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The Winter Dance Party, 1959 28 Nov 2024 12:41 PM (4 months ago)

The Buddy Holly crash-site memorial

The Winter Dance Party of 1959 is best known for the tragic plane crash and deaths of three popular rock & roll musicians, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper. Don McLean’s famous 1971 song, American Pie, immortalized the tragedy as “the day the music died”.

Rock & roll music took off in 1956 when Elvis had a string of hits and influenced just about every rock & roll artist who came after him. The major pioneers of Rock were Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. But by the end of 1959, all of these musicians would be gone from the music scene.

The Winter Dance Party tour began on January 23rd in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. These concerts lasted a total of 24 days, crisscrossing six mid-western states in the dead of winter--Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky. The musical acts were Buddy Holly, Dion and the Belmonts, Richie Valens, the Big Bopper and Frankie Sardo.

Buddy Holly was the most famous of the tour group musicians, already having a string of hits. His first hit single with The Crickets was That’ll Be the Day in February 1957, others being, Every Day, Not Fade Away, Peggy Sue, Maybe Baby, Oh Boy and Rave On.

Dion and the Belmonts was a quartet from the Bronx, a white Doowop group with three songs on the Billboard top 100, I Wonder Why, No One Knows and Don’t Pity Me. They were on American Bandstand in early 1958 and after that appearance their records began to get national airplay. Their first major tour was in late 1958 with The Coasters, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and Bobby Darin. But their most famous songs, A Teenager in Love and Where or When, didn’t come out until after the Winter Dance Party. In the early 1960s, Dion would go on to become one of the most popular recording artists of the time with hits like Run around Sue, The Wanderer and Ruby Baby.

Richie Valens at 17 was a performer on the rise. He had three hit songs on the charts at the time of the tour, Come on Let’s Go, Donna, and his biggest hit La Bamba, a Mexican folk song that Valens sang in a rock & roll style. La Bamba is on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

The Big Bopper (JP Richardson) was a popular DJ from Beaumont, Texas. He was also a musician and song writer. He wrote the song White Lightning for George Jones which became Jones’ first number one hit on the country charts. He also wrote Running Bear for Johnny Preston, which became a hit after Richardson’s death in the plane crash. Richardson recorded Chantilly Lace for Mercury records and followed it with Big Bopper’s Wedding. Both songs were still actively playing on the radio at the time of his death.

Frankie Sardo was from Brooklyn and had a regional hit with Fake Out. He was not nationally known and was the opening act of the Winter Dance Party concerts.

Buddy’s original band, The Crickets, were not part of the tour. In 1958 Buddy moved to New York City and met Maria Elaina, the secretary for Southern Publishing. They fell in love and on August 15, 1958, Buddy took Maria back to Lubbock to get married in a private ceremony. Separating from his manager and the Crickets, Buddy and Maria returned to New York city and moved into an apartment in Greenwich Village. Maria was pregnant at the time.

Buddy recruited a new back-up group, which would also be the back-up band for the other musicians on the Winter Dance Party tour--Carl Bunch on drums, Tommy Alsup on guitar and Waylon Jennings on bass.

Waylon was from Littlefield, Texas, a small town 36 miles northwest of Lubbock, Buddy’s hometown. The two met in 1958 in a restaurant in Lubbock and became friends. At the time Waylon was working as a DJ and performer at KDAV, a local radio station. Buddy was already an established recording artist and produced Waylon’s first record, Jole Blon.

In 1956-57 Buddy and Jerry Allison were a country singing duo that played at the Lubbock, Texas Youth Center and shared bills with well-known artists that passed through the area. At one concert they were the opening act for Elvis, who was not yet nationally known. According to Allison, before that concert they were country musicians, but seeing Elvis changed everything. They became enthusiastic converts to this new style of music, rock & roll, and “Buddy began writing songs with a new intensity”.

In March of 1958, Buddy Holly and the Crickets did a month long tour in England and was a major influence on the early rock & roll scene there. The Crickets’ records in the UK sold faster than the record company could produce them.  Young John Lennon and George Harrison, in part, learned to play guitar by listening to the Crickets’ records and Lennon wore Buddy’s style of glasses for a while. The Quarrymen changed their name to the Beatles, inspired by Holly’s band the Crickets, and The Rolling Stones’ first hit song in the U.S. was a cover of Holly’s Not Fade Away.

In January and February of 1959, the Midwest was extremely cold. The musicians traveled from one venue to another in reconditioned school buses with faulty heaters. They had no “Roadies”, so the musicians had to heft their own equipment. Sometimes there were as many as 300-400 miles between shows and the temperatures were below freezing.

The 9^th concert was at the National Guard Armory in Duluth, Minnesota on January 31^st, three days before the fatal crash. A sixteen-year-old Robert Zimmerman, from Hibbing, Minnesota, who later changed his name to Bob Dylan, was in the audience, right up in front of the stage. In his Nobel Prize lecture, Dylan writes about seeing Holly perform:

 “From the moment I first heard him, I felt akin. Buddy played the music I loved. He was the Archetype, everything that I wasn’t and wanted to be. I saw him only but once and that was a few days before he was gone. If I had to go back to the dawning of it all, I guess I’d have to start with Buddy Holly. I had to travel a hundred miles to see him play and I wasn’t disappointed. He was powerful and electrifying and had a commanding presence. I was only six feet away. He was mesmerizing. I watched his face, his hands, the way he tapped his foot, his big black glasses, the way he held his guitar, the way he stood, his neat suit, everything about him. Then out of the blue, the most uncanny thing happened. He looked me straight, dead in the eye and he transmitted something. I didn’t know what, and it gave me the chills.”

Two shows were scheduled for February 1^st in Appleton Wis. 336.5 miles from Duluth. With over 200 miles to go, one of the buses broke down outside of Hurley, Wis.  It was 20 below zero. The matinee had to be cancelled. Carl Bunch, the drummer, got frostbitten feet and was sent off to a hospital. Another bus came and picked up the musicians and took them the rest of the way. With Carl gone, Buddy, Richie Valens and Dion took turns playing drums for the concerts in Green Bay and Clear Lake.

Surf Ballroom, Clear Lake, Iowa

The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa was the 11th concert on February 2nd. It was originally built in 1933, a wooden framed building on Witke’s beach on Clear Lake. Carl Fox wanted to create a ballroom that resembled an ocean beach club. He furnished it with bamboo and rattan furniture, murals of the ocean surf and pictures of palm trees on the walls. It was a venue for dancing to the big bands of the 30s and 40s. It attracted the popular orchestras of the time such as: Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Glen Miller, Stan Kenton and Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. In 1947, the building burned down and was rebuilt in 1948 across the street. In 2009 the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame designated the ballroom as an historical landmark and in 2011 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

People who were interviewed after the Winter Dance Party, Clear Lake concert said they saw no signs that any of the musicians were suffering from the cold and poor traveling conditions. They all said they had a great time and enjoyed the music.

