Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

Flamingo --- Earl Bostic. Listen to him go:



About everything I knew about Bostic until tonight I learned from Carolina Beach Music mix tapes given to me in the early '80s by my personal music archivist, Larry K, and miscellaneous articles now lost in the canyons of my minds. I recognized him as a swinging tenor man with a gravelly tone who worked the higher registers of his instrument. Wrong... or maybe 25% correct. Tonight I find that Earl actually played an alto, but he used a hard rubber alto mouthpiece tricked out with a tenor reed! Nifty hack --- I don't remember ever hearing an alto sound like this. (Still an embarrassing error by someone who played a fair amount of alto and tenor for about 10 years... and considering that Bostic is shown holding his Martin Alto on the jacket of For You. Geez.)

Anyway, this is what I consider to be Earl's classic performance of "Flamingo." Unfortunately, because he seems to have recorded half a zillion versions of his biggest hits later for the teen dance market, I don't know the date of this recording. A different YouTube video purports to be the original 1951 release, so I'm a confused guy. And evidently I'm not the only guy who is confused: the first album cover displayed in the YouTube slide show after you click the play button is a Bostic reissue on the Living Era label that in fact depicts Bull Moose Jackson blowing a tenor. Um, erf?!?

Between Bostic's tone and the predominant role of the vibes accompaniment, the sound of his combo is unmistakable. The later '50s reissues of "Flamingo," "Night and Day," and others, sound "whiter" to my ears. I think that's because he was making a good living selling dance records to teenagers in the early rock era, and so like so many other R&B tunes that were co-opted into the rock repertoire, these latter-day versions emphasized flash and novelty --- lots of shakes, falls, schmaltzy vibrato, tonguing tricks, and so forth. Somewhere I read that they typically released later Bostic recordings with pictures of sexy ladies on the sleeve to conceal the fact that Earl was an African American; suburban parents were jumpy enough about plain old rock and roll during the Eisenhower years without needing to be alarmed by the horrors of race music and the rampant miscegenation that would inevitably follow repeated listenings. The earlier versions of Earl's combo work sound "smokier" to me, and they have a more authentic swing to them, and this is one of them.

Doing my Fish Fry homework tonight I discovered that Bostic had a much richer jazz career than I was aware of during the 1940s, and he had the deep respect of giants (reed players and otherwise) like Coltrane, James Moody, Benny Golson, Stanley Turrentine, and Art Blakey. The Wiki article reports that Earl once cut Charlie Parker in an alto battle, and who am I to argue with Sweet Papa Lou Donaldson about this seemingly improbable scenario? Anyway, I love a number of Bostic recordings from the early '50s and am now inspired to dig deeper into his jazz career.

Flamingo, Earl Bostic (not dated, King Records), via YouTube.

PS: if the 59er knows about Bostic and/or the Carolina Beach Music scene I'd be grateful to hear about it.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

*

Apropos of something, here are The Hawk and Bird from a 1950 studio session. This is part 1 of 2 of the session available on YouTube. Part 2 doesn't feature Hawkins or Parker, though.



Apropos of what, one might wonder? The juvenile Cooper's hawk perched on my woodpecker feeder Wednesday morning, that's what. With the exception of a few stray birds --- I guess you could call them Yardbirds --- the avians have been very scarce around the homestead for several days. Likewise, the squirrels have been less visible.

Anyway, this is a rare look at some giants. It's a shame we can't see what Bird's fingers are doing --- just hard to comprehend how they can move so fast and clean in sync with the tonguing. You will hear some "clams" by Bird in this set. He's past his prime here, but there are certainly lots of reedmen out there who might give their right thumb to duplicate what he's doing on this clip. But, then, it would be difficult to do that without a right thumb.

Incidentally, as a bonus, take note that our hero Buddy Rich is the guy banging the tubs in this set. Presumably he didn't lecture Parker about the "clams" after the film stopped rolling.

Finally, apropos of nothing, Parker's nickname originated not with this definition, but is most popularly thought to be linked with this one (first on the page). Myself, I favor the last two that are discussed in this short informative essay on the topic.

