A friend emailed earlier today to tell me that John Philip Sousa was born on this date in 1854. I have always maintained that Sousa’s influence is underappreciated by contemporary society, probably because to modern Americans he seems like such a social and cultural anachronism. Really he was the progenitor of Ellington, Armstrong and even Coltrane, who like Sousa played in a military band. In Coltrane’s case the Navy. Here is the United States Marine Band earlier today at Sousa’s resting place in Congressional Cemetery.
I’m having my morning coffee before heading out for what will be a long day. I wanted to take a few brief moments however to note that Jim Croce and Maury Muehleisen died on this date fifty years ago today. Maury Muehleisen’s name may be less familiar to many, but it was his guitar work that made so much of Croce’s work come to life. Croce was thirty and Muehleisen all of twenty-four when the plane in which they were flying from Natchitoches, Louisiana to an upcoming show in Texas crashed. They and four others were all killed.
When Jim was in the Army National Guard there were banks of pay telephone booths on base from which at scheduled times enlisted men were allowed to call home. Croce never forgot the scenes he sometimes saw play out in which men who had received Dear John letters called their wives or girlfriends to learn as much as they could in the amount of time their ten cents allowed to learn why their sweethearts had left them. From those experiences came one of Jim Croce’s most poignant songs.
Hank Williams was born on this date in 1923. I noticed that there are a number of events in various places across the country and around the world this weekend through the coming week to commemorate what would have been his 100th birthday. I think it’s lost on some what a universal figure Hank is. Go half way around the world and you will find people who listen the man who is still the father of country music. His power was in the directness of the message. “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” “Why Don’t You Love Me (Like You Used to Do)” “Mind Your Own Business” Three chords and truth applied to no one more than Hank. Whatever his flaws as a human being—and they were many—Williams always regarded himself as a work in progress and capable of redemption. That’s what makes his gospel recordings so powerful.
A friend emailed last night and reminded me that today, April 29, is Edward Kennedy Ellington’s birthday. The composer was born in Washington, D.C. on this date in 1899. I think I have said this before, but I have always wondered by artists in other genres such as Matisse (1869), Picasso (1881), and Braque (1882) are still considered Modern while jazzmen also born in the nineteenth century are regarded with nostalgia. Intellectually Ellington has had more influence on me than any other creative person. The reason I say this is because I internalized something he once said about the audience never knowing how hard you work to pull it off. I don’t compare myself to Duke Ellington, but I like to think those who read my work take from it what they do without thinking about the effort on the back end. What it takes to make it happen, the reader should never know. I remember seeing “Beyond Category: The Musical Genius of Duke Ellington,” a traveling exhibit sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution, when it was on view at the African American Museum of Dallas in 1996. When I visit Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx his modest resting place there on Jazz Corner is one of the places I alway visit.
It was sixty years ago today that Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and others died in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee. The first time I listened to Patsy in a serious way was one summer in the mid-1990s when, going through a tough stretch, I played one of the many anthology cd’s over and over each morning and evening after work. I have never cared for the countrypolitan style in vogue during her recording lifetime in which the labels added lush strings, backup voices, and other touches to slick the music up and make it more palatable to the respectable crowd now buying records to play on their new living room hi-fi sets. Her voice was so transcendent, however, that it rose above whatever white noise the producers surrounded it with. When one listens to Patsy Cline, the voice is all that matters. I can only imagine what it was like when she was on the road with a small band in front of an intimate audience and everything was working.
I’ve been sending and receiving many texts and emails these past few days from friends discussing the death of baseball player and announcer Tim McCarver. One of the things that touched me the most was that he died in Memphis, where he had been born and raised. To the best of my knowledge he did not live there once his long career began. I assume he returned once he knew the end was near and to come full circle. He was of course a fine ballplayer–you don’t play 20+ seasons in the Majors and win two World Series if you’re not. His biggest contribution to the game though was in the booth. Indeed he is in the Hall of Fame as a broadcaster. The closest parallel to what he accomplished would be John Madden in football. Both simplified the action on the field for listeners without dumbing it down. Fans expect the local broadcasters to be homers on some level, which is natural given that the hometown listeners are by definition the primary audience. McCarver though was unafraid to challenge and call out what he regarded as lackadaisical play. The Mets famously let him go in 1999 after sixteen season due to complaints from players. Think about that.
Some friends of mine once had a brief conversation with him at a Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side as the they all waited in line to speak to the clerk about finding what they were looking for on the shelves. They said he could not have been more delightful. McCarver wasn’t perfect, because no one is. The tension between him and boothmate Jack Buck was sometimes palpable. And as a friend and I were saying the other day, sometimes the quips and puns were a little forced and premeditated. I suppose there’s a thin line between preparation and spontaneity. Still, as I told my friend, the occasional linguistic overindulgences were a small price for listeners to pay for everything Tim McCarver provided us.