The next concert was at the Armory in Moorhead, Minn. just across the river from Fargo, North Dakota. Frustrated with the long, cold uncomfortable traveling conditions, Buddy chartered a plane for Waylon, Tommy and himself, to fly from Clear Lake to Fargo, North Dakota. After the Clear Lake concert, Carol Anderson, the Surf Ballroom manager, drove the three musicians to the Mason City Municipal Airport. The flight cost $36 per person.

The single engine Beechcraft Bonanza had room for only three passengers. JP Richardson (the Big Bopper) was fighting a bad cold, so Waylon gave him his seat. Richie Valens had a fear of flying, but did not want to spend another night riding on the cold uncomfortable bus, so he asked Tommy for his seat. Bob Hale, a local DJ and the MC for the concert, flipped a coin and Tommy lost, so Richie got the remaining seat. It was reported that after the coin toss Valens said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever won anything in my life”.

1947 Beechcraft Bonanza at the Mason City, Iowa Airport

Some of the fans were on the tarmac to see their heroes off. The three musicians boarded the plane at 12:30am on February 3^rd. As they were boarding, Holly jokingly said to Waylon, “Well I hope your damn bus freezes up.” And Waylon replied, “Well I hope your ol plane crashes.” Years later Waylon said in an interview that he felt guilty all of his life for saying that to his good friend Buddy.

The pilot, 21-year-old Roger Peterson, flew for Dwyer Flying Service. He had just over four years of flying experience with 128 flight hours in Bonanzas and 52 hours of instrument flight training. He had passed the written test, but was not certified to fly by instruments only. His training was on a conventional artificial Horizon instrument that displayed the sky on top and ground on the bottom. But the plane he flew that night had a Sperry F-3 altitude gyroscope that had the ground on top and the sky on the bottom.

That night there was low cloud cover with no visible horizon. Peterson had not heard about a blizzard warning. They took off and must have flown right into it. Being a rural area, there were no ground lights to visually orient the young pilot. The plane crashed in a cornfield five miles after take-off. It hit the ground going 170 miles per hour. The right wing-tip gouged the frozen ground for 57 feet before the plane spun into a cartwheel for 540 feet and finally stopped, resting against a barbed wire fence.

Because of the blizzard, they did not discover the wreckage until the morning. The bodies of the three musicians had been ejected from the plane and lay all night in the open field, not far from the wreckage. Peterson’s body was entangled in the crumpled plane and had to be removed with blow torches. The civil aeronautics investigator concluded that the probable cause of the accident was “the pilot’s unwise decision to attempt a flight at night that required skills he did not have”.  Holly was 22, Valens was 17 and the Big Bopper was 28.

Holly’s mother heard about her son’s death over the radio. Maria Elaina learned of her husband’s death by a television report. After only six months of marriage, she instantly became a widow. Shortly thereafter, she miscarried and lost their baby. In the months following the crash, authorities adopted the policy of not releasing the names of crash victims until the family members have been notified. The public did not find out about the marriage and Maria’s pregnancy until after Buddy’s death. One more song made the charts after Holly’s death, It Doesn’t Matter Anymore. It shot up to number 13 on the charts. The music industry had discovered that after an artist’s death, there was great opportunity for record sales.

Buddy Holly’s career lasted just a year and a half and he had only one number one hit, That’ll Be the Day. But his influence on popular music was immense. Buddy and his band The Crickets, set the standard for rock & roll bands. They were a self-contained band with two guitars, bass and drums and would become the blue print for later bands. Buddy wrote and produced all of his songs, which was unheard of at the time.

The Winter Dance Party continued after the crash. There were 13 more concerts scheduled after Clear Lake and the main three acts were gone. For the next show in Moorhead, Minnesota, fifteen-year-old Bobby Vee filled in for Buddy and Waylan filled in for Buddy for the rest of the tour. Some of the other performers to fill in for the remainder of the tour were, Jimmy Clanton, Fabian and Frankie Avalon. These handsome young singers were more in line with the crooners of the previous generation. As the decade changed, the airways of the early 60s would be taken over by theirs and others’ soft pop rock music. The raw creative force of early rock & roll did seem to have died out.

Don McLean was a thirteen-year-old paperboy in New York City in the winter of 1959.  On the morning after the crash, he cut open a bundle of papers and read the front page headlines, “Iowa Air Crash kills 3 Singers”. In 1971 he wrote the song American Pie.

“But February made me shiver, with every paper I’d deliver, bad news on the doorstep, I couldn’t take one more step, I can’t remember if I cried, when I read about his widowed bride, but something touched me deep inside, the day the music died.”   

 

 

 

The mystery of Sinatra's gravestone switch 8 Sep 2024 12:35 PM (7 months ago)

 Frank Sinatra is buried not far from the Twin Palms home that he occupied from 1947 to 1957. He lived there with his first wife Nancy and their three kids, and then with Ava Gardener after he and Nancy divorced. Katie and I drove by the house and peeked at the grounds from outside the gate, and then went over to the Desert Memorial Park cemetery to have a look at Frank’s grave.

  

Sinatra's Twin Palms House 30 Aug 2024 11:46 AM (7 months ago)

 

Near the end of June Katie and I drove north to get away from the Arizona heat and to visit family and friends in Washington state. We take our time on these trips and stop along the way to view local sights or hike in beautiful areas. Besides, our aging bodies demand that we get out of the car and move around at regular intervals.

Our first night’s stop was Palm Springs. For years I’ve been interested in the history of Palm Springs as Hollywood’s favorite get-away destination and playground. This exodus of the rich and famous to the desert began in the 1930s, a time when gossip columnists like Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper could derail an actor’s career by revealing details of their personal lives. The newspapers of the time paid travel expenses for columnists for up to 100 miles and Palm Springs was just over the limit. Famous people wanting to get out of the limelight could drive to Palm Springs from LA in just a couple of hours and be out of the paparazzi’s reach.

Before leaving on our trip, I had just finished reading the book, “Sinatra and Me, In the Wee Small Hours”, by Tony Oppedisano. I was a total rock & roll fan growing up in the Midwest in the 50s and 60s but later in life my taste in music expanded and I became a Sinatra fan. Tony O’s book is not so much a biography of Frank but a memoir of Tony’s experiences and close friendship with him.

Tony O was a singer and musician and performed periodically at Jilly’s night club in Manhattan where many of the rich and famous hung out, including Frank. One night in December 1972, Frank came into Jilly’s and Jilly introduced him to Tony.  They became friends right away. At the time Tony was just 21 years old.