Ballad and Celebrity, Coleman Hawkins [ts], Charlie Parker [as], Hank Jones [p], Ray Brown [b], and Buddy Rich [d] (1950, film of studio session, provenance unknown to RubberCrutch), via YouTube.

Friday evening editor's note

*

Hello. RubberCrutch has been away from his blogging equipment for a few weeks owing to various mundane causes including a busy, exciting lifestyle; a case of poison ivy; and a bout of fever that may have been caused by a German medical bulb thermometer that registers exactly 4 degrees Fahrenheit higher than ones' actual temperature. He will return to his post at his earliest possible convenience.

Incidentally, it makes lots of sense to learn how to recognize poisonous flora in your yard. Although RubberCrutch was nearly driven insane by a case of poison ivy (or oak or sumac) contracted in California almost 35 years ago to this very day, he still forgets what the stuff looks like. Don't be like RubberCrutch --- be sure to use your noodle every day. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Games Joe McCarthy played

*

There are so many disgusting aspects of this story (more here) that I must struggle to avoid tangents. I'm sure most people have heard some incomplete version of it: a right-wing provocateur posted to his website a videotape that was deliberately edited to create a defamatory context for remarks made by a USDA appointee in a March 2010 speech she gave to a Georgia chapter of the NAACP. The deceptively edited video was rapidly propagated by FOX as "news," with all the dignity that usually accompanies baseless accusations of black racism by white racists. And then, before you could say "Tom Vilsack is a craven asshole," the minor official, Shirley Sherrod, was bullied out of her job by her chain of command. Only the impression given by the video, as I say, has been demonstrated to be false and defamatory.


Vilsack: way to create a possible tort for wrongful dismissal, dicknose. Washington Post: learn how to check facts, especially when your errors reflect poorly on the wrongly accused person... motherfuckers. NAACP: yes, you sure were "snookered," but I'll spare you an obscenity since you've sort of done penance and claim to have learned something from it... but your fuck-up shows how weak your organization really is these days. And Barack Hussein Obama? Waiting....

Irony, presumably unintended

*

Herein please find a special educational supplement concerning proper use of the term "irony," intended for Big Rock Head specifically and the greater Fifty50 community generally, courtesy of the Iowa "Tea Party" via TPM. You see, BRH, the irony of the scene depicted below is that President Obama is in fact a moderate, centrist U.S. President while mainstream Republican Senate "leaders" such as John Kyl, Mitch McConnell, Judd Gregg, John Cornyn, and Tom Coburn are right-wing radicals who thrive on the bitterness of fearful, naive "Real Americans" who they trick into believing that the unemployed and chronically impoverished people just have it too darned easy in life while our wealthy elites need even more tax relief than George Bush gave them 9 years ago.

A casual reading of any impartial 20th century history text will reveal that both Hitler and Stalin derived unheard-of totalitarian powers in part by aligning corporate management and strategic objectives (and financial interests) with those of their respective party apparatus. The differences in tactics of Hitler and Stalin were essentially irrelevant considering the enormity of the results they achieved, such as continual wars of aggression and industrial-scale mass murder. Can any of my shorties out there in Fifty50Land think of any examples from our modern times that resemble the Nazi and Communist merger of corporate, political, and military interests to prey on the fearful and naive? Do tell.

Editor's note: the photo above is by Deb Nicklay and copyrighted by the Associated Press and the Globe Gazette (http://gazetteonline.com/) in Iowa, U.S.A. Fair use is claimed for purposes of social commentary and community education. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Stan Freberg Modestly Presents

*

"Surly to bed and surly to rise."



