Originally posted July 13, 2009:
On a late winter day many years ago, I wandered up a slight hill and through the gate of the Tower of London, the complex that has served for more than nine hundred years as fortress, residence, bank vault, jail and more. The Tower was the fourth stop of the day for me. I recall being interested, even fascinated in the historic things I was seeing: a Seventeenth Century home, a monument to the 1666 Fire of London, bits and pieces from Roman settlements in the basement of a church. But it was like reading old stories. There were stones and walls and chairs and inscribed dates. Nothing seemed alive.
And then I came to Tower Green, an open space inside the tower walls. I stopped at a small sign near a plaque in the pavement, and I read:
On this site stood a scaffold on which were executed:
Queen Anne Boleyn 1536
Margaret, Countess of Salisbury 1541
Queen Catherine Howard 1542
Jane Viscountess Rochford 1542
Lady Jane Grey 1554
Robert Devereux Earl of Essex 1601
also near this spot was beheaded Lord Hastings 1483
I looked at the names on that simple sign, a few of which I recognized – the crowned queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard and the uncrowned queen Lady Jane Grey – though I knew very little of their stories. And I looked at the shiny metal plaque set inside a quadrangle of chains.
In even the most average and quiet of lives, I imagine that there are moments when those lives shift, moments that one can look back at and say, “I changed right then.” My life has had more than a few of those moments, and I’ve written about some of them. But only a very few of such moments were more important to me than the few seconds it took for me to read that very plain sign and look at the plaque that marked the site of the scaffold.
“Blood flowed here,” I thought. As I had that thought, history ceased to be simply names and dates in books; it became people, those men and women whose lives had intersected for good or ill – mostly for ill, in that place I was standing – with the lives of those who were greater or at least more powerful.
Since that moment, I have probably read history more frequently than anything else (although I do still enjoy plenty of fiction). For a time, I dug into World War II and the Holocaust. The exploration and the settling of the American West – especially, for some reason, the Mormon migration from Illinois to what became Utah – caught my attention for a while. I’ve dabbled in ancient Egypt and dug into the end of the Romanov dynasty during the Russian Revolution. I find myself drawn, as I was when I was very young, to the American Civil War.
And recently, I’ve been teased by a television series into the idea of examining the very era that triggered my fascination with history. And that statement will launch a side trip:
A couple of weeks ago, the Texas Gal called our our cable and internet provider from her office and asked if it were possible for both our computers – my desktop and her laptop – to run from the same modem, mine via landwire and hers as a wireless. The answer was yes, and the woman on the phone told the Texas Gal that she could disconnect our standard modem immediately. “No, no, no!” said the Texas Gal, explaining that I was using the standard modem, adding that any disconnection should only come after we’d moved the wireless modem to where my computer resides and connected my machine to the wireless modem via the landwire.
Of course, within five minutes, my Internet access went away. I called and was told my wife had ordered the access disconnected. Damn, I thought, I really made her angry about something! When she came home as I was on the phone with our provider, she sighed resignedly and said, “I knew they were going to do that, even though I told them not to, twice.” After a brief conversation, my access was restored, and we made plans to move the wireless modem during the next weekend. The next morning, my access was gone once more for the same nonexistent reason. And when I called to complain and explain, the firm’s representative apologized, reactivated my line and offered us all the premium cable channels free for a year.
Now, back to the original story: That evening, I came across the third-season premiere of The Tudors, the tale of King Henry VIII of England as told by Showtime. And I was fascinated. Often bawdy, often bloody, it seems to be fairly accurate historically, and I’ve been catching up on the first season through our DVD service. And when I finish the current pile of books in my study, I think I’m going to dig a little bit into Tudor England and learn a little more about those unfortunates – and about the people and life around them – whose lives ended so many years ago at that place that changed my life.
A Six-Pack of Queens
“Black Queen” by Stephen Stills from Stephen Stills [1970]
“Little Queenie” by the Rolling Stones from 'Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!' [1970]
“Witch Queen of New Orleans” by Redbone, Epic 10746 [1971]
“Caddo Queen” by Dobie Gray from Drift Away [1973]
“Mississippi Queen” by Mountain, Windfall 532 [1970]
“Gypsy Queen, Part One” by Gypsy from Gypsy [1970]
Note: The fairly plain sign I saw at Tower Green was replaced sometime later with a more detailed sign, further identifying the individuals executed and providing a date as well as a year of execution. And the spelling of one of the names was changed, from “Catherine Howard,” when I saw it, to “Katherine Howard” on the more detailed sign. In recent years, the site of the plain sign and plaque has been marked by a fairly ornate monument. I read in one of the documents linked at the monument page that the temporary scaffold on which those victims died was built at various locations over the years. So it’s still likely that blood flowed nearby, if not exactly at the place where I stood many years ago.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Some Time Off
Originally posted July 14, 2009:
The Texas Gal is taking a few days off, so I’m going to do the same. See you Saturday, maybe Friday.
“Take the Time” by the Freddy Jones Band from Waiting for the Night [1993]
The Texas Gal is taking a few days off, so I’m going to do the same. See you Saturday, maybe Friday.
“Take the Time” by the Freddy Jones Band from Waiting for the Night [1993]
Saturday Single No. 141
Originally posted July 18, 2009:
I’m a newsman, a reporter. I always have been and always will be. I haven’t made my living in that trade for more than ten years now, but still, I am one. I didn’t have much of an audience for the hand-printed newspapers I put together when I was twelve or so, but even then I was a newsman (or newskid, if you will). As someone whose life is tied to the news – and that will always be the case, even if I never work another minute in the industry – there are those who have influenced me on my path.
Chief among those is DQ, my first real-world editor at the Monticello Times. DQ taught me almost everything I know about newspapering in a small town. Explicitly, through his instruction, and implicitly, through his behavior and demeanor, he showed me how to be what I eventually realized I’d always wanted to be: a reporter.
The fact that I wanted – and had always wanted – to be a reporter surprised me. Writing – one of the essential portions of reporting – had always been a chore: Until I got a typewriter and mastered it, my thoughts moved far too fast for my horrid handwriting to keep pace. And even with more and more modern tools, there still are days when writing is hard work. Add to that the tasks of first, going out and talking to strangers to learn what they know and think and second, finding a way to tell all of that to an audience, and reporting is a craft that can be complex and scary. And I’ve wondered from time to time where that impulse arose: Who or what in my youth made me – despite my dread of writing and my uneasiness as having to face strangers throughout the process – want to be a reporter?
I think I got my answer last evening, and that answer – as delayed as its realization might have been – was ultimately as unsurprising as the sunrise. My inspiration was Walter Cronkite, the grand man of television news who died yesterday at the age of ninety-two. From World War II through the Iranian hostage crisis of the later 1970s and early 1980s, Cronkite was first and foremost a reporter, even during the nineteen years when he was the anchor for the CBS Evening News.
That was evident last evening in many of the clips that CNN showed as it covered Cronkite’s death. Among the many on-air moments of his life that were shown last evening, we saw him discussing Vietnam with President John F. Kennedy in the backyard at (one assumes) the Kennedy retreat at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and talking about the D-Day invasion with retired general and one-time President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a jeep on the beaches of Normandy, France. We saw him at his anchor desk explaining the intricacies of the Watergate affair in late 1973, delving into a story that did not, at that time in its development, lend itself well to the visual medium that is television news. And we saw perhaps the two most famous moments of Cronkite’s long career: his exultation and relief in July 1969 when the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle found a safe landing spot on the moon and his controlled shock and grief in November 1963 as he told his viewers of Kennedy’s death in Dallas.