Jilly was Frank’s confidant for about 40 years, accompanying him on tours. “He was there for Frank for anything he needed”. In 1992 on his 75^th birthday, Jilly was broadsided by a drunk driver and died. Frank was devastated. Jilly’s death left a big hole in his life. Tony worked his way into filling that hole, becoming Frank’s “road manager” and confidant.

Frank was the most popular entertainer of his generation. Before Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, the Beatles and Elvis, in the 1940s, Frank had legions of girls screaming at his concerts. These young women were called “Bobby Soxers” by the media, because of the way they dressed--loose skirts, ankle socks and black and white saddle shoes. At the time this was a rebellious way to dress. The Bobby Soxers’ music was jazz and swing and their favorite singer was Frank.

In 1952 Sinatra's career tanked and Columbia records dropped him. But he revived his career in 1953, after making the movie “From Here to Eternity” and subsequently winning the Academy Award and signing with Capitol records. He began recording with Nelson Riddle and he and Riddle had a great working relationship. Together they produced many of Sinatra’s most popular recordings. It was this era of Frank’s music that turned me into a fan.

According to Tony O, Frank felt most at home in the southwest desert. I could identify with that feeling. In 1947 Frank had a house built in Palm Springs as a get-away for his young family. He had just earned his first million and signed a movie contract with MGM. He originally wanted architect E. Stewart Williams to build him a Georgian style house with brick façade and columns. Williams and his business partner brother thought this was just wrong for the desert and suggested a design more in harmony with the desert environment. They showed Frank plans for a “Desert Modern House”, a mid-century modern design. He liked it, and so they started work on what is now called Sinatra’s “Twin Palms House”.

Frank, his wife Nancy, and their two children, Frank Jr. and Nancy "Jr." occupied the house just prior to the Christmas holiday in 1947. In 1948 their daughter Tina was born, but later that same year Nancy and the kids moved out because of Frank’s affair with Ava Gardner. Frank and Ava married in 1951 and she moved into Twin Palms with him. It was quite a volatile marriage and ended in divorce in 1957. Frank sold the house and bought another property up on a hill subsequently called "the Rancho Mirage compound". It became his home base until he and his 4^th wife Babara sold it in 1995. He was briefly married to Mia Farrow, his 3rd wife, sometime in the 1970s.

Twin Palms was not far from our hotel, so Katie and I drove by to have a look. It was in the middle of a sprawling, upscale suburban neighborhood. We couldn’t see past the front wall, so we went around to the back and peeked through the gate.  There are plenty of photos online of both the outside and inside of the house which can be rented through Luxury Vacation Rentals, with emphasis on "luxury". Katie and I will not be staying there any time soon.  

 When Sinatra occupied Twin Palms there were no surrounding houses. The views of the mountains in the background are spectacular. I could imagine the peace he found that Tony O describes, sitting by the pool on still, warm nights, drinking Jack Daniels and smoking Camel cigarettes.  It was definitely a different era.  

 

Andy's Gang, a favorite children's TV show from the fifties 2 Mar 2024 10:59 AM (last year)

Mr. Peabody instructs Sherman to set the Wayback machine to the year 1955

 While driving through Kingman, Arizona, on our way back to Washington state, Katie and I noticed the street we were on was Andy Devine Avenue. Andy Devine was a character actor in movies and television shows and died in 1977. When I looked him up online, I found out that he was born in Flagstaff, and grew up in Kingman. He is the town's favorite native son. In the Mohave Museum in Kingman, there is a whole room devoted to his life and career.  

The End of Innocence 19 Nov 2023 11:47 AM (last year)

1965

Bob Kuban and the In-men, Our Local Band 27 Mar 2023 10:08 AM (2 years ago)

 

The St. Louis area spawned many famous musicians, most notably Chuck Berry, Ike and Tina Turner and more recently Michael McDonald, who graduated from McClure High School, in Florissant, Mo. I had already graduated from McClure before he entered high school, so I'm sorry to say, I didn't know him. In North St. Louis in the mid '60s the local band that made the big-time was Bob Kuban and the In-Men. If you've heard of them, you are either familiar with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's one hit wonder list or you’re from the St. Louis area or you have an incredible amount of rock and roll trivia rambling around in your brain. I'm guilty of all three.

Bob Kuban was the drummer and band leader of the In-Men. On Friday nights during the summer, his band would play at Jackson Park, a relatively small park in Berkeley, a north St. Louis suburb. Jackson Park hosted a variety of local bands during the hot St. Louis summer nights. In the summers of 1964 and 1965, my friends and I would go back and forth between Jackson Park and the local YMCA where there was usually a band playing as well. But when Bob Kuban and the In-Men were playing at Jackson Park, we tried not to miss it. It was a first-rate band.

The Beatles and the British bands were taking over America at that time and they were the major influence on popular music. Bob Kuban's band was not your typical band of the era. It had more in common with the earlier rhythm and blues bands of Ike Turner, Wilson Picket and James Brown. In an interview, Kuban states that Ike Turner was a big influence on him and his formation of the band. As a footnote, in 1951 before Tina joined him, Ike Turner's band was called The Kings of Rhythm. They recorded a song called Rocket 88 which some believe was the very first rock and roll song.

Bob Kuban had an eight-piece band with horns, drums and keyboard, which was played by Greg Hoeltzel, who lived in my neighborhood. The lead singer was Walter Scott, who had a great voice for that style of music. During those two summers we listened to our local band, knowing they were a cut above the other local groups, playing in their unique St. Louis style. This was several years before Chicago, originally called (Chicago Transit Authority) and Blood Sweat and Tears would bring the big band sound back to popular music. In 1966 Bob Kuban and the In-Men hit it big with The Cheater. The song was all over the radio for months. That year we watched our local guys on national TV, but their run was short lived. They had only a few other songs that got national play, Teaser, and a cover of a Beatles song Drive My Car. I also remember hearing a song called Jerkin' Time and the Bat Man Theme on the radio as well, but they may have just been popular locally.

Walter Scott left the band shortly after The Cheater's popularity to pursue a solo career. He never had another hit song, but in his repertoire, he sang (Look out for The Cheater) over and over again in a variety of performance venues. In 1983, when Bob Kuban was trying to get the original band back together for a reunion concert, he discovered that Walter Scott was missing. Scott was found 4 years later floating face down in a cistern with his ankles, knees and wrists bound. He had been shot through the heart from the back. In one of life's ironic turns, it was discovered that his murderers were his “cheater” wife and her "cheater" boyfriend. There was a Forensic Files TV show about it, as well as a book written titled The Cheaters: The Walter Scott Murder by Scottie Piesmeyer.