Unfortunately the needle skips a few times near the beginning of the musical number for the Declaration of Independence. The voice characterizations are a thing of beauty that awed a coupla shorties who overheard their dad playing this album in the early 1960s. Rocky and Bullwinkle fans will recognize the voices of June Foray (the voice of Rocky) doing all the female parts here, and Stan Freberg, who did umpty-nine wiseguy voices pretty much everywhere in Jay Ward cartoons in the early and mid-'60s in addition to his own hugely fruitful and influential output. Paul "Boris Badenov" Frees, is hard to recognize as the narrator. Freberg and partners did very hip and smart parody, and other tracks from this LP, The United States of America, display some pretty biting satire about the white man's relations with Indians (as we used to call Native Americans). I hope to revisit Freberg sometime in the future because he was a giant in 1950s and '60s pop culture, catering both to hipper adults and legions of kids.

Declaration of Independence and Betsy Ross and the Flag, Stan Freberg (1961, from "The United States of America: The Early Years," Capitol W/SW-1573), via YouTube.

Fifty50 After Hours

*

In order to preserve the temporal integrity of this blog, I present a new name for an established feature.  You will see it on the Saturday evenings when circumstances force me to click the "Publish Post" button after midnight.

So here, After Hours, I present to you a rock performance that in my opinion represents the precise origin lummox rock, and possibly even its apex.



At a neighborhood garage sale this morning I heard from inside the house this dirt simple, highly familiar guitar power chord vamp. But something about it seemed out of the ordinary to me --- way too mellow --- and I couldn't place it. The neighbor manning the cash box, an incorrigible "Deadhead," told me it was a Jerry Garcia composition called "Standing On The Moon." I suppose that it was, but not in my universe it wasn't. The vamp was supposed to be encrusted with thick distortion and reverb tomfoolery.

And then, while contemplating this disconnect, I immediately had a fleeting impression of an early '70s Chicago TV host, Svengoolie, who screened delectable monster movies late Friday nights on channel 32. Chicagoland natives of a certain age will remember the AM disc jockey Jerry G. Bishop, caked in white foundation makeup, raccoon eyes, ratty longhair wig and hippie headband, performing shtick in a Transylvania accent during the interstices between commercial and movie. And those individuals, like me, will likely remember the theme song for Svengoolie's Screaming Yellow Theater: "Rumble," by Link Wray. "Composed by Jerry Garcia," my foot. If George Harrison could be successfully sued for "subconsciously" plagiarizing the Chiffons hit "He's So Fine" when composing "My Sweet Lord," (a horseshit lawsuit, incidentally, in my highly learned opinion), then Garcia should have been thrown in a penitentiary for trying to disguise the heartbeat and pulse of  "Rumble" with insignificant variations, noodling accompaniments, and lyrics that should have been used somewhere else if at all.

Few rock historians doubt that "Rumble" is a seminal rock performance that inspired the next generation of garage musicians, etc. etc. But in my opinion that doesn't mean Wray was a musical visionary, as many contend. I don't mean that as a criticism of Wray and the Ray Men. It's just that I think "Rumble" was probably less a work of genius and more the product of some guys hypnotizing themselves with heavy guitar tones, primitive beats, studio effects, and about three quarts of Schlitz apiece.

Rumble, Link Wray (1958, Cadence single 1347, b/w The Swag), via YouTube.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

Went out of doors for the Fish Fry tonight; The Iron Post in Urbana, Ill., specifically. I think they call it The Iron Post because wherever you park your fundament in the room you're likely to be sitting behind an iron post.

Below is photographic documentation of a pickup band called Donald's Sons, which includes three guys named Donaldson and one guy named Big Rock Head. For most of the set BRH plucked his sweet hybrid Fender P-bass with the Jazz neck (picked it out myself when he was a tot, don't ya know), but on two tunes he and old Champaign Central HS Jazz Ensemble buddy Robert A., trumpet, played horns. In the photo, BRH (foreground) blows a tenor solo while acolyte Joel H. (right) assumes bass duties. I don't remember this second song he was blowing on when I snapped the photo because I was concentrating on getting a usable phone-cam pic. The first horn number was a version of Hendrix's "Red House." Both the vocals (by father Tim D., blurred with dorky hat) and the horn arrangement sounded reminiscent of Ray Charles, but with some Western Swing flavor. A marvelous concoction!