As I watched those clips – all of which I’d seen before and some of which I’d seen at the moment of broadcast – I realized that from the time I began to watch television news (and that was at a very young age, perhaps when I was ten ), I always by choice watched CBS and Cronkite. (Cronkite was followed on CBS, of course, by Dan Rather, who was himself succeeded by Katie Couric. I don’t think much of Couric, but I still watch CBS; brand loyalty dies hard.) I realized as well that it was Cronkite who – without my ever coming close to realizing this before – gave me a model of what a newsman should be: As he reported and presented the news, he was calm, well-spoken (which means he also wrote well), courteous but persistent, interested in just about everything, and a good story-teller.
Cronkite’s passing is truly the end of an era, as has been said many times by many people on CNN and elsewhere in the brief hours since his death. I’ll let others deal with the historical implications and with the contrast of the news environment of, say, 1969 to that of 2009. My reaction is far more personal, and it’s far more intense than I would have expected.
I don’t know that I ever had heroes, even when I was a kid. I don’t think I ever thought of anyone as someone who could do no wrong, which is to me the definition of a hero. Over the years, however, from the time I was very young through my college years (and probably beyond), I did have role models, folks whose best attributes and actions seemed to me worthy of emulation: A couple of them were teachers, for the way they guided me and encouraged me; I’ve written once about Roger Lydeen and I may write about others in the future. Musically, as I’ve also said before, there were Al Hirt, the Beatles and Bob Dylan. As a sports fan, I looked up to Jim Marshall of the Minnesota Vikings. And, as I noted above, I realized last evening – with some surprise and some tears – that Walter Cronkite was on that list as well.
I would imagine that Walter Cronkite shows up on a lot of folks’ similar lists, especially among those of us who consider ourselves newsmen and –women.
And here’s a song whose content has no relation to my topic but whose title fits, today’s Saturday Single:
“I Got The News” by Steely Dan from Aja [1977]
I’m a newsman, a reporter. I always have been and always will be. I haven’t made my living in that trade for more than ten years now, but still, I am one. I didn’t have much of an audience for the hand-printed newspapers I put together when I was twelve or so, but even then I was a newsman (or newskid, if you will). As someone whose life is tied to the news – and that will always be the case, even if I never work another minute in the industry – there are those who have influenced me on my path.
Chief among those is DQ, my first real-world editor at the Monticello Times. DQ taught me almost everything I know about newspapering in a small town. Explicitly, through his instruction, and implicitly, through his behavior and demeanor, he showed me how to be what I eventually realized I’d always wanted to be: a reporter.
The fact that I wanted – and had always wanted – to be a reporter surprised me. Writing – one of the essential portions of reporting – had always been a chore: Until I got a typewriter and mastered it, my thoughts moved far too fast for my horrid handwriting to keep pace. And even with more and more modern tools, there still are days when writing is hard work. Add to that the tasks of first, going out and talking to strangers to learn what they know and think and second, finding a way to tell all of that to an audience, and reporting is a craft that can be complex and scary. And I’ve wondered from time to time where that impulse arose: Who or what in my youth made me – despite my dread of writing and my uneasiness as having to face strangers throughout the process – want to be a reporter?
I think I got my answer last evening, and that answer – as delayed as its realization might have been – was ultimately as unsurprising as the sunrise. My inspiration was Walter Cronkite, the grand man of television news who died yesterday at the age of ninety-two. From World War II through the Iranian hostage crisis of the later 1970s and early 1980s, Cronkite was first and foremost a reporter, even during the nineteen years when he was the anchor for the CBS Evening News.
That was evident last evening in many of the clips that CNN showed as it covered Cronkite’s death. Among the many on-air moments of his life that were shown last evening, we saw him discussing Vietnam with President John F. Kennedy in the backyard at (one assumes) the Kennedy retreat at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and talking about the D-Day invasion with retired general and one-time President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a jeep on the beaches of Normandy, France. We saw him at his anchor desk explaining the intricacies of the Watergate affair in late 1973, delving into a story that did not, at that time in its development, lend itself well to the visual medium that is television news. And we saw perhaps the two most famous moments of Cronkite’s long career: his exultation and relief in July 1969 when the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle found a safe landing spot on the moon and his controlled shock and grief in November 1963 as he told his viewers of Kennedy’s death in Dallas.
As I watched those clips – all of which I’d seen before and some of which I’d seen at the moment of broadcast – I realized that from the time I began to watch television news (and that was at a very young age, perhaps when I was ten ), I always by choice watched CBS and Cronkite. (Cronkite was followed on CBS, of course, by Dan Rather, who was himself succeeded by Katie Couric. I don’t think much of Couric, but I still watch CBS; brand loyalty dies hard.) I realized as well that it was Cronkite who – without my ever coming close to realizing this before – gave me a model of what a newsman should be: As he reported and presented the news, he was calm, well-spoken (which means he also wrote well), courteous but persistent, interested in just about everything, and a good story-teller.
Cronkite’s passing is truly the end of an era, as has been said many times by many people on CNN and elsewhere in the brief hours since his death. I’ll let others deal with the historical implications and with the contrast of the news environment of, say, 1969 to that of 2009. My reaction is far more personal, and it’s far more intense than I would have expected.
I don’t know that I ever had heroes, even when I was a kid. I don’t think I ever thought of anyone as someone who could do no wrong, which is to me the definition of a hero. Over the years, however, from the time I was very young through my college years (and probably beyond), I did have role models, folks whose best attributes and actions seemed to me worthy of emulation: A couple of them were teachers, for the way they guided me and encouraged me; I’ve written once about Roger Lydeen and I may write about others in the future. Musically, as I’ve also said before, there were Al Hirt, the Beatles and Bob Dylan. As a sports fan, I looked up to Jim Marshall of the Minnesota Vikings. And, as I noted above, I realized last evening – with some surprise and some tears – that Walter Cronkite was on that list as well.
I would imagine that Walter Cronkite shows up on a lot of folks’ similar lists, especially among those of us who consider ourselves newsmen and –women.
And here’s a song whose content has no relation to my topic but whose title fits, today’s Saturday Single:
“I Got The News” by Steely Dan from Aja [1977]
Friday, February 26, 2010
'That's One Small Step . . .'
Originally posted July 20, 2009:
Like almost everyone else in the United States – and like so many elsewhere around the Earth, for that matter – I was watching television forty years ago this evening.
My folks, my sister and I gathered in the living room, gazing at our old Zenith, and watched Neil Armstrong descend the Eagle’s ladder and then take that first step on the surface of the moon. And we continued to watch as he was joined by Buzz Aldrin and the two of them placed a U.S. flag and then gathered samples of lunar rocks to bring back to Earth.
I admit to being puzzled by the missing “a” from Armstrong’s ceremonial first words on the moon: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” But in the years since, he’s said that he intended to say it and he thought he said it, so that’s fine. Given the weight of the occasion (and granting him the missing “a”), I thought his first words were well thought out and appropriate. But they were ceremonial, and thus were missing the visceral truth of Aldrin’s first words when he left the Eagle and joined Armstrong on the lunar surface: “Magnificent desolation!”