I don’t know if Bob Kuban still has his band. He would be in his 80s today. I read that not too long ago, the Bob Kuban Brass played a summer evening gig at Jackson Park and invited all the fans to come out for old time's sake. I would have liked to have been there. I live out west and haven't been back to St. Louis since 2002. But I still have memories of those hot summer evenings in the '60s at Jackson Park, listening to our local band that made the big-time.

Here's a link to The Cheater

(131) The Cheater (Remastered) - YouTube

 

The Birth of Motown 27 Mar 2023 9:37 AM (2 years ago)

The Elders of Green Valley, The Silent Generation 21 Mar 2023 9:39 AM (2 years ago)

 

View from our patio

Katie and I moved back to Arizona, but this time as snowbirds, splitting our time between Washington and Green Valley. We were in our sixties when we lived here before and the folks of the WWII Generation were the elders in this community of people 55 years and up. The youngest of that generation would now be 97 years old, so there are not many left, and those who are, don’t get out a lot. The Silent Generation, those people born between 1928 and 1945, was the dominant group, while Baby Boomers, born from 1946 to 1964, were the youngsters.

Now Boomers are the dominant group, the youngest is 59 and the oldest 77. The evidence of this Boomer take-over is everywhere. Walking the desert trails, I’m occasionally flashed the two-finger peace sign by another walker. It always takes me by surprise and I usually just give a normal wave. Many men still display their “freak flags”, with tiny thin pony tails or facial hair. The other day, I was standing in line at the grocery store and the elderly woman in front of me had long straight white hair and was wearing a colorful skirt down to her ankles. She reeked of patchouli oil, which transported me mentally back to the Oregon Country Fair in the 70s, where the dominant smells were patchouli and cannabis. We’ve attended three different music venues since we’ve been here and all the music was 50s and early 60s rock & roll.

The youngest Boomers have more in common with Gen-Xers. They were too young to remember Watergate and when the boys came of military age, the draft had already ended, so, unless they lost a loved one, the Vietnam War had little impact on their lives. The oldest Gen-Xer would be 58 and they are beginning to show up here as well. I see them holding hands, walking with a spring in their step, newly retired, hopeful, bright-eyed and bushytailed.  

The Silent Generation(SG), also referred to as Traditionalists, are the elders now. They were children during the Great Depression and the end of WWII. Couples during this time were not having a lot of babies, so they are a comparatively small generation.  As children they were strictly managed by their parents (seen but not heard) as opposed to the later more promiscuous Boomers and Gen-X children. Radio was their dominant form of entertainment. Women entered the workforce in record numbers and unions became strong and dominant in the work place. SGs inherited the values of their parents-- conformity, hard work, religiosity and early marriage. But times were changing and for the first time in American history, divorce became legal and more culturally accepted, so this generation has the highest divorce rate in US history. Communism was on the rise in the world and Joseph McCarthy attempted to root out communist leaning individuals in all walks of life. SGs made up the majority of soldiers in the Korean War. Because of these national events, this generation is described as being conservative and cautious.

And yet, this cautious and conservative generation had a rebellious undercurrent that erupted in the 1950s.  In the 1953 movie “The Wild One”, Marlon Brando’s character, the biker gang leader, was asked by another character, “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?”, and he replied “What have you got?”. The 1955 movie “Rebel Without a Cause”, starring James Dean, captured the alienation, angst and confusion felt by teenage SGs. From this generation sprung the civil rights movement, which later morphed into the 60s peace movement and protests against the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King and John Lewis were SGs. The Beatniks were a 50s phenomenon, a counter-culture movement whose expression was seen in literature, art and music. They laid the foundation for the Hippies of the 60s.  

The “Beat Generation” or “Beatniks” were anti-establishment and anti-materialism. Their music was jazz by musicians like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis and their writers were Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Gary Snyder among others. They embraced eastern philosophy and adopted the lifestyle of the “Lost Generation” writers and French existentialists of the 20s. Some dressed in black tight outfits, horned rimmed glasses and berets and they gathered in coffee houses and listened to poetry readings or acoustic music with accompanying bongos.  My introduction to Beatniks as a child was the Maynard G. Krebs character on the TV show “The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis”, played by Bob Denver. Later I read Kerouac’s book “On the Road”. In Greenwich Village, the coffee house scene transformed in the early 60s into the folk revival movement of Silent Generation musicians like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Eric Andersen, Tom Rush, Tim Harden, and Leonard Cohen as well as John Sebastian(The Lovin Spoonful), Roger Mcguinn(The Byrds) and Cass Elliot(Mamas and the Papas).

Ken Kesey, an SG, was a direct bridge between the Beatniks and the Hippies. In 1964, he and the Merry Pranksters drove a psychedelically painted 1939 International Harvester school bus they named “Further”, across the country, smoking marijuana and dropping LSD. They stopped in small towns and visited with (or more like intimidated) the locals along the way. Neal Cassady, who Kerouac’s side kick character was based on in “On the Road”, was one of the Merry Pranksters. The “trip” was immortalized in Tom Wolf’s book “The Electric Cool-aid Acid Test”.

All the early rock & rollers were from the Silent Generation, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Bo Diddley, Ricky Nelson. All are dead now. Don Everly just died in 2021.

I was surprised to learn that even the second wave of rock & roll in the 60s was launched by a bunch of Silent Generation artists--the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Jerry Garcia, Surf Music inventor Dick Dale, as well as the Beach Boys(except the youngest of the Wilson brothers Carl was a Boomer) and Jan and Dean.   

Even though rock & roll was invented and carried on by individuals of the Silent Generation, it was the Boomers who made up the majority of the audience and claimed the music as their own. By the time of the British invasion in 1964, most of the SGs were married and working at their jobs, too busy to pay much attention to the music. But the hordes of Boomers just coming of age, latched on to the music and it became the sound track of our lives.   

 

 

 

 

 

John Sebastian and the Lovin' Spoonful 12 Nov 2022 9:24 AM (2 years ago)

 

 John Sebastian grew up in Greenwich Village. His father was a professional concert harmonica player and his mother, a radio script writer. His godmother was Vivian Vance (Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy), a close friend of John’s mother. His family hosted many musicians at their home, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Sonny Terry, and Lightening Hopkins. John got to know them and their music intimately. I attended a John Sebastian concert in Tucson in the early 2000s. John said Mississippi John Hurt stayed with his family when he was in New York and John learned Mississippi’s finger picking style. He confessed and demonstrated how the Lovin’ Spoonful song “Loving You” was a direct rip off of Hurt’s musical style.