"It's elementary, my dear Watson," sez Gallup

*

As seen on Hullabaloo, The Gallup Organization has applied state-of-the-art polling and statistical analysis methods to reveal that Tea Partiers are pretty much nothing more than core right-wing Republicans, if ones who like to act out and pretend they're the heirs to the philosophy of America's founders. If Fifty50 had a "No Shit, Sherlock" department, this revelation would headline it today.

However, I won't disdain Gallup for doing the survey or publicizing the results, because I think it's good that this fact be consecrated as "official" by an organization that establishment types consider to be legitimate. I will, however, disdain any reporting that Gallup's findings are surprising to any politically sentient American.

The asparagus ranch revivified

*

I never informed you about the fate of my asparagus experiment station, which first inserted itself in our shared folklore about here and here. The short version --- short for me, at least, is this:

On April 17 I gave it up, mourned for the asparagus crowns that I had abused the life out of, and backfilled the trench with its 3 tons of Illinois clay loam. It was my intention that after a respectful period of grieving for the little fellers I'd plant the ground with some native wildflowers or grasses. The next weekend, as I glowered over the plot trying to figure out what to do with it, I spotted a stiff purple shoot breaking through the ground at the northwest corner. "Crap," I thought. "Since this one plant is here I'm now obligated to let it grow and reserve the rest of this dirt for another try next spring." I don't like waiting for things to happen, but that's the way it would be.

Meanwhile, Rudy's long-suffering wife had, for reasons not relevant to this post, given me a St. Francis plaque to display near my garden. She had not told me that she'd blessed it with Holy Water before wrapping and delivering the gift. So I chainsawed a groove at the north pole of a walnut log and displayed the placque sort of like a Franklin Mint plate, facing the moribund asparagus patch from the east. Starting the next day, more purple shoots broke the soil. I was bemused, and started marking them with stakes. Well, by cracky, every last one of those hapless asparagus "crowns" eventually made their way to the surface, and as of yesterday I was still seeing new growth. So, as illustrated by the photograph below, which was taken late afternoon on Thursday with a phone camera, this for me truly is the dawning of The Age of Asparagus.* Thank you.

______________________
* I'm afraid I can't take credit for this pun. To the best of my knowledge it was coined by Robert Crumb in 1969. Also, apropos of nothing, the ornamental rectangular prism near bottom left is a genuine 1901 Culver Block brand embossed street paver.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

You may thank frequent contributor and good friend of this blog, Anonymous, for suggesting tonight's visit by Chase, which must be the only prominent group in jazz-rock history to have used four trumpets, and four trumpets only, as its brass section. Listen to this mother!



Any geezers out there might remember that the band Chase was eponymously named for its leader, trumpet screamer Bill Chase. Chase (the guy) was old for a rock star, having been born in the middle of the Depression and having gotten his start with the original trumpet monster, Maynard Ferguson (whose lips must have been calloused thick as a catcher's mitt after decades of galloping after F over high C like it was his own fleet-footed strumpet). He then paid dues with Stan Kenton, and especially Woody Herman's New Thundering Herd through the early and mid-1960s. Anyway, my point is that the guy was a veteran jazzman before putting Chase together, so it must have been a blast for him to be, for at least a little while, a bona fide rock star. If you remember "Open Up Wide," then you'll probably also remember Chase's biggest hit, "Get It On." Here's a 1974 live Chicago performance of that tune --- a guerrilla home movie from an album release party about half a year before Bill and three other band members died in a plane crash. Check out the flowing shirts and --- gasp! --- the beards. These are the kind of guys who Buddy Rich mercilessly terrorized on the tour bus week in and week out (refer to the beard confrontation at about 6:00). No wonder younger jazzmen like Chase and Don Ellis tried to become huge rock stars instead! They shoulda stuck with it.

I seem to remember that the other three beardy trumpeters in Chase were also alums of the New Thundering Herd. All of them are adept at playing in this piercing brass register, and this particular chart really makes the most of those tones with insanely rich chromaticism and dissonances. Nobody I'm aware of ever used trumpets like this except Bill Chase --- at least not without another 15 pieces playing along. Nice use of the Echoplex at the beginning. Other than that, nothing to say except just listen to these staccato motherfuckers! And don't miss the rhythm section!