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Of all the individuals discovered or rediscovered during the Folk/Blues Revival of the 1950s and 1960s by far my favorite is Elizabeth Cotten, who was born 130 years ago today. Ms. Cotten was left-handed and instead of restringing her guitar simply flipped it over and taught herself how to play it backward. Here is a bit more from Smithsonian Folkways. In that great Folk/Blues tradition, the article lists a different birth year. I have seen other years given in yet other sources as well. By most accounts however, including Cotten’s, she was indeed born on January 5, 1893. For one thing she played a commemorative show at Folk City in Greenwich Village in January 1983 a few days after her 90th birthday.
Seventy years ago at this moment Americans were waking up and hearing on their radios that Hank Williams had died in the backseat of his car on the way to a show in the early hours of 1 January 1953. There is a saying that the Blues is for Saturday night and Gospel for Sunday morning. What is fascinating about Country is that the sacred and profane are equally embedded in the mix. For no one was this truer than the King of Hillbilly himself. I have been listening to Hank Willams for 40+ years now, and can say that listening again in full middle age brings its own rewards. People grew up faster in the early decades of the twentieth than they do today. In his twenties Williams was singing about work, marriage, death, and salvation. There are no songs here about curfews missed or allowances being taken away.
I don’t romanticize the notion of the artist tragically dying young. Hank Williams left us far too early so much still to say. He was also a husband and a father. Still it is difficult to imagine him adjusting to the changes that took place in Country Music in the years immediately after his death. How he would have reconciled to the Nashville Sound is something we will never know. In a piece David Halberstam wrote for the July 13, 1971 edition of Look magazine, later anthologized in The Hank Williams Reader, the journalist asked, “And what would he be like now [at 47]—bald, pudgy in the middle, his sharp, reedy voice gone mellow, his songs backed by violins, pianos and worse? On the late-night talk shows beamed from New York, and dressed in Continental-cut suits?”
These are all good questions. I would add to these how Hank Williams might have adjusted to the rise of the twelve inch, 33 1/3 long playing record, which was invented in 1948 and only coming into its own at the time he died. Here is one he the Drifting Cowboys recorded for his Mother’s Best Flour radio transcriptions when Hank was still in his full powers.
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I’m here with my coffee gearing up to proofread a project before sending it back to the editors. I’ve been off this week but intentionally staying away for most work- and writing-related things. The past twenty-four hours I’ve been reading of Pelé’s passing with great sadness. It was not unexpected; news of his illness was widespread during the World Cup. Still, when someone so iconic passes away it is always a shock. Soccer is not something I follow regularly and although losing interest the last few cycles due to people and events related to the organizing bodies, I do enjoy the World Cup when it comes every four years. There are different ways of putting it but watching makes you feel like an international citizen, or something like that. Not to mention that the game is, well, beautiful.
Pelé is the only player to have won three World Cups, in 1958, 1962, and 1970. I don’t think I quite understood until reading some of the obituaries and tributes the extent to which his playing elevated the nation of Brazil in those decades just after the Second World War. Prior to Brazil’s 1958 victory the only three nations to have won the Cup were Uruguay, Italy, and West Germany. England won in 1966 before Brazil’s third title in 1970. The symbolism of this seventeen-year-old from the barrios of Brazil leading his country to victory at the height of the decolonization movement would not have been lost on many. The details are different but he was much like Muhammad Ali in this respect, which explains their respective international stature. I remember when he played for the North American Soccer League’s New York Cosmos in the mid-1970s. Pelé’s best playing days were behind him at this point, but his presence brought soccer to millions of Americans who otherwise would never have been exposed. And oh yes, he led the Cosmos to the Soccer Bowl title in 1977. (I was having lunch with someone a week ago when we got on the topic of ins and outs of the NASL shootout.) If you want to read a good book and/or watch a good film, check out Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos. You want to talk about 70s excess? Yikes.
Like all persons Pelé could sometimes disappoint. I found it unseemly the way he sometimes denigrated the accomplishments of later players like Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. I never understood why he felt the need to do that. Still, people’s feet of clay are part of their humanity and thus what make them even more interesting. I feel fortunate to have lived in the world at the same time Pelé was in it as well.
I emailed someone today to acknowledge and pay my respects to the great Loretta Lynn. I would have to say hands down that she was favorite female country singer. One of the things I always found most intriguing about Lynn was how little she spoke publicly while seeming to emanate so much wisdom and intelligence. The cliche of country music is that its essence boils down to three chords and truth. With no one was this truer than Lynn; sexuality, motherhood, marital strife, spirituality, and just the everyday struggles of life were all grist for her mill. As a cultural figure she also seemed to cut across generations and fan bases in a way that, unlike with certain other country artists of her time who latched on to whatever genre was happening at the moment, seemed uncontrived. I have no way to verify this, but I read this morning that more Loretta Lynn songs were banned from the radio in the twentieth century than those of all male Country Western artists combined. It seems plausible. Outlaw artists singing about dance floors and booze is one thing, but a woman discussing the independence accorded her via The Pill at the height of the Sexual Revolution was too much for many.
Like so many, for Loretta Lynn it began with gospel and the church.