We watched until the two astronauts went back into the Eagle after something like two hours exploring the lunar surface that evening. None of us said much in the living room that night, and I don’t know what my folks thought as they watched men bounce around on the surface of the Moon. I remembered President John Kennedy’s 1961 challenge to the nation to land a man on the moon and bring him home, and it seems to me – I was maybe eight at the time the challenge was laid down and fifteen when the Eagle landed on the Moon – that I took the existence and success of a lunar expedition as a given. (History and chance have since taught me, of course, that so many things could have gone wrong, but they didn’t. Then.)
But I wonder now what my parents felt and thought, both having been born less than half a century earlier in homes – like many of those in the United States at the time – that had no electricity. Did they marvel at the sight of men on another world? Or did they take it as a given, another accomplishment checked off the list in a world that supplied marvels one after the other? I don’t know.
I know I was fascinated by the landing and all the things that surrounded it. There was a Gulf service station on not far from Tech High School, about a mile west of the Mississippi River. And during that summer, Gulf Oil was handing out sheets of heavy die-cut paper. By carefully punching out the die-cut pieces and then folding and inserting tabs into slots, one could make his or her own lunar module. Most of the kids I knew had picked up at least one, and each spent an hour or so carefully constructing the fragile model. I wound up with three of the paper models on a shelf in my bedroom. Even after the mission of Apollo 11 was finished successfully, I’d look at those fragile models and think of the real fragile and ungainly Eagle landing on the moon and then returning Armstrong and Aldrin to the Columbia and Michael Collins, in orbit around the moon.
Though I might not have put it into these words back then, I think what I was pondering was the slender margin of error that those three astronauts had successfully ridden, from the launch of the Saturn 5 rocket through the trip to the Moon and back to the splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Everything had to go just right, and it did. I think I was trying to figure out what that could teach me that I could apply to my life. And I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten there.
A Six-Pack From the Charts (Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending July 23, 1969)
“In The Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)” by Zager & Evans, RCA Victor 0174 (No. 1)
“Good Old Rock ’N’ Roll (Medley)” by Cat Mother & The All Night News Boys, Polydor 14002 (No. 25)
“Get Together” by the Youngbloods, RCA Victor 9752 (No. 44)
“On Campus” by Dickie Goodman, Cotique 158 (No. 51)
“Tell All The People” by the Doors, Elektra 45663 (No. 58)
“Your Good Thing (Is About To End)” by Lou Rawls, Capitol 2550 (No. 87)
The first single is either a listener’s worst earworm or a delightful piece of bad science fiction. Either way, it was inescapable during the summer of 1969, vibrating out of tinny speakers and car radios at least twice an hour, or so it seemed. A bit of research a while back by a blogger whose stuff I read regularly – I believe it was my colleague jb at The Hits Just Keep On Comin’ – revealed that Zager & Evans hold the title of the greatest one-hit wonder of all time: “In the Year 2525” was in the Billboard Top 40 for twelve weeks, with an amazing six weeks spent at No. 1. This is one of those records that one either loves like a first-born child or hates like mold. I was a science fiction geek in 1969, so I never tired of hearing it come out of the speaker. In fact, this record might have been one of those that drew me toward Top 40 music during that summer when I was exploring new sounds.
“Good Old Rock ’N’ Roll (Medley)” by Cat Mother & The All Night News Boys is another one-hit wonder, this one from a band that’s kind of slipped through the cracks of time. I knew nothing at all about Cat Mother and the boys a year ago, and I still know very little (though I like what I have heard, mostly through the graces of Chuntao at Rare MP3 Music). The medley, which was the opening track of the band’s first album, The Street Giveth...and the Street Taketh Away, spent six weeks in the Top 40 and peaked at No. 21. The group released three more albums, closing down the presses after Cat Mother in 1976. “Good Old Rock ’N’ Roll (Medley)” pulls fragments from Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the Big Bopper, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins/Elvis Presley and Buddy Knox in a little more than three minutes, kind of a whirling history of a portion of 1950s rock ’n’ roll.
The Youngbloods’ “Get Together” had originally been released in 1967 and had risen to only No. 62 in the Billboard Hot 100 before being re-released in 1969 with a different catalog number. The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits notes that in 1969, the record “was popularized as the theme for the National Conference of Christians and Jews.” Whatever the reason, the record got as high as No. 5 the second time around, spending twelve weeks in the Top 40. Without digging too deeply into the timing, it seems to me that the record’s peak came in the autumn: its strains carry with them the sense of moonrise and the crackling dance of leaves falling from the oaks in the back yard.
With “On Campus,” Dickie Goodman struck again with his cut-in comedy formula. This one isn’t as witty as some of his other topical takes from over the years, but it wasn’t as lame as “Batman and His Grandmother” (which was the only one I ever bought). The record didn’t make the Top 40. Goodman’s previous Top 40 hit had been 1957’s “Santa and the Satellite” and his next would be 1974’s “Energy Crisis ’74.” It didn’t miss by much, though: “On Campus” peaked at No. 45 during an eight-week stay in the Hot 100.
The version of “Tell All The People” I’m offering here is from the album The Soft Parade, and given the Doors’ and Elektra’s propensity for issuing widely different mixes on their 45s, I have no confidence at all that it’s the version that folks heard occasionally on their radios during the summer of 1969. I find it interesting for the use of horns, and for the fact that the writing credit for the single went solely to Robby Krieger; the Doors’ albums to that point had credited all songwriting to the group as an entity. One bit of speculation I saw (and I do not recall where I read it) suggested that Jim Morrison was unwilling to attach his name to a lyric that told listeners to “get your guns.” The record moved up one more spot to No. 58 during the last week of July, hovered there for another week and then fell out of the Hot 100 entirely.
I don’t have a lot to say about Lou Rawls’ “Your Good Thing (Is About To End)” but only because any comment I make is superfluous: It’s a great record by one of the great singers of all time. The record peaked at No. 18 in late September of 1969, the third of six Top 40 hits Rawls would have in his career.
Like almost everyone else in the United States – and like so many elsewhere around the Earth, for that matter – I was watching television forty years ago this evening.
My folks, my sister and I gathered in the living room, gazing at our old Zenith, and watched Neil Armstrong descend the Eagle’s ladder and then take that first step on the surface of the moon. And we continued to watch as he was joined by Buzz Aldrin and the two of them placed a U.S. flag and then gathered samples of lunar rocks to bring back to Earth.
I admit to being puzzled by the missing “a” from Armstrong’s ceremonial first words on the moon: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” But in the years since, he’s said that he intended to say it and he thought he said it, so that’s fine. Given the weight of the occasion (and granting him the missing “a”), I thought his first words were well thought out and appropriate. But they were ceremonial, and thus were missing the visceral truth of Aldrin’s first words when he left the Eagle and joined Armstrong on the lunar surface: “Magnificent desolation!”
We watched until the two astronauts went back into the Eagle after something like two hours exploring the lunar surface that evening. None of us said much in the living room that night, and I don’t know what my folks thought as they watched men bounce around on the surface of the Moon. I remembered President John Kennedy’s 1961 challenge to the nation to land a man on the moon and bring him home, and it seems to me – I was maybe eight at the time the challenge was laid down and fifteen when the Eagle landed on the Moon – that I took the existence and success of a lunar expedition as a given. (History and chance have since taught me, of course, that so many things could have gone wrong, but they didn’t. Then.)