I owned the first two Chase albums back when I was a scrawny suburban delinquent, but I remember being somewhat bored by most tracks on those discs. I think the problem was that Chase and the boys tried getting a little too arty-farty (i.e., heavy) but couldn't quite pull it off in a way that the kids related to. They're probably worthy of revisiting in their entirety, however, just in case.

I read in the YouTube comments section that marching bands attempt to perform "Open Up Wide." I've never heard one try it. Sounds like a foolhardy task to say the least, if not less. A world-class bugle corps... maybe.

Open Up Wide, Chase (1971, from "Chase," Epic Records), via YouTube.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

*

"Turn into stone," I knelt to the hobo.



This incarnation of Blood, Sweat & Tears (1967-68) is probably the least known, but in my opinion it is by far the best-ever lineup. The band's sound is highly recognizable and unified from track to track, but every composition shows off a different facet of the ensemble's talents, not to mention Al Kooper's arranging genius. In addition to Kooper's original compositions, they covered tunes by Nilsson, Randy Newman, and Goffin and King.

Wikipedia and everyone else categorize BS&T as a jazz-rock combo, but that descriptor is much too narrow for the original lineup. The Kooper BS&T album, "Child is Father to the Man," begins with a formal overture that functions exactly as a classical overture is intended to, with much verve and wit. And near the end of side 2, "The Modern Adventures of Plato, Diogenes and Freud" pairs Kooper's intense psycho-philosophical lyrics with an orchestration that might be described as outre avant-garde pop.

"Morning Glory" is one impressive stop on this vinyl tour de force. The song was originally composed and performed in a folk style by Tim Buckley, with allegorical psychedelic lyrics by his partner Larry Beckett. You can hear Buckley's ethereal, elegiac treatment of "Morning Glory" here on YouTube. Buckley's style of music mostly has never appealed to me, and therefore I never would have heard this song if not for Kooper and his treatment of it. There's both a majesty and a foolishness to the arrangement that captures the psychonaut's innocent, earnest, and completely deluded expectation that enlightenment will be delivered on his desired schedule to the front door by a magic guru. As a teenager I would not have been able to extract any meaning from Buckley's languid performance of Beckett's creakily worded parable. Kooper and BS&T turned it into something a pimply suburban delinquent could relate to even before he discovered railroad-striped bell bottoms and incense.

Morning Glory, Blood, Sweat & Tears (1968, from "Child is Father to the Man," Columbia Records), via YouTube.

The power elites are sissies

*

This Balloon Juice page has been hanging open in a Firefox tab on my machine for the past week. I wanted to link to it here for two reasons.

First, the author points out a corporate media meme that should be troubling all of us these days: the idea that us everyday slobs have no business criticizing individuals and corporations who turned the global financial system into a pyramid scheme or whose possibly criminal negligence is responsible for runaway pollution of the Gulf of Mexico, and by extension that the President of the United States --- our First Among Equals --- is an unseemly "bully" for threatening to hold them accountable for their acts. That meme, of course, does not extend to a president's nakedly unconstitutional breaking of international treaties, the instigation of illegal wars, the elimination of habeas corpus on demand, or the bulk wiretapping of electronic communications by innocent civilians --- it only applies to picking on corporations and the man-children who direct them.

Second, the post hints at just how unaccustomed to criticism and populist anger these elites have become after 30 years of The Good Life. There are PR campaigns, executed not only though advertising but by marquee-name news commentators, that scold citizens for "vilifying" financiers and oilmen for the destruction they have sown. Why would the captains of industry bother with such nonsense? Because we make them nervous. They do not like their parasitic livelihoods and lifestyles to be criticized, because they're important people and therefore entitled to anything they wish: unearned income, untaxed riches, unwarranted power, and immunity from accountability. They are nervous because many, many people are beginning to understand that they are parasites out of control. And that they are terrified sissies. There's not a man among them; candy-ass jabronis. Revel in their fear.