As part of the folk revival, John was in a group called the Mugwumps along with Zal Yanovsky, Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty. In 1964, they put out one album and two singles. When the group broke up, Cass and Denny joined with John and Michelle Phillips to form the Mammas and Pappas and John and Zal recruited bass player Steve Boone and drummer Joe Butler to form the Loving Spoonful. The Mammas and Pappas 1967 hit song, “Creeque Alley”, tells the story of the formation of the two bands.

After their first hit song, “Do You Believe in Magic”, the Lovin’ Spoonful had a string of hits with “You Didn’t Have to be So Nice”, “Day Dream”, “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind”, “Summer in The City”, Rain on the Roof”, “Younger Girl” and “Nashville Cats”. They had seven consecutive top ten hits. John Sebastian was the main song writer and lead singer. He often played the auto harp on their recordings and was/is an excellent guitar and harmonica player. Even though the other members of the group were good musicians, John was the dominant force behind the group.

The band was flying high throughout 1966. Joe Butler was in the Broadway production of “Hair”. The group composed and performed the music for Woody Allen’s film “What’s Up Tiger Lily?”. Sebastian composed the music for Francis Ford Coppola’s second film, “You’re a Big Boy Now” with the band performing all the instrumental background. And they scored another hit song from the film, “Darling be Home Soon.” The producers that created the TV show “The Monkeys” built the show around the Lovin’ Spoonful, but "dropped the band from the project due to conflicts over song publishing rights". 

In May of 1967, Zal left the group after getting busted for marijuana possession. He was a Canadian citizen and the police pressured him to either give up the name of his drug supplier or be deported. Zal was afraid he wouldn’t be allowed back into the U.S. so he complied. After this incident, there was a counter-culture movement to boycott all of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s records and performances. In an interview Zal said he left the band because he didn’t like the direction John’s song writing was taking it. Zal was replaced by Jerry Yester from the Modern Folk Quartet, but the band was hurt by the drug controversy and only had a few minor hits after that. In 1968 Sebastian left the group to pursue a solo career. I love his first solo album titled “John B. Sebastian”.

I attended a benefit concert for fire fighters at the Tacoma Dome in the 90’s. The bands included America and the Lovin’ Spoonful. America sounded great, with the two remaining members. The Lovin’ Spoonful consisted of Boone, Butler, Jerry Yester and his brother Jim. Joe Butler sang all of John’s leads. The music sounded the same, but Butler was no substitute for Sebastian on the lead vocals. In 2000, the original band got back together for their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

In the summer of 1969, Sebastian performed at Woodstock and some of it is captured in the “Woodstock” movie. In an interview John said he was not scheduled to perform. He had hitched a ride on a helicopter and attended the festival as a fan and to support his musician friends. He didn’t even bring a guitar with him. After a fairly long bout of rain, the crew needed to sweep down the stage to make it safe for the electronic equipment. They needed someone who could fill in with just an acoustic guitar, so John borrowed a guitar from his friend and fellow folk singer, Tim Hardin, and performed a totally improvised acoustic set.

In talking about the performance, he said it was a magical moment for him. He was wearing a self-tie-dyed outfit and pretty high on pot. In the middle of the set, the clouds parted and the sun came out. His solo career got a big boost from that performance. John had his biggest solo hit, “Welcome Back” in 1976, the theme song to the television show “Welcome Back Cotter”.

When we saw him perform in Seattle, John still had his voice and put on a great show in the small club. I was determined to speak to him. During the break he went to the bathroom and I followed him. I didn’t want to be creepy, so I waited outside the door. When he came out, I said, “John, thank you for your music.” He said, “You’re welcome.” And that was the extent of it. He got back on stage and finished the show. When we saw him in Tucson years later, he had all but lost his voice. He still put on a good show, but his croaky voice did not work well singing the old “Spoonful” songs but sounded appropriate for the early folk and blues songs. 

The Lovin’ Spoonful was truly an authentic American band that pioneered a genre of rock & roll that is still popular to this day.

 

The "Girl Groups" 1 Jun 2022 9:34 AM (2 years ago)

 

I was in middle school when early rock & roll all but died out and “girl groups” began appearing over the radio airwaves. These groups sprung out of the male dominated Doo-Wop era of the forties and fifties. The “girl group” phenomenon lasted from about 1957 to 1966.The early groups were mostly teenagers who sang together in school and church. “Mr. Lee”, by the Bobbettes was the first song to make the pop charts. These five teenage girls from East Harlem, originally called themselves the Harlem Queens. They grew up in the projects and like the Doo-Wop groups before them, practiced in the hallways and on the playground.

“Maybe”, by the Chantels, was the next song to become a hit. It was a million seller in 1957 and re-released in 1969 after Janis Joplin covered it. The Chantels were five high school girls, ages 14 to 17, who attended parochial school in the Bronx and sang together in the school choir.

My favorite “girl group”, and the act that solidified the “girl group” sound was the Shirelles, four teenagers from Passaic, New Jersey. They began singing together at high school shows and parties, initially calling themselves the Poquellos. They had a sweetness and innocence to their sound, with back-ground harmonies like the earlier Doo-Wop groups. Their first single “I Met Him on a Sunday” was a song they wrote themselves and sang at school parties. Their second single, “Dedicated to the One I Love”, was a cover of a 1957 “5 Royals” song. The Shirelles version was released in 1959, but without a national distributer, only charted at #83 on the Billboard Top 100. In 1961, after they had several hits, the song was re-released and shot to #3. In 1967, the Mamas and the Papas covered the song "Dedicated to the one I Love" which went to #2. This was the first song that Michelle Phillips sang lead on instead of Cass Elliot.  

“Tonight’s the Night”, the Shirelles next hit single, was co-written by lead singer Shirley Owens. “Will You Love MeTomorrow” written by Carole King and her then husband Jerry Goffin was their first #1 song and the first #1 by any “girl group”.  Both of these songs would later make Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the greatest hits of all time. “Mama Said” reached #4 and in early 1962 “Baby It’s You” (co-written by Burt Bacharach, Hal David and Barney Williams) went to #8, It was recorded by the Beatles and put on their first album “Please Please Me” along with another Shirelles’ song, “Boys”, sung by Ringo. In 1969, a group called Smith had the biggest hit with “Baby It’s You”, but I favor the Shirelles’ version. The Shirelles second #1 hit, and their biggest selling single was “Soldier Boy”. Even though they continued to record new material until the late sixties, the Shirelles’ last hit single was “Foolish Little Girl” in 1963, charting at # 4.