But I wonder now what my parents felt and thought, both having been born less than half a century earlier in homes – like many of those in the United States at the time – that had no electricity. Did they marvel at the sight of men on another world? Or did they take it as a given, another accomplishment checked off the list in a world that supplied marvels one after the other? I don’t know.
I know I was fascinated by the landing and all the things that surrounded it. There was a Gulf service station on not far from Tech High School, about a mile west of the Mississippi River. And during that summer, Gulf Oil was handing out sheets of heavy die-cut paper. By carefully punching out the die-cut pieces and then folding and inserting tabs into slots, one could make his or her own lunar module. Most of the kids I knew had picked up at least one, and each spent an hour or so carefully constructing the fragile model. I wound up with three of the paper models on a shelf in my bedroom. Even after the mission of Apollo 11 was finished successfully, I’d look at those fragile models and think of the real fragile and ungainly Eagle landing on the moon and then returning Armstrong and Aldrin to the Columbia and Michael Collins, in orbit around the moon.
Though I might not have put it into these words back then, I think what I was pondering was the slender margin of error that those three astronauts had successfully ridden, from the launch of the Saturn 5 rocket through the trip to the Moon and back to the splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Everything had to go just right, and it did. I think I was trying to figure out what that could teach me that I could apply to my life. And I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten there.
A Six-Pack From the Charts (Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending July 23, 1969)
“In The Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)” by Zager & Evans, RCA Victor 0174 (No. 1)
“Good Old Rock ’N’ Roll (Medley)” by Cat Mother & The All Night News Boys, Polydor 14002 (No. 25)
“Get Together” by the Youngbloods, RCA Victor 9752 (No. 44)
“On Campus” by Dickie Goodman, Cotique 158 (No. 51)
“Tell All The People” by the Doors, Elektra 45663 (No. 58)
“Your Good Thing (Is About To End)” by Lou Rawls, Capitol 2550 (No. 87)
The first single is either a listener’s worst earworm or a delightful piece of bad science fiction. Either way, it was inescapable during the summer of 1969, vibrating out of tinny speakers and car radios at least twice an hour, or so it seemed. A bit of research a while back by a blogger whose stuff I read regularly – I believe it was my colleague jb at The Hits Just Keep On Comin’ – revealed that Zager & Evans hold the title of the greatest one-hit wonder of all time: “In the Year 2525” was in the Billboard Top 40 for twelve weeks, with an amazing six weeks spent at No. 1. This is one of those records that one either loves like a first-born child or hates like mold. I was a science fiction geek in 1969, so I never tired of hearing it come out of the speaker. In fact, this record might have been one of those that drew me toward Top 40 music during that summer when I was exploring new sounds.
“Good Old Rock ’N’ Roll (Medley)” by Cat Mother & The All Night News Boys is another one-hit wonder, this one from a band that’s kind of slipped through the cracks of time. I knew nothing at all about Cat Mother and the boys a year ago, and I still know very little (though I like what I have heard, mostly through the graces of Chuntao at Rare MP3 Music). The medley, which was the opening track of the band’s first album, The Street Giveth...and the Street Taketh Away, spent six weeks in the Top 40 and peaked at No. 21. The group released three more albums, closing down the presses after Cat Mother in 1976. “Good Old Rock ’N’ Roll (Medley)” pulls fragments from Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the Big Bopper, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins/Elvis Presley and Buddy Knox in a little more than three minutes, kind of a whirling history of a portion of 1950s rock ’n’ roll.
The Youngbloods’ “Get Together” had originally been released in 1967 and had risen to only No. 62 in the Billboard Hot 100 before being re-released in 1969 with a different catalog number. The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits notes that in 1969, the record “was popularized as the theme for the National Conference of Christians and Jews.” Whatever the reason, the record got as high as No. 5 the second time around, spending twelve weeks in the Top 40. Without digging too deeply into the timing, it seems to me that the record’s peak came in the autumn: its strains carry with them the sense of moonrise and the crackling dance of leaves falling from the oaks in the back yard.
With “On Campus,” Dickie Goodman struck again with his cut-in comedy formula. This one isn’t as witty as some of his other topical takes from over the years, but it wasn’t as lame as “Batman and His Grandmother” (which was the only one I ever bought). The record didn’t make the Top 40. Goodman’s previous Top 40 hit had been 1957’s “Santa and the Satellite” and his next would be 1974’s “Energy Crisis ’74.” It didn’t miss by much, though: “On Campus” peaked at No. 45 during an eight-week stay in the Hot 100.
The version of “Tell All The People” I’m offering here is from the album The Soft Parade, and given the Doors’ and Elektra’s propensity for issuing widely different mixes on their 45s, I have no confidence at all that it’s the version that folks heard occasionally on their radios during the summer of 1969. I find it interesting for the use of horns, and for the fact that the writing credit for the single went solely to Robby Krieger; the Doors’ albums to that point had credited all songwriting to the group as an entity. One bit of speculation I saw (and I do not recall where I read it) suggested that Jim Morrison was unwilling to attach his name to a lyric that told listeners to “get your guns.” The record moved up one more spot to No. 58 during the last week of July, hovered there for another week and then fell out of the Hot 100 entirely.
I don’t have a lot to say about Lou Rawls’ “Your Good Thing (Is About To End)” but only because any comment I make is superfluous: It’s a great record by one of the great singers of all time. The record peaked at No. 18 in late September of 1969, the third of six Top 40 hits Rawls would have in his career.
'Always Something There To Remind Me . . .'
Originally posted July 21, 2009:
Sometime during the early months of 1970, a new record came whispering out of the radio as I listened. It might have been a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, but most likely, it was a weekday evening, and the radio was my old RCA, perched on the nightstand in my bedroom, keeping me company as I did homework, read or simply puttered around with the things that were important to a sixteen-year-old boy.
And as I puttered, I heard the singer, with a little bit of a rasp in his voice, tell the object of his devotion, “There’s always something there to remind me . . . You’ll always be a part of me.” And as the sound and the words sunk in, I operated on two levels for an instant. A portion of me recognized the voice as that of R.B. Greaves, who’d had a hit the previous autumn with “Take A Letter Maria.” (That record, the tale of a cuckolded husband who turns around and hits on his secretary, peaked at No. 2 during a thirteen-week run in the Top 40.)
And on the other level, I was thinking, “Always there to remind me: Oh, yes! Always be a part of me. Oh, yes! But how does he know?” How, I wondered, can the people who write and perform popular songs know what it is I’m going through? For there was in fact someone who mattered that much during that winter of 1969-1970, one whom I adored without consequent return. And in the confined environment of even a large high school like St. Cloud Tech, there were many places and people and things and moments that reminded me of her as I made my way through the days. And as I heard “Always Something There To Remind Me” from time to time – it spent only five weeks in the Top 40, reaching just No. 27 – it became one more of a chorus of songs that reminded me almost daily that the one I wanted to hold would remain forever beyond my reach.