Recommended atmospherics for the general's exit interview

*

On the slim chance that President Obama decides to take my advice on how to handle the problem with his allegedly insubordinate General Officer, then he also may consider my serving suggestion for the exit interview.

The general's seat at the conference table should be reserved with one warm bottle of Bud Lite Lime, placed on a TGI Friday's coaster. Obama should arrive at the meeting 15 minutes late with an ice-cold 40, two fresh packs of Philip Morris Commanders, and a box of kitchen matches. Joe Biden should arrive at the meeting 15 minutes early with two fifths of Wild Irish Rose (no glass) so he can keep the general company until the boss is done chillin'.

Undereducated guess [updated]

*

Something about the layout and editing of the HuffPost front page from tonight, shown below, gives me the strong gut feeling that Obama will not fire his insubordinate 4-star general. Check the wording on the subhead: "President Obama Rebukes His Top Afghan General For 'Poor Judgment'."

Nope. If you're going to fire the guy, you don't make Peep 1 about it for the Tuesday evening headline writers. Why would the president bother with public "tough talk" before having the guy's ass on a platter in person? If my hunch is correct, I must say that it would be a really witless move with zero upside. BHO will get mau-maued whether he cans McChrystal or lets him stay. But in the latter case, Obama will also look like a king-hell pansy. And he should expect more of the same in his future. Limbaugh wins much less if Obama emerges from the oval office with the general's blood dripping from his socialist fangs.

No one is indispensable. Meanwhile, insubordination is unacceptable in any job, period, and it's always cause for immediate dismissal. Soldiers know this as well as forklift operators and Wal-Mart associates and Army public affairs officers. Maybe McChrystal wants to get fired and become the newest political darling of right-wingers (a role I still see Petraeus playing even if he retires along normal lines). So let him. Whether you support the Afghanastan mission or not, the good general has jeopardized its execution with his hi-jinx and he knows it. Not exactly a career-crowning achievement on which to base a political campaign, though. Basically, his motives seem pretty murky to me unless he just can't hold his Bud Lite Lime (the drinking of which should certainly be sufficient grounds for loss of rank and dismissal).

Update: Florida Rep. Alan Grayson has a few more reasons why McChrystal's presence can no longer be tolerated, including an incident last year when he publicly showed-up Obama about Afghanistan troop strength. And, incidentally and apropos of nothing, Grayson is my leading candidate to become the next Huey Long. Just a disinterested observation....

Saturday Night Fish Fry Junior!

*

Hokey smoke, Bullwinkle! It's an ultra-rare Saturday night twin spin!



Why? Because when I walked into Schunck's (The Friendliest Store In Town, I'll have you know!) to shop for victuals this evening, I was pleasantly smacked upside the head to hear this terrific summer 1966 wimp-rocker in progress. It's a swingin' guilty pleasure, what can I say? Musta heard this repeatedly on transistor radios at the Indiana Dunes; I can practically feel the sun blistering my skin off and smell other people's suntan lotion as I listen to it.

This was the title tune from a comeback album by one Ezekiel Christopher Montanez. Wikipedia sez, "The title single from the album, sung in a soft, very high tenor range and played on primarily adult-formatted radio stations, confused some disc jockeys...." Haha! "Very high tenor" indeed --- I think they used to call that "alto." Anyway, the title single didn't "confuse" the program directors at WLS and WCFL in Chicago that summer, because that's where and when I done imprinted on it like a baby bird.

Other Wikipedia things I did not know: this tune was penned in 1945, and was performed earlier by Sara Vaughn, Nat Cole and Nancy Wilson, and even (date unknown) by the great Johnny Hartman.

The More I See You, Chris Montez (1966, A&M Records), via YouTube.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

Uno!
Dos!
One! two! tres! quatro!