Following in the wake of the Shirelles, came a host of other “girl groups” and 1963 was their most successful year. The Chiffons had hits with, “He’s So Fine” and “One Fine Day”(another Carole King/Jerry Goffin song),  The Ronnettes (Phil Spector’s Group) with “Be My Baby”, Martha and The Vandellas (a Motown act) had two hits, “Heatwave” and “Come and Get These Memories”, the Chrystals with “DaDoo Run Run”, and the Angels had a hit with “My Boyfriend’s Back”.

The most popular “girl group” was the Supremes (another Motown act). In 1964 they had two hits, “Where did Our Love Go,” and “Baby Love”. They went on to have 12 number one hits and for a time rivaled the Beatles popularity.

But in 1964, after the Beatles came to America, popular music became dominated by British groups, pushing out and replacing many musical styles, including almost all of the “girl groups”.

 

 

Surf Rock 1 Feb 2022 10:19 AM (3 years ago)

 

     

When I was in high school in Ferguson, Missouri in the early sixties, I dreamed of traveling to California and living the lifestyle of a surfer.  The southern California mystique was in the minds and hearts of many young people at the time. Rock & roll had nearly died in the early sixties. The hard-edged originality of early rockers, like Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Little Richard was gone and the airwaves were filled with clean cut white singers; (lots of Bobbys--Vinton, Vee, Rydel) and Fabian, Shelly Fabre, Connie Francis etc. Most sang well, but it was mainly sanitized pop music. Two major styles of music sprung out of the void, Motown and Surf Music.

Surf Rock is a southern California phenomenon integral to the surf culture of the early sixties, originating mainly in Orange County. Dick Dale is credited as the creator and pioneer.  His family moved to Orange County when he was a seventeen-year-old senior in high school. Dick began surfing and wanted to play music that represented his experience. He was influenced by the instrumental rock music of Duane Eddy, Link Wray and The Venturers. He played a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar and worked with Leo Fender to invent an amplifier that could increase the sound and get a reverb effect that emulated the sound of the waves. This reverb, called the “wet sound”, was built into the fenders amps.  He also made use of the vibrato arm of the guitar to bend the notes and he added tremolo picking, rapid picking that became the signature sound of surf bands.

            Dick Dale and the Deltones song Let’s Go Trippin’ is thought to be the first Surf Rock song. The group introduced it in 1960 at a dance concert at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Newport Beach on the Balboa peninsula. These concerts became known as “Stomps” because the surfers who attended would stomp on the floor in time with the music causing the old dance hall to shake. The dance, “the surfer’s stomp” was born from this.

            The Beach Boys were by far the most popular surf rock band, even though the surfers at the time would not have considered them to be authentic. Surf music was exclusively instrumental until Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys borrowed the basic sound and added the rich harmonies of the late fifties college circuit groups like the Four Freshman and the Hi-Los.  In 1961 the Beach Boys came out with Surfin’, but probably the first surfing song I heard in Missouri was Surfin’ Sufari, followed by Surfin’ USA and Surfer Girl.

Surf music splintered into two genres, instrumental surf rock and vocal surf pop. By 1963 both types of surf music were getting airplay across the country with hits like, Pipeline by the Chantays, Wipeout by the Safaris, and Surf City (co-written by Brian Wilson) by Jan & Dean. Many non-surfing musical groups jumped on the bandwagon and surf music began to fill the airwaves.

During those long, cold winter months in Missouri, intoxicating waves of surf music entered my ears and washed over my brain. I could only dream of the surfing scene of southern California, but it was a dream that enlightened my imagination and warmed my soul.

The Nevada Lineman 16 Nov 2021 9:53 AM (3 years ago)

Returning home to Washington from Arizona on highway 93, Katie and I had an experience where an everyday worker came to the rescue, and became the “hero” of our story. We were on our way to Boise, Idaho after spending the night in an RV park in Ely, Nevada. Highway 93 is a long desolate highway. You have to make sure your gas tank is filled before starting out, because there are stretches of over a hundred miles with no gas station in sight. In 2001 I traveled this highway on a motorcycle, and had not calculated my gas correctly. I coasted on empty into a farmer’s driveway and begged him for enough gas to get me to Las Vegas. He was reluctant, but finally sold me some at an inflated price.

This time we had plenty of gas in the RV to cross Great Basin country. Each basin we entered was greater than the last, big open, expansive areas with mountains off in the distance on all sides. There were few cars or trucks on the highway, but about four hours into our trip, I noticed a small brightly colored car approaching in my rear-view mirror. Quickly it grew bigger and bigger and then blew by us, doing well over the speed limit. It was a new, orange, Audi TT. I wished it would have been going slower, not because of any danger factor, but because I wanted to look at the car. It looked really cool.

I had plenty of time to admire the car just a few minutes later. As we came over a rise, the TT was stopped, dead in the road and a Nevada Sheriff’s car was right in front of it, parked sideways, blocking both lanes. We slowed down and stopped behind the TT. The Sheriff must have just gotten there. There seemed to be no reason why he was stopping traffic. We waited, not knowing what was going on for quite a while. Finally, the deputy got out of his car. I sarcastically commented to Katie that he probably had to finish his coffee and donut first.

He was heavy-set and moved like a giant sloth. Opening the trunk of his squad car, he took out a bright lime green work safety vest and put it on. Then he took two stacks of orange cones out and began placing them on the highway around his vehicle. Bubba, as we referred to him, was straight out of casting for a Smokey and the Bandit movie. He never looked over at us, even though we were just one small car away from him.

Cars and trucks began to stack up behind us and on the other side, coming toward us. Still wondering what was going on, we suddenly saw the top of a telephone pole across the road burst into flames. It continued to burn, until the cross piece that held the wires toppled over and fell to the ground next to the pole. The wires it was holding were attached to a pole on our side of the road. So, when the cross piece fell, the wires lay strewn across the highway. If Bubba hadn’t arrived, we would have driven by unknowingly and without consequence. But somebody behind us or in front of us, would have plowed, right into the live wires. I don’t understand how Bubba knew to arrive when he did. He never acted like he was in a hurry or gave any indication of what was going on. The cones he placed around his car, were in the exact right place after the wires fell.

At least now we knew why we were stopped. A couple of fire trucks and another Sheriffs’ car showed up. All of the first responders got out of their vehicles and gathered in groups to talk. Nobody did anything concerning the still burning telephone pole, or the wires lying across the highway.

We waited for over an hour. Long lines of cars and trucks now waited along with us. Then the cavalry arrived or I should say, one utility truck. We watched as it drove along the line of cars and then went off the road and over to the telephone pole on our side of the highway, not the one that was on fire. Only one worker emerged from the vehicle. He put on a harness and pulled out some tools from the truck. Katie and I were elated. We had just driven over 4 hours and had been waiting an hour, while the firemen in full fire-fighting gear chatted with the deputies. The utility worker didn’t chat with anyone. He just methodically did what needed to be done.