So how do I hear the song today when it pops up on the RealPlayer or – infrequently – on the radio? I smile, recalling the absolute devotion of the high school junior I was, and I smile with a shrug of regret as I recall the exasperation on the face of my beloved. As it happens, the song doesn’t come around on the oldies stations very often: Greaves is remembered more for “Take A Letter Maria,” but then, that was the bigger hit. On occasion, though, it makes it way through the speakers here in the study. And almost forty years after that one-sided high school romance, the song – which was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David – brings back memories far more sweet than bitter.
Over the years since Greaves’ version of the song was on the charts, I’ve learned, of course, that Greaves was not the first to record the Bacharach-David song, just as I learned that there are at least two ways to present the song’s title. Two versions that reside in my collection came out of 1964: One by British singer Sandie Shaw and the other by Lou Johnson.
Shaw’s version – one I’ve never much cared for – was a hit in the United Kingdom, reaching No. 1. Here in the U.S., it went to only No. 52. At the same time in the U.S., Johnson had been assigned through his record label, Big Top, to work with Bacharach and David. His take on “(There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me” was his second single for them, and it went to No. 49, according to All-Music Guide. (AMG says that Bacharach brought Johnson to London for an appearance on Top of the Pops, but the visit took place right during the time that Shaw’s version of the song was dominating the charts.)
A few years later, in 1968, José Feliciano slid the song onto his record Feliciano! as an album track, and in 1972, a couple of years after Greaves recorded his version, Michael McDonald recorded the song for his first album, a little-known artifact called That Was Then. Neither version reached the Top 40, and neither seems to be anything special, though I like the Feliciano version better of the two. (The McDonald album was recently released in a CD package with some extra tracks; I have utterly forgotten who pointed it my way, but they deserve my thanks.)
Finally, the last version in my collection is the one that most recently reached the Top 40 chart: the 1983 cover of the song by Naked Eyes, with the attention-grabbing chiming bells in the introduction. The record, which I quite like – though I was prepared not to when I first heard it – went to No. 8 and spent thirteen weeks in the Top 40, the first – and best-performing – of four Top 40 hits for the English duo.
There are of course, many others who’ve covered “(There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me.” Some of them are: Affnity, the Drifters, Carol Duboc, the Four Seasons, Aretha Franklin, Jay & The Americans, Larry Knechtel, Patti LaBelle, Brenda Lee, Peggy Lee, Anne Murray, Willie Nelson, the Pozo-Seco Singers, the Stylistics, Stanley Turrentine, Dionne Warwick and Don Williams.
I’ll likely dig a few of those up in the future. (The idea of the Aretha cover of the song intrigues me.) But these six will have to do for now:
“Always Something There To Remind Me” by Sandie Shaw, Pye 15704 (UK) [1964]
“(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me” by Lou Johnson, Big Hill 552 [1964]
“(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me” by José Feliciano from Feliciano! [1968]
“Always Something There To Remind Me” by Michael McDonald from That Was Then [1972]
“Always Something There To Remind Me” by R.B. Greaves, Atco 6726 [1970]
“Always Something There To Remind Me” by Naked Eyes, EMI America 8155 [1983]
Afternote: I read Oldetymer's note, and yes, the McDonald track does sound like B.J. Thomas. I admit to wondering about it, as it was an extra track in the That Was Then package someone posted for me. So I did some digging, and it turns, according to what I learned at An Overdose of Fingal Cocoa, that McDonald recorded some tracks for Bell Records in 1972 that were eventually release on Arista in 1982 as That Was Then. A later re-release on vinyl included some bonus tracks, one of which was “Always Something There To Remind Me.” So it is in fact a young Michael McDonald.
Sometime during the early months of 1970, a new record came whispering out of the radio as I listened. It might have been a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, but most likely, it was a weekday evening, and the radio was my old RCA, perched on the nightstand in my bedroom, keeping me company as I did homework, read or simply puttered around with the things that were important to a sixteen-year-old boy.
And as I puttered, I heard the singer, with a little bit of a rasp in his voice, tell the object of his devotion, “There’s always something there to remind me . . . You’ll always be a part of me.” And as the sound and the words sunk in, I operated on two levels for an instant. A portion of me recognized the voice as that of R.B. Greaves, who’d had a hit the previous autumn with “Take A Letter Maria.” (That record, the tale of a cuckolded husband who turns around and hits on his secretary, peaked at No. 2 during a thirteen-week run in the Top 40.)
And on the other level, I was thinking, “Always there to remind me: Oh, yes! Always be a part of me. Oh, yes! But how does he know?” How, I wondered, can the people who write and perform popular songs know what it is I’m going through? For there was in fact someone who mattered that much during that winter of 1969-1970, one whom I adored without consequent return. And in the confined environment of even a large high school like St. Cloud Tech, there were many places and people and things and moments that reminded me of her as I made my way through the days. And as I heard “Always Something There To Remind Me” from time to time – it spent only five weeks in the Top 40, reaching just No. 27 – it became one more of a chorus of songs that reminded me almost daily that the one I wanted to hold would remain forever beyond my reach.
So how do I hear the song today when it pops up on the RealPlayer or – infrequently – on the radio? I smile, recalling the absolute devotion of the high school junior I was, and I smile with a shrug of regret as I recall the exasperation on the face of my beloved. As it happens, the song doesn’t come around on the oldies stations very often: Greaves is remembered more for “Take A Letter Maria,” but then, that was the bigger hit. On occasion, though, it makes it way through the speakers here in the study. And almost forty years after that one-sided high school romance, the song – which was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David – brings back memories far more sweet than bitter.
Over the years since Greaves’ version of the song was on the charts, I’ve learned, of course, that Greaves was not the first to record the Bacharach-David song, just as I learned that there are at least two ways to present the song’s title. Two versions that reside in my collection came out of 1964: One by British singer Sandie Shaw and the other by Lou Johnson.
Shaw’s version – one I’ve never much cared for – was a hit in the United Kingdom, reaching No. 1. Here in the U.S., it went to only No. 52. At the same time in the U.S., Johnson had been assigned through his record label, Big Top, to work with Bacharach and David. His take on “(There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me” was his second single for them, and it went to No. 49, according to All-Music Guide. (AMG says that Bacharach brought Johnson to London for an appearance on Top of the Pops, but the visit took place right during the time that Shaw’s version of the song was dominating the charts.)
A few years later, in 1968, José Feliciano slid the song onto his record Feliciano! as an album track, and in 1972, a couple of years after Greaves recorded his version, Michael McDonald recorded the song for his first album, a little-known artifact called That Was Then. Neither version reached the Top 40, and neither seems to be anything special, though I like the Feliciano version better of the two. (The McDonald album was recently released in a CD package with some extra tracks; I have utterly forgotten who pointed it my way, but they deserve my thanks.)
Finally, the last version in my collection is the one that most recently reached the Top 40 chart: the 1983 cover of the song by Naked Eyes, with the attention-grabbing chiming bells in the introduction. The record, which I quite like – though I was prepared not to when I first heard it – went to No. 8 and spent thirteen weeks in the Top 40, the first – and best-performing – of four Top 40 hits for the English duo.
There are of course, many others who’ve covered “(There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me.” Some of them are: Affnity, the Drifters, Carol Duboc, the Four Seasons, Aretha Franklin, Jay & The Americans, Larry Knechtel, Patti LaBelle, Brenda Lee, Peggy Lee, Anne Murray, Willie Nelson, the Pozo-Seco Singers, the Stylistics, Stanley Turrentine, Dionne Warwick and Don Williams.