This proto-lummox-rock speaks for itself. That said, I will briefly point to a few amusing features of this video, of which I do not know the provenance. First, the Pharaohs look more like Sheiks than what they purport to be. Second, Sam is costumed more like a Sikh than a Pharaoh, but maybe that was why he called himself a Sham. Third, the boys give us a fresh and clever application of go-go girl technology, namely being that the cuties are as motionless as mummies throughout the performance. And fourth, Sam didn't need no stinking lip syncing, as is especially evident during the last chorus as his voice tatters and he even cracks up at being busted with it on live TV. Probably either one run-through or tequila shot too many before rolling videotape. Everything about it looks fun.

RubberCrutch Bonus Trivia! In summer 2007, inspired by my memory of these antic lyric stylings of Domingo “Sam” Samudio whilst being browbeaten by my Chinese date and a small roomful of her equally Chinese students upstairs of a campus bar at a private karaoke party, I plucked this song from the tune menu they kept shoving up my grille. "I'll fix their wagon," I thought to myself. The crowd went wild, so I ended up doing two more by request. And significantly, there was no alcohol whatsoever involved! That's what Sam means by "let's not be L7"!

Wooly Bully, Sam The Sham and The Pharaohs (1966, unknown live TV performance), via YouTube. 

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

*

So go on and live....



I fell in love with this song, like so many others in the 1966 - 1967 timeframe, before dawn. The situation was this: every Wednesday evening the Williams Press truck would engine-knock up our driveway and throw me a bundle or two of The Homewood-Flossmoor Star, the biweekly area newspaper. I would roll 'em all up in rubber bands (or when they were fat or I was lazy I'd use the flat trifold method) and get to bed early. Before bed, though, I'd snatch my sister Peggy's red and white plastic transistor Sears Silvertone radio/record player, which was the size of a Belgian paver but also a marvel of miniaturization at the time, and stash it with the bulldog edition of the Star in my old-school canvas paperboy bag. Then, around 4 or 4:30 a.m. I'd drag my scrawny carcass out of bed, get dressed, and head out into the suburban dark. The important thing was that radio, even more important than the princely paycheck. I started every Thursday all alone in the calm, dark reverberating open-air auditorium of suburban concrete, brick, and cedar siding with the predawn sounds of WCFL-1000, one of Chicago's two Top 40 powerhouses in the mid-'60s. (At that time WLS-890 didn't start broadcasting music until Chrome-Dome Weber came on around 6:05, after all the farmer nonsense.) These were formative mystical experiences for me, and I gratefully soaked up everything from The Casinos to the Doors. I remember first taking note this song, "Tell It Like It Is," around February 1967. This was the same month I heard the early-morning Chicago premier of a jaw-dropping Beatles song called "Strawberry Fields Forever," which literally brought me to a dead stop in the snow flurries as I tried to puzzle out its melody and structure.

So I originally felt a little weird about luxuriating in "Tell It Like It Is" because to my innocent ears it sounded like (wait for it) serious country and western! That's right: I heard it as a crossover country-pop tune (not actually knowing that term at the time), and it would have been damn uncool for me to admit liking such a thing in the winter of 1967 even as the crocuses of The Summer Of Love were starting to think about peeping their randy little budding heads up out of the earth. (Editor's note: some country was OK by me even back then, such as Roger Miller and a Jack Jones hit or two, but that stuff kinda at least sounded like rock.) It's not that I was some kind of proto-hippie or was even aware of such things beyond how they were made fun of on "Petticoat Junction." But it wasn't rock and roll, so what the hell else could it be!?! Sorta jazzy, but definitely not jazz. Well, "country" or whatever, I'd never heard a more beautiful rhythm guitar sound before then, and the piano and percussion kept things peppy with a 6/8 beat in back of the seductive melody. And that voice... like a choir of bells.

I rediscovered this song in the mid-'70s when I started hoarding 45 rpm records from thrift stores with Larry K. With more mature ears, informed by three semesters of college-level music theory (harmony), I was bowled over by it again. By then I'd recategorized it as "country soul" in my still-underdeveloped bean, and remember thinking to myself about Aaron Neville's vocal performance, "this guy is like a white Al Green!" I don't think that it was until sometime in the 1980s that I finally discovered that Aaron Neville and his brothers were, uh, black. Today I can recognize the vivid New Orleans flavor of the chart, especially in the horn sounds and even the rhythm guitar, but I still hear "Tell It Like It Is" as a small masterpiece of country soul.