We were happy to be waiting in our RV as opposed to a car. We had a place to pee and plenty of snacks and drinks in the frig and cupboards. As we watched the utility worker do his job, I plugged in my I-pod. I had just the right song to play for the occasion, Wichita Lineman.  I had three different versions. The most popular by Glen Campbell, a cover by James Taylor and a version by Jimmy Webb, who wrote the song. I chose Glen’s. What a great song.

We were traveling with our friends Nick and Suzanne. They were in their own RV ahead of us and probably getting close to Boise by now. They are dedicated Birders and have taught us to always have binoculars handy. You never know when an interesting bird might show up. So, I was watching Nevada lineman, through our binoculars. He climbed into his cherry picker and maneuvered it up close to the wires. He put some sort of clip on each wire, I assume to stop the electric flow. I noticed that he was a young handsome guy with jet black hair and beard. I mentioned this to Katie and she grabbed the binoculars and I had a tough time getting them back.

The lineman lowered himself back down, walked across the street, cut the wires and pulled them off the road, one at a time. None of the firemen or deputies helped or even spoke to him. When the last wire was removed, Bubba sauntered back to his car in front of the TT, removed his vest, folded it and placed it in the trunk. He ambled around, picking up each cone, stacked them, and put them back in the trunk. The Nevada lineman was putting his tools away. Just when I was getting ready to play Working Class Hero by John Lennon, Bubba pulled his car to the side of the road and began waving the cars through.

The TT took off like a shot. As we started up, Katie told me to honk the horn to thank the lineman, whose back was toward us. I honked and he turned around and gave us a wave in reply.  He truly was the hero.

It was after dark when we finally pulled into the RV resort in Boise.

The Birth of Folk Rock 16 Sep 2021 3:25 PM (3 years ago)

 

My 17-year-old grandson recently told me he was getting into early 70s music. He sent me his playlist of fifteen songs, which included songs by America, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, the Grateful Dead, and Carole King.  He asked if I could recommend any songs, artists or albums. It was a baby boomer grandfather’s dream question. He had discovered the “Folk/Rock-Singer/Songwriter” era.

Folk/Rock was the background music of the “Hippie” era. Lasting about ten years, from 1965 to 1975, it was formed out of two main musical movements, the Folk Revival music of the late 50s and early 60s, and the British Invasion. In this new evolving genre, song lyrics became more topical and personal. The protest songs of the civil rights movement morphed into anti-Vietnam war songs. Electric guitars of rock & roll joined the acoustic instruments of folk music with a drum backbeat and two or more harmony singers. The musicians dressed in street clothes and didn’t try to be dancers or showmen. Folk/rock was all about the music.

The leading edge of the baby boom generation grew up listening to rock & roll. But in 1959, it almost completely died out. The hard-edged rock & roll of Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly was replaced with cleaned-up pop versions, by the likes of Pat Boone, Fabian, Bobby Rydell, Bobby Vinton Frankie Avalon and many more. In January 1964, when the early boomers were in high school or college, the Beatles released their first US single, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. In February they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and after that, the floodgates opened for the “British Invasion”. The British groups loved American rock & roll and rhythm and blues. They brought the raw energy of early rock & roll back to us, reinterpreted. For the next three years, British rock & roll dominated the American radio airways.

Music historians credit the birth of folk/rock to the Los Angeles group, the Byrds. The group was hailed as the American answer to the British invasion. Roger McGuinn, co-founder of the Byrds, was already an accomplished folk musician by the time he met Gene Clark and David Crosby at the Troubadour in LA and formed the Byrds.

Roger grew up in Chicago. In an interview, he said that when he heard Elvis singing “Heartbreak Hotel” on the radio, he knew what he wanted to do. He got a guitar and practiced diligently. He loved the folk music of the time and in 1957 entered Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music. There he learned to play the five-string banjo and continued with the guitar.

As a teenager he played around in the local clubs and his musicianship was so good, that he was asked to be a sideman for the popular folk group, the Limelighters. He was then hired to play behind the Chad Mitchell Trio. You can watch him as a teenager accompanying the Trio on you tube. Bobby Darin wanted to put more folk music into his repertoire and hired Roger to help him. Roger accompanied Darin for a year and a half, until Darin got sick and retired from singing. Darin then hired Roger as a song writer for his TM music in New York’s Brill building. At the same time, Roger also worked as a studio musician and recorded with Judy Collins, Simon & Garfunkel and others.

In 1963, Roger heard the Beatles, who were then popular in England and He began including Beatles’ songs in his solo act and experimented with fusing their rock & roll sound folk songs. He got a call from Doug Weston in LA and was hired to play at his nightclub, the Troubadour. Roger said that his Beatles style folk music was not very popular with the audience. One night Gene Clark was in the audience and loved Roger’s music. Gene asked Roger if he wanted to start a band.

Clark also had a background in folk music. After high school in Kansas City, he formed several folk bands. He was recruited by the New Christy Minstrels and recorded two albums with the popular folk group. After hearing the Beatles, Clark quit the folk scene and moved to LA.

Clark and McGuinn formed a duo and sang Beatles covers and Beatle-esque folk songs as well as some of their own compositions. David Crosby introduced himself to the duo after hearing them perform at the Troubadour and began singing with them, putting on a third part harmony. The trio became “The Jet Set” and through Crosby’s connections hired a manager named Jim Dickson.

They added Michael Clarke to their group as a drummer. According to Wikipedia, Clarke didn’t have much skill playing drums, but he had a haircut like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and looked good. Chris Hillman was the last member to be added to the group as a bass player. Hillman had a background in Bluegrass music as a Mandolin player. The group bought instruments just like the ones the Beatles used, including Rogers’ 12 string electric Rickenbacker guitar like the one George Harrison played. This gave the music that electric “jangly sound”. They changed their name to the British sounding “Beefeaters” and put out a single on Elektra records, “Please Let Me Love You”. It’s a pretty bad song in my opinion, but you can hear the Byrds’ signature sound taking shape

 Roger wanted to fuse the jangly rock sound with lyrics like Bob Dylan’s. Dickson acquired an acetate disc of the unreleased Dylan song “Mr. Tambourine Man”. Dylan had recorded the demo for his album “Another Side of Bob Dylan”. Ramblin’ Jack Elliot sang harmony on the demo, but sang off key, so the song wasn’t used on the album. At the time, the Byrds were still calling themselves “The Jet Set”. They invited Dylan to hear their version of the song. Dylan loved it and it is conjectured that this influenced Dylan to “go electric”.

With back up harmony and a rock beat, the song launched the Byrds’ career and opened the door for a host of American groups to challenge the popularity of the British groups that dominated the airways.

The Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” was produced by Terry Melcher (Doris Day’s son), who had also produced songs for the Beach Boys. Terry used the same production style for the song that he used for the Beach Boys’ song “Don’t Worry Baby”. McGuinn wanted his lead vocal to sound like a cross between Dylan and John Lennon. Only three of the Byrds were actually used on the record. Roger sang lead, and David Crosby and Gene Clark sang harmony. Melcher used four members of the “Wrecking Crew” to play the musical instruments, Bill Pitman, Leon Russell, Hal Blaine and Larry Knechtel. They had also played on the Beach Boys’ recording. Chris Hillman and Michael Clark grudgingly did not play on the record.  The Byrds became a regular band at the Troubadour and in a short period of time their musicianship was up to the task of playing on their own recordings. Mr. Tambourine Man was the only song they didn’t actually play on.

In April of 1965 the song shot to number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and on the U.K.’s Singles Chart. It proved to be the template for a new style of music labeled, folk/rock. In addition to the Byrds, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Turtles, Sonny and Cher and Barry McGuire all had folk/rock hits that year. The Byrds second number one song of that year, “Turn, Turn, Turn” was written by Pete Seeger. Before Pete recorded it, the Limelighters recorded their version in 1962, when Roger, who went by Jim at the time, was playing guitar with them. By the early 70s, folk/rock had become a dominant genre in American music.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona 28 Jan 2020 10:17 AM (5 years ago)

At the restaurant we ate dishes from the original Harvey House menu like their corn and black bean soup. The waitress instructed me as to how to eat it. “First take a bite of the corn side, then the bean side, and after that you can eat them together.”  I followed her guidance, and it was delicious. 

One Impactful Issue of Life Magazine 25 Nov 2019 12:28 PM (5 years ago)

VetsAid Concert 2018 20 Nov 2018 11:09 AM (6 years ago)

The Savoy Theatre 25 Jan 2017 12:00 PM (8 years ago)

 It was the first show of the evening and a long line of kids stood waiting outside to buy tickets.  Paul and I went to the end of the line. Most of the other kids towered over us. Some girls standing next to us talked with each other excitedly and Paul and I noticed they smelled like perfume. Some of the boys up ahead looked dangerous, with hair greased back, short sleeves rolled up, shirt fronts partly unbuttoned and collars flipped up in the back. They were smoking cigarettes, talking loudly and pushing each other around.







 

My Childhood Slides 8 Jan 2017 1:14 PM (8 years ago)

I’ve begun the laborious task of transferring all of my family’s slides to digital photos. The slides start in the mid-fifties and go into the early sixties. My dad took a lot of pictures, three shoe boxes full. In the nineties, after both of my parents had died, I went through the slides, throwing many away and putting the rest in little plastic boxes with labels on the top. Besides the family slides, we also have boxes of photographs out in the garage that need to be scanned sometime in the future.


It was one of those “people sitting around in the living room” pictures that caused me to pause and seriously question this whole project. My Grandmother had two good friends, Elsie and Amanda. Neither of them ever married and they shared an apartment,  we called it a “flat” but I don’t know why.  I never knew the history of either of these women, but as a boy, they both seemed very old, in their old lady print dresses and big clunky black shoes. My Dad referred to them as the “high kickers” which my sister and I thought was funny. They were both very sweet ladies and always nice to us kids.

I was given a puppy for Christmas when I was three. I named her Cookie. She slept at the foot of my bed and went everywhere with me when I was a boy. She died when I was in Vietnam.

Me, Paul Brehm, Tom Woodard and Bob Chapman

At Ranch Royale, we camped and rented horses. We were allowed to ride anywhere on the  huge property, unsupervised.

 
                                                                       
One of my favorite trips, in 1958, was to Hannibal, Mo where we visited the boyhood home of Samuel Clemmons. The books Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were my childhood favorites.
    

I had just gotten a new Brownie flash camera for my birthday. When we toured the cave where Becky and Tom had to hide from Indian Joe, the tour guide turned out the lights. It was dark and scary.



Sometime my sister, Karen, went along on these adventures.

My mom had a friend from work named Alma who owned a farm house down in the Ozarks. We went there quite a few times. In the winter I explored the woods with Cookie. I always had my BB gun, but never shot at any animals. I was afraid I might hit one.
In the summer I fished in the local stream and we swam in a large lake nearby. Alma was sometimes there when we were and she made big breakfasts--pancakes, bacon and fruit. She also cleaned and cooked the fish I caught.

So Long Leonard 16 Nov 2016 12:10 PM (8 years ago)

Dylan on the Jukebox 25 Oct 2016 4:00 PM (8 years ago)

      

The Last Wild Ride 6 Jul 2016 12:12 PM (8 years ago)

The Historical City of Hue 9 Jun 2016 9:33 AM (8 years ago)



Image from alphaonefive.com

After an hour or so of taking in the many beautiful ornate buildings, they became rather redundant. We read about the royal family and looked at many pictures. They seemed rich, spoiled and out of touch with the rest of the people in their country. They enjoyed gluttonous meals consisting of hard to get or hard to prepare foods and they used eunuchs (castrated boys) as personal servants. The men in power had many wives as well as many concubines.

PTSD Express 30 May 2016 1:20 PM (8 years ago)

Looking over the damage after Tet offensive

One of the guys said, “We’re gonna have to run for it,” and he took off across the road for the bunker. Another guy went and another until it was my turn. I waited for a break in the tracer bullet action and took off. At the entrance to the bunker someone grabbed me and pulled me in. We all made it and spent the rest of the night hunkered down in the bunker, listening to the explosions and hoping we were not being overrun by the enemy.  I kept thinking about how easy it would be for someone to lob a grenade or satchel charge into the bunker and kill us all. We sat huddled in that humid smelly bunker until daylight, not knowing what was going on or what would be the outcome.

This hooch took a direct hit from a rocket

This was one of many experiences I had the last time I was in Vietnam and it seemed to be fueling my current anxiety on the bus. I looked out the bus window at the Bus Driver and he was talking on his cell phone. He hung up and shortly after that a man showed up on a motorbike, apparently the bus company supervisor. He got the keys from the driver and unlocked the bus door. The passenger who had been beating on the door, ran off to the bathroom and the man climbed on the bus and stood in front of the tall tourist.

The "HomeStay" in Hoi Anh 15 May 2016 11:04 AM (8 years ago)

It was a long hot walk. We stopped for lunch and to cool off. Hoi Anh is a beautiful old town. The buildings are rustic and colorful. Right before the bridge going over to Cam Nam Island, we passed through a large open produce and fish “wet” market, bustling with people.   

Danang 6 May 2016 2:06 AM (8 years ago)