I’ll likely dig a few of those up in the future. (The idea of the Aretha cover of the song intrigues me.) But these six will have to do for now:
“Always Something There To Remind Me” by Sandie Shaw, Pye 15704 (UK) [1964]
“(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me” by Lou Johnson, Big Hill 552 [1964]
“(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me” by José Feliciano from Feliciano! [1968]
“Always Something There To Remind Me” by Michael McDonald from That Was Then [1972]
“Always Something There To Remind Me” by R.B. Greaves, Atco 6726 [1970]
“Always Something There To Remind Me” by Naked Eyes, EMI America 8155 [1983]
Afternote: I read Oldetymer's note, and yes, the McDonald track does sound like B.J. Thomas. I admit to wondering about it, as it was an extra track in the That Was Then package someone posted for me. So I did some digging, and it turns, according to what I learned at An Overdose of Fingal Cocoa, that McDonald recorded some tracks for Bell Records in 1972 that were eventually release on Arista in 1982 as That Was Then. A later re-release on vinyl included some bonus tracks, one of which was “Always Something There To Remind Me.” So it is in fact a young Michael McDonald.
On The Shores Of St. Andrew
Originally posted July 22, 2009:
I went to summer camp three times during my childhood and youth. I spent one week each of the summers of 1965 and 1970 at a Boy Scout camp a little more than an hour north of St. Cloud. The second time I was there, the camp was formally called Parker Scout Reservation, but, informally, everyone still called it Camp Clyde in honor – as I understood it – of the stuffed moose head called Clyde that presided from the wall of the mess hall.
My other camping summer was in 1968, when I spent something like twelve days at Bible camp, swimming, boating, crafting and more at a camp called the Shores of St. Andrew near the town of New London about forty-five miles southwest of St. Cloud. St. Andrew wasn’t near as rustic an experience as Camp Clyde had been: We slept on bunk beds in a cabin instead of in canvas tents, and everything was located within, oh, a hundred yards of the lakeshore instead of being sprinkled throughout the piney woods as it was for the Boy Scouts.
A few things stick out from my time at the Shores of St. Andrew:
First, it was during those twelve days that my voice changed. When Mom and Dad dropped me off on a Sunday afternoon, I was still singing something close to soprano when we all gathered for sing-alongs in the evenings. Within a few days, that started to change. I felt constantly as if I needed to clear my throat. It never helped. Another few days went by, and I was a tenor. My range diminished slightly as my voice deepened, and as I struggled with the new sound of me, my fellow campers joshed me gently. When I greeted Mom when she arrived to take me home after those twelve days, the first thing she said was “What happened to your voice?”
One of the girls in the little crowd that had gathered at the departure point giggled. “It changed,” she said simply. Mom looked at me, looked at Jill – and the fact that I recall my fellow camper’s name after forty-one years is a little surprising – and then back at me. She nodded, and then we put my stuff in the car, and I left my remaining camper friends behind.
Jill’s presence – and the presence of the other girls – is another thing that makes that time at camp memorable. Oh, there was no romance between us, although a few other couples among the older campers – the ages of campers ranged from about twelve to sixteen – paired up tentatively during our time there. But there were cross-gender friendships, which was kind of a new concept for a lot of us, I think, girls as well as boys. Those friendships were aided by a decrease in the number of campers after one week. Most of the kids who arrived the same Sunday I did had signed up for just one week; about a third of us – maybe twenty – had signed up for the twelve-day session. A few of the kids from the nearby city of Willmar who’d signed up for the single week extended their stays because we were all having so much fun, but the second portion of my time at camp still had a much smaller population, and I think that helped encourage the development of a wider range of friendships, including those that crossed the gender line.
But friendly or not, we were still boys and they were still girls. And one night after midnight, we boys decided to go visit the girls’ cabin. We didn’t go in, of course. We ran around the outside of the cabin and then banged on the windows, yelping and hollering. I was gratified to hear the sounds of laughter on the other side of the window where I stood, shouting what in effect were nonsense words. After about five minutes, we ran back to our cabin, where our counselors – who had not attempted to dissuade us from our plans – were waiting. Both Louie and Paul – More names! Amazing! – shrugged as we tumbled in, laughing. One of them said, “I hope it was fun, guys. You’ll pay for it tomorrow.”
And we did. After lunch, while the girls got to go outside and go swimming or do whatever they wished, we boys were issued buckets and scrub brushes and spent the afternoon cleaning the floor of the mess hall. That wasn’t all that bad; as we scrubbed, we talked and laughed.
I also recall the last night at camp. We had a dance in the craft room, which was on the upper floor of one of the buildings. The tables were folded and moved to the side, some basic decorations were installed and one of the counselors provided a radio. I might have danced once; I think I had a dance with Jill. But I spent a good chunk of the evening with a few other guys standing near the wall, watching the others dance. After a while, I slid along the wall to the door. Once outside, I made my way down the stairs.
I wasn’t the only one who’d gone outside. A guy whose real name I never knew – he was chunky and called himself “Jumbo” – was sitting atop one of the picnic tables smoking a cigarette. (Another thing I never knew was whether Jumbo truly chose that nickname for himself or accepted it with as much grace as he could when it was given to him.) “Dull dance,” I said as I approached and sat on the table top.
He shrugged and nodded. “But we can at least hear the music here,” he said, and we could. The front windows of the craft room were open, and the sound of the radio was clear.
Jumbo offered me a cigarette, my first. I took it and smoked it inexpertly, somehow not managing to inhale. (That, and the habit, would come to me during college.) And, perched on top of a picnic table, we listened to the music and sat out the dance. As we did, I would guess we heard at least one of these records.
A Six-Pack from the charts (Billboard Hot 100 the week of July 27, 1968)
“The Look Of Love” by Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, A&M 924 [No. 16]
“MacArthur Park” by Richard Harris, Dunhill 4134 [No. 23]
“People Got To Be Free” by the Rascals, Atlantic 2537 [No. 32]
“The Eyes Of A New York Woman” by B.J. Thomas, Scepter 12230 [46]
“The Snake” by Al Wilson, Soul City 767 [No. 110]
“This Wheel’s On Fire” by Julie Driscoll/Brian Auger and the Trinity, Atco 6593 [122]
“The Look Of Love,” the first hit for Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, was part of the soundtrack for the James Bond film Casino Royale. The title was the only one of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels to which producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli didn’t hold rights. Faced with the prospect of mounting a spy film without Sean Connery – secure in the role of the British spy in the Saltzman-Broccoli films – the producers of Casino Royale turned Fleming’s taut tale into a spoof and a shambles. According to the Internet Movie Database, the producers were Jerry Bresler and Charles K. Feldman; six people were listed as having directed portions of the film, and ten individuals were involved in the writing (six were officially credited, not including Fleming, who got the credit: “suggested by the novel Casino Royale”). The movie was a mess in which – according to my memory – actors David Niven and Peter Sellers were allowed to run amok. But it did have some good music, including “The Look Of Love.” The song went as high on the charts as No. 4 during an eleven-week run, and the group had two more Top 40 hits in 1968, both also done in a light and friendly Latin style.