Tell It Like It Is, Aaron Neville (1966, Par-Lo Records), via YouTube.

Apropos of nothing

*

Office still life with margarita glass and melba toast resembling polar cross section of a lemon. Shot on iPhone 3G; cropped, slightly gamma-corrected, and sharpened using Adobe Bridge and Photoshop.

James Fenimore Cooper: hack literary prophet (featuring Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

*

Apropos of nothing, my good pal Highly Osmotic Salami recently sent me the link to a rollicking 1895 critique, penned by Mark Twain, regarding the literary contributions of James Fenimore Cooper. You can read Twain's highly informative and entertaining essay here. Even if 19th century criticism is not your cup of tea or it runs too long for your tastes, I highly recommend that you scan the first few sentences, at least, and then sample some of the text after the numbered list, or else try the five paragraphs starting at the sentence that begins, "If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty...." Not only is Twain's use of humor devastating, as usual, but his application of language is at once both princely and accessible. There's barely a hint of old-fashioned rhetoric or vocabulary; mainly just the power of plainly written English, authored with craft and intent. I would be honored and amazed if I were able to roughly approximate Twain's elegant economy with words and discipline of tone. His late-life essays, which I devoured over 30 years ago but haven't much revisited, are never far from from the back of my mind.

That said, I think Twain was indulging in a bit of blood sport with the legacy of the late Cooper, who was considered a literary giant throughout 19th century America and also overseas. For example, although the point about Cooper's "singularly dull" word sense may be well taken, Twain's extensive catalog of the author's specific transgressions seems somewhat petty and academic, especially to postmodern citizens who have been forced to accept some unlovely aspects of rapidly evolving vocabulary and usage.

Having only once tried to read Cooper as 4th grader and becoming bored stupid within about 21 pages of The Last of the Mohicans, I can't claim any first-hand knowledge of Cooper's work or his career. But the absurd heroics that Twain amusingly deconstructs, such as the forest shoot-off where bullets hit bulls-eyes and then other bullets hit the earlier bullets, may have been intended less to withstand critical analysis and more to excite the minds and imaginations of young boys whose families were building new towns at the edges of frontier territories. If Cooper was a hack, then maybe he knew it and didn't care. Or maybe he even relished his role as a hack popular entertainer, endowing his canny woodmen and noble savages with the prowess of Olympians for pure diversion value just like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did in the 1960s with their own lovable and highly significant hack creations like Spider-Man, The Thing, the X-Men, and even the mythology-inspired Thor. Perhaps Cooper became a literary force mostly because the cultural elites said he was rather than by his own pretense. You know: just like John Irving.

Anyway, I'll probably never read Fenimore Cooper, in large part because of Twain's critique, which I can't help but to honor even given the churlish* undertone of it. But one of Twain's most devastating observations about Cooper's incompetence at writing dialog attracted my own postmodern interest, not only as the literary insult intended but also as a possible hint that Cooper may at the same time have been 150 years ahead of his peers in this regard. Says Twain:

The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern ears. To believe that such talk really ever came out of people's mouths would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom to spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a man's mouth was a rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there.

In the bemused mind of Twain, who presumably had not traveled a century into the future and attended various Lynn Street happy hours, Cooper's dialog was surreal and insufferable. But if Twain's characterization is accurate, then Fenimore Cooper's dialog may have amounted to literary prophecy. Sometime soon, sit unobtrusively in a bar or coffee shop sometime, or maybe your own neighborhood gathering, and listen. Try the break room at work, or the weekly staff meeting. Or the Sunday morning infotainment shows. Listen intently for the "relevancy with an embarrassed look."
______________
* I learned the term churl in 1965 when Lee-and-Kirby creation Dr. Doom back-knuckled a hapless lackey with his iron gauntlet as punishment for some offense, real or imagined by the supreme despot of Latveria, and publicly denounced the poor sap as a "WITLESS CHURL!"