinkle, trinkle, trinkle, trinkle

Slice of cheese and bite of pickle

Doesn’t even cost a nickel

Now to wash it down

 Clink, clink, no more to drink

I had a cellar full, but now its gone

Drink, drink, the glasses clink

Like the anvil chorus and my head is splitting

uh, brinking, uh, busting. Oh brother!

 Oh, ow, what’ll I do now

Pink elephants running after me

Oh, that stuff is smooth as silk

From now on I’ll stick to milk

Nothing else to drink for me