I said the other day that “In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)” is one of those records that one either loves like a first-born child or hates like mold. I imagine the same is true of “MacArthur Park,” the rambling and symphonic love song whose most famous line is “Someone left the cake out in the rain.” I happen to think that the combination of Jimmy Webb’s admittedly over-the-top songwriting with the astounding vocal range of Richard Harris makes “MacArthur Park” a great record. Top 50 of all time? Maybe, maybe not. But – using a measuring stick I used here at least once before – if I were selecting a hundred records for a classic rock and pop jukebox, I think “MacArthur Park” would be in it. The record – Harris’ only Top 40 hit – spent ten weeks in the Top 40, peaking at No. 2.
Here’s what Dave Marsh had to say about “People Got To Be Free” in his 1989 classic, The Heart of Rock & Soul: “Sung like a funky Italian boys choir, arranged like a cross between Dyke and the Blazers and the Buckinghams, written in the fullest immersion in the glorious naivete of the times. Does hearing Felix [Cavaliere] try to preach about ‘the train to freedom’ render ‘People Got To Be Free’ dated? Of course. But what a glorious date, and what a way of celebrating the part of it that’s eternal: ‘I can’t understand, it’s so simple to me / People everywhere just got to be free.’ Ask my opinion, my opinion will be: Dated but never out of date.”
The Rascals’ record was in the Top 40 for thirteen weeks and spent an astounding five weeks at No. 1.
For more than ten years, from 1966 into 1977, B.J. Thomas recorded reliably good singles, but all too often, when talk and thought turns to listing the great Top 40 performers, his name seems to get lost. I’m not sure why that’s so. The man had fourteen Top 40 hits, with two of them reaching No. 1: “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” in 1969 and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” in 1975. Three others – 1964’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” 1968’s “Hooked on a Feeling” and 1970’s “I Just Can’t Help Believing” – all reached the Top Ten. And I’d be amazed if at least one of those five songs doesn’t start running through your head as you read that list. (And no, Blue Swede’s version of “Hooked on a Feeling” does not count!) “The Eyes Of A New York Woman” didn’t quite reach the heights those five records did, peaking at No. 28, but it’s probably my favorite B.J. Thomas song. Why? I dunno. Some things just are.
Al Wilson’s “The Snake” was pulled from his Searching For The Dolphins album, which was released on Johnny Rivers’ Soul City label. Through the end of the summer and into the autumn of 1968, the sly and funny slice of R&B moved slowly up the chart, peaking at No. 27, where it sat for the first two weeks of October. It was Wilson’s first Top 40 hit; he’d reach the top spot five years later with “Show and Tell,” which spent a week at No. 1 during the autumn of 1973. Being a sucker for drums, I love the four-second riff that starts about six seconds into the song. Drummers on the album were Hal Blaine and Jim Gordon.
Julie Driscoll never had a Top 40 hit in the U.S., but her version of “This Wheel’s On Fire” (written by Bob Dylan and Rick Danko of The Band), which she recorded with Brian Auger and the Trinity, went to No. 5 in her native Great Britain. Shortly after that, Driscoll moved her career toward vocal improvisation and jazz, recording under her own name into the mid-1970s and in a variety of ensembles since then. In 1992, according to All-Music Guide, Driscoll re-recorded “This Wheel's on Fire” as the theme to the smash BBC comedy Absolutely Fabulous.
I went to summer camp three times during my childhood and youth. I spent one week each of the summers of 1965 and 1970 at a Boy Scout camp a little more than an hour north of St. Cloud. The second time I was there, the camp was formally called Parker Scout Reservation, but, informally, everyone still called it Camp Clyde in honor – as I understood it – of the stuffed moose head called Clyde that presided from the wall of the mess hall.
My other camping summer was in 1968, when I spent something like twelve days at Bible camp, swimming, boating, crafting and more at a camp called the Shores of St. Andrew near the town of New London about forty-five miles southwest of St. Cloud. St. Andrew wasn’t near as rustic an experience as Camp Clyde had been: We slept on bunk beds in a cabin instead of in canvas tents, and everything was located within, oh, a hundred yards of the lakeshore instead of being sprinkled throughout the piney woods as it was for the Boy Scouts.
A few things stick out from my time at the Shores of St. Andrew:
First, it was during those twelve days that my voice changed. When Mom and Dad dropped me off on a Sunday afternoon, I was still singing something close to soprano when we all gathered for sing-alongs in the evenings. Within a few days, that started to change. I felt constantly as if I needed to clear my throat. It never helped. Another few days went by, and I was a tenor. My range diminished slightly as my voice deepened, and as I struggled with the new sound of me, my fellow campers joshed me gently. When I greeted Mom when she arrived to take me home after those twelve days, the first thing she said was “What happened to your voice?”
One of the girls in the little crowd that had gathered at the departure point giggled. “It changed,” she said simply. Mom looked at me, looked at Jill – and the fact that I recall my fellow camper’s name after forty-one years is a little surprising – and then back at me. She nodded, and then we put my stuff in the car, and I left my remaining camper friends behind.
Jill’s presence – and the presence of the other girls – is another thing that makes that time at camp memorable. Oh, there was no romance between us, although a few other couples among the older campers – the ages of campers ranged from about twelve to sixteen – paired up tentatively during our time there. But there were cross-gender friendships, which was kind of a new concept for a lot of us, I think, girls as well as boys. Those friendships were aided by a decrease in the number of campers after one week. Most of the kids who arrived the same Sunday I did had signed up for just one week; about a third of us – maybe twenty – had signed up for the twelve-day session. A few of the kids from the nearby city of Willmar who’d signed up for the single week extended their stays because we were all having so much fun, but the second portion of my time at camp still had a much smaller population, and I think that helped encourage the development of a wider range of friendships, including those that crossed the gender line.
But friendly or not, we were still boys and they were still girls. And one night after midnight, we boys decided to go visit the girls’ cabin. We didn’t go in, of course. We ran around the outside of the cabin and then banged on the windows, yelping and hollering. I was gratified to hear the sounds of laughter on the other side of the window where I stood, shouting what in effect were nonsense words. After about five minutes, we ran back to our cabin, where our counselors – who had not attempted to dissuade us from our plans – were waiting. Both Louie and Paul – More names! Amazing! – shrugged as we tumbled in, laughing. One of them said, “I hope it was fun, guys. You’ll pay for it tomorrow.”
And we did. After lunch, while the girls got to go outside and go swimming or do whatever they wished, we boys were issued buckets and scrub brushes and spent the afternoon cleaning the floor of the mess hall. That wasn’t all that bad; as we scrubbed, we talked and laughed.
I also recall the last night at camp. We had a dance in the craft room, which was on the upper floor of one of the buildings. The tables were folded and moved to the side, some basic decorations were installed and one of the counselors provided a radio. I might have danced once; I think I had a dance with Jill. But I spent a good chunk of the evening with a few other guys standing near the wall, watching the others dance. After a while, I slid along the wall to the door. Once outside, I made my way down the stairs.
I wasn’t the only one who’d gone outside. A guy whose real name I never knew – he was chunky and called himself “Jumbo” – was sitting atop one of the picnic tables smoking a cigarette. (Another thing I never knew was whether Jumbo truly chose that nickname for himself or accepted it with as much grace as he could when it was given to him.) “Dull dance,” I said as I approached and sat on the table top.
He shrugged and nodded. “But we can at least hear the music here,” he said, and we could. The front windows of the craft room were open, and the sound of the radio was clear.
Jumbo offered me a cigarette, my first. I took it and smoked it inexpertly, somehow not managing to inhale. (That, and the habit, would come to me during college.) And, perched on top of a picnic table, we listened to the music and sat out the dance. As we did, I would guess we heard at least one of these records.
A Six-Pack from the charts (Billboard Hot 100 the week of July 27, 1968)
“The Look Of Love” by Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, A&M 924 [No. 16]
“MacArthur Park” by Richard Harris, Dunhill 4134 [No. 23]
“People Got To Be Free” by the Rascals, Atlantic 2537 [No. 32]
“The Eyes Of A New York Woman” by B.J. Thomas, Scepter 12230 [46]
“The Snake” by Al Wilson, Soul City 767 [No. 110]
“This Wheel’s On Fire” by Julie Driscoll/Brian Auger and the Trinity, Atco 6593 [122]
“The Look Of Love,” the first hit for Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, was part of the soundtrack for the James Bond film Casino Royale. The title was the only one of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels to which producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli didn’t hold rights. Faced with the prospect of mounting a spy film without Sean Connery – secure in the role of the British spy in the Saltzman-Broccoli films – the producers of Casino Royale turned Fleming’s taut tale into a spoof and a shambles. According to the Internet Movie Database, the producers were Jerry Bresler and Charles K. Feldman; six people were listed as having directed portions of the film, and ten individuals were involved in the writing (six were officially credited, not including Fleming, who got the credit: “suggested by the novel Casino Royale”). The movie was a mess in which – according to my memory – actors David Niven and Peter Sellers were allowed to run amok. But it did have some good music, including “The Look Of Love.” The song went as high on the charts as No. 4 during an eleven-week run, and the group had two more Top 40 hits in 1968, both also done in a light and friendly Latin style.
I said the other day that “In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)” is one of those records that one either loves like a first-born child or hates like mold. I imagine the same is true of “MacArthur Park,” the rambling and symphonic love song whose most famous line is “Someone left the cake out in the rain.” I happen to think that the combination of Jimmy Webb’s admittedly over-the-top songwriting with the astounding vocal range of Richard Harris makes “MacArthur Park” a great record. Top 50 of all time? Maybe, maybe not. But – using a measuring stick I used here at least once before – if I were selecting a hundred records for a classic rock and pop jukebox, I think “MacArthur Park” would be in it. The record – Harris’ only Top 40 hit – spent ten weeks in the Top 40, peaking at No. 2.
Here’s what Dave Marsh had to say about “People Got To Be Free” in his 1989 classic, The Heart of Rock & Soul: “Sung like a funky Italian boys choir, arranged like a cross between Dyke and the Blazers and the Buckinghams, written in the fullest immersion in the glorious naivete of the times. Does hearing Felix [Cavaliere] try to preach about ‘the train to freedom’ render ‘People Got To Be Free’ dated? Of course. But what a glorious date, and what a way of celebrating the part of it that’s eternal: ‘I can’t understand, it’s so simple to me / People everywhere just got to be free.’ Ask my opinion, my opinion will be: Dated but never out of date.”
The Rascals’ record was in the Top 40 for thirteen weeks and spent an astounding five weeks at No. 1.
For more than ten years, from 1966 into 1977, B.J. Thomas recorded reliably good singles, but all too often, when talk and thought turns to listing the great Top 40 performers, his name seems to get lost. I’m not sure why that’s so. The man had fourteen Top 40 hits, with two of them reaching No. 1: “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” in 1969 and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” in 1975. Three others – 1964’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” 1968’s “Hooked on a Feeling” and 1970’s “I Just Can’t Help Believing” – all reached the Top Ten. And I’d be amazed if at least one of those five songs doesn’t start running through your head as you read that list. (And no, Blue Swede’s version of “Hooked on a Feeling” does not count!) “The Eyes Of A New York Woman” didn’t quite reach the heights those five records did, peaking at No. 28, but it’s probably my favorite B.J. Thomas song. Why? I dunno. Some things just are.
Al Wilson’s “The Snake” was pulled from his Searching For The Dolphins album, which was released on Johnny Rivers’ Soul City label. Through the end of the summer and into the autumn of 1968, the sly and funny slice of R&B moved slowly up the chart, peaking at No. 27, where it sat for the first two weeks of October. It was Wilson’s first Top 40 hit; he’d reach the top spot five years later with “Show and Tell,” which spent a week at No. 1 during the autumn of 1973. Being a sucker for drums, I love the four-second riff that starts about six seconds into the song. Drummers on the album were Hal Blaine and Jim Gordon.
Julie Driscoll never had a Top 40 hit in the U.S., but her version of “This Wheel’s On Fire” (written by Bob Dylan and Rick Danko of The Band), which she recorded with Brian Auger and the Trinity, went to No. 5 in her native Great Britain. Shortly after that, Driscoll moved her career toward vocal improvisation and jazz, recording under her own name into the mid-1970s and in a variety of ensembles since then. In 1992, according to All-Music Guide, Driscoll re-recorded “This Wheel's on Fire” as the theme to the smash BBC comedy Absolutely Fabulous.
Richard Harris, Three Degrees & More
Originally posted Thursday, July 23, 2009:
Rummaging as usual today, I found a fascinating clip from a British television show examining the greatest one-hit wonders. Here’s that show’s take on Richard Harris and “MacArthur Park.”
This is interesting: Here are the Three Degrees live in London in 1975, with their rendition of “MacArthur Park.” The dancing is, well, cheesy, but the vocal performance and the musical backing are pretty good.
Here’s a video put together or taken from another source – long after the fact, I assume – to go with Jay and the Americans’ version of “Always Something There To Remind Me.” I don’t recognize the video. Does anyone out there? It’s a little ambiguous and disturbing for some reason. Or it could just be too early in the morning.
And to close, here’s a performance from one of Jules Hollands’ New Years’ fetes, with Ron Wood, Slash and Holland taking on Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie.” They get an assist from a strolling streaker, whom Slash doesn’t even notice.
Tomorrow, I think we’ll do something we haven’t done in a while: Select a record label and pull a random selection of singles. At least we’ll start there.
Rummaging as usual today, I found a fascinating clip from a British television show examining the greatest one-hit wonders. Here’s that show’s take on Richard Harris and “MacArthur Park.”
This is interesting: Here are the Three Degrees live in London in 1975, with their rendition of “MacArthur Park.” The dancing is, well, cheesy, but the vocal performance and the musical backing are pretty good.
Here’s a video put together or taken from another source – long after the fact, I assume – to go with Jay and the Americans’ version of “Always Something There To Remind Me.” I don’t recognize the video. Does anyone out there? It’s a little ambiguous and disturbing for some reason. Or it could just be too early in the morning.
And to close, here’s a performance from one of Jules Hollands’ New Years’ fetes, with Ron Wood, Slash and Holland taking on Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie.” They get an assist from a strolling streaker, whom Slash doesn’t even notice.
Tomorrow, I think we’ll do something we haven’t done in a while: Select a record label and pull a random selection of singles. At least we’ll start there